How Do We KNOW God Exists?

Introduction

Apologetics- “reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.”

Why is apologetics important?

There is a BIG difference between Faith and Fact.

Knowing THAT God exists and knowing WHY exists.

Wouldn’t it Give you more confidence?

There are 5 main arguments atheists with try to make to disprove God. We Will Look at 4.

The Ontological Argument

The Cosmological Argument

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Teleological Argument

The Moral Argument

The first 3 we look at will all seem to go hand in hand but in certain setting need to be rightfully separated.

They all deal more with creation and the beginning.

The Cosmological Argument

Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.

By an external cause:

Things that are caused to exist by something else don’t exist necessarily but rather contingently.

They exist because something produced them.

By necessity of its own nature:

It’s impossible for them not to exist

Some philosophers have claimed that it’s impossible for the universe to have an explanation of its existence. For the explanation of the universe would have to be some prior state of affairs in which the universe did not yet exist. But that would be nothingness, and nothingness can’t be the explanation of anything.

If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.

Think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time.

The universe exists.

Obviously

Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1, 3).

Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God (from 2, 4).

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Something has never come from nothing and never will

The universe began to exist.

What makes the Big Bang so amazing is that it represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing. As the physicist P. C. W. Davies explains, “the coming into being of the universe, as discussed in modern science … is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization … upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.”

Therefore, the universe has a cause.

The Teleological Argument

The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.

It is not due to physical necessity or chance.

Therefore, it is due to design.

The Moral Argument

If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

Objective Moral values and duties exist.

Therefore, God exists.