Sermon Tone Analysis

!

The

*/ /*

*/Existence /*

*/ /*

*/Of /*

*/ /*

*/God/*

*/ /*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*/“Theist are not just after winning and argument,/*

*/ /*

*/But want to see souls won into the /*

*/ /*

*/Kingdom of God because the alternative is /*

*/ /*

*/unspeakably horrifying”/*

*/ /*

!! Nick Keehus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW DO WE KNOW THAT GOD EXISTS?

/                  /

/ /

“The question of the existence of God is vital for us today.

Most people would probably agree that this question does have great existential significance, but at the same time deny that it is a question to which rational argumentation is relevant.

Most people would say that it’s impossible to “prove” the existence of God and that therefore, if one is going to believe in God, he must “take it by faith” that God exists.

I’ve heard many students say this is an excuse for not believing in God.  “Nobody can prove that God exists and nobody can prove that he doesn’t,” they say with a smile, “so I just don’t  believe in him… such a blithe attitude fails to appreciate the depth of man’s existential predicament in a universe without God.

The rational man ought to believe in God even when the evidence is equally balanced, rather than the reverse.”[1]

“But it is in fact the case that there is no probatory evidence that a Supreme Being exists?

This was not the opinion of the biblical writers.

The Psalmist said, /“The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse id declaring the work of his hands” /(Ps.19:1), and the apostle Paul declared, /“Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they [men] are without excuse” /(Rom.

1:20).

Nor can it be said that this evidence is so ambiguous as to admit of equally plausible counter-explanations-for then people would not be “without excuse.”

Thus, people are without excuse for not believing in God’s existence, not only because of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, but also because of the external witness of nature.”[2]

Thus, we shall examine various arguments for the existence of God.  / / 

                                                                                                                                        

COMMON ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

1.

If everything has a cause, what caused God?

 

2.

All of science points to the Big Bang.

The universe just popped into existence.

3.

If God exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is to be trusted because God says so, then you are arguing in a circle.

4.

Claiming that miracles validate Scripture presupposes theism.

Odds are better that men have lied about events than the laws of  nature have been violated (This is Hume’s argument against the resurrection contained in his short paper entitled “On Miracles.”)

5.

The ontological argument (Perfection requires existence, God is perfect, therefore, God exists) is actually backwards.

Since existence precedes essence, some /thing/ must first exist before it becomes perfect.

6.

If God implanted morals in each of us, why don’t we all have the same morality?

Man’s conscience is a Darwinian survival response to a hostile environment

 

7.

People project an omnipotent, omnibenevolent Father-figure to satisfy their need to be taken care of (Freud).[3]

8.

The testimony of people who claim that God changed their lives is suspect.

People also claim to have been abducted by aliens.

9.

People will lie for a variety of reasons.

The founders of Christianity were in it for power, or money, or prestige, or all three.

10.

Faith and reason are opposites.

If one must believe in God by faith, then that person is unreasonable by definition.

Faith cannot prove the existence of anything.

11.

How could and all-powerful good God permit evil?

Why do bad things happen to good people and vice-versa?

 

12.

There are many paths to heaven – Jesus is just a way.

Philosophical Proofs

 

A.

Argument: /Ontological/

 

     The concept of a perfect being infers the real existence of that perfect being, namely God.

Anslem (1003-1109) wanted to find a single argument that would prove not only that God exists, but also that he has all the superlative attributes Christian doctrine ascribes to him.

Having almost given up the project, Anselm landed upon the following reasoning:  “God is the greatest conceivable being.

This is true by definition, for if we could conceive of something greater than God, then /that/ would be God.

So nothing greater than God can be conceived.

It is greater to exist in reality than merely in the mind.”[4]

“Which is greater, the artist’s idea of the painting or the painting itself as it really exists?

Obviously the latter; for the painting itself exists not only in the artists mind, but in reality as well.

Similarly, if God existed only in the mind, then something greater than him should be conceived, namely, his existing not only in the mind, but in reality as well.

