Does God exist? This is one of the most important questions anybody can ask, and the answer will have a trmendous impact on our lives. Here, we will look at four arguments in favor of God's existence: the kalaam cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from desire, and the teleological argument. These four arguments are just a sample of the many arguments for God's existence, and my presentations here are, in turn, just a sample of all the various lines of argumentation associated with these arguments.
1) Everything that begins to exist has a creator
2) The universe began to exist
3) Therefore, the universe has a creator
That is the syllogism that the Kalam Cosmological Argument is based on. Every rational person should agree with the first premise and that the third follows logically from the first two. What atheists disagree with, however, is the second premise. Did the universe really have a beginning? Is there any evidence either way?
First of all, scientists today agree that both time and matter were created at the big bang; the current consensus in physics is that the universe was created out of nothing at the big bang. Now, it's illogical to say that the universe could've just come into being without any cause whatsoever; anybody who is even slightly oepn to the possibility of God's existence will have to agree. if the universe had a beginning and could not have been uncaused, then there must be a creator. This creator is God.
Philosophically, the universe had to have had a beginning. For any event to happen (for example, you reading this essay), all of the events leading up to it have to have been completed. If the universe is infinitely old, then an infinite amount of events would have had to have been completed, which can't happen; an actual infinite cannot be crossed (or completed). If you try to cross an actual infinite, there will always be one more