With scientists and theologians still in debate over the universe's birth, the age-old question of the creation

of the universe continues to be a controversial issue. Amongst these theories, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking and the theologian William Rowe are each proponents of the two opposing theories on the creation of the universe. In this paper, I will argue that Hawking's theory is sufficient to undermine Rowe's version of the 'Cosmological Argument' and that a God isn't necessary to explain the origins of the universe. Before arguing this position, it is important to define the specific description of God that will be discussed. In the entirety of this paper, God will be defined as supremely good, omnipotent, omniscient, and creator of but separate from and independent of the world (Rowe 1993, p.17). The argument that Rowe presents is called the 'Cosmological Argument' and is composed of the following three basic propositions: every being is either dependent or self-existent; not every being is dependent; therefore, there exists a self-existent being (Rowe 1993, p.18). By dependent being Rowe means a being that is caused by another being, and by self-existent being Rowe means a being that is caused by itself. This self-existent being that Rowe describes is asserted to be what God is and that this God is what causes dependent beings, as well as the entirety of the universe. Hawking, on the other hand, has shown that modern science has reached the point where we no longer need to assert the existence of a God to explain the creation of the universe. Hawking says in one article that: the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing and that we don't necessarily have to assert the existence of a creator in order to explain the universe's beginnings (Hawking, 2010). Another concept that will be discussed in this paper is the Principle of Sufficient Reason. This principle states that: there must be an explanation (a) of the existence of any being, and (b) of any positive fact whatever (Rowe, 1993 p.20). In summary, this means that all beings and explanations need to have an explanation. With these concepts in place, I will demonstrate that Hawking's theory undermines the claim of necessity in the 'Cosmological Argument'. The 'Cosmological Argument' asserts that not everything can be a dependent being and that therefore there exists a self-existent being whose cause is accounted for by itself. For example, a human being created by two parents is an example of a dependent being because it was caused by something else, namely its parents. If we take this chain of events to its logical extreme, we observe that everybody's parents needed to have parents, and that our animal ancestors also had to have a creator who created it, leading us all the way back to the creation of the universe. So the question is asked: What was the first creator who created the rest of the universe? Was it a dependent being or a self-existent being?

According to the 'Cosmological Argument', God was the self-existent being who started the chain of dependent beings. The reason that God is asserted to be the self-existent being is that he would not be able to be the creator of dependent beings if he himself was a dependent being, because then something would need to create God making him a dependent being. God is therefore asserted to be the only selfexistent being which starts the entire chain of causation. In response to these premises, Hawking claims that the fundamental fallacy of the 'Cosmological Argument' is that there could be a being that was neither dependent nor self-existent; Hawking claims that the universe could well be caused from nothing (Hawking, 2010). Hawking's claim of a universe spontaneously creating out of nothing is based upon scientific evidence of the kind that physicist Frank Close has been researching on. In an article by Amanda Gefter, Close argues that quantum theories have shown that what we perceive to be nothingness is acctually just a vacuum that creates particles in and out of existence (Gefter, 2011). Seeing as the 'Cosmological Argument' rules out the existence of anything that could be caused by nothing, Hawking's theory stands as a third position of universe creation that the 'Cosmological Argument' hadn't considered. In other words, Hawking's third option opens up a third possibility thereby rendering the 'Cosmological Argument's claim of necessity false. Let us now discuss this particular concept of necessity and why it is rendered false. The condition of necessity is false because in order for a proposition to be necessary, it can only allow the possibility of its premises and no other premises; in this case, Hawking's claim opens up a premise that is possible outside of the argument and therefore renders the necessity claim false. To demonstrate this with an example, take the claim that: All humans are necessarily mortal. This claim asserts that if any object or entity (x) is a member of the class humans then it is must be mortal without any exceptions. To put this into the perspective of the 'Cosmological Argument', the argument is asserting that the only two means by which the universe is created is either on the basis of a dependent being or a self-existent being. Hawking asserts that the universe doesn't need to be created by either of these two means; Hawking introduces a third term of creation from nothingness. Rowe's criticism might be that Hawking hasn't yet taken into the account the 'Principle of Sufficient Reason' (PSR); PSR states simply that every explanation needs another explanation to justify it. While Rowe might accept that the universe could have came came from nothingness, Rowe would still ask the question: where did nothingness come from? The fallacy here is that nothingness does not need a creator; nothingness is itself no 'thing' or 'being', is completely devoid of any properties at all, and therefore does not need to be explained. There is no reason why nothingness would need to be created, especially by a God, as there is nothing/no 'thing' to create.

However, in an online video by Sean Carroll, Carroll explains that Hawking isn't advocating that God does not exist but that God does not need to be the one that created the universe (Carroll). Hawking is still open to the possibility that God exists; he simply doesn't think that God needs to be the one that created the universe. While this may seem that Hawking has no problem with the cosmological argument, this isn't quite the case. The problem that Hawking has with the argument is that the argument rests on two premises and accepts no other possibilities, namely creation by a dependent being or a self-existent being. By introducing a third premise, Hawking undermines the claim that there are only two possibilities for the existence of the universe and therefore removes the necessity of a God as the creator of the universe. In conclusion, while Hawking is open to the possibility that God could exist independent of the universe, be perfectly good, and omniscient, Rowe's binary argument does not cover all the possibilities of the creation of the universe. Without even needing to go into a discussion about an infinite chain of dependent beings, Hawking's addition of a third claim of creation from nothing shows that a God does not have to exist in order to explain the creation of the universe.

Works Cited Carroll, S. Stephen Hawking and the Existence of God

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCVqJw7T1WU>

Gefter, A. Existence: Why Is There a Universe? New Scientist, 26 July 2011.

<http://web.mac.com/ericmargolis/PHIL101/1_belief_in_God_files/existence.pdf>

Hawking, Stephen. "Why God Did Not Create the Universe." The Wall Street Journal. Random House Publishing Group, 03 Sep 2010. Web. 12 Feb 2012. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467921609024244.html>.

Rowe, W. (1993). The Cosmological Argument. Chapter 3 of his Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, 2nd edition (Wadsworth, 1993), pp. 16-28.