If you had been born into a
Christian home, you would have been drilled/trained thoroughly with the notion
that there is God. Hence you may not have given this topic adequate research.
What if your
[non-theist/non-Christian] friend(s) wants you to explain as to why you
think God exists? What if they say that God’s existence is implausible when there
is so much evil in our world? How would you rationally and reasonably defend
your belief in God’s existence?
To say that the Bible reveals God’s
existence to a non-Christian is not a good answer because a non-Christian does
not believe in the Bible, to begin with.
How
then do we explain the existence of God (with reasons outside the Bible)?
J. Warner Wallace of Cold Case
Christianity explains that there is evidence outside the Bible that is best
explained by means of God’s existence, “There are a number of circumstantial
lines of evidence pointing to the existence of God, and the diverse, collective
nature of this evidence is most reasonably explained by the existence of a
Creator.”1
So for instance, we know for a
matter of fact that our universe began to exist. Hence it is reasonable to
conclude that God created our universe because everything that exists should
have a cause. Since our universe had a beginning, there should be a Beginner or a First Cause who created our universe. So God must have been the
cause for the existence of our universe. This is otherwise termed as the Cosmological Argument for God’s Existence.
J. Warner Wallace explains the
Cosmological Argument as follows:2
(1)
The Temporal Nature of the Cosmos (Cosmological)
(a) The Universe began to exist
(b) Anything that begins to exist must
have a cause
(c) Therefore, the Universe must have a
cause
(d) This cause must be eternal
(uncaused), non-spatial, immaterial, atemporal, and personal (having the
ability to willfully cause the beginning of the universe)
(e) The cause fits the description we
typically assign to God
Our universe is incredibly well
designed. Consider the “Fine Tuning” of our universe (The Teleological Argument For God’s Existence). “The fine tuning
refers to “just right” properties. Our universe has several properties that are
set to precise values, and slight changes to those values would prevent life as
we know it, claims an article on the Biologos
website.3
Take the gravitational constant as
an example, “The strength of gravity has to be exactly right for stars to form.
But what do we mean by “exactly”? Well, it turns out that if we change gravity
by even a tiny fraction of a percent—enough so that you would be, say, one
billionth of a gram heavier or lighter—the universe becomes so different that
there are no stars, galaxies, or planets. And with no planets, there would be
no life. Change the value slightly, and the universe moves along a very
different path. And remarkably, every one of these different paths leads to a
universe without life in it. Our universe is friendly to life…”4
Brett Kunkle of Stand To Reason explains why God is the best explanation for the
fine tuning of our universe, “Scientists tell us there are more than 50
"just right" details in the universe that make life on planet earth
possible. What are the chances of this happening? Really smart guys who
calculate this stuff tell us there is a trillionth of a trillionth of a
trillionth of a trillionth of a percent chance. In other words, there is no
chance for chance. Instead, a finely tuned universe points to a Fine Tuner,
God.”5
Here’s J. Warner Wallace’s formulation
of the Teleological Argument:6
(2)
The Appearance of Design (Teleological)
(a) Human artifacts (like watches) are
products of intelligent design
(b) Many aspects and elements of our
universe resemble human artifacts
(c) Like effects typically have like
causes
(d) Therefore, it is highly probable the
appearance of design in the Universe is simply the reflection of an intelligent
designer
(d) Given the complexity and expansive
nature of the Universe, this designer must be incredibly intelligent and
powerful (God)
The
Moral Argument For God’s Existence argues for the existence of God because of the presence of objective moral
values. An article on the website of the Apologetics
Press details the moral argument as follows:7
The moral argument
for the existence of God has been stated in a variety of ways through the
centuries. One way in which the basic argument has been worded is as follows
(see Craig, n.d.; Craig and Tooley, 1994; Cowan, 2005, p. 166):
Premise 1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values do
not exist.
Premise 2: Objective moral values exist.
Conclusion: God exists.
Some object to the moral argument by
claiming that God cannot exist because of the rampant moral evil in this world.
Ravi Zacharias demonstrates that this question is absurd/self-defeating, “When
you say there’s too much evil in this world you assume there’s good. When you
assume there’s good, you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law on the
basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that’s
who you’re trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there’s no moral
Law Giver, there’s no moral law. If there’s no moral law, there’s no good. If
there’s no good, there’s no evil. What is your question?”8
Atheists strive to explain God away
as the causal factor for objective morality. Some atheists do so by claiming that
there is no objective morality.
Atheists believe that man is an
animal and they deny objective moral values:9
“Allegedly,
man not only descended from fish and
four-footed beasts, we are beasts. Charles Darwin declared in chapter two of
his book The Descent of Man: “My object in this chapter is solely to show that there is no fundamental difference between
man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties” (1871, 1:34).”
