Does God Exist? The Moral Argument – Sidebar, Moral Dilemmas

Previously, I finished up an explanation of the argument for God based on our moral intuitions, and today I want to take a bit of a side-trip while on the subject of morality. As noted previously, we do find that objective morality exists, but sometimes it can be hard to discern what the moral thing to do is in a given situation. This does not constitute an argument against objective morality (the ontology of it), only our ability to know what the moral good in the situation is (epistemology).

We often characterize moral dilemmas as choosing between “the lesser of two evils.” and this certainly conveys the angst involved in having to choose among difficult options. I would submit that this proves ultimately to be an unhelpful phrasing of the problem which leads to unnecessary additional indecisiveness, guilt, and second-guessing. It also doesn’t seem to be quite accurate: if one imagines Christ himself in a position of “choosing between two evils,” doesn’t that still equate to Christ choosing evil? That must not be the right way for us to approach these dilemmas, so how should we then?

I believe a more helpful and accurate way to look a these moral dilemmas is, rather, by asking, “Which option will accomplish the greater good?” The answer to that question, as best as we can discern it, is the option we ought to take. Perhaps a couple of examples will clarify this point.

In Joshua 2, the Hebrews sent spies into Jericho to assess the strength of the people and the city. While there, they came under suspicion of the city guard and took refuge with a woman named Rahab. When the guard approached Rahab, she faced a moral dilemma: reveal the location of the spies, leading to their deaths, or lie to the guards. Rahab concealed the spies and mislead the guard, recognizing that the Hebrews served the true God. In this case, did Rahab sin?

A more contemporary example is that of Corrie Ten Boom’s family who sheltered Jews in their home during the rise of persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. Her family had to make a choice: admit to the German soldiers that Jews were hidden there, or tell a lie to the soldiers. They chose to lie. Did God disapprove of their actions? Was it sin?

I believe in both of these cases, we are not stuck in a position in which there is sin, no matter which option is chosen. Instead, in moral dilemmas, such as these, we must assess the good available to be accomplished in the situation, as best as we are able, and choose the greater of these goods. Is honesty usually a virtue? Yes. Is saving a life a greater virtue? I would think so. In both of these examples, the greater good is accomplished by working to save the lives of the Jews, than by giving the truth to those who did not have legitimate right to it.

In these sorts of circumstances, we choose the greater good, and that good supersedes the other lesser good which we must violate, and I believe that God gives his blessing. No repentance for sin is needed. That’s not to say that these become easy choices, but it should make them easier to decide with clear conscience, even if sadness for difficult dilemmas still weigh on us. This should be quite freeing for you! We all face moral dilemmas, but facing them from the perspective of “what is the choice that can bring about the most good?” can be an easier question than “which of these alternatives are the least evil?” Is this just semantics? Well, sort of, but the difficulty of decision-making can be trying enough without unnecessary guilt adding the paralyzing further pressure of a no-win sin situation. It doesn’t have to be that way.

I hope this was helpful for you! If so, let me know! If you disagree, let’s talk about it. Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Does God Exist? The Moral Argument – Part 3: The Problem of Evil

One fact which each of us must face is the real presence of evil and suffering in the world. This is undeniable – we all recognize that bad things happen, that bad things happen to good people. We have to make sense of this somehow. Often this is presented as a problem for Christianity: something along the lines of, If God is good (as you say he is), how can there be so much evil and suffering in the world? If he was real, there wouldn’t be so much. So, he must not really exist. In essence, the argument says that the presence of evil means that the God Christians proclaim can’t exist because he is either unable (and therefore not all-powerful) or unwilling (and therefore not all-good), since he has not eradicated evil.

Identifying the Problem

Of course, there are really two issues when considering an answer to the problem of evil. The first and most immediate is that when this issue is brought up, it isn’t usually academic, but a response to a personal tragedy. Christian apologetics will almost never be helpful or appropriate here; compassion and empathy are by far what is more called for at this time.

