These are the arguments for the existence of God I find most compelling. There are others. Use what appeals to you, the ones you find compelling.
(Bold is for subject headings. Normal text gives the thumbnail of the argument. Italics gives explanatory comments that you can go into if time allows and if necessary.)
1. The Cosmological Argument
A. Whatever began to exist has a cause. The universe began. Therefore the universe must have a cause.
Something cannot come from nothing. Even subatomic particles that arise from vacuum fluctuations aren't coming from "nothing" but from an energy-rich quantum field. If anything has ever come from nothing, anything can come from nothing.
However, God doesn't need a cause because God did not begin. There cannot be a continual, infinite progression of causes. It must stop somewhere. True infinities do not exist. There must be a first cause, and that is God (see B).
But the universe did begin. That the universe began to exist is a necessary result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and General Relativity (among other physical observations). It is simply not possible that the universe has always existed.
If the universe didn't always exist, and if something can't come from nothing, something created the universe.
B. If the conditions for the creation of the universe were always met, the universe would have always existed. The universe has not always existed. Therefore some condition had to change. The physical conditions could not change, so it had to be a decision on the part of the creator — thus the creator has to be personal, not simply some force.
2. The Design Argument
The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design. It is not due to physical necessity or chance. Therefore, it is due to design.
The design in the universe is unmistakable. There are dozens of physical parameters in the universe that have to be just so before life — any life, not just human — is even conceivable. One example is the cosmological constant which drives the expansion of the universe. If it were different by one part in 10 to the power of 120 (or 10^120; 10^9 is a billion) life couldn't exist.
These numbers don't have to be anything like they are, but if they weren't what they are, no one would be here. The odds of all of them being what they are simply by chance are beyond ridiculous — it would be like one person winning the lottery millions of times.
Therefore the features of the universe that make life possible must have been designed by an intelligent, personal designer.
3. The Moral Argument
If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. Objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists.
Notice that this is NOT arguing that atheists cannot be good. It's arguing that if God doesn't exist, there is no such thing as objective "good." If humans are just unusually advanced animals, murder is not wrong. One man killing another is no more wrong than a lion killing a gazelle. There is no moral obligation to help each other. Selfishness is nothing worse than the lion failing to share with the hyena.
But we all know instinctively that murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. Stealing is wrong. It is good to help people who are in need. We feel bad when we do wrong and when we fail to do right because this morality is ingrained in us. When someone does evil we do not respond as if the rules for a well-functioning society have been violated. We respond as if something evil has been committed. Those few who seem not to recognize morality do not disprove morality any more than the colorblind disprove the existence of color.
This inborn, universal knowledge of objective moral values and duties shows that God must exist.
The above only proves that a god exists. It takes more to prove the existence of the Christian God. For that you have to move from here to the case for believing the Bible and for the resurrection of Christ.
Whole books have been written on these topics. This is of necessity a brief summary. I encourage you to study so that you can explain these arguments in more detail where it is needed.
The above borrows heavily from On Guard by Williams Lane Craig.
11 comments:
These are not really why you believe in God, are they?
I mean if one or more of these arguments were shown to be unsound would it alter the intensity of your belief? I suspect not at all!
But in the spirit of debate - take one of the foundational claims in your first argument: "Whatever began to exist has a cause.", or in other words you are stating that there are no uncaused events.
This seems like an assumption you've gleaned from every day observation of things in our world. For every day objects there always seems to be a chain of causality.
But how do you know that this principle applies to all objects in the universe? How do you know that this principle applies to the entire universe?
I know that you work as a radiographer (or in a similar technical field), so I bet in your studies you became aware of "uncaused events" that happen all the time. Precisely the kinds of events that your line of reasoning suggest do not exist!
And here's another one:
"However, God doesn't need a cause because God did not begin."
How do you know that God did not begin? I totaly see that unless you first accept that God did not begin then the rest of the argument quickly crumbles.
But since you are trying to prove that god exists, it hardly makes sense to ask the reader to first assume that God does exist.
Can you see that your proof rests upon this unproven claim, and hence your proof is little more than an inference built upon a bunch of assumptions.
I think that's likely to be true of all apologetics. Once you strip away the assumptions and intellectual trickery there's not much in the way of solid argument left.
I'm going to skip #2, because almost nobody outside the bible belt takes creationism that seriously and point out another assumption in #3:
"If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. Objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists. "
The unwritten assumption here is that you thik that God is the only conceivable source of these "objective moral values".
I think what you are trying to say is that if you (a Christian in Texas) and me (an Atheist in England) can both agree that murder is bad then some common factor must have made us both think and react in a similar sort of way.
