Does God Exist?

[SLIDE 1] Good morning Church! My name is Ashley, and I am so excited to be here today! I am not a preacher or a Pastor, but I am an apologist. [SLIDE 2] Who knows what an apologist is? It is someone who makes a case for Christianity. “Apologia” literally means speaking in defence. This comes [SLIDE 3] from 1 Peter 3:15-16

1 Peter 3:15–16 (CSB)

but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do this with gentleness and reverence, keeping a clear conscience, so that when you are accused, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame.

[SLIDE 4] I spend a big chunk of my time engaged in my online ministry, which is called “The Social Apologist”, and this entails writing articles, making videos, both short form video and long form video, and engaging in online debates with atheists, agnostics, muslims… Anyone who essentially does not believe in Christianity, or who tries to attack Christianity.

What to look out for over the next 2 weeks

[SLIDE 5] Over the next 2 Sundays I plan to present a case for the existence of God, as well as the existence of Jesus, with the intention of equipping you in sharing this with others who doubt in both God, and Jesus’ existence. [SLIDE 6] An important thing to remember, is that people who do not believe in God, or who don’t subscribe to Christianity, do NOT believe in the Bible, so using the Bible to prove the existence of God, or Jesus, is the same as using a comicbook to prove that Spiderman actually exists! That is why we look outside of the Bible, not because we question the authority of Scripture as Christians, but to rather meet people where they are at, and then to use God’s natural revelation to reveal God’s existence, as well as Historical evidence to reveal the truth about Jesus, which will then lead people to God’s special revelation, which is God’s divinely inspired Word, the Bible. [SLIDE 7]

Who here knows someone who does not believe in God?

Good! Who here has ever had doubts in God’s existence, anytime in your life? Who has engaged with other people in wether or not God existed, and felt you could not defend His existence well enough? Who here feels confident that they can prove God’s existence to someone without being allowed to open your Bible?

I engaged in a debate with a phycisist in the 2nd week of January on TikTok, and he had the following video Title: God is a Myth, join if you disagree. And after waiting an hour, it was finally my turn. We debated for an hour, and it was excellent! And I presented a case for God’s existence which was simply 3 premises. If premise 1 and 2 were true, then premise 3 would be true. We spent roughly 45 minutes concluding that premise 1 was true, and after 15 minutes on premise 2, he had to go, and could therefore not conclude the debate, which was unfortunate.

Kalam Cosmological Argument

[SLIDE 8] Today, we will look at this argument for God’s existence, and it’s called the Kalam Cosmological argument. You each have a handout, so don’t worry too much about memorizing this name, or the 3 premises, for now at least. It goes like this:

Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist, has a cause.

Premise 2: The universe began to exist.

Premise 3: Therefore, the universe has a cause.

If premise 1 is true, and premise 2 is true, then premise 3 is true. Does this therefore mean God? Not at all. But let’s see where this will lead us once we break this down.

Premise 1

[SLIDE 9] Let’s look at premise 1. “Everything that begins to exist, has a cause”. This is true for each and every one of us in this room. We each began to exist at the moment of conception, which means we each have a cause, which is simple biology really, the birds and the bees. Let’s look at the phones in our pockets. It has a date of manufacture, which means it began to exist. The cause is the process within the factory and the people involved. In the same way we can look at everything around us that began to exist at one point or another, and figure out how it came to be, and what caused it to come into existence. This is essentially the pursuit of science, seeking to understand the cause and effect of all things within our universe. Nothing in our universe is uncaused, because that would be like thinking it’s normal for a hippo to pop into existence in front of us, and start running around. Imagine, poof! A tesla! I wouldnt mind one, just saying… I think it is same to say that premise 1 is true.

Premise 2

[SLIDE 10] So let’s take a look at premise 2. The universe began to exist. For this premise, I am going to be looking at what modern science shows us about the universe. Whether we all agree in this room about it or not, does not matter. What matters is that the person you are speaking with subscribes to a scientific worldview, so let’s see if their worldview brings us to God’s existence or not. Albert Einstein’s equations changed his understanding of the universe from being eternal and static, to having a beginning, and it expanding.

[SLIDE 11]

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist “Irritating” Facts

If his theory of General Relativity was true, it meant that the universe was not eternal but had a beginning. Einstein’s calculations indeed were revealing a definite beginning to all time, all matter, and all space

Science demonstrates that our universe is not infinite, nor eternal, but that it had a beginning, and to prove this, let’s look at the acronym SURGE, to prove this point.

