1. Does anything other than matter and energy exist, and if so, do we know anything about it?

You want me to believe that God exists. But everyone knows only matter and energy are real.

 On the contrary. I think I can prove that things other than matter and energy are real.

Matter and energy have no ordering or organizing principle within themselves. Left to themselves, they would never have produced the order around us, and left to themselves even now they would eventually reach the point of absolute disorder. Scientists refer to this tendency toward randomness as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy. Whatever enforces order on matter and energy cannot itself be matter and energy. For no matter or energy is exempted from the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

This should lead us to two realizations: First, without something other than matter and energy to enforce order on matter and energy, there could be no order or design in the universe. Everything would be absolutely random. There would be no thinking and nothing to think about. You and I wouldn't be talking here.

But that's not so. Some matter does impose order on other matter, like genes causing life to form in one way and not in another.

 Genes do cause order in some matter and energy but they do so only because they are already ordered themselves. They didn't cause their own order, but got it from something else. Whatever little bits of order and of order‑causing matter there may be in the universe, still the universe as a whole cannot have brought about that order, and there must be a cause for it outside matter.

The second realization we should get from the Second Law of Thermodynamics is that since all matter and energy tend irreversibly toward maximum randomness, and since the universe is not maximally random today, it cannot have been tending that direction forever. It has only been tending that way for a limited time. This means that matter and energy are not eternal; there was a time when they did not exist. This means that there must be something other than matter and energy that is eternal, for nothing comes from nothing, and if nothing exists but matter and energy, then before matter and energy existed there was nothing.

We're really left with only two options. We can believe that nothing exists, or we can believe that matter and energy and something else exist. But to believe that only matter and energy exist is to deny a basic law of physics.

Okay, something other than matter and energy exists. But you can't really know anything about it. After all, statements only have meaning if they can be investigated for truth or falsehood by empirical means. I take the scientific approach: nothing is meaningful that can't be tested empirically.

 Think for a moment about that statement. Can it be tested empirically?  Definitely not. It is an overarching principle about empirical investigation, and  cannot itself be tested by empirical means. If it is true, then it calls itself meaningless. Whatever is meaningless cannot be true, since truth depends on meaning. So, that principle cannot be true.

Nothing prevents our talking sensibly about non‑material things.

Fine. In principle I have to agree-it isn't meaningless to talk about non-material things. But you can't know anything about them.

 Do you know that you can't know anything about them?

Yes.

Then you do know something about them! You know that you cannot know anything about them. But if that's true, then it's something you know about them. Your own statement condemns itself, you can and do know something about non-material things.

Fine. But you can't know anything more about them.

 Except that, you can't know anything more about them? Every time you limit what may be known about non‑material things, you add something else you know about them. The only logical  approach is to admit that you can know about non‑material things, and then see where the evidence leads to determine what you know about them.

Well, all right. Where does the evidence lead? What do you think we can know about non‑material things?

 First, we know that they exist‑or that at least one non‑material thing exists. At least one non‑material thing must have made matter and energy.    RETURN TO QUESTION PAGE

2. Did the universe have a beginning?

You're talking about creation, but didn't evolution disprove that?

 Let's leave evolution for later, if you don't mind. We're not talking about how all things got to their present form; we're only talking about how the material universe came into existence in the first place. In that sense, yes, we're talking about creation.

This isn't contrary to the idea of evolution, and it isn't contrary to science. One of the leading astronomers of our age, for instance, Robert Jastrow, says that scientific research about the universe has led to one extremely important conclusion: "... I am an agnostic in religious matters. However, I am fascinated by some strange developments going on in astronomy‑partly because of their religious implications and partly because of the peculiar reactions of my colleagues.

"The essence of the strange developments is that the Universe had, in some sense, a beginning—that it began at a certain moment in time ... for the astronomical evidence proves that the Universe was created ... in a fiery explosion...

"Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind—supposedly, a very objective mind-when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist or we paper it over with meaningless phrases. " (Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers,  New York: Warner Books, 1984, pp. 11-16.)

RETURN TO QUESTION PAGE