But there is also an academic side to this problem as well, and that is worth considering in more quiet and stable times. Having worked through the problem in one’s mind ahead of time will give a bit of stability when the pain comes and the emotions are high. That is what I hope to offer here.

A Contradiction Without God

I cannot see any philosophical justification for the category of “evil” without God; not that God is somehow the source of evil, but that without an objective standard for good, how can we even know what evil is? Evil is not a “thing,” it’s an absence or corruption or something else. Just as a shadow cannot exist without light, evil cannot exist without good. The objection against Christianity doesn’t even make sense to me without an admission of objective moral standards, and as I pointed out previously, objective morality cannot be adequately explained without the existence of God. We cannot judge a line to be crooked unless we have some idea of what a straight line is. For these reasons, it seems to me that the problem of evil turns out to be one of the best evidences in favor of God, not against him!

But what of God’s attributes in the face of evil? Does the existence of evil mean God is not good or not powerful? Those who argue against God in this way make an assumption that all evil is gratuitous and unnecessary. But what if there is another category of evil which an all-good and all-powerful God allows to happen, both natural and moral evil, which God has a morally sufficient reason for permitting? God’s purposes in this world are not to maximize our comfort, but our character, and draw all mankind to him. Perhaps hardships are the only way some may have their attention drawn to the issues of ultimate importance in life.

A Problem for Everyone

As I see it, the problem of evil is a problem for everyone, not just Christians. We all have to live with evil, and cutting God out of the picture doesn’t explain it, it only removes any hope to relieve it. We can resign ourselves to purposeless evil with no justice and no comfort, and so we should, if there is no God. But if there is good reason to believe God is real and better explains the problem of evil than does alternate explanations, there is justice and comfort from a transcendent God who also took on humanity and experienced very real pain and suffering. In God we have someone able to offer ultimate justice for the evil and comfort for the victims, one who not only understands, not only sympathizes, but empathizes with our hurts.

Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Does God Exist? The Moral Argument, Part 2

In the previous post, we began to explore an argument for the existence of God based on morality. The argument goes like this:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

I spent the time discussing the first point, showing that if objective morals exist (and most people acknowledge that they do), they are completely unexplainable except that they be grounded in God. No other source can explain their origin, so that if God does not exist, objective morality cannot exist. So that brings us to the second premise:

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

This point itself is not without controversy, so let me give you some reasons to accept the existence of objective moral values and duties (as laid out by Frank Turek in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist)

The first and foundational step is to acknowledge the existence of some absolute truths. If one wants to deny that there are any absolute truths whatsoever (moral or otherwise), he is going to be immediately caught in the unhappy position of affirming  a logical contradiction, namely “there are absolutely no absolutes.”

But what about absolute moral values and duties? It’s only when the moral relativist wants to philosophize that he claims that moral objectivity doesn’t exist. We simply cannot live that way. Innate to all of us are certain moral rules of “oughtness:” one ought to protect one’s family; one ought to be self-sacrificial for a good purpose; one ought not take a life without adequate justification; and so on. (The difficult bit, of course, is often in applying these sensibilities in day-to-day life, but that difficulty is not a point for or against this premise; it’s difficult whether you believe in moral objectivity or relativism.) The relativist betrays this inconsistency with his reactions when someone steals his wallet or cuts him off in traffic.

If you believe in universal human rights, you also cannot be a consistent relativist. If you are offended by foreign slave trade, or oppression of a people group by a dictatorial government in the third world, you have no grounding for this outrage under moral relativism. Only with some universal (objective) moral standard can this cry of wrongness make any sense.

Unless there is an absolute moral standard, we are incapable of knowing what is good or evil, justice or injustice, yet we make these moral judgments all the time. The “problem of pain” objection to Christianity trades heavily on this, and I will be talking more about this topic next post.

Without an objective moral standard, “moral progress” is meaningless. The terms “better” or “best” are comparative, and imply a standard. Was Mother Theresa “better than” Adolph Hitler? Is it morally “better” to abolish slavery than to embrace it? Unless an absolute moral standard, what are these conditions being measured against to say one is better than another?