“S” in SURGE

[SLIDE 12] Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the law of entropy. Essentially it means that everything tends to bring things to disorder. With time, things naturally fall apart. Your car, your house, your body, all of these fall apart with time. Since we still have some useable energy left, this means 2 things. 1. Our universe is not eternal, because then there should have been an eternity for the energy to change into unuseable energy. 2. In reverse, all energy changes to useable energy, pointing to a beginning.

“U” in SURGE

[SLIDE 13] U - The Universe is expanding.

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist U—The Universe is Expanding

How does the expanding universe prove a beginning? Think about it this way: if we could watch a video recording of the history of the universe in reverse, we would see all matter in the universe collapse back to a point, not the size of a basketball, not the size of a golf ball, not even the size of a pinhead, but mathematically and logically to a point that is actually nothing (i.e., no space, no time, and no matter). In other words, once there was nothing, and then, BANG, there was something—the entire universe exploded into being! This, of course, is what is commonly called “the Big Bang.”

Now church, for some this is a touchy point, and for others not. Some people are young earth, who believe the earth is 6000 years old, and some Christians are Old Earth, believing the earth is 4-5 Billion years old. When it comes to this conversation, what you and I believe in does not matter, because we are exploring whether science and the current scientific understanding of the beginning of our universe leads to God or not.

“R” in SURGE

[SLIDE 14] Radiation from the Big Bang. In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered tha cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang, which ultimately won them both a Noble Prize. Here is a quote from Robert Jastrow:

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist R—Radiation from the Big Bang

No explanation other than the Big Bang has been found for the fireball radiation. The clincher, which has convinced almost the last Doubting Thomas, is that the radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson has exactly the pattern of wavelengths expected for the light and heat produced in a great explosion. Supporters of the steady state theory have tried desperately to find an alternative explanation, but they have failed. At the present time, the Big Bang theory has no competitors

“G” in SURGE

[SLIDE 15] Great Galaxy Seeds.

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist G—Great Galaxy Seeds

If the Big Bang actually occurred, scientists believed that we should see slight variations (or ripples) in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation that Penzias and Wilson had discovered. These temperature ripples enabled matter to congregate by gravitational attraction into galaxies. If found, they would comprise the fourth line of scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning.

In 1992, they found these ripples. Newspapers all around the world shared George Smoot’s shocking quote: “If you are religious, it’s like looking at God”.

“E” in SURGE

[SLIDE 16] Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist E—Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

His theory of General Relativity is the fifth line of scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning, and its discovery was the beginning of the end for the idea that the universe is eternal. The theory itself, which has been verified to five decimal places, demands an absolute beginning for time, space, and matter. It shows that time, space, and matter are co-relative. That is, they are interdependent—you can’t have one without the others.

[SLIDE 17] Robert Jastrow is the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, is an astronomer, and an agnostic, and he has the following to say about all of these put together:

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist God and the Astronomers

Jastrow writes, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”

The overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang and its consistency with the biblical account in Genesis led Jastrow to observe in an interview, “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover.… That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”

Premise 3

[SLIDE 18] New let’s talk about Premise 3. The universe has a cause. Since premise 1 is true, and premise 2 is true, it follows that premise 3 is true.

What can we know about the cause of the universe?

[SLIDE 19] Now that we have established that the universe has a cause, what does this mean? What can we know about the thing that caused our universe? How did we get to a point where we call this cause God?

[SLIDE 20] In science, we can look at an effect, and form deductive arguments about characteristics of the causal agent of the said effect. Meaning, if I look at my iphone, I can deduce a couple of things that are true regarding the causal agent, without knowing who or what the causal agent is. I can see that there is glass, which means there is heat involved in shaping this glass, a mechanism of cutting the glass. There is certain metals involved, which means an aspect of the causal agent must be able to mold, and remold certain elements found within my phone, and reorient them in a specific order, to form a series of resistors, capacitors, flows of copper and current. There is a software element to it, so therefore the causal agent has to be able to write and create software, and apps, and when looking at all of these, there has to be a mind driving these things, choosing and directing the creation of this iphone, and its operational functions within it. Its not just random actions that led to this iphone, but design, and an intelligent mind.

So let’s apply this same line of thinking to our universe, and it’s creation.

[SLIDE 21] Space, time and matter came into existence at the Big Bang. That means the causal agent of our universe has to be timeless, in order to create time, spaceless in order to create space, and immaterial in order to create matter. The causal agent has to be outside of its effect in order to cause it. The iphone factory is not within the iphone, but rather outside of it.

