Logic and God 3

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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. – Romans 1:18-20, ESV


Richard Dawkin’s book The God Delusion is an interesting set of polemics. If it were possible to win an argument based on insults and innuendo, this book would have ended all positive discussion of belief in God. Future posts will contain some of the more interesting quotes.

Once again someone states that there is no positive argument which proves God’s existence. To answer with one line of thinking out of several, God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end. This is foundational for a very reasonable argument for His existence.

Something in the past must have always existed. It is not possible to move through an infinite series of moments of time. For example, if time extends forward out to infinity then it is obvious we will never reach the end of it. Reversing the process, if time extends infinitely into the past, we could never have moved through time from the past to get to this moment.

Similarly, we cannot expect that an infinite regress of finite causes exists either. That is, if we move backward from ourselves to the things that caused us, then backward to the things that caused them and so on, we must find something that did not have a beginning. Otherwise, we would never have moved through the infinite series of finite causes to get to ourselves. The infinite regression cannot exist in reality. Whatever the first cause was, it must have always been (it is “eternal”) and it must have the power to bring about all we see in the universe (a part of “omnipotence”). We know something of God’s “eternal power and divine nature” from the world we live in.

Evidence of rational design found in the universe makes belief in God reasonable, especially since the universe as we find it already requires something that has always existed and was powerful enough to bring it about. Ultimately, the historically reliable accounts of Christ’s life found in the New Testament provide enough evidence to be convincing.

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