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Hi. I was wondering if you could explain (in as much detail as possible) what problems exist with a
‘Star Wars’ type of god. Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe in Christianity, but what kind of logical/scientific problems would exist with an impersonal, supernatural ‘force’ somehow being responsible for the formation of the universe?
Atheists, of course, reject anything supernatural, but I can see some people thinking that such a ‘god-force’ could have accidentally formed the universe (since as an unconscious ‘thing’ it couldn’t have been on purpose).
Thanks for your time.
John
Hi John,
I’m so glad to hear from someone with an honest question about God and worldviews. I sure will do the best I can to answer your question in detail, and I hope that my response is not too long. Thanks for your time!
The idea of an impersonal Force, like the one in Star Wars, as the cause of the universe has been gaining some popularity. It originated among the pantheistic Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism – even the originator of the Star Wars series admitted these influences in his work (for a great discussion of this check out “The Worldview of Star Wars” at Probe Ministries http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4217915/k.7FF6/The_Worldview_of_Star_Wars.htm)
An impersonal God like the Star Wars Force would have no will, and thus it cannot choose to create. If this force cannot choose when to create (since it has no consciousness), then why would the universe “pop up” 10,000 or 10 billion years ago? An unconscious force would be continually creating, so that it makes more sense that this force would be continually creating an eternal universe that never had a beginning.
Creation would have to be a necessary act of this Force, like gravity’s inexorable pull to bring objects to earth. There isn’t a time when gravity doesn’t try pulling objects to earth – at all times this impersonal force uses its energy for what it naturally can do. So if there is an impersonal force that created the universe, it cannot use its “consciousness” to decide when and when not to create: Only its characteristics as a creative power would propel it to create the very moment of its existence, and so if the Force always was, then the universe always was.
Thus if God is an impersonal force, then it would be most reasonable to expect that the universe is infinitely old. Since an impersonal force cannot choose when it wants to create, it is like the force of gravity, always exerting its energy. Since this impersonal God would always have existed, its creative force would always exist too, and thus this universe would always have been here in some form.
The problem with an impersonal Force and an infinite universe is that scientific evidence clearly shows that the universe is not infinitely old. Almost all scientists, theistic and secular, agree that the universe had a beginning. One indication of this beginning is the expansion of the universe. We can observe from the redshifting of light that the universe’s very fabric has expanded – space has expanded. And since the universe has expanded, it once was small. The farther you go back in time, the smaller the universe would be, until it was infinitesimally small and nonexistent. Thus, it appears that the universe had a beginning, from which its horizons were expanded.
Atheists don’t like the idea of a universe with a beginning, since this implies that a personal God, like the God of the Bible, created the universe at a point in time. Atheists would much rather say the universe is eternal without need for a Cause. So in order to get around this dilemma, some atheists postulate that the universe, rather than expanding from a point as scientific theory indicates, expands and contracts continually in a never-ending cycle.
This expanding/contracting universe could also be a defense used by someone advocating the existence of an impersonal, force-like God. Such a universe would be rhythmic, like the seasons, and fit much better in the view of either secularism or pantheism than a universe that began to exist in the finite past.
Yet one big problem with this expanding/contracting universe view is that it has precious little evidence. It is mostly put forth in order to avoid the personal-God implications of a universal beginning. It is based mostly on speculation, not scientific evidence. Thus, it cannot be used as evidence for the continually-creating impersonal Force.
Two of science’s most important, experimentally-verified laws, the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, present another problem with the expanding/contracting universe hypothesis.
These laws point to a universe that has come into existence at a definite point in time. According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, the amount of matter and energy in the universe is constant – nothing is being added or taken away. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy is increasing in the universe – i.e., things are breaking apart and the universe is increasing in disorder. Since the First Law of Thermodynamics states that the amount of matter and energy in the universe is constant, then there is no replenishment for this loss of usable energy. This constant, ever-running-down matter and energy will one day totally run down.
Basically, things are breaking down and usable energy is being turned into unusable heat. Every single movement of energy, whether from the sun to the earth or from your arm to the coffee cup, is not 100% efficient – some of that energy becomes useless heat. Once it is heat, this energy cannot be used to do work, such as moving objects. Over a very long time, more and more energy is transformed into heat until in the distant future, there is no longer any usable energy. Everything has broken down, like a rag hung over a fence gets rent and torn and moldy until it crumbles apart. No more stars or molecules – just heat distributed across the universe. This is called the “heat death” of the universe.
So how does the death of the universe relate to the dawn of the universe? Basically, if the universe is “winding down” from order to disorder, usable energy to useless heat, and if the universe has always been here, then the universe would have disintegrated by now. An infinitely-aged universe would have fallen apart long ago, and we wouldn’t be here. Thus, since the universe has not yet fallen apart, it must have begun at a point in the past which is recent enough that all things have not fallen apart.
Now let’s apply these laws to the expanding/contracting universe hypothesis (or the oscillating universe hypothesis). If the universe expands and contracts, expands and contracts, then these laws stipulate that more usable energy will be sapped from the system – with each new cycle, there will be less available energy to make the expansions. Eventually, all energy will be exhausted, and there will be no more universe, oscillating or otherwise. If the universe really had been expanding/contracting for eternity past, then the universe would have broke down and used up all its energy by now. Again, we would not be here.
Along with these impossible theoretical hurdles, the expanding/contracting universe also fails evidential tests. For example, the universe is not “heavy” enough (not enough mass) to allow gravity to halt its expansion and cause its contraction (more info at “Who Created God?” christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c039.html). As it is, gravity doesn’t have enough force to squeeze the universe back into a tiny point and initiate the cycle. Even if gravity could somehow have enough strength to fold the universe back on itself, there still is not an atom of evidence for the physical mechanism that would force the universe to expand again (Guth, A.H. and Sher, M., “The Impossibility of a Bouncing Universe,” Nature, 302:505-507 (1983)).
I apologize if I’ve travelled too long in this interesting rabbit trail, but the impossibility of an oscillating universe or an eternal universe leaves only one other option, based on the evidence: a universe with a beginning. If the universe has a beginning, then a personal Being must have caused it to come into being.
Only a personal Being can decide to create and bring creation into existence. An impersonal Force would just be emanating creation from within itself for all eternity; but since we can see that the universe has not always existed, then Someone chose to bring it into existence at a finite point in the past. An impersonal force, like gravity, cannot make choices, so it will either always be creating or never creating at all.
Since the universe once did not exist, and now exists, whoever began the universe must have exercised a will to decide to create it. Such an entity would by definition have to be personal in order to make the choice to create. Thus, the Cause of the universe is a personal God.
I hope that I answered your question adequately. There are many other evidences that can address this issue: One of the posts I wrote on DNA and God touches on whether an impersonal force could create DNA. You may want to check it out, if that’s part of your question: https://witnessinggod.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/the-mystery-of-dna-does-dna-point-to-god/
The logical and scientific evidence is quite strong against an impersonal god-force as creator, but another reason I know that God is not impersonal is because the Bible expressly says God is a personal being. And since the Bible has great historical, logical, and scientific evidence in its favor, I can trust what it says about God’s nature. So there are numerous ways to address the problems of an impersonal Force, and I hope that you found the evidence compelling.
If you have more questions, feel free to post. I’m glad to be able to discuss these things with you.
May you enjoy God’s blessings and truth,
Rowena