Rancho Miller

Paul Johnson

Historian Paul Johnson (“A History of the American People,” “Modern Times“) discusses in his Spectator column why the hypothesis that the  universe was created by God makes more sense than the inanimate hypothesis:

By contrast a personal explanation of the universe, that it was created by God, for good purposes in order eventually to produce humans, themselves capable of pursuing good, is quite simple. God is simple. He is one. All His essential characteristics (including perfect goodness) follow from four properties: he is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly free. The simplest physical cause of the general feature of the universe would be exactly like God: eternal, unlimited and unique. This same cause would have the power to bring about a good universe. It would have the liability to exercise that power, and also since, being physical, would have a location, and the liability to produce effects there which it would not produce elsewhere, thus ensuring uniqueness. The other God-like property of perfect freedom would be the absence of a feature, and especially the absence of a feature in having no rival creative substance or person (which follows from God’s omnipotence). So in sum God is simpler than the simplest possible inanimate explanation.

The entire column is here.