Two Arguments on the Existence of God
The arguments below for the existence of God are just two of many such arguments advanced in the past by philosophers. They are presented here in a very simplified form, not as conclusive proofs, but simply as illustrative of the point that theism is highly defensible. Atheism, on the other hand, is highly indefensible. Atheism - the claim by a finite, limited being that he knows for certain that the infinite, unlimited being does not in fact exist - is the height of unprovable dogma, and has been abandoned by an overwhelming majority of philosophers. Atheism turns out to be a bald, unsupported assertion, as is the assertion that the universe never had a beginning, but always existed. Such assertions require a much greater leap of credulousness than theism.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument
These are the questions that the Kalam argument deals with:
1. Did the universe have a beginning?
2. If it had a beginning, was that beginning caused?
3. If it was caused, then was the cause personal or impersonal?
We will briefly go through the Kalam argument by the sections outlined above
(1).
1. Did the universe have a beginning?
It seems clear that if one claims that there was no beginning to the universe, then this is equivalent to saying that there have been an actual infinite number of past events in the history of the universe. The problem is this: actual infinity can be a useful conceptual tool in mathematics, but it does not seem possible for an actual infinite to exist in the real world. (A number that approaches infinity certainly seems to exist in the real world, but note that that number is still finite.)
Craig offers the following case.
(2) Imagine a library with an actual infinite number of books. Suppose further that there is an infinite number of red books and an infinite number of black books in the library. Does it really make sense to say that there are as many black books in the library as there are red and black books together? Furthermore, I could withdraw all the black books and not change the total holdings in the library. In this way, actual infinity, if it exists in the real world, implies unreasonable consequences.
Another way to approach this question is to consider the fact that it is impossible to count to infinity. If we claim that there was no beginning to the universe, then this is equivalent to saying that the beginning of the universe was at negative infinity. But if that were the case, then the past could never have been exhaustively traversed to reach the present. In order to reach this moment, how many actual years must have passed? If the universe did not have a beginning, then before we can reach any event in the history of the cosmos, there has already transpired an actual infinite number of events. (i.e., an infinite number of years have been counted in order to reach today.) Yet this seems to violate the observation that it is impossible to count to infinity; in the real world, we can always approach infinity, but never reach it.
Two current scientific theories support this conclusion that there must have been a beginning to the universe. The big bang theory
(3) implies that the universe sprang into existence from nothing an infinite time ago - that space, even time itself, "started" from a single point. As scientist Robert Jastrow puts it, "What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation." Another scientific theory is actually a law, the second law of thermodynamics, involving a concept known as entropy. It is one of the fundamental, best-established laws of science. The second law states that the universe is irreversibly moving toward a state of maximum disorder and minimum energy. For example, if you were to leave an open bottle of perfume in a room, the perfume will evaporate from the bottle and disperse in such a way that it will become uniformly distributed throughout the room. Applied to the universe as a whole, the second law tells us that the universe is wearing down irreversibly. But since a state of maximum entropy has not yet been reached, the universe has not been here forever. As theoretical physicist Paul Davies puts it: "The universe cannot have existed forever, otherwise it would have reached its equilibrium end state (known among the physicist as the 'heat death' of the universe) an infinite time ago. Conclusion: the universe did not always exist."
2. If it had a beginning, was that beginning caused?
Since the universe had a beginning, it would mean that there is such a thing as the "first event". It would also seem that the most reasonable view to take would be that the first event was caused
(4). The principle that something does not come from nothing without cause is a reasonable one. This is especially true with regard to events, which have a definite beginning and end, and do not happen without something causing them. For example, if someone were to observe a baseball flying overhead, she could reasonably state that the movement of the baseball was caused (by a bat, an arm, another object striking it, etc.); it could not have just "decided" to move. When we look at the universe, we can see that all events are caused by another event, in what physicists call the chain of "cause-and-effect". By contrast, God does not need a cause, since he is neither an event nor a contingent being. He is a necessary Being and such a being does not need a cause. In fact, it is a categorical fallacy to ask for a cause for God since this is really asking for a cause for the Being from which the first event arose. If we were to continue in this categorical fallacy, then the first event no longer becomes the first event; the previous event (namely God coming into being) is the first event, and so on and so forth forever backwards until we throw out the idea that the universe had a beginning at all. But since it was established that the universe does have a beginning, we must accept the fact that there is such a thing as the "first event." And this event, by the very nature of events, must have been caused. And this cause, since it is the cause of time and the universe, must have existed outside of time and the universe.
3. If it was caused, then was the cause personal or impersonal?
Prior to the first event, there was a state of affairs which can be described by the following: there was not time, space, or change of any kind. In that state, what does one really mean when he (or
she - the legion of PC strikes again
) thinks of the "cause" of the universe being impersonal? Surely the cause itself cannot be from the universe itself, for it does not exist yet. One can possibly think that it was the Laws of Nature (impersonal laws of physics or math) that somehow caused the first event, for that is the only impersonal, immaterial thing that could have existed prior to the first event. However, the vague idea that laws of nature can cause events is faulty.
