How Do We Know That Universe Is Created?

Dr. Irfan Shahzad updated 1 month, 1 week ago 3 Members · 13 Replies

Epistemology And Philosophy

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Ahsan

Moderator June 1, 2025 at 1:41 pm

Summarized from The Divine Reality by Hamza. pg 74 and …

The Qur’an outlines four possible explanations for how something comes into existence:

1. Created by nothing: “Or were they created by nothing?”

2. Self-created: “Or were they the creators of themselves?”

3. Created by something created: “Or did they create the heavens and the Earth?”—implying that something created by another created thing ultimately leads to a chain of created causes.

4. Created by something uncreated.

The universe exists and is made up of real, physical entities. Since an actual infinite number of differentiated physical things cannot exist in the real world, the universe cannot be infinite. This implies that the universe is finite and, therefore, must have had a beginning.

If the universe had a beginning, it could not have come into existence by:

Could the universe have been created by something else that was itself created? That too is not a sufficient explanation. It would lead to an endless chain of created causes, which doesn’t ultimately account for the origin of everything.

To understand why an infinite chain of created causes is irrational, consider this analogy:

Imagine a sniper has a target in sight and radios headquarters for permission to shoot. HQ, however, tells him to wait while they get approval from a higher authority. That authority then seeks permission from someone even higher, and this continues endlessly. Will the sniper ever receive the order to shoot? Obviously not—because the command is stuck in an infinite loop.

This shows that in a chain of dependent causes, there must be a final authority—something that does not rely on anything else. Similarly, the universe must ultimately have been created by something uncreated—a necessary being that is the first cause and is not dependent on anything else.