In this third part of our study of God’s existence, we will
continue looking at the evidence for God. Just like the previous post, this one will be
an examination of a logical argument for the existence of God. So fasten your seat belts as we uncover more confirming
points for the Lord God.
Let’s
begin by quickly summarizing what we covered last time. We walked through what is called the Moral
Argument and realized that each and every one of us has a built-in sense of
what is right and what is wrong. This
obviously begs the question: where did this awareness of such a moral law come
from? The answer is that there must be
something behind this law. In the end,
we realize that there has to be a God who authored this law, established right
and wrong, and gave humankind the awareness of it.
The new
argument that we will explore today is very compelling to me. It is called the Cosmological Argument. We’ll go through this one slowly since it is
a bit difficult to grasp. The argument
begins with the understanding that everything that we see in the physical world
came from something else. A tree, for
example, did not just show up on the face of the earth. It came from a seed. And that seed came from a tree which came
from a seed and so on and so forth. Even
things that are not natural, like computers, did not pop into existence. All of the countless parts that make up the computer’s
monitor, hard drive, motherboard, etc. came from something else. Thus, everything in the universe had
something that came before it and caused it to exist.
Think
of this as a series of "causes."
If you follow this series back through time, you will arrive at one of
two conclusions. Either the series goes
back into infinity with no first cause, or there was a first cause that got
this whole universe started. Let’s
consider the first option. The idea that
the series of causes could be followed back in time to infinity is
impossible. For if this sequence of
causes can be followed back forever, then we would not have progressed through
time to the point that we are at now. Maybe the following illustration will help. Christian philosopher, Ravi Zacharias, used
this analogy at the 2007
Ligonier Conference "Contending for the Truth" in his talk “The
Existence of God”: "If you
have a domino called 'X' and you've got to have an infinite number of dominoes
falling before X falls, you will never get to X because you will need an
infinite number of dominoes to fall."
So again, if the series of causes that we have been referring to has
been going on for infinity, then there is no way that the present moment would
have arrived.
So now
we’re left with only the second possibility: there was a first cause. We could name this cause (like
"bacteria" or "DNA" or "the Big Bang" or
whatever), but then we’d be left with a problem: where did that cause come
from? If the universe started with a
bacterium, where did the bacterium come from?
If the Big Bang caused the bacterium to exist, where did the Big Bang
come from? You see the problem? So how do we get around this? There is only one plausible conclusion. For there to be a first cause, the first
cause would have to be something non-physical, eternally existent, and beyond
the normal reality that humans can understand. Read that again if you have to. Something of a "supernatural"
nature is the only possibility. Is this
sounding like the Creator God? Well,
logically, a Being (like the God of the Bible) is the only reasonable
explanation for the physical universe. So that’s the Cosmological Argument for
the Existence of God.
This brings
me to an interesting side note. Many
people raise the question, “who created God?” in an effort to stump Christians
and cause them to struggle answering. The
problem is not with the Christian faith, but with the question itself. The underlying assumption behind the question
is the faulty notion that God has the same properties as a physical object and
consequently demands a cause. However,
that is not the identity of God. As I
mentioned above, because God is eternally existent and not physical, He does
not have or need a cause. In fact, when
God speaks to Moses in Exodus 3:14, He called Himself "I AM." God just is.
That is His state of existence. I know that this is hard to wrap your mind
around. But because we are fallen human
beings, living in this physical universe, it is often beyond our capabilities
to easily understand concepts outside of our perceived reality. Hopefully you were able to figure out most of
it though.
I hope this encourages you! Even the use of logic and a simple understanding of the natural world can point us to the realization that God exists. Stay tuned for more arguments for the reality of God.