      3. Therefore God exists

Having shown that no other system can account for the objective values and duties that demonstrably exist in reality, we are led to the conclusion that God exists. It is His character that forms the standard of “good” by which we must measure our actions and that of others. To be sure, many numb their consciences through volition and bad example, but a defective or damaged sense of right and wrong are not counter-arguments. It is because of the existence of objective morality that we recognize these deviations from it.

Here’s a great summary video by Dr. Craig:

 

Next time, what about the so-called “Problem of Evil”? We’ll take a look at it and see the implications of it for the Christian worldview.

Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Does God Exist? The Moral Argument, Part 1

In recent posts, I have been defending the reasonable notion of God’s existence with the Cosmological argument (causation) and the Teleological arguments (design). Today, I want to turn to

what I consider to be one of the most powerful and compelling arguments for the existence of God, the Moral argument.

First, here is the structure of the argument, as proposed by William Lane Craig in On Guard:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

This is a deductive argument in the modus tollens form, and so the conclusion follows if the premises can be shown to be true. I believe they can, so let’s have a careful look at them.

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

Possibly I am ignorant, or simply do not understand alternate explanations, but without a transcendent source, I cannot fathom how any objective standard of right and wrong can exist. Since we all seem to have a sense of right and wrong innate within us, we must account for it somehow. And unless that source is God, I don’t see how it can exert any moral authority in a final and objective sense; all other explanations seem to collapse into moral relativism and subjectivism. Here, in brief, are the other proposed explanations I’ve heard for the origins of morality.

Social Contract

The social contract theory observes that in order for a civilized society to exist, the members of that society have to agree to abide together peaceably to promote safety for citizens and their property. This social contract is one which we agree to implicitly by living in such a society, and it is enforced by laws. The trouble is that the social contract theory is not an explanation of the origin of these moral rules we contract to live by, but a statement of their need. The social contract may be cited as an argument in favor of the existence of objective morality, but it does not serve as an alternate explanation of the origination of objective moral standards.

Evolutionary Ethics

Another offered origin of objective morality applies macro-evolutionary theory in that as we as a species developed over time, so too did our sense of right- and wrong-ness. Societies flourished as we observed such rules as “don’t kill your neighbor” and “don’t take what is not yours.” As societies flourished, more reproduction occurred, and this sense of right and wrong progressed through the surviving and thriving generations. Stated this way, it becomes more of a discovery of objective morals, rather than a development or their origination. And if we say they just developed over time to the objective set we have now, this actually constitutes a contradiction, as if they changed and developed, they cannot be objective.

Love

Another explanation of objective moral values I have heard given is that if one just does the loving thing in a given situation, that is guide enough, and no detailed rules or God is necessary in the process. Each person can discover the objectively right thing to do if guided by love. This sounds great, and is true, as far as it goes. The difficulty comes in applying this to dilemmas. If a strong swimmer sees a small child drowning in a pool, the loving thing is easily seen to be rescuing the child. Moral dilemmas occur when two different “goods” are in conflict with one another, and one must be chosen. In these situations, declaring that the objectively right thing to do is to do what is loving is far too simplistic. Some people consider Christian evangelism to be intrusive and offensive; most Christians consider it to be the most loving thing that can be done for someone. Who decides? It ends up distilling down to personal or group moral relativism, not objectivism.

Next post, we’ll investigate premise 2: Objective morals and values do exist, and on to the conclusion.

Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Does God Exist? The Teleological Argument, Naturalistic Explanations

In the last post, I gave an overview description of the design argument as applied to the life on earth, further expanding the positive case for the existence of a Designer. This time, I want to address some of the explanations proposed by materialistic and evolutionary theories, and how I think they fail as adequate alternatives.

