Philosophy: Is there a creator?

I should note that this document is a work in progress.  The thoughts contained within are complex.  While some ideas may be clear to me, they are my own ideas.  As I see ways of helping convey the thoughts more clearly I will modify the writing.

One of the most basic questions in Philosophy is whether or not we have a creator.  This is also one of the most important questions to answer for reasons of morality and science.  Most of us have been exposed to the question at some point, and most of us have probably contemplated this topic on our own rather heavily.  Much of our viewpoints on the world are impacted by what we believe to be the answer to this question. The goal of this document is to show you my answer, and perhaps help you formulate your own.

The question dates back to our earliest documented philosophers Socrates and Plato, and the debate continues today.  The duration of the debate should show both the complexity of the arguments and the importance in trying to answer the question.  I have read the works of both of the Philosophers previously mentioned , as well as Aristotle, Descartes, Aquinas, and many many more.  This has helped me to formulate an answer for myself, and offer a great amount of defense against most of the atheist arguments.

I will never suggest that you take my word for anything here, but rather recommend that you go search, read, and think for yourself.  You can think, therefor you are!  A good place to begin your reading would be the Works of Aristotle and his theory of "The not caused Cause".

What should be done in order to show a logical proof is to reduce the argument to the base level.  I won't ask you to discard your belief system no matter what Religion you believe in, but the purpose of truly understanding the question and formulating an answer I will ask you to set them aside for the time being.  This includes atheists who tend to evangelize with the same conviction as any named Religion.  While it is important that you have your beliefs, it is also important that you set them aside while you evaluate the logic and reason which will follow.  Obviously you have faith to believe what you believe.  Faith alone can not be used as proof to someone that does not have the same faith as you. 

One of the major challenges in defining a creator is that we tend to associate properties that we can understand to our idea of a creator.  We do this for numerous psychological reasons, most of which assist us in associating ourselves with a creator and our vision of our creator.  It's much easier to believe in something we can visualize. For example if you are a believer in the Old Testament, the quote "God created Man in his image" comes immediately to mind.  If we take these words literally, then we must look like God right?  But what does this phrase mean if someone does not believe, believes differently, or even if you have doubts and question your own faith (which most people do periodically).  What if the statement means "how God envisioned humans" and not that we look like God?  For now, we need to put all of our visions of a creator to the side so that we can prove that our Creator exists.  S

I mentioned before that I thought Aristotle was a great beginning choice for arguments for a creator, though there are many to choose from.  The reason for my choice is that using cause and effect does not require that we assign or visualize any human like properties to a creator.  The premise and conclusion of Aristotle's argument is rather simple, hence to me much of the beauty.

The next step we must take is to define what our word "Creator" means.  Again I'm using the simplest possible terms, and I'm using the term Creator very intentionally.  This is not done to offend anyone, but rather to assist in reducing the question to the smallest possible logical arguments.  The question should not include things like "What does the creator look like?" as many people attach to the question.  This question is not about who's right or wrong when it comes to Religion.  The Creator is a concept, hence we should define "Creator" here to be a single entity which has no shape or size. 

In the proof of a creator, we are only going to examine a single action with the Creator.  That being, the inception of the Universe.  This single action is an extremely complex act.  No matter what your current belief is (Big Bang, Expanding Universe, or Divine creation) picture this event for what it is.  In a small fraction of a second, the Universe came to exist.  This act included the creation of matter, energy, space, time, and all of the laws of Physics we know.

It should only be fair to warn people that I must introduce scientific concepts here, which may bother some of the extremely Religious people.  The intent is not to offend anyone,  but rather show the logic involved in answering the question this paper addresses.  If you are offended by reading something about God, or a Creator, that is not in the Bible or taught in a common Theology please stop reading.

Now that we have a Creator and the action we wish to assign to our creator we need to tackle one more very important issue.  The importance of this question relates to the question very heavily.  Is there a Beginning? Without a beginning, there would be no need for a creator.

Is there a beginning?  Yes, without a doubt.  There is no logic that could indicate that there was no beginning, no matter what school of Cosmology you refer to.  There are many people who use theories in an effort of avoiding the question, but none can take us to anything other than Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Einstein, and countless other great minds have taken us to.  The answer is rather resounding and unanimous "yes", there was a beginning of the Universe.


It is now time to work on a thought experiment so that we can resolve our question of whether or not there is a creator.

Assume that we could set up a small experiment where we could isolate a mass from any influence.  We can somehow shield our experiment from radiation, magnetic forces, heat, and gravitational forces.  We could ensure that no external particles would ever touch the inside of our box.  Lastly, we need to envision the ability to remove all heat from the box making our box's temperature absolute zero inside.  We have an environment where there is no energy of any type inside, and no possible way of any type of energy entering our experiment.

If we could maintain the mass in the box, in a billion years time what would the box contain?  There is no motion, no heat, no gravity, no magnetism so our ball of mass would be exactly like we started with.  