You've just assumed that the common factor is God. But the common factor might be biology or culture, social conditioning or something else that we haven't thought of yet.
And later in your argument you seem to be contradicting yourself: But we all know instinctively that murder is wrong
If our dislike of murder is (as you suggest) an instinctive behavor then why bring God into the argument at all? We all know that the animal world is full of instinctive behaviors.
Another thought - perhaps these morals are not as universal as you suggest:
For example, the state where you live has the death penalty. The continent where I live has mostly abolished the death penalty. Over here most people believe that it's obviously wrong and disgusting for the state to kill it's prisoners. Meanwhile a majority of citizens in Texas feel that it's obviously a good idea for the state to eliminate it's most dangerous offenders? The country where I grew up (Saudi Arabia) thinks it's OK to kill people simply for having converations like this!
If morality were truly objective then there would be no debate over the death penalty - because we'd all think the same way about the subject. The mere fact that our species seems to be unable to agree on any moral issue suggests that there's no objective morality.
fake dobson, believe it or not, when I was in college and had to re-examine what I believed from the ground up, this was my "cogito." I couldn't get past the beginning of the universe without an intelligent cause.
Other than the irrational belief by some that the universe lept into being without cause, science is unanimous in believing that every effect must have a cause. If there is one thing that violates that rule, the whole scientific method is called into question.
That there must be a first cause is a simple logical conclusion. If there is no first cause, you end up with an irrational, eternal series of something creating something else. It must end somewhere -- we call that somewhere "God." (Lots could be written about this. This post was supposed to be a thumbnail sketch of the argument. I recommended books that flesh it out.)
The argument from design is not the same as creationism.
If the immorality of murder is simply instinct, biology, or culture, murder is not "wrong." It's simply impolite, illogical, ineffecient, and/or illegal. If it's not really wrong, then there is nothing wrong with Nazi's gassing people or ISIS cutting off heads. It's just not the way we'd do it. So is it really wrong or not? If it's really, really wrong, why? How did it get that way? You have to have an external standard or everything we call morality is just a cultural convention and no more binding than "tea time."
CB, first of all - thanks for engaging with this debate. I know that your blog is not written for the likes of me which is why I'm appreciative of the time you spend to reply.
You have to have an external standard or everything we call morality is just a cultural convention and no more binding than "tea time."
What do youm mean by an "external standard"?
Are you proposing some kind of divine inspiration that touches some (but not all of us) that gives us knowledge of what is good and what is bad? If so, why does it seem to be so inconsistent?
Even a child can work out that certain behaviors can have awful consequences. We (mostly) all have a sense of empathy which allows us to imagine how we might feel in place of ISIS's victims, and that's why we all feel the same kind of disgust when we read about their behavior.
I don't understand why you think that a theological argument is neccecary to explain basic human empathy!
If the immorality of murder is simply instinct, biology, or culture, murder is not "wrong." It's simply impolite, illogical, ineffecient, and/or illegal.
What do you mean by "wrong" here - do you mean it in the sense that 2+2=5 is wrong or does "wrong" mean detestable in a way that most sensible people would agree that Charles Manson's crimes are.
If it's not really wrong, then there is nothing wrong with Nazi's gassing people or ISIS cutting off heads
If anything, religious thought inspires the most bizarre kind of moral relativism. "It's OK because God promised their land to us!", "God says it's OK to kill infidels!"
I'm sure that the ISIS people think there's nothing wrong with their own behavior. They believe that they are doing God's work on earth!
It looks like there's almost nothing in the world of moral propositions that everybody agrees to. There's no universal standard of right or wrong because for everything you can say that is obviously wrong I can point to some group of people who take an opposing view.
Other than the irrational belief by some that the universe lept into being without cause, science is unanimous in believing that every effect must have a cause. If there is one thing that violates that rule, the whole scientific method is called into question.
OK, I'm guessing that you've never googled for "uncaused effects". I'm going to leave you with that suggestion and then ask you to re-confirm if you still believe that "science is unanimous".
It might help if you were to become familiar with the most common objections to the first-cause argument.
That there must be a first cause is a simple logical conclusion.
"Inferrence" might be a better word than "conclusion" here!
An external standard is something outside of us that imposes the rule. It's not that we all have a divine intution that it's wrong. It's that it's really wrong.
I hate to use this example, but I can't think of anything better. Take a road where drivers routinely go 55mph. They feel safe and comfortable there. But the law is 45. Someone with authority has declared what the limit is. So that fact that some people think something is ok is immaterial.
The ultimate morality has to come from a layer higher than government because government has to have those limits too. We know when governments do something wrong, it's really wrong.
The problem with your approach is, how do you say it's wrong for ISIS to kill infidels?