Time + Chance

If you recall from last time, two strong arguments, specified complexity and irreducible complexity make a compelling case in favor of intelligent design of life on earth. Scientists committed to materialism have fewer tools available with which to construct alternative theories, and thus have (at least) two very large problems: 1. origin of first life, and 2. diversity of complex life forms we observe today. In this space today, I’m not going to address the origins of life problem; suffice it to say that producing life from non-life has proven daunting, at best, even with intelligent agency (the scientists) manipulating initial conditions. If anything, any success in this area seems to give more credibility to the need for intelligent agency.

Materialists have only a few tools with which to construct complex life: natural selection and random mutations operating over a long period of time. Extrapolating from observable and non-controversial micro-evolution, time plus chance are proposed as adequate to change the (elusive) first single-celled organism to the highly diversified life forms throughout the earth today (macro-evolution). The trouble is, “time plus chance” are articles of blind faith, not words which provide any adequate explanatory power.

Our uniform and repeated experience tells us that higher complexity does not flow from lower complexity; water does not rise higher than its source. Adding time and chance does not help, either. Consider the following example paraphrased from Frank Turek. Consider a fellow taking with him a large bag of red, white, and blue confetti into an airplane. At 5,000 feet, he dumps the bag over a football field; how good do you think are the chances that the confetti lands in the pattern of the American flag? Probably not too good. What about if the plane goes to an altitude of 30,000 feet? If he empties the bag from there, is it more or less likely to form the flag than at the first altitude? It’s pretty easy to tell that adding extra time for random chance to act to produce something orderly is so unlikely to work that it is hard to imagine that adding any amount of time would produce success. Applying this intuition to the issue of development of life forms has led some to refer to Darwinian evolutionists as “young-earth evolutionists,” meaning that the amount of time needed for probabilities of random mutation to have acted appropriately to get where we are now is exponentially larger than the same scientists estimate the age of the earth to be.

The Philosophy of Science

Why is it that materialistic scientists have fewer explanatory tools than do theistic scientists? They limit themselves to only naturalistic explanations; no supernatural explanations are even allowed as possible. This results in many a round-peg-in-square-hole scenarios. This approach is called philosophical naturalism, and as its name suggests, is not a statement of science, but one of the philosophy of performing science. It is a commitment to providing a naturalistic explanation for all things. Methodological naturalism, by contrast, is a more modest approach to science which says one must presume and investigate the object of study as if it has a naturalistic explanation; most things will comfortably fall into this category. However, if the evidence leads to a supernatural explanation as being the best fit for the evidence, the scientist is free to consider such a theory.

From this discussion, it should be clear that science is not the final authority on truth and fact; science itself rests on philosophy. The methods of scientific testing and inquiry set the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is out-of-bounds. Science cannot be done without philosophy, and even faith (used broadly); we exercise faith when we apply the scientific method that the natural laws will provide consistent results and can reliably assist to explain scientific mysteries. The philosophical assumptions brought in to the experimentation process can drastically impact the conclusions a scientist makes about data gathered. After all, science does not say anything; scientists do, and their interpretations are influenced by their prior philosophical commitments. Of course, none of this is to denigrate science or the scientific method, but one should be somewhat skeptical when the monolith of Science is said to proclaim the truth. A good scientist must be able to recognize his or her own presuppositions and attempt to mitigate its influence on the interpretation of scientific data.

In my next post, I’ll move into another area of argument for God’s existence, the moral argument. I hope you’ll join me!

Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Does God Exist? The Teleological Argument, Part 2

In recent posts, I’ve been explaining the Teleological argument, or the argument from design, as applied to the universe at large. Today, let’s zoom back to Earth and talk about the design of life which points to a Designer.

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

Specified Complexity

As pointed out before, when we see cloudy words in the sky saying “Drink Coke,” it is an immediate inference that an intelligent, designing agent has been at work. Why do we come to that conclusion? It is because of specified complexity. Many natural, undesigned things can display complexity, such as the repeating geometric patterns of crystals, the streaming trails of clouds that sometimes form in the sky, or the complex regular pattern of bird footprints on a damp beach. The difference is in the information contained in the complexity.