Atheists find
themselves in a conundrum: (1) They must admit to objective morality or, (2) They must contend that everything is relative—that no action
on Earth could ever be objectively good or evil. Rather, everything is
subjective and situational.
…Relatively
few atheists seem to have had the courage (or audacity) to say forthrightly
that atheism implies that objective good and evil do not exist. However, a few have. Some of the leading atheists and
agnostics in the world, in fact, understand that if there is no God, then there
can be no ultimate, binding standard of morality for humanity. Charles Darwin
understood perfectly the moral implications of atheism, which is one reason he
gave for being “content to remain an Agnostic” (1958, p. 94). In his
autobiography, he wrote: “A man who has no assured and ever present belief in
the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and
reward, can have for his rule of life,
as far as I can see, only to follow
those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the
best ones” (1958, p. 94, emp. added). If a person has the urge to suffocate
innocent children, like a snake may suffocate its victims (including people),
then, if there is no God, there is no objective moral law against suffocating
children. If a person impulsively drowns a kind elderly person, similar to a
crocodile drowning its prey, then, if atheism is true, this action could
neither be regarded as objectively good or evil.
…The moral
argument for God’s existence exposes atheism as the self-contradictory,
atrocious philosophy that it is. Atheists must either reject the truthfulness
of the moral argument’s first premise (“If God does not exist, then objective
moral values do not exist”) and illogically accept the indefensible idea that
objective morality somehow arose from rocks and reptiles, or (2) they must
reject the argument’s second premise (“Objective moral values exist”), and
accept the insane, utterly repulsive idea that genocide, rape, murder, theft,
child abuse, etc. can never once be condemned as objectively “wrong.” According
to atheism, individuals who commit such actions are merely doing what their DNA
led them to do. They are simply following through with their raw impulses and
instincts, which allegedly evolved from our animal ancestors. What’s more, if
atheism is true, individuals could never logically be punished for such immoral
actions, since “no inherent moral or ethical laws exist” (Provine, 1988, p.
10).
Since atheism is inundated in a
dilemma, it cannot negate God based on moral values. However, the Moral
Argument reveals the presence of a transcendent God.
Is this all we got?
No, these are the basic arguments for
the existence of God. But there are more. Kalam
Cosmological Argument is a case in point. Dr. William Lane Craig christened
the argument Kalam Cosmological Argument, wherein Kalam is the Arabic word for ‘medieval
theology.’
The formulation of this argument is
as follows:10
1. If the universe began to exist, then
the universe has a cause of its beginning.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause
of its beginning.
Dr. Craig
offers three reasons to support premise (1):
1. Something
cannot come from nothing.
2. If
something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why
just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing.
3. Common
experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise 1
Premise 2 is
also true because:
1. The number of past events must be
finite.
2. Since the past involves a series of
events that has been formed by adding one event after another. It cannot be
actually infinite. Hence, the universe cannot be eternal. It must have had a
beginning.
3. The
standard Big Bang model states that the universe had an absolute beginning.
4. The Second
Law of Thermodynamics implies that the universe had a beginning. This law states
that unless energy is being fed into a system that system will become
increasingly disorderly. Since our universe is constantly expanding it will soon
become disorderly (into a state of heat death). If our universe did not have a
beginning, then by now, we should be in the state of heat death of sorts. Since
we are not in a disorderly state now, we can confidently assert that our
universe had a beginning.
So there are
good reasons to believe that our universe had a beginning. Dr. Craig then analyses
the First Cause, “What properties
must this cause of the universe possess? This cause must be itself uncaused
because we’ve seen that an infinite series of causes is impossible. It is
therefore the Uncaused First Cause. It must transcend space and time, since it
created space and time. Therefore, it must be immaterial and non-physical. It
must be unimaginably powerful, since it created all matter and energy. Finally…this
Uncaused First Cause must also be a personal being. It’s the only way to
explain how an eternal cause can produce an effect with a beginning like the
universe.”
So to conclude, four arguments for
the existence of God have been discussed here. They are the Cosmological,
Teleological, Moral, and Kalam Cosmological arguments. These arguments
provide more than sufficient, adequate and reasonable reasons to believe in God’s
existence.
Endnotes:
1https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/cumulative-evidence-and-the-case-for-gods-existence-free-bible-insert/
2Ibid.
3https://biologos.org/common-questions/what-do-fine-tuning-and-the-multiverse-say-about-god/
4Ibid.
5https://www.str.org/articles/does-god-exist#.XlZzJCEzZhE
6https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/cumulative-evidence-and-the-case-for-gods-existence-free-bible-insert/
7http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4101
8 https://apologetics315.com/2013/01/ravi-zacharias-on-the-problem-of-evil/
9http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4101
10https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/the-kalam-cosmological-argument/
Websites last
accessed on 27th February 2020.
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