Is God the Cause of the Universe?

Trent Horn, Catholic Answers Apologist, answers the question "Is God the cause of the universe?"

Discover the profound concept of creation out of nothing and delve into the question of whether God is the cause of the universe in this thought-provoking online lesson.
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[FlexCathedrafromIG]

I got to say I can watch Trent horn speak for hours. He doesn't even professed himself to be a Dominican but this has to be one of the most fluid and concrete explanations of Thomas aquinas's first cause argument that I've ever heard

[hjvdodh]

Even the potential to cause something, is something. Therefore, if "nothing" can potentially cause something, then that "nothing" is actually something.

[kynesilagan]

Trent's brilliance is expected, the outro music got the production team right! Bravo!

[Moranimal]

I believe in God. I also believe that he didnt not make me smart enough to grasp half of what you are saying. 😊

[RogerDeal]

This video is a great resource, but I feel like the weakest argument of the video is the personal explanation category. It could be argued by materialists that Personal explanations are actually scientific explanations when considering the interactions of matter/energy in the brain chemistry, as in wanting to make tea. A permanent cause accompanied by temporal effect I feel like better defends a personal agent with volition. Thanks so much, Trent & CA. God bless you all.

[sliglusamelius]

The first law of thermodynamics says that matter and energy do not self-create. We know matter and energy and their characteristics. They can’t arise ex nihilo based on any known physics.

[danmeyer]

I agree with Trent here, except when he implies that God is timeless since creation. I believe that God is timeless sans creation, but at the moment that God created our temporal reality he entered into time to have a personal relationship with His creation including us. It seems perfectly logical to say that God exists now, that He existed yesterday, and that He will exist tomorrow.

[peterv]

Though I am Catholic and believe completely in God, I don't think it requires too great an imaginative leap to suppose that the universe, or the fact of being, as such, is a thing which just is, and always was, even though our knowledge and theory of the origin of the universe in the Big Bang makes the present configuration of being a finite entity, one merely needs to posit that some state of what the universe is and how it works was there present before that, and it was likely the natural course of things that that state would lead to the next state, which is what we have now, even though we have no way to observe or even much think about what that state may have been like, but one ready conjecture for me is an idea like: let's say that beyond our own observable universe is an endless array of others just like it, and that they also are expanding such that a huge matrix of expanding universes (massive clusters of galaxies and stuff) are expanding toward one another, and eventually all of the stuff (or subsets of the stuff, collide, contract, and form super crazy black holes which become a singularity which then big bangs again, in a never ending cascade of infinite creations, which are really only bounded by the observableness of them, because of the speed of light and all that. A sort of ever fluctuating steady state of dynamic movement where the very laws of physics and the fact of how gravity compacts mass and energy into those crazy black hole things, basically loading the gun of total energy for the next go round, in an ever-renewing cycle, which is happening all over the place, and has no true fixed center, only relative centers to each and every other singularity formation, which is merely some percentage of stuff which has to clump together to form the black hole which shrinks and explodes, and bam!. or something like that. But I don't know, these kinds of technical pictures of the mechanics of things are really only useful up to a point. What do they have to do with the eternal life of the soul? as it is stated, and how do they help us love one another? We can never know what any of the material objects are in themselves, we can only describe them in terms of their behavior, and maybe in a way, God is like that also, and his behavior is that he has gifted us this Miracle called life, and tutored us in it toward love, because God is love and God is life, and those two things are so united in their essence that without each other neither is sensible or rational. and Love is not a material reality.

[clutchmaster]

What if there is no first cause and it infinitely regresses, or if the universe itself is the uncaused cause.(I'm a Catholic but Idk if i agree with the cosmological argument)

[justindesouza]

I didn't think theistic arguments are sufficient evidence for God (and that the Resurrection is the only evidence for God's existence). However, Trent has me convinced here

[SmallAlexander]

I was thinking, and for me space is the absolute essence of nothingness, and therefore is named, immortal, but not a thing. It can't be bound by anything, and nothing can be attached to it. Therefore, space Is infinite, or we have some boundary layer where God formed a discontinuation of existence, and outside is the absolute essence of existence, which can't be fathomed, nor described, as it is outside the plane of existence in which we live. It is also eternal, and has always just been in the context of God's eternal plan, or it was created, had a begging, and now resides in the context of our existence. Space can't create anything, as it is the absence of things, not a thing itself. A creator had to design it, or no designer never created it, it is eternal, and simply just was. The creation event could be what we are seeing in the cosmic microwave background, so that does seem to point to a creator of space, and all the elements within that space. Or, the elements always existed, and they are eternal themselves as well, which still begs the question. Who made the elements, and space that always were? Could God's creation be eternal like himself? In the Bible, we read that it is not.. he is not his creation, and that there was a begging of the existence of our current reality. Those questions seem to be answered for us, yet the alternative would simply be that existence itself was eternal, had always been, and was a kind of 'I Am' mixed with 'I am doing/I am dying'. Those are my thoughts as a Catholic.