So how does this apply to the appearance of design in terrestrial life? When we recognize information contained in a book, we know it did not come about by an explosion at a typesetter; nor do we see “Drink Coke” in the clouds and presume its origin in unguided natural processes of cloud-formation. No, we immediately and intuitively infer an intelligent designer responsible for the information. Why, then should we not assume the same when we see it in nature as well? DNA contains enormous amounts of specific information, represented by letters, used to create cells in a body. One amoeba has enough information in exactly the right order to fill 1000 complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. That is far more information than “Drink Coke,” which we know requires intelligence.

Irreducible Complexity

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case. ― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

Charles Darwin recognized a few points at which his theory of evolution could be falsified, or shown to be untrue. One of these points concerns what has since been called “irreducible complexity,” or an organ for which Darwinistic evolution cannot account for. Take as an analogy of this a mousetrap. Designed for the purpose of catching mice, if it fails in it’s job, “natural selection” will weed it out of the gene pool an it will die out as a “species.” A mousetrap has six parts, the wooden base, the spring, the hammer, the arm, the trigger, and staples holding it all in place. Could this have “evolved” from successively simpler parts, or must it arrive on the scene fully formed in order for it to survive as a successful organism? If you have only the wooden base how many mice will you catch? Zero. What if you have the wooden base, the spring, and the staples? Will you catch 50% of the mice that you would with a fully formed mousetrap? No, still zero. It cannot function without the entire mechanism.

Of course that is just an analogy of an item that is clearly designed. Do natural systems exist that display irreducible complexity? There seem to be. The blood clotting cascade, the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies, the eye, and the bacterial flagellum are just a few which have been discovered. Here is a brief explanation of the irreducible complexity and evidence of design in the bacterial flagellum, explained by molecular biologist Michael Behe:

At the time which Darwin wrote about this, science had not yet produced any examples of this principle, and so Darwin felt confident in his theory. Now, with several examples of irreducible complexity found in natural systems and organs, we have more good reasons to doubt Darwin’s explanation. Does this prove the existence of a Designer? No, it alone does not. But it is evidence which must be taken into account along with the rest, and these lead me to find the theory of Intelligent Design very plausible indeed.

Next time, I’ll spend a little time on naturalistic explanations. Please join me!

Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Does God Exist? The Teleological Argument, What about the Multiverse?

In the previous post, I presented and explained an argument for the design of the universe to make possible life on earth. The universe certainly appears designed, but could our intuitions

about this be wrong? Some think so, and have offered alternate explanations.

The Multiverse

The evidence and appearance of design is overwhelming. It seems an insurmountable challenge to explain how all the cosmological constants are so precisely calibrated to support life on earth without inferring design. Without design, the only other mechanism is chance, and as mentioned previously, the odds of all the constants falling in these “sweet spots” are practically, if not mathematically, impossible. The multiverse is an attempt to work around this problem.

In brief, the multiverse theory states that there is an ensemble of universes parallel to our own. There could be any number of other universes out there, each with different settings on their cosmological constant values. So, one may be quite different from ours, having life-crushingly heavy gravity, and another may be quite similar to our own, but perhaps having an Earth with high carbon dioxide and a runaway greenhouse effect. This multiplicity of universes are generated by some mechanism, a “machine” which produces these universes with such high quantity that eventually, one like ours would eventually pop out, develop, and evolve life.

A Multiplicity of Problems

 

So does the multiverse explanation offer an equal or superior alternative to a designing Agent? If so, it’s going to have to address a couple of problems.

The offering of a multiverse is an attempt at bypassing the implications of an Agent, whose properties begin to look like a personal Designer, one which we might call God. The problem here is that this explanation is, by definition as outside our universe, a metaphysical one, just as much as a belief in a God is; how can this sit well with materialists? Being outside our universe, there is no way, even in principle, to have any observation of, interaction with, or evidence for such a mechanism. To assert the existence of a multiverse ensemble or a multiverse generator is an act of blind faith exceeding the most fundamentalist theistic believer.