So we currently have the following attributes of the causal agent:

Timeless, spaceless and immaterial.

[SLIDE 22] But theres more! Since there is a tremendous amount of energy in our universe, the causal agent has to be extremely powerful, in order to create all this energy within our universe. Now you might say that that the 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but rather changed from one form to another, but that law is limited to our natural universe, not beyond our universe to the causal agent.

[SLIDE 23] So now we have timeless, spaceless, immaterial, extremely powerful. But wait, theres more!

[SLIDE 24] Personal, meaning an ability to make decisions, to choose to cause something. Remember, impersonal forces, like a rock, cannot choose to do anything. We know there is an element of a personal mind behind the iphone, because we see the design behind it, and the necessary flow of actions required that can only be made by something, ie US, with a mind to choose to make an iphone.

[SLIDE 25] So now we have timeless, spaceless, immaterial, extremely powerful and personal, meaning having the ability to choose to cause something. But wait, theres more!

[SLIDE26] Lets talk about morality real quick, and what is right or wrong. You see, we all have a sense within us, of certain moral situations that is always wrong. I am sure I can think of certain moral actions that will always remain objectively wrong, regardless of where you are in the world. And guess what. The only way anything can be right or wrong, is when there is a higher standard that we are striving toward. An objective standard of goodness. Stay with me, this can get complicated.

[SLIDE 27] Here is an example of why an objective standard of morality is a necessity. When something happens that we deem is morally wrong, why is it morally wrong? Just because you say so? If it is ONLY wrong because you said so, does it become morally right, just because someone else says it is? [SLIDE 28] Absolute truth exists, and therefore, something is either true, or it is false. Intentionally hurting an innocent 2 year old child for fun is morally wrong. If our subjectve feelings are the only standard of morality, then this statement is not absolutely true, because all it takes for this to be false, is for someone else to say this is morally right. But because there is a moral law engrained in each of us, it begs for a moral law giver. Is it possible that we were designed with this sense of morality in each of us? I believe that is a reasonable view to hold, because without an objective standard of morality beyond us, a moral lawgiver, then morality does not exist. And that is a very dangerous worldview to hold.

[SLIDE 29] So now lets look at the attributes the causal agent has: Timeless, spaceless, immaterial, extremely powerful, personal (able to make decisions), and the standard of objective morality, ie. the moral law giver.

So if we have a causal agent with all of these attributes, does it appear to be a reasonable belief in God? Does God share in these attributes?

[SLIDE 30] Is God timeless? God has always existed (Col. 1:17), and will always exist (Psalm 90:2). God calls himself the “I AM”, that is, the eternally existing One (Exo.3:14; John 8:58). He calls Himself the first and the last (Rev. 1:17-18).

[SLIDE 31] Is God spaceless? For God to be omnipresent, he needs to be spaceless (Psalm 139:7-12; Jeremiah 23:24)

[SLIDE 32] Is God immaterial? God is spirit, which means a non-physical entity (John 4:24)(2 Cor. 3:17)

[SLIDE 33] Is God extremely powerful? According to Jeremiah 32:17; Psalm 135:6) God is omnipotent, meaning to have unlimited power.

[SLIDE 34] Is God Personal, able to make decision? According to Genesis 1:1 and Colossians 1:16 he is, since he chose to create all things.

[SLIDE 35] Is God perfectly good? According to John 3:16, 1 John 4:8, Leviticus 19:2, 1 Peter 1:16, Deuteronomy 32:4 and James 5:11 he is all loving, all righteous, all holy, all just, all forgiving and all compassionate.

[SLIDE 36] The God of the Bible is in a league of His own.

Lets take God out of the transcendent realm, and realize that he is really close also. God didnt just make the world and remained distant, yes he is transcendent, [SLIDE 37] yet He takes on human nature, material flesh, John 1. Verse 3 says everything was made through Him. He made it all. V14 Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Study God’s word just as much as we study his world. He has revealed himself in the world, in his son, which we will talk about next week. [SLIDE 38] Next week we will explore wether Jesus actually existed according to ancient historical standards, the same we use for Cleopatra, Caesar, Alexander the Great, and if He really did exist, what is written about him? What can we learn about the historical Jesus without opening th Bible? Remember. Faith is based in reality, and you have good reasons to believe that. You have a creator who came to rescue you. Lets pray.