The Creator

There is a Creator (pronouns: it/it)

Fourteen billion years ago, there was no universe as we know it. Four and a half billion years ago, there was no Earth. Less than four billion years ago, there was no life on Earth. Five to seven million years ago, there were no human ancestors walking upright in the way we recognize. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, did not exist 300,000 years ago, but we exist now.

Something happened. The universe, Earth, life, and human consciousness all came into being. In that broad sense, they were created. Therefore, there is a Creator.

But that statement must be handled carefully. “Creator” does not automatically mean the God of the Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah, the Vedas, or any other religious tradition. It does not automatically mean a personal God, a loving God, an involved God, or a God who gave commandments to human beings. It simply means that something caused existence as we know it to come into being.

The Kalam cosmological argument is often used to move from that idea to a religious conclusion. It says that whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore, the universe has a cause. Many then add one more step: that cause must be God.

That final step is the problem.

The argument may suggest that the universe had a cause, but it does not prove what that cause was. The cause could be God. It could be some unknown pre-existing state. It could be a process beyond current human understanding. It could involve quantum conditions, cosmic inflation, dimensions, forces, or realities we do not yet have the knowledge to describe. Calling the cause “God” may be a belief, but it is not a fact proven by the argument.

The same problem occurs when someone uses scripture as proof. A person cannot prove God exists by pointing to a book that says God exists. The Bible cannot prove the Bible is true. The Qur’an cannot prove the Qur’an is true. No sacred text can serve as objective proof of its own divine authority. That is circular reasoning: the text is treated as true because it says it is true, and then its truth is used to prove the claims inside it. That may support belief for someone who already accepts the text as sacred. But it does not prove God to someone asking for facts, logic, knowledge, and reason.

This does not mean God does not exist. It means the argument has limits. It may be reasonable to believe the universe had a Creator, but it is not reasonable to claim that a religious document, by itself, proves who or what that Creator is. So the better question may not be, “Can we prove God exists?” No one can. The better question is: if there is a Creator, what did the Creator actually create?

Did the Creator build every galaxy, planet, animal, and person by direct intention? Did the Creator form a man out of clay? Did the Creator write moral rules into sacred texts? Fundamental Deism does not think so. A more reasonable possibility is that the Creator created the conditions from which everything else could emerge: the fundamental forces, the structure of reality, and the possibility for matter, energy, stars, planets, chemistry, life, consciousness, and reason to unfold.

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