Q&A: Question about the Cosmological Argument
Question about the Cosmological Argument
Question
Hi Rabbi Michael,
I have a few questions about the cosmological argument:
1. First, regarding the revised formulation of the argument: everything that is in our experience has a cause — what would you say about a prophet? For him God is in his experience, so I would suggest instead: everything in the world has a cause. Since God is not in the world but outside it, that would work. Maybe one could also suggest: everything physical has a cause….
2. A friend who works in physics claimed to me that the Big Bang does not mean that the world did not always exist; rather, the world indeed always existed, but it moves between states of contraction and expansion — the Big Bang is simply the expansion of the world, which takes place in the form of an explosion. Is this a recognized theory that the Rabbi is familiar with?
Thank you
Answer
- It amounts to the same thing. The fact that God is in a prophet's experience (that is not really correct, but it doesn't matter for our purposes) does not mean that He has a cause. If our experience tells us that things of that kind have a cause, then they have a cause. But if we encounter something in our experience and experience does not tell us that it has a cause, then there is no reason to assume that it has a cause. When I speak about something in our experience, I mean in everyday experience.
- This is a theory proposed by some people. At present it has no experimental indication whatsoever, and its entire purpose is to solve the cosmological problem (who created the world). In my book I explained why it does not solve it.