OK, I googled "uncaused effects;" all I got was people's opinions that radioactivity(!) and/or quantum mechanics (slightly less bizarre) mean that uncaused effects happen. That's ridiculous. We may not be able to explain radioactivity, etc, but that doesn't mean it's uncaused.
Again, if there are uncaused effects, the scientific method is over.
An infinite regression of causes blows up. There simply must be a first cause.
An external standard is something outside of us that imposes the rule. It's not that we all have a divine intution that it's wrong. It's that it's really wrong. [stuff deleted] Take a road where drivers routinely go 55mph. They feel safe and comfortable there. But the law is 45. Someone with authority has declared what the limit is. So that fact that some people think something is ok is immaterial.
So you really are proposing a kind of cosmic law-giver? A celestial supreme court?
If such a law giver exists - why is it that its rules seem to have been so inconsistently applied? Both the pacificts and the psycopaths claim to be following God's law!
That's a problem if you believe in a kind of ultimate morality, right?
The problem with religious standards is that there are just so many to choose from!
"The problem with your approach is, how do you say it's wrong for ISIS to kill infidels?"
I don't "know" that it's wrong. I "feel" that it's wrong. When I saw the news about what ISIS did I felt disgust, and sense of horror that any human being could be so cruel and misguided.
Any normal human being would feel the same way upon learning of a fellow human's suffering, right? This isn't something that god made me feel - it's just normal human empathy.
Most human beings are naturally empathic creatures - it's what helps us get along with each other. Once you can put yourself in somebody else's place it's easy to understand why murder is so "wrong".
On a more rational level, I could point out in history that cultures like ISIS tend to be very short-lived, self-destructive and harmful - but let's be honest, when i first heard the news about the Syrian pilot who was burnt alive my reaction (and probably your reaction too) was emotional rather than rational.
all I got was people's opinions that radioactivity(!) and/or quantum mechanics (slightly less bizarre) mean that uncaused effects happen. That's ridiculous.
Quite a lot of stuff in modern physics seems counter-intuative because observations of what happens at the microscopic and gigantgic scales seem to be so different from what happens in our every-day, observable world.
Have you read about Hawking Radiation, a bizarre phenomina caused by the spontaeous appearance of particles near to a black-hole's event horizon.
I'm not trying to convert you to a belief in modern quantum physics - only disprove your claim that "science is unanimous" about the non-existence of uncaused events. If anything the opposite is true since the work of Stephen Hawkins is considered to be foundational to modern astrophysics!
Again, if there are uncaused effects, the scientific method is over.
Not over, but it means that there are probably some phenomena that will never be truly explainable: We might never now why an atom of uranium chose this exact moment to decay. Perhaps it will keep us a little bit humble knowing that science has it's limits.
An infinite regression of causes blows up. There simply must be a first cause.
Or possibly multiple first causes, or possibly the conditions of the birth of the universe are so bizarrely different to our every-day observable world that it's just unsafe to infer anything at all about that scenario from common sense. That was the point of my "red bag" analogy.
I just thought of something that might help me understand your world-view.
Can you tell me what our world might look like if the "external standard", that "something outside of us that imposes the rule." did not exist?
Based on your previous statement, it would be a rather unkind world: "But we all know instinctively that murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. Stealing is wrong. It is good to help people who are in need." - what if we lived in a world where some human beings lacked the kindness 'instinct' you describe?
Then we'd live in a world where horrible murder and war filled our nightly news. Rapes would be happening in our colleges and even amongst our so-called leaders. A ruling class of thieves would have taken over parts of economy and a tiny few would enjoy riches beyond dreams while millions suffer in poverty.
Perhaps it would help if I point out I have a degree in physics. I've heard about all the things you mention, but you're misinterpreting them. We don't know why a given uranium atom picks this moment to decay, but that doesn't mean it has no cause. If it had no cause, there would be no pattern to radioactive isotopes. Using Hawking radiation to suggest the universe lept into being spontaneously isn't new. It's also not convincing. You need a universe to have a quantum "soup" capable of generating the matter.
The world with no moral code would look like the animal kingdom. There it is simply survival of the fittest, might makes right. The gazelle wants to survive, but the lion doesn't do anything wrong by eating it. The other gazelle's may be bothered by it, but mostly it's a reminder to be faster and more cautious.
I came across an article on the topic that you might find useful: http://www.epm.org/blog/2015/May/25/atheism-morality
If it had no cause, there would be no pattern to radioactive isotopes. Using Hawking radiation to suggest the universe lept into being spontaneously isn't new.
That's not really the thrust of my argument:
I'm saying that if at least one "uncaused" event has ever happened then the claim that "every event has a cause" is obviously invalid, the whole argument falls.