[J.T.Stillwell]

But Trent, how is it even possible for anyone to cause anything to come from nothing? Nothing is nothing to come from, if it were, that would be something. How is it possible or coherent to say that something can be created from nothing? Nothing is nothing to create from. To create means to form that which exists.

[gunsgalore]

So far, I've only found one critique of the First Cause argument that makes any sense to me. There are a lot of dumb New Atheist ones like "What made the first cause" which are just stupid, but then there is one that I think is interesting. It is "Well what if the universe is the first cause of everything in it?" Now, this isn't atheism really but more like pantheism (after all, the universe, as an uncaused being, would still have to be personal, all-knowing, eternal, etc., etc.), but I would like to see what Trent would have to say about it. I know right now current science seems to point to the universe having a beginning (Big Bang Theory) and thus the universe couldn't have been caused, but if the Big Bang theory is wrong, or maybe if it's been repeated Big Bangs have some have supposed, then I would be interested to see what Trent has to say.

By the way, I am Catholic, I'm just always interested in dealing with counterarguments.

[phelimkennedy]

I would like a clarification on one point. You address the objection that God may cease to exist by giving an intuitive appeal to the temporal nature of 'ceasing to exist'. I agree that it is not intelligible how a timeless God could cease to exist with respect to a temporal moment. My concern, however, is that I can imagine similar reflections of this argument to intuitively disprove that a being (God) which does not exist in a temporal space couldn't 'cause' in a temporal sense something which acts in a temporal causal chain. Ie what can one mean by cause (in 'first cause') when the timeless being is unchanged from before to after the 'instant' of initiation

[seanneal]

"The universe brought itself into existence". LOL. Then the universe would not NEED to "create itself" since it would already exist. Also, nothing cannot do anything at all. A cause cannot give to an effect what it does not have to give. For example, I cannot lift a 100-pound concrete block if I only apply 50 pounds of weight to the bottom. But these new atheists would have you believe that ZERO pounds would be enough. It is all just sloppy "reasoning". How anyone can take these people serious is beyond me.

[Shawn-qx]

God Sharing His Power and Spirit:
Both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are separate beings, but it is because they possess the power and spirit of God that makes them as one with the Father. Jesus said, “for as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). This is true for all of those who belong to God, not just Jesus. If we have the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, we will also be raised from death into life (Romans 8:11), inseparable from the Father. God does all of his work through Jesus and through those who belong to him. Without God, Jesus can do nothing (John 5:30) because it is God who doeth the works (John 14:10). Jesus is our Lord and Savior, but the Father is the only God.

[DeconvertedMan]

What is the cause for God?
If nothing, then save a step, and don't posit god.

No time = no when. No before, during or after. No point when a thing can do something before the thing that follows, if God is not bound by time, then it can not do anything.

No space = nowhere. "space" is an abstract idea of where things are in 3D space or 4D time. If "God" is not in space, then there is nowhere that god "is".

Immaterial = Does not matter OR spirtual - if spirtual then what is spirtual?


Power: All power we are aware of comes from something else. Its engery, it requries an engery sourse of sometype that it consumes (entropy), if God is immune to entropy, then its "power" is unlike any power we know of, and would require a new word rather then "power" to talk of it coherently. Where does gods "power" come from? How does that work?

Minds: All minds we know of require a brain, we have never observed a mind apart from a brain, or something that functions to be brain-like. Does God have a brain?

[davidcole]

Is there some reason you don't ever engage in your comment section? It really comes across poorly, especially when you're doing a controversial topic and you're no where to be seen, even when your defenders are getting clubbed over the head by the naysayers. I can't support the channel if you can't manage to find the time to be involved directly.

[maxmaximus]

Trents analogies are bad, , , really bad 😂

[SergeantSkeptic]

God made all Creation. Ancient humans wrote the Bible. The facts in the Bible clash with the facts of God’s Creation. Thus, the Bible does not come from God.