| Evidence for God Handout |
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| Written by John Feakes |
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Evidence for the Existence of God: (These notes go along with my 90 minute presentation on the existence of God) 1. The universe’s origin. * The second law of thermodynamics (heat transfer) shows the universe had a beginning (if the universe were infinitely old, everything everywhere would be the same temperature). * The first law of thermodynamics: the total amount of E in the universe remains constant. * The second law: the total amount of usable E in the universe is decreasing (entropy). * Extrapolation backward must end when all of the universe’s E was usable (the moment of creation). * Zeno’s paradox: Actual infinite sets are impossible (this includes an infinite set of moments in time.) * Premises: i) Whatever begins to exist has a cause ii) The universe began to exist iii) The universe has a cause. * The Big Bang story: “The universe has no cause.” This reasoning undercuts all scientific investigation (which seeks to establish firm casual relationships). * There can only be one independent, infinite, unlimited cause (because two causes would limit each other). 2. The Universe’s Complexity. * The second law shows the universe running down, wearing out. * Paradoxically, the universe is filled with innumerable examples of staggering complexity. * “Running the clock backward” does not bring us to a chaotic “Big Bang”. * Extrapolation backward brings us to a highly ordered original creation of the universe. 3. Existential Causality. * Every part of the universe is limited and dependant upon something else for its continued existence, therefore, the entire universe must be limited and dependant. * What unlimited, independent something (or someone) is responsible for the universe’s continued existence if not God? * The universe’s cause must be personal. The cause of all else is not compelled by anything outside of itself to do anything. Creating a universe must therefore have been an act of will. Having a will denote the presence of a personality. 4. The Anthropic Principle. * Life-prohibiting universes are far more probable than life-permitting ones. * Life-permitting parameters for planet earth are coupled with the provision for intelligent life to make meaningful scientific discovery. 5. Objective Moral Values. * Objective moral values do not originate with: * The individual, or one individual could not judge the actions of another individual. * Society, or one society could not judge the actions of another society. * Premises: i) Objective moral values cannot exist without God, ii) Objective moral values do exist, iii) God must exist 6. The Validity of Thought. * For some thoughts to be truly more valid than others, the thoughts themselves must not by wholly dependant upon brains. * If thoughts are nothing more than chemical reactions, then no thought could be said to be any more valid than another. * The effect on thoughts that damage to the brain causes is not proof that thoughts are wholly dependant on brains. The brain may be though of as the machine that the soul/spirit operates (like a human operates a computer). * The world’s greatest scientists believed that God existed and that provided rational justification for scientific investigation * The statement that all statements are meaningless unless scientifically verifiable is itself unverifiable scientifically. 7. The Need for God * Belief in God is almost universal, what caused this? * Atheists claim that people invented God because they needed something divine to believe in. * Perhaps atheists invented the idea that God doesn’t exist because they needed moral autonomy. * Needing something is no proof that that something is nonexistent (we thirst and water exists to quench our thirst) * If our brains are simply stimulus/response mechanisms, what kind of stimulus created the belief in God? * Claiming that a biochemical accident occurred sometime in the remote past that caused the belief in God is inconsistent with atheism. (If the universe is completely meaningless and random, how can the atheist speak of biochemical accidents?) 8. Absurdity of Life w/o God. * Without God life has no ultimate meaning * The greatest humanitarians and the cruelest dictators performed morally neutral acts arbitrarily * They both meet the exact same fate: The humanitarian goes unrewarded, the dictator unpunished * Without God, life is a “nightmare between two eternities.” 9. Changed Lives. * Even if God is not directly observable, we can observe directly the profound changes in the lives of those who have come to believe in him. * Courage, honestly, selflessness can be observed * A person can say they have experienced God and no one can prove him wrong. If God exists… He’s got to be very intelligent. Since all intelligent life on earth communicates, it is reasonable to look for God’s communication attempt to us His creatures. The Bible is the most obvious place to start. This book actually claims to be the word of God, and it documents His dealings with humanity over the last 6,000 years. For many, the Bible is a book of fairy tales. They feel this way because the Bible describes miracles that God has performed, most notably, those that accompanied the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Some of these are incredibly hard to believe. But are they harder to believe than, say, a universe just popping into existence from nothing and without a cause? No matter what we chose to believe, a faith projection is required. If we can believe in a God that can act, (we just looked at 9 lines of evidence!), then we can believe that there may have been acts of God. It just might be that the biblical writers accurately recorded these events for us. How can we know for sure? By testing the Bible’s historic merits. See www.carewinnipeg.com for more on this. |
| Last Updated on Saturday, 21 February 2009 11:53 |