But God is the greater conceivable being.

Hence, he must exist not merely in the mind, but in reality as well.

Therefore, God exists.”[5]

Many see this line of thinking having little value and few would argue this way.

Luther wrote:

            /“This demonstrates that there was in their hearts a knowledge of a divine sovereign being.

How else could they have ascribed to a stone, or to the deity represented by a stone, divine attributes, had they not been convinced that such qualities really belonged to God.” /

Tertullian:

            /“It was not the pen of Moses that initiated the knowledge of the Creator.

The vast mauority of mankind, though they had never heard the name of Moses-to say nothing of his book-know the God of Moses nonetheless.

Nature is the teacher, the soul is the pupil.”

/

Denney:

            /“There is that within man which so catches the meaning of all that is without as to issue in an instinctive knowledge of God.”  /

 

     Anne Sullivan, the teacher of Helen Keller, attempted to explain the Lord to her and her response was, “I already know about Him – I just didn’t know His name.”

B.

The Argument From Creation: /Cosmological Argument/

 

·         The universe is an observable effect, which requires either an infinite regress of causes or else a sufficient uncaused cause.

In contrast to the ontological argument, the cosmological argument assumes that something exists and argues from the existence of that thing to the existence of a First Cause or a Sufficient Reason of the cosmos, in other words, it is obvious that something cannot come from nothing, thus there must be an original cause for the world’s existence.

Every effect must have a cause.

The alternative to this logical deduction is that the universe is eternal, but the second law of thermodynamics rules out this theory.[6]

This argument has its roots in Plato and Aristotle and was developed by medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thinkers.

The cosmological argument is really a family of different proofs, which can be conveniently grouped under three main types.

/ /

1.      /Kalam//*[7]*// /Cosmological Argument.

Apologists, Nick Keehus in his book /Reasoning About God Man & Evil, A Dialogue, /puts it this way – “It has its origin in early Christian apologetics[8] and was developed by some Arabic thinkers about a thousand years ago.

It was a philosophical defense for a finite view of the cosmos, or the beginning of the universe, in contrast to Aristotle’s infinite assessment of the world.”[9]

Lets look at the formulation of this argument by Al-Ghazali, a medieval theologian, he reasons, “Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning.”

[10] 

/Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig /the greatest contemporary defender of this argument puts it like this,

(1)   Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

(2)   The universe began to exist.

(3)   Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.

/Secondly, /the world, or the universe, began to exist, therefore, it is impossible that there should be an infinite regress of events in time, that the series of past events should be beginningless.

(1)    The series of past events comes to an end in the present – but the infinite cannot come to an end.

(2)    If the series if infinite going back into the past, then how could the present moment arrive?

(3)    It is impossible to cross the infinite to get to today, today could never arrive, which is absurd, for here we are!

(4)    If the number of past events were infinite, that would lead to infinites of different sizes.

“Suppose Jupiter completes and orbit once every twelve years and Saturn once every thirty years and the sphere of the stars once every thirty-six thousand years.

If the universe is eternal and these planets have been orbiting from eternity, then each of these bodies has completed and infinite number of orbits, and yet one will have completed twice as many or thousands of times as many orbits as another, which is absurd……if we take the orbits completed by just one of these planets, we may ask, is the number of orbits it has completed odd or even?

It would have to be one or the other, yet it is absurd to say the infinite is odd or even.

For this reason, the universe must have had a beginning, and it must have a cause of its beginning, which Ghazali identifies with God, the Eternal.”[11]

/ /

 

Thomas Aquinas

/Aquinas’s Five Ways /

Thomistic arguments assert that finite contingent beings owe their existence to either (a) a vicious infinite regress of other dependent finite beings, or (b) a necessary Being with causal powers.

1.

Argument from Change or Motion – Aquinas presents Aristotle’s argument that motion implies a First Mover.

God is pure actuality, there is no potentiality in the Divine Nature.

God is not in the process of becoming, He is Pure Being.