The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (570 page)

 
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Cosmogony
:

see
COSMOLOGY
.

 
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Cosmological arguments
.

A family of arguments for the existence of God, which start from the existence of the world or some very general feature of it, e.g. causality, change, or contingency, and argue thence to the existence of a First Cause or Necessary Being, which is identified with God. Such arguments were attacked by
Hume
and
Kant
in the 18th cent. and by subsequent thinkers; but they are still defended by many
neo-Thomists
and some analytic philosophers. Their modern proponents see the arguments as an expression of the human mind's search for total intelligibility in the world, and contend that we should not set
a priori
limits to the search for ultimate explanations.

 
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(Gk.,
kosmos
+
logos
). Reflection on, and account of the world/universe as a meaningful whole, as embodying or expressing an order or underlying structure that makes sense: cosmogony is concerned with the coming into being of the cosmos, and cosmography with the description of its extent.
It is rare for religions to give a single cosmology or cosmogony purporting to be a description of the origin of the universe, in the way in which a scientific cosmology might aim to give a critically realistic account of the origin and nature of the universe. Religious cosmologies give accounts of origin and nature, but principally in order to display the cosmos as an arena of opportunity; and for that reason, a religion may offer, or make use of, many cosmogonies without making much attempt to reconcile the contradictions between them. It is this aesthetic and spiritual relaxation which allows religions to address cosmological issues from the point of view of accountability and responsibility (as at the present time over issues of ecology), not as competitors with a scientific account: thus the Vancouver Assembly of the World Council of Churches (see
ECUMENISM
) decided ‘to engage member churches in a conciliar process of mutual commitment (covenant) to justice, peace and the integrity of creation (subsequently known as JPIC)’; while this (especially the word ‘covenant’) depends on a particular understanding of creation, and thus of cosmogony, it has moved far beyond concerns about identifying the ‘correct’ account of the cosmos and its origins.
Judaism
Tanach
(Jewish scripture) contains at least six different types of creation narrative, all of which are integrated to the overriding cult of
Yahweh
. The controlling accounts are those in Genesis: God created everything that exists in six days and rested on the seventh (1–2. 4). A second, more anthropocentric account (Genesis 2. 4–24), although differing in detail, also emphasizes that God is the origin of everything. The world is created solely in obedience to the divine will.
Christianity
Christians inherited the Jewish cosmology, but virtually from the outset (as early as
Paul's
letters) they associated Christ with the activity of the Father in creation. Furthermore, creation now has its end and purpose in him. Not surprisingly, therefore, Christian interest in cosmology and creation has seen them as a matter, not of technique, but of relationship—i.e. the relation of dependence which the created order has on its creator, not just for its origin, but for its sustenance. Thus God is the cause, not simply of things coming to be, but also of their being. The prevailing cosmography for millennia was one of a ‘three-decker’ universe (heaven above, earth in the middle, and hell below), but its ‘correction’ by modern cosmologies has not affected the more fundamental point of the earlier (or of any) religious cosmology which mapped the universe as an arena of opportunity. For that reason, a three-decker universe may well persist indefinitely in liturgy.
Islam
The Qur’
n strongly affirms God as creator and disposer of all that is. By a simple word,
kun
(‘Be’), he commands and it is (2. 117, 6. 73). God is al-Kh
liq (the Creator, from
khalaqa
, ‘he created’), and has the power and authority to bring about all things as he disposes (
qadar
,
All
h
). Everything that he has created is a sign (
ay
), not only
of
God for those who have eyes to see, but also
that
God has power to continue his creative act in relation to humans by bringing them from the grave for judgement (e.g. 50. 6–11). The creation of a first man and first woman, and of the earth and seven heavens in two days, and of the cosmos in six, is described in such a way that, given the nature of the Qur’
n, any apparent conflict with other accounts (e.g. in the natural sciences) would have to be resolved in favour of the Qur’
n.
Hinduism
Vedic religion displays a clear sense of an ordered universe in which
ta
prevails. There are many different accounts of how the universe came into being, some implying agency, others emanation from a pre-existing state in which there is neither beginning nor end. Thus
a
kara
understood the emanation as a progress from the subtle to the gross constituents of the world. But earlier than that, there had developed a sense of an unending process like a wave, with elements rising up into organized appearance, but then lapsing into a corresponding trough during ‘the sleep of Brahm