But even if we concede the existence of such a machine, it would also require some explanation of its origin, as noted before, an infinite regress of days (or other time units) is impossible to traverse. We must also have some explanation of its cause, and of its design, being necessarily a highly complex mechanism to be able to produce complex universes of various configurations. It seems to me that, at best, the multiverse pushes back the problem a level, but offers no solution for it.

The multiverse is an attempt to explain the appearance of design of the universe we live in. However, since it ends up not answering the question, but postponing it, and requires a lot of blind faith in an explanation without any evidence, even in principle, I find myself without any reason whatsoever to believe in such a thing.

But perhaps I’ve overlooked something. If you think so, leave me a note through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Does God Exist? The Teleological Argument, Part 1

Continuing in the study of arguments for God’s existence, let’s today turn our attention to the Teleological argument for God’s existence, otherwise known as the Design argument. It works like this: a design requires a designer, and as the universe gives good evidence of design, we are well-justified in believing in a grand Designer. Here’s the formal argument:

1. Every design had a designer.
2. The universe has a highly complex design.
3. Therefore, the universe had a designer.

1. Every design had a designer

This is an intuitively known fact that can be shown true without a whole lot of introspection, but since this notion comes under attack, let’s consider a couple of scenarios to flesh it out.

Paley’s Watchmaker

William Paley, a natural philosopher of the 18th century, underscored our intuition of design by imagining that within a forest a person discovers to the side of the path a pocket watch. Now, a pocket watch is a complex mechanism, with carefully calibrated and assembled gears, springs, and other precise components, working together to perform a function: accurate timekeeping. If one were to find such a device, even if they had never before seen or knew about watches, it seems clear that no one would conclude or even for very long consider the possibility that it assembled through natural processes over time. No, the immediate inference would be that of an intelligent agent having designed the pocket watch.

Skywriting

We’ve probably all seen it at some point – fuzzy white letters in a blue sky saying “Marry Me” or “Eat at Joe’s” or “How Do I Land?” What are our intuitions when we look up and see these words? Coincidence of clouds and water vapors and wind? No, not even a simple “I ♡ U” would be mistaken as the product of natural forces and random chance. Information is conveyed, and our uniform and repeated experience is that information originates from a mind.

2. The universe has a highly complex design.

The “Anthropic Principle” is the term used to categorize the ever-increasing evidence that the universe was designed to permit and support life on earth. This is quite a claim, isn’t it? But it is the best explanation of the evidence of the cosmological constants, seemingly tweaked to make life on earth possible. Here are just a few of those:

1. Earth’s oxygen level – 21%; 25% would cause spontaneous combustion; 15% would cause human suffocation
2. Earth’s atmospheric transparency – blocks right amount of solar radiation
3. Moon-Earth gravitation interaction – greater interaction would mean tidal effects on oceans, atmosphere, and rotational period would be too severe. Less interaction would cause climactic instabilities.
4. Carbon Dioxide levels – more would cause uninhabitable greenhouse effect; less would prevent photosynthesis and cause suffocation.
5. Gravity effects – if any different by an infinitesimal amount, stars and planets would never have formed.

There are over one hundred of these constants, precisely and mind-bogglingly set so that man can thrive. Put all together, the odds are truly staggering that such a universe could have arrived by chance. For a more in-depth look at the anthropic principle, additional cosmological constants, and more numbers on the vanishingly small odds of these constants lining up randomly, please see this excellent article on the anthropic principle here. The author describes a very lucky Powerball winner, and then makes this great observation: “If someone won even two such lotteries consecutively, we would all assume the results were rigged. And yet, when it comes to life existing in our universe, the odds are far more remote than winning a hundred Powerball lotteries consecutively.” Our universe certainly seems to have been rigged.

