Steven asked:

On the assumption that:

*
God does exist.

*
The universe did have a beginning.

*
God created the universe

Why did God create the universe?

============

It is hard to think of a reason why God created the universe without making some suppositions about
the character of God, his motivations, reasons and the like, which usually we only get through His
revelation to us, which then gets us into religious metaphysical systems. Whatever reason God had
for creating the universe would only make sense given some larger religious interpretation of the
world, its purpose and our role in it.

Some religious groups claim that God created the universe as a reflection of his power and glory and
created and created intelligent beings in order to appreciate and worship His greatness.

The problem with these religious pictures however is that they are at rock bottom egocentric. They
explain very well why we are here and what role we have in the greater scheme of things, but they
give us very little insight into the motivations of the Big Man, appealing to the old 'God works in
mysterious ways' line.

We could give a non-religious reason, perhaps after an eternity of sitting around doing nothing God
got bored and needed something to entertain him for a few trillion years. Or perhaps one day he was
in the grip of existential doubt about the meaning of his own existence and decided to create the
universe to give his life a purpose. But here again we are transferring human motivations on to God
and we don't really get any answer to the question, just a trivial comedy sketch.

We can however approach the question more philosophically to try and get at the very heart of the
nature of God. The religious answers are based on the assumption that God had a reason to create
the universe. Well, this assumption may be wrong. Perhaps God didn't have a reason, perhaps he
didn't even have a choice. Here's why:

The fact that God is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good means that He could not
fail to create the universe, because if he did not create it he would not be God. God, being omniscient
knows that it is a better state of affairs that the universe exists than its not existing. Being omnipotent
He can create the universe. And being wholly good he would do whatever was the best thing
possible. Therefore, because of His very nature He had to create the universe. Of course this
argument rests on the premise that it is better for the universe to exist than for it not to exist. If we
forget about God for a minute, this premise would be open to debate, because if God does not exist
then the existence of the universe would be a value-neutral fact. The universe would just be there, the
result of physical processes without any moral reason for it being here rather than it not being there.
Without God, the claim that it is better that the universe exists is a moral claim about what we think
and some people may disagree with us.

But because God is wholly good, morality already has a foot hold in an explanation of the world. So
for God to fail to create the universe would mean he does not do something which was the best thing
to do.

This however only explains why God created something rather than nothing. There is a related and
equally important question why God created thissomething, this universe rather than some other
world — assuming of course that He could have created a different world. Again perhaps because of
His nature he could not have created a world different from this one, perhaps to use Leibniz's term
this is the 'best of all possible worlds'.

Brian Tee
Dept of Philosophy
University of Sheffield