An Argument for the Existence of God

As you might know, my grad classes have started up again. One of the books we're reading this semester is Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics by William Lane Craig. The first part of the book deals with philosophical arguments for the existence of God and I've decided that you must suffer through this with me! Just kidding...these arguments are actually fascinating even if some of them are a little hard to wrap your mind around. (I'm counting on Mark Mathewson to correct me where my representations of these arguments aren't quite right!)

These arguments are good to know, even in their simplest form, because you may have cause to use them in your own conversations with unbelievers to defend God's existence. Most people will have never heard these arguments before, but if you run across someone who has and who wants to go deeper than a simple representation of a particular argument, don't forget it's always fine to postpone the conversation until you can get help, assuring whoever you're talking to that you want to continue talking once you're prepared enough to do the argument justice.

One such argument for the existence of God is the kalam cosmological argument (written by Craig). It goes like this:

1.) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2.) The universe began to exist.
3.)Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Seems simple enough, but there are philosophers who refute even point one saying there is no reason to believe that whatever begins to exist necessarily has a cause. For them, it is more reasonable to believe that things like the universe can pop into being out of nothing than to believe in a First Cause of the universe. But we know that this isn't the case...things don't just pop into existence!

We also know that an infinite regress of causes is impossible for the universe or anything else. In other words, at some point the cause of something that began to exist has to be uncaused because causes cannot go back infinitely with no first cause to start the process.

Another common objection to this argument is that if everything that begins to exist must have a cause, what caused God? But this objection does not work because as an eternal being, God did not begin to exist. He exists outside of time and has no beginning or end, so He does not require a cause. The universe however, did begin to exist and so does require a cause (and there are philosophical arguments for this as well). There are many models of the universe put forth and some still try to claim an eternal universe, but most scientists now acknowledge that the universe is not eternal but had a definite starting point. The models that claim otherwise have serious problems that cannot be overcome.

This is a simple representation of the kalam argument and some objection that you might hear. Arguments like this one show that it is reasonable to believe in the existence of God, especially when you add other such arguments to it. If you want to learn more about this argument, Craig's book is a great source as is his website http://www.reasonablefaith.org/