The Argument For God's Existence From Creation

This conversation started on a Facebook page where someone got stuck with logic in his effort to write a defense for God's existence. So with a lady acquaintance we exchanged a bit on that long post and this below is what i essentially told her.

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Hi A.,

Hope you doing well in this festive season. Well, this is an interesting argumentation but it is poorly done. It sounded more like an excuse for God's existence or a plea of exception for the existence of God than a well argued case for His existence. The mistake the writer made is easily found in his introductory statement: 

"Everything comes from something. Every effect has a cause. This is a law of logic and a fact of science." 

This isn't neither true nor a law of logic. The better formulation of it is found in premise one of the Kalam cosmological argument as presented by Dr. William Lane Craig: "Everything that BEGINS to exist has a cause for its existence". Now this makes more sense - it is true and logical since it is a recurrent observable fact.

Now that we have made this important correction, we can proceed. 

The first thing we need to prove is the claim that everything that we know of in the universe begun to exist. With the Big bang model and the evidence of physics from the cosmic microwave background radiation - it is believed now that the universe begun to exist. Hence if the universe begun to exist, it then needs a cause for its existence.

Step two. What could reasonably be its cause? Logic dictates that whatever the cause of the universe is, it should have properties that transcends those of the universe. For example, if the universe is made of matter, and that the universe begun to exist - then matter also begun to exist. And if matter begun to exist, then whatever the cause of matter and the universe is - it can not be made of matter. It is by necessity non material in nature/property. We call it spiritual because it is non corporeal and cannot be quantified like matter.

Second, Time and Space also came into existence at the Big Bang according to the logic of the model - hence the cause must then also be non-temporal and spaceless in its property/ by nature. We call it Eternal because it is not subject to time and space.

Third, since the universe Cause existed prior to creation in an eternal state as per the argument above and that the effect (creation) did not exist in the eternal state but begun to exist at a given moment 'in history' - it implies that the Cause chose to bring its creation at such a given moment - hence giving the universe Cause the property of choice making. Since the reaction of the effect is not automatic to the existence of the Cause, it means that the Cause is not an automatic entity. If the universe Cause was not imbued with a choice to cause to universe but was automatic, then the the universe would have existed simultaneously with its Cause for all time (infinite).  But the universe begun to exist - hence the universe existence is not a necessary effect of its Cause. The Cause of the universe hence has a personality to make a choice to make or not to make a universe. Hence, the Cause is a conscious entity and not an unconscious entity.

Fourth, by the engineering of the universe (including biological life) and the specific laws that govern it, we can deduce that the Cause of the universe is an intelligent entity.

If we only take these few line of arguments above, we can come up with these attributes for the Cause of the universe: 1) The Cause is eternal (spaceless and timeless), 2) The Cause is spiritual (non-material), 3) The Cause is a conscious being (with obvious capacity of choosing to create at any given moment), 4) The Cause is intelligent (this is also called the teleological argument of God's existence). 

These lines of arguments are far from being called a proof but it can be called evidences and reasons of God's existence.

All these evidences point to what theologians and philosophers refers to as GOD. We are far from proving the existence of the Christian God because these attributes above is shared by believers of other religions - monotheist religions that is.

However, the arguments above can also be equally applicable to the Christian God, but not exclusively applicable to the christian God. If we assume the existence of the christian God then these arguments are also valid. The follow up question would be how do we move from the God of natural theology to the God of Christian theology? 

The easiest books that helped me to understand the transition from natural theology to christian theology are the excellent books of Drs. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek 'I dont Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist" as well as the more technical one by Dr William Lane Craig 'Reasonable Faith - 3rd edition'. C.S Lewis also does have quite an insightful approach in his book "Mere Christianity". These literatures help make a case for the Christian faith from Natural Teology.

Happy New Year in Jesus' name.

P.S: Don't forget to check out my book - Help Me Understand Jesus. Check My Book by clicking here or more here.