No matter how much matter we put into our box, we would still have nothing additional assuming we could totally shield the box as described above.  No matter how much mass we have, it’s only mass until it’s excited to be something else.  The amount of time the matter sits in the box would make no difference. 

When we watch objects in physics, movement is caused by something.  The reasons for movement range from heat transfer, to kinetic motion.  A molecule bumps into a molecule causing it to move.  An increase or decrease in heat causes similar motion, due to atomic and sub-atomic kinetic motion.  Gravity can also pull objects in motion, and magnetism can push or pull objects.  As we scale up from the atomic level, we can see that things really don’t change.  Gravity and velocity (Velocity created by kinetic energy as the Earth was formed) move the Earth around the Sun, which moves through the Milky Way, which spins through the Universe (as do countless other Galaxies).

In a nut shell, there is energy all around us.  Everything that moves does so because energy has been transferred from somewhere to the object moving.  This is true even in a quantum

We note in physics that without the energy, nothing happens.  Hydrogen cannot fuse with Oxygen to create water molecules.  Compression of heavy elements cannot happen to create stone; we cannot send electrical impulses to our muscle tissues to cause movement.

Whether you believe in divine creation or the Big Bang makes no difference.  There must have been a point in time where nothing was moving.  The Big Bang theory as well as Divine Creation Theory both agree to that point.  Even when people start to argue for a Multi-verse or Parallel Universe, that point does not change.  Everything can be traced back to a point of origin, in which there was nothing.  And then, there was an excitement that started everything moving.

We can only look back to the point just after the initial excitement occurred.  Anything, and that is an absolute anything, prior to that moment can not be proved by science.

Was there a beginning?  Yes, without a doubt.
Now for a very profound statement:  We can never prove a cause, we can only prove that it occurred.  We could debate for an infinite amount of time the Theism or lack thereof which caused it, but we can never prove it (at least while we are alive).

Why will we never know?   For the same reason we can prove that there was a beginning, we can prove that we will never know what the beginning actually was.  We can measure movement backward, but the prior to the beginning there was no movement.  Regardless of what was there, it was nothing until the beginning happened.  The Universe prior to the Beginning, is mathematically and logically zero.

Theories about why we have a beginning are only that.  I have my own beliefs, just as you have yours.  The logic I use points to some obvious answers, but not all of them.  Since we can prove nothing as far as these theories go, they will all remain the same.  Yours is just as good as mine, is as good as theirs, etc...

So after all of that, we now come to the question and answer I started with.  Was there a creator?

Since we know that there was a beginning, we know that there must be a creator as long as we use the definition for a creator I provided above.  While that answer may not satisfy some of the theological crowd, remember we are proving that a creator exists.  We are not defining any properties that the creator has.  To finish the definition, we need to add that "The creator is the entity that started everything in motion".

Scientist should have no problem relating to a creator if the definition being used above is followed.  More simply put, the creator either is the ball of mass or made the ball of mass, and the energy that caused the mass to become the Universe.  (For the Theological minded, if the creator is the mass and explosion we have backing in scripture.  God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent.  If God "is" the Universe then we can easily see how this statement has scientific merit.)

For the scientific folks:  I want to expand a bit on the concept of the initial event and why it must be considered something more than just an act, but rather something divine.

We know for example that the Sun generates heat and light.  It took us years upon years to figure out that fusion was responsible for the effects we see from Earth.  We looked at our effect, sunlight and heat, and found our cause.  What a complex and beautiful thing Fusion is right? But fusion is something so complex that while we think we know how it works, we have no ability to really work with fusion.  The energy it takes us to fuse atoms like the Sun is immense in comparison to how the Sun works which is nearly self sustaining.  Though not perpetual, it's efficiency is not something we can hope to achieve.

We know that we have gravity, and we believe we understand the mechanisms behind how it works.  We can't simulate the energy though, nor can we counter gravity.

We know that we have life, yet we have no idea what causes life.  As with the origin of the Universe we can see properties and symptoms of life after it's been created, but we have no idea what the little bit of magic is that actually brings something to a living state.

Imagine the initial cause of the Universe.  In a fraction of a second something happened.  Not only did it create fusion, but the laws of physics that fusion works with.  It not only used gravity immediately, but created laws of gravity.  It not only created matter and energy, but it also created the potential for, and finally life itself.

That initial event, the creator, is something special and incredibly complex.

Countering atheism
If you can never get yourself to the point where you believe that the Universe has a creator, then you must absolutely deny the big bang.  Without an initial event the big bang could not have occurred.  This is why most atheists will deny any discussion about the event that started the big bang.  They claim it does not matter, but we can see that it does matter and changes their belief to something intangible and impossible.

To believe in a creator is a very logical thing, and it does fit with Science very well.  Remember, I'm not assigning any properties to the creator, nor am I claiming to know what the creator thinks or does.  Those thoughts are the study of Theology.