The law of physics decree that when one billiard ball (A) sets another billiard ball (B) in motion, the momentum lost by A exactly equals the momentum gained by B. This is a
law. That is, this the pattern to which the movement of the two billiard balls must conform - provided, of course, that something set ball A in motion. And here comes the snag. The
law won't set it in motion. It is usually a man with a cue that does that. But that would bring us immediately to consider a personal cause, so let us stay off that path and assume that the ball was lying on a table in a ship and that what set it in motion was a lurch of the ship. Still, it was not the law which produced the movement; it was a wave. And that wave, though it certainly moved
according to the laws of physics, was not moved by them. It was shoved by other waves, and by winds, and so forth. And however far we trace the story back we would never find the Laws of Nature causing anything. The obvious conclusion is this:
in the whole history of the universe the Laws of Nature have never produced a single event. (5) They are the pattern to which every event must conform, provided only that it can be induced to happen. But how do you get it to "happen"? The Laws of Nature can give you no help there. All events simply obey them, just as all operations with money obey the laws of arithmetic. Add six pennies to six and the result will certainly be twelve pennies. But arithmetic by itself won't put a single penny in your pocket.
The only way for the first event to arise spontaneously from a timeless, changeless state of affairs, and at the same time be caused, is this: the event resulted from the free act of a person or agent. We can observe this phenomenon in our daily lives. In the world, persons or agents spontaneously act to bring about events (which poses a huge problem to the whole idea that humans are nothing more than conglomerations of molecules in motion, but we won't get into that here). I myself "will" to raise my arm, and it happens. There may be necessary conditions for me to do this (e.g., I have a normal arm, I am not tied down), but these are not sufficient. The event is only realized when I freely act. Similarly, the first event came about when an agent freely chose to bring it about, and this personal choice is the only possible first cause that is not contingent on any other causes.
In summary, it is most reasonable to believe that the universe had a beginning which was caused by a timeless, personal agent. This is not a proof that such a being is the God of the Bible, but it is a strong statement that the world had its beginning by the act of a person. And this is at the very least a good reason to believe in some form of theism. However, the parallel ought to be noted between this mysterious agent and the God of the Bible. Could it be possible that the Will that started the universe is the God of teh Bible, who introduces Himself as such
(6)? Could it be possible that the immutable, timeless agent that created the universe is the God of the Bible - who claims to be the beginning and the end, who always was, is, and is to come
(7)- the timeless "I am"
(8)?
The Moral Argument
The Moral Argument for the existence of God deals with these issues:
1. Is there an objective moral law?
2. If there is an objective moral law, then what is its most probable origin?
1. Is there an objective moral law?
Everyone has heard people quarrelling.
(9) Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?" - "That's my seat, I was there first" - "Why should you shove in first?" - "Come on, you promised." People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups. Now what is interesting about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if he does there is some special excuse. It seems as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior abotu which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might fight like animals, but they could not
quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other person is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are. The fact that there seems to be some kind of an agreed-upon law - which seems deply embedded in our conscience and has a say in what we ought to do - cannot be denied, assuming that we have not become dangerously deranged beyond hope. The issue is not the existence of this strange law, but the objectivity (i.e., that which does not depend on personal opinion) of this law.
One of the prevalent alternatives to believing in an absolute, objective morality is to believe that morality is determined by each person according to her (and his - is this necessary :bugeye: ) own tastes and cultural background. We hear people saying things like: "Who are you to say what's right?" Others ask, "Isn't what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?" The people who ask that question are usually taking it for granted that if we learned a thing from parents and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. But, of course, that is not so. We all learned the multiplication table at school. But surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention, something human beings have made up for themselves and might have made differently if they had liked? There are things that we learn (such as driving on the right side of the road) that are mere conventions, and there are others, like mathematics, that are objective truths. The question is, to which class does the Moral Law belong? Living in a multicultural society, we are afraid of making any statements that might sound ethnocentric. Surely it would be ethnocentric for us to say something like American music is the only "right" music. But we must not confuse morality with these sorts of subjective, cultural issues. For example, would it be considered ethnocentric for us to say that the Nazis were wrong in committing genocide? If we were to accept the view that morality is soleley determined by culture, then we could not make such a claim. According to their socially determined rules, their system of eliminating the Jews was entirely legal. Does this make what they did right?
Another problem with this relativistic view is that there coudl never be no moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring the life of Mother Teresa to the life of (??? um, insert villain here, or so-called villain); there would be no sense in preferring Christian morality to Nazi morality. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring both of them by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other
(10). Also, if we were to say that the "rightness" of a particular behavior is determined by the cultural norm of that time, then we must, by that definition, condemn all moral reformers (like the abolitionists, MLK Jr., etc.) as evil, for they went against the cultural norm. We have grown quite familiar with the vague notion that morality is subjective and relative; however, upon careful examination, we can see that such a belief collapses on itself. At the Nuremberg trials, one of the arguments that the Nazis used in their defense was that they were operating according to the law of their own land. To that, a legitimate counter-question was raised, and it remains the question we must answer today, "But is there not a law above our laws?"
