Epigraph

He is Allah, the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner. His are the most beautiful names. All that is in the heavens and the earth glorifies Him, and He is the Mighty, the Wise. (Al Quran 59:24)

Presented by Zia H Shah MD

Context & Participants: In Closer To Truth episode 506, host Robert Lawrence Kuhn engages four eminent thinkers – philosopher William Lane Craig, theologian Robert John Russell, physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne, and philosopher Brian Leftow – in a probing dialogue on what it means to call God “the Creator.” The conversation assumes a classical monotheistic perspective (shared by major faiths like Christianity and Islam) in which God is an eternal, all-powerful being responsible for the existence of everything apart from Himself. With this backdrop, Kuhn poses a series of questions exploring the scope of divine creation: “If God exists, did God create everything? Did God create [the universe] out of literally ‘nothing’?” rutube.ru He pushes further, asking the experts to consider a theoretical eternal universe with no beginning – “Suppose there was no beginning to the cosmos, just the universe going through endless cycles, what then?” rutube.ru – and finally inquires about abstract realities: “And what about ‘abstract objects’ like logic and numbers, which seem to exist without any cause and no creator?” rutube.ru. These questions frame a rich discussion at the intersection of theology, philosophy, and science, examining God’s role as Creator of all reality – physical and abstract – and how that role is understood if the cosmos had no beginning or operates via natural laws.

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