My Presentation on the Existence of God

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to talk to the students about the existence of God and run through four cosmological arguments.  Check it out!

What Does Martyrdom Prove?

The other day I was talking to my Atheist friend at work about the foundations of the Christian faith.  I mentioned the evidentiary importance of the martyrdom of the Apostles.

He replied with indignation:

You can't use their martyrdom as evidence.  It proves nothing.  There are plenty of people who die for all kinds of things.  So are you willing to say every other faith with martyrs is true as well?

Is that the case?  The Apostolic martyrdoms has long been used as evidence for the truth of the Christian claim.  But does that work?  Does their willingness to die prove anything?

Undermining Theism - A Look at Two Common Attempts

In the movie Inception, the character Cobb accidentally gives his wife an obsession about the world really being a dream.  This doubt eventually undermines her belief in reality and drives her to suicide.

The secular undercurrents in our culture can do something similar to belief in God.  Rather than presenting real arguments for Atheism (of which there are precisely two), they simply introduce a doubt which prevents people from taking the possibility seriously.

I call these "Underminers" .... and today I want to look at two of them.

Atheism and Pascal's Wager

One thing I do occasionally at my Bible Study is don the persona of an Atheist and challenge the students from that perspective.  The last time I did this, one of the kids (a new guy) raised his hand and confidently belted out Pascal’s Wager.

I… or rather, Atheist Steve… took the kid to task.  Atheist Steve had heard Pascal’s Wager many times before from his Christian friends and was having none of it.

Today I want to take a look at Pascal’s Wager ... and ask whether it is of any use.

Is God Personal, or Not?

The other day I ran into a fella who said he was in an odd theological category.  He explained that his closest sympathies lay with those who imagine God as an impersonal force.  Kinda like... well... the Force.

This would include Taoists who contemplate “the Tao”.  Or Hindus who believe in the impersonal “Brahman”.  Or even the ancient Greek concept of the “Logos”. These ideologies propose the Ultimate Explanation of Existence (UEE) is an eternal, non-personal principle of existence.

This belief would be incompatible with classical theism, which holds that God is inherently personal and rational.  So today I want to go over four arguments which point us toward Theism.

Can Life Have Meaning Without God?

One long-running discussion between Christians and Atheists has to do with the meaning of our lives.  It is common for Christians to assert that in absence of God, life is ultimately meaningless and absurd.  And, in fact, there are certain Atheists philosophers (such as Bertrand Russell) who would agree.

These claims are usually not well-received by Atheist audiences.  They retort that they can lead happy, meaningful, purpose-filled lives without God.  This is typically coupled with a certain amount of indignance because – let’s face it – no one likes to be told their life is meaningless.

So today I wanted to take a look at this discussion.  Can life have meaning without God?

What is "Atheism" Anyway?

One of the most common side-tracks when speaking to a self-described "Atheist" is the question of what the word "Atheism" even means.  The exchange typically goes like this...

Theist: "Can you prove to me that God does not exist?"

Atheist: "You are so ignorant.  You don't even know what atheism is."

... and before you know it, the conversation is derailed.  It then goes down the long fruitless path of debating the meaning of a word and rather than matters of substance.

Today I want to discuss the evolution of the word "Atheist" and how one can avoid falling into this rhetorical ditch.

If Jesus Was a Myth...

CS Lewis famously asserted his "Trillemma" argument regarding the identity of Jesus of Nazareth.  It proposes that a man who claims to be God can be one of three things; God, a wicked liar, or a complete madman.  This is usually called the alliterative “Lord, Liar, Lunatic Trillemma”.

There is a fourth option which CS Lewis dismissed based on his knowledge of literature.  Namely, that New Testament is either partly or entirely mythological.  This option is often labeled, "Legend".  It proposes that the Apostles (or other early Christians) embellished Jesus' story with claims to divinity or completely fabricated the man wholesale.

So... What Caused God?

"OK... what caused God?"

"Well, nothing.  God has just always been around."

"That seems rather convenient."

This exchange usually occurs when someone argues that God must exist because... well... where did the universe come from?

Even if one puts forward a solid case for why the universe needs some kind of creative cause, one quickly finds that there is more work to do. Because in the mind of a skeptic the idea of God existing infinitely into the past seems just as absurd as the universe doing the same.  So if the universe demands a cause, why not God?    

Answering this question will require us to take a look at two classic arguments for the existence of God.  Most people think of these arguments as trying to prove God's existence from reason - which they do - but they also help us clarify what God  is (and isn't).

So let's dive in.

You, your Soul, and God

A long while ago I did a series of classes on classical and modern arguments for the existence of God.  At the outset of the first class I went around the room and asked the students, “Why do you believe in God?”

One student replied, “Because I know I have a soul.”

It was a profound observation.  The student’s answer is one of the primary intuitions that send mankind in search of its Creator. 

Today I wanted to talk about the soul, some of the reasons we have the sense of having a soul, and why it points us to God.

My Favorite Theistic Arguments - Part 0 - What Do We Mean?

For a long while I've been wanting to give a treatment to the most basic tenet of Christianity - the existence of God.  Namely, I wanted to do a sketch of the most common (and powerful, in my opinion) argument's for God's existence.

Before we begin with the messy work of providing those arguments, it may be instructive to do a little background work.  First, we'll touch upon what we mean by “God" and then what it means to have "faith in God".  Lastly, I'll provide links to all 6 arguments I wanted to examine.

My Favorite Theistic Arguments - Part IV - The Argument from Regularity, Intelligibility, and Mathematics

In the previous note we examined how physics is shot through with physical constants which govern its effects in reality.  So, for instance, we look at the equation for gravitational attraction.

Today we’re going to come at this from a slightly different angle.  The fourth argument I’d want to take a look at has various forms, but I think they all point to the same thing.

My Favorite Theistic Arguments - Part III - The Fine Tuning Argument

In the previous two parts we looked at the Kalam and Contingency arguments.  Those focused on the need for an external cause to create and sustain the universe (or anything at all) in being.

Today we’ll look at an argument of a different type – one which looks for fingerprints on the universe itself.  The most well-known of these is called the “Cosmological Fine Tuning Argument”.

But before we look into that, we first have to review some background.

My Favorite Theistic Arguments - Part II - The Contingency Argument

In the previous post we drew a sketch of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.  It looks at the beginning of the universe and asks, “Why did that happen?  What or who could do that?”

We closed with an objection that can undermine one of the hidden assumptions in the Kalam.  Namely, the reality of the passage of time.  That, I said, moves us into the next argument:  The Contingency Argument.

My Favorite Theistic Arguments - Part I - The Kalam

Today I wanted to start with an overview of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.  The Kalam is probably the most basic argument – so much so that people come realize it on their own.

The Kalam is basically the observation that if the universe has a beginning, then something had to make that happen.  And the only suitable candidate is something like God.

Now let's go through it in more detail.