(11)
Some adopt the view that the "rightness" of something is determined by whatever benefits society; and that consequently there is no mystery abou tit. Human beings, after all, have some sense; they see tha tyou cannot have real safety or happiness except in a society where everyone plays fair. But this explanation of why we feel as we do about Right and Wrong misses the point. If we ask: "Why ought I to be unselfish?" and you reply, "Because it is good for society," we may then ask, "Why should I care what's good for society except when it happens to pay me personally?" and then you will have to say, "Because you ought to be unselfish" - which simply brings us back to where we sarted. You are saying what is true, but you are not getting any further. If a man asks what is the point of behaving decently, it is no good replying, "in order to benefit society," for trying to benefit society, in other words being unselfish (for "society" after all only means "other people"), is one of the things decent behavior consists of; all you are really saying is that decent behavior is decent behavior.
(12) Still others adopt the view that morality is somehow coded into our genes through evolution to preserve the species. Let us imagine a situation where a healthy young man is given the task of murdering an innocent elderly woman, or else he will lose his own life. Now in such a situation, if we were to adopt the view that morality is determined by whatever benefits the species, then we would have to say that it's morally "right" for the young man to eliminate the old woman. In fact, it would be "wrong" for him to refuse to do so, because the old woman, in an evolutionary sense, can no longer contribute to the preservation of the species. Yet why is it that something inside of us feels outrage at such an act?
While the law of gravity tells you what stones do if you drop them, the Moral Law seems to dictate what we
ought to do, not what we actually end up doing. In other words, when we are dealing with humans, something else comes in and beyond the actual facts. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behavior, and yet quite definitely real - a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.
(13)
2. If there is an objective moral law, then what is its most probable origin?
Following the conclusion that there is strong evidence for the existence of an absolute set of moral laws, let us now consider what this tells us about the universe we live in. We can observe the universe using the empirical methods of science; however, note that if we were to merely study mankind from the outside, as we study electricity or plants, by observing what man "does," we would never get the slightest evidence that we were aware of this moral law. But as we observe ourselves from the inside, we find a strange influence or command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. The question is: what is the source of this objective moral law, which urges me to do right and makes me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong? We have to assume it is more likely to be a mind than it is anything else we know - because after all the only thing we know is matter, and you hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions.
This mind-like Being, apparently is intensely interested in right conduct - in fair lay, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, and truthfulness. But at that precise moment when we realize this, we find reasons to be uneasy, because if this absolute "goodness" were impersonal, like the multiplication table, then there may be no sense in asking it to make allowances for us or let us off. We would be in the wrong. Even if this Being was personal, we are not in any better situation. On one hand, we agree with this "goodness" with His disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. Yet we know that if there does exist an absolute goodness He must hate most of what we do. This is the terrible fix we are in.
Although it's not sufficient proof, it's notable to recognize that the God of the Bible specifically addresses this human predicament. Just when we look inward and are terrified at what we find there - just when we are tempted to ignore the whole thing and go on with our lives - Christianity asks us to face the facts. The Christian religion asks us to consider carefully what our condition is and offers the invitation to approach the Being from whom these laws came.
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(1) For a more extensive overview on this subject, refer to
Scaling the Secular City (J.P. Moreland)
(2) Craig, "Philosophical and Scientific Pointers," pp. 6-7; see also G.J. Whitrow, "On the Impossibility of an Infinite Past," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 29 (1978): 39-45
(3) For introductory treatments of the big bang theory, see John Polkinghorne,
The Way the World Is: The Christian Perspective of a Scientist (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), pp.7-16
(4) J.P. Moreland,
Scaling the Secular City, p. 38
(5) C.S. Lewis,
The Grand Miracle p. 52
(6) Genesis 1:1
(7) Revelations 1:8
(8) Exodus 3:14
(9) Paraphrased from C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity p.17-18
(10) C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity p. 25
(11) Quoted by Ravi Zacharias,
A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism, p. 61
(12) C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity pp. 29-30
(13) C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity p. 30
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Well... there it is. 6:30 AM. As for my comments:
- Can't I scan this stuff somehow up here somehow? I had some other stuff, from a book called
Letters from a Skeptic (letters between a 70-ish retired agnostic - with strong anti-Christian tendencies - and his Christian Ph.D. etc. etc. son) which I'd like to scan up here, but there's no way I'm risking carpal tunnel...
- Obviously, nothing other than atheism (and maybe agnosticism, which as I understand it isn't a stance that can be *permanently* adopted) has been addressed... more knowledgeable people please contribute
- Isn't it funny how, aware of my own limitations (intellectual, mostly) as a human being, I "make belief my mind's adviser", and put my faith in more experienced/intelligent human beings? Don't any of you do this as well? Just a thought.