3. Therefore, the universe had a designer.

As with the cosmological argument, I want to remain modest about the results of this argument. It doesn’t prove the Judeo-Christian God. It does, however, demonstrate that a super-intellect and super-power “set the dials” of the constants and designed the arrangement of the universe to be the way it we see it.

As with the Kalam argument, Reasonable Faith has made a great animated short film summarizing and explaining this argument. Check it out:

 

Next time, I’ll spend a little time on design objections. Please join me!

Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Kalam Cosmological Argument: Objections and Clarifications

In my last post I explained the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God, but perhaps some questions were raised in your mind which I did not answer. Today, I would like to try to briefly address a few.

Objections

Firstly, some modern physicists attempt to get around the uncomfortable implications of the universe’s beginning out of nothing by redefining “nothing.” When we say that the universe came from nothing, it is a literal nothing that we are talking about: not a quantum vacuum, not a blank slate that an imperfection can arise on its own, not a quantum vacuum; no-thing. Anything in existence prior to this starting point would have to be explained in terms of causation itself, and this argument concerns that ultimate origin.

A second point sometimes raised concerns the confusing notion of infinities. Why can’t the universe be infinitely old? Aside from the observational data referenced in the Kalam argument post which indicates a beginning, a bit of careful thinking will reveal that actual infinites are impossible. Only mathematical infinites are useful; when one tries to imagine an actual infinite, absurdities begin to multiply. The main issue, specifically applied to an infinitely old universe, is that it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite number of points in time (days, minutes, seconds, etc.) to get to the present moment. If we move back in time ten years, we should have a smaller amount of time prior to today, right? Well no, it’s still infinite. What if we move back halfway in time? Is it a smaller amount? No, still infinite. What if we remove an infinite number of years from the past timeline? Infinity remains. I hope this clears it up a bit, but for more information, a further, more thorough explanation of this concept can be found by William Lane Craig at his website here.

Thirdly, what about the multiverse hypothesis? I am actually going to defer this to a later date, when I discuss Intelligent Design. For now, suffice it to say that any multiverse generator still must be explained in terms of first causes.

Which leads to the fourth issue sometimes raised, that is put forth something like this: “If everything must have a cause, what caused God?” The idea is that we as Christians are trapped in the same infinite regress absurdity that we identify as a weakness of naturalistic explanations in the second point above. But the answer to this is really quite simple – we do not believe in a created God, but one who is the uncaused cause of everything else. Does this sound like a sidestep, some sort of religious special pleading? The point is that every explanation is going to have to have some first cause without a prior explanation. God, I submit, an intelligent, purposeful, willful mind, is the best explanation of a first cause.

Age of the Universe?

Another quite important issue that I want to make some very brief comments about is that of my beliefs about the age of the universe. The second premise in Kalam cosmological argument, namely that the universe began to exist, is largely supported by modern scientific observation and evidence of the Big Bang, the single point in time and space which expanded eons ago into the universe we have now. Now we will revisit some of this in the Intelligent Design section, but the main point to think of here is that, as Greg Koukl puts it, “the Big Bang needs a Big Banger;” that is, we have to account for causes. The Big Bang explanation doesn’t remove the need for God; in my view, it underscores it! Furthermore, even though there is some disagreement among Christians, I believe that an ancient universe is at the very least compatible with the Bible, and indeed the best explanation.

However (and this is important), this is not a crucial issue of orthodoxy, nor is it one I feel such strong convictions over that I spend a lot of time trying to convince anyone. My reasons for adopting an old-universe view are several. For one, I believe that natural revelation points to an old universe, and since the biblical accounts may be vague in their interpretations on this point, I believe that we are justified in applying the more clear evidence from science about this question. For another reason, I don’t stand alone in this view. There are many dedicated, well-credentialed Christian scientists and theologians that have adopted an old-universe view. Finally, pragmatically, this view is convenient in interacting with unbelievers with apologetics. An ancient universe view can be held in common with most non-Christians and built on as a starting point.

That is all I really want to say about the issue of young-earth vs. old-earth creationism except for the good advice from St. Augustine,

“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”

Christian friends, the age of the universe is not one of the essentials.

