Presentation on Creation Draws Large Crowd

Bison Catholic held an event on Wednesday that gathered so many students that the event was moved into the Memorial Union Plains Room to hold them all.

Originally slated for the smaller Prairie Room, Friar Robert Spitzer’s “Creation’s Case for God” presentation drew an audience of mixed beliefs and interests.

“Every oscillating universe...every single, solitary one of them has a beginning,” Spitzer said.

Spitzer is a well-known speaker with a long list of achievements and degrees. He has published five books, won the Catholic Press Associations Award for best book in faith and science, and was President of Gonzaga University from 1998 to 2009. He holds fives degrees including a doctorate from the Catholic University of America in philosophy. Spitzer has also founded seven major national institutes including the Magis Center of Reason and Faith, which he serves as President.

The overall arching theme of Spitzer’s discussion was the beginning of the Universe. In the beginning, there was nothing, but “we know that when it was nothing, it couldn’t have moved itself into something, because it’s nothing, and nothing can only do nothing,” Spitzer said.

Spitzer took questions from the large crowd, and the event lasted until nearly an hour later than scheduled as students took their turn asking questions.

Many questions were asked, including why people gravitate towards religion and whether Spitzer could make a case for the young world, to which he responded no. “There are 27 sets of data” confirming that about 13.7 billion years ago the world began, so the evidence is very strong against a young world, Spitzer said.

Spitzer discussed what science cannot do. Science cannot do anything without observation, and thus “can not disprove a transcendent theology,” he said. Science is inductive, so scientists cannot know “everything about everything,” which, Spitzer said, means science must be open to new discoveries.

Mentioning many Beginning theories, both disproved and still plausible, he discussed how every plausible theory up until now has led to the idea that all universes must have a beginning. As long as the universe has a Hubble expansion greater than zero—and they must—then they will have a beginning, no matter what the physics of the universe are.

Spitzer concluded that there are two theories thus far to explain how the earth began: a complex multi-verse system or a transcendent being.

“Some creative force” began the universe, Spitzer said, and it had to be “really, really smart.”