You need a universe to have a quantum "soup" capable of generating the matter.
That's a little beyond my field of expertise - we've never been able to study what the absence of a universe might be like so who knows whether that statement is true or not!
My point here is that when you say "whatever exists has to have a cause" - that's not a universal truth. It's only an inference based on our everyday observation.
The world with no moral code would look like the animal kingdom.
Aren't we part of the animal kingdom? :-)
There it is simply survival of the fittest, might makes right.
Quite a lot of human behavior is a survival of the fittest - I'm sure it won't take you long to recollect a few industries that are known for their corruption and cut-throat nature. A few moments of reflection on this will convince you that quite a lot of human behavior makes the lion/gazelle thing seem rather dignified by comparison!
So where's the evidence that a kind of ultimate majority really exists?
Let's use your analogy about state and federal law: You were arguing that the relationship between God's law and Man's law is somewhat analagous to Federal law and State Law.
Even if you never saw a federal courtroom you might infer the existence of federal law becuase *something* is keeping the lower courts consistent. This something ensures that all the lower courts apply the law in a more-or-less similar kind of way. There's some corrective force that stops a court in Florida from ruling that murder is OK on Thursdays.
But human morality is really inconsistent. There doesn't seem to be a cosmic "federal court" telling people that killing is wrong when just about every culture has circumstances when it's OK to kill.
How would you explain the fact that people in the Bible Belt tend to believe that abortion is wrong whereas a lot of people in California are less troubled by the idea.
If there were a cosmic law available to everybody then we'd all feel the same about abortion. Isn't it more likely that people who grew up in liberal cultures generally inherit liberal social attitudes. People who grew up in conservative cultures tend to inherit conservative values, and those values guide their moral world-view!
I came across an article on the topic that you might find useful: http://www.epm.org/blog/2015/May/25/atheism-morality
From his article: "then surely any morality we forge on our own will ultimately amount to a mirror image of our own subjective opinions that will change with the times"
Well duh!!!
Morality really does change over time. Look up how attitudes and laws have changed on subjects like slavery, homosexuality, divorce.
I re-read that article it's really bizarre - here's my first attempt to pick apart some of it's details:
You misunderstand,” someone says. “We atheists do not base our morality on personal preferences, but on the judgments of society as a whole, on what benefits the most people.” But how does this help the argument? What if in our class of thirty students, sixteen of us really wanted to kill the professor? Would that be good? Or what if the majority of an entire nation thought it best to liquidate one portion of that population—would that be good? Or what if 51 percent of the world’s population decided to obliterate the continent of North America? Would that be good?
Let's read past the fact that the unnamed "professor" and the "someone" in this article are both straw-men and figments of his own imagination, instead I will focus on the author's claims.
I don't suppose he's suggesting that atheists are any more likely to want to do horrid things than christians. In fact he seems to be stating the opposite since nobody in the imaginary class wanted to murder the professor - not even those evil atheists!
But he's sort of suggesting that Christians have a reason to be moral: If you are not moral then God will punish you for your sins. Therfore any god-fearing person will wish to obey the holy law.
He dosen't eplain why athiests might want to be moral even without the cosmic threat? Perhaps it's because human beings don't need that kind of threat of retribution to be nice to each other (some of the time). And judging by the numbers of people who claim to be Christian in prison for violent crimes, it looks like that threat of moral retribution is not a particularly effective deterrent of bad behavior anyway!
To say that the Holocaust or child abuse is wrong is a moral judgment. But such a judgment has no meaning without a standard to measure it against. Why are the Holocaust and child abuse wrong? Because they involve suffering? Because other people have said they are wrong? Feeling it or saying it doesn’t make it so.
I'm assuming that he knows about mass killings in the bible. Was the genocide of the Cananites "wrong". If not, then genocide can sometimes be "right". You'd have to be a particularly skillful moral tap-dancer to believe that!
If anything this sort of nonsense shows that nothing could be less objective than religious morality. Tell me, according to the Bible is genocide always wrong. The honest answer is "um.. it kinda depends on whether God told you to do it or not".
So how do you know what God wants you to do? "um... well read the bible and figure it out for yourself or just ask your pastor or something"
And so many people do - and it's hardly surprising that Christians are no more consistent in their moral outlook than athiests.
Remember a few years ago we debated whether there was a ratioal basis for banning homsexuality and gay marriage. Unless you could show that there really was some reason why it would be in our interests to regulate what happens in the bedroom of consenting adults, why get in their way?
I suppose one answer might be that you think that God dosen't want people to be gay. But what if somebody else thinks that God is totally down with people being gay? How do you know what behaviour god actually wants since his self-appointed spokesmen often contradict each other.
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