Finally, if you want to see some of the arguments that have persuaded me, the best one has to do with starlight over at Stand To Reason here. Another site which has done a lot of work to demonstrate from the scriptures and from science the old-earth view is Reasons to Believe, and some of their resources on this topic can be found here.

Next, I plan to discuss another argument for God’s existence from design. Please join me!

Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

Does God Exist? Kalam Cosmological Argument

Many different arguments can be used to demonstrate that God does actually exist. Individually, these arguments are compelling, and I believe when brought together, they make a very strong case, indeed. I want to go through a few of them with you. These are, of course, not original with me, and much more has been said about each of them, but I hope to explain in an easy-to-understand way the intuitive and powerful nature of these arguments.

Causes and Beginnings

Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

To start with, let’s look at an argument about the beginning of the universe, called the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Reasonable Faith has put together several great videos presenting these arguments, and so I want to start with one of them. Have a look:

The Kalam Cosmological argument goes like this:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

This is a deductive argument, and it is in a valid form, so the task is to examine the premises to see if they are true, and so show the conclusion as also being true.

The first premise, “Everything that begins to exist has a cause,” matches our uniform and repeated experience in everything in life and science. To deny this is to say that some things could spontaneously come into existence with no cause and no reason; there is a rather large burden of proof on the one who would want to assert this counter-intuitive claim. An overthrow, or even an exception to the foundational principle of causation would create a massive undermining of the process and understanding of the scientific endeavor. I simply have not seen any convincing arguments or alternative explanations for the tried-and-true principle of causation that we adopt as the first premise.

Secondly, “the universe began to exist” matches the evidence of modern scientific observation, and is the best explanation of the evidence. But let’s consider some alternative theories that have been suggested.

1. The steady state theory says that the universe has existed in stasis for eternity past. Cosmological observations and discoveries have rendered this theory obsolete, as there is data that shows the universe is expanding outwards from a central point.
2. Another theory attempts to modify and salvage the steady state theory by postulating a continuous expansion, in which the universe is and has eternally been expanding, and that as it does so, new matter comes into existence from that central point. But this theory seems rather implausible as well, as (referring back to the first premise) our uniform and repeated observation and experience tells us that nothing begins to exist without a cause. Some sort of reasonable mechanism would need to be proposed and explained to redeem this theory, and none exist.
3. Another model, the oscillating universe theory, suggests that our universe eternally, past and future, oscillates between cycles of expansion and contraction in which the gravitational forces in the universe cause the universe to collapse back in upon itself, after which it will expand back out. In this proposal, we are observing the universe presently in one of the expansion cycles. The problem here is that the force of gravity is not strong enough to pull all the universe back together; a collapse is not possible through this means. It appears we have a one-way expanding universe.

Therefore God?

It seems that we cannot escape the conclusion that the universe has a cause. How does this help our case for God’s existence? As I said in the last post, we are taking baby steps here. I won’t assert that this proves Christian theism, but I do think it provides some good evidence that is hard to ignore. Some of the properties of the causal agent of the universe would include these:

• Uncaused – the “first cause” must be uncaused or else it would not be the first cause; something beyond would have caused it, into an infinite regress of absurdity.
• Exceedingly Powerful – even omnipotent, to cause the universe to exist from literally nothing
• Personal – only a personal agent with will, intent, and consciousness can explain the beginning of the universe with no prior causes.

I believe there are more attributes we could infer from this argument, but again, I want to be modest and not stretch out beyond our reach. These three attributes are certainly God-like as described in the Bible, and as we go on, we’ll see that the other arguments will bring us even closer to the God of Christian theism.

In the next post, I will briefly discuss some objections that may be raised to the cosmological argument and address my views on the age of the universe, another implication of this argument.

Comments, questions, challenges? Email me through the form on my “about” page, we’ll discuss, and your comments may inspire a follow-up post!

(All Scripture in this post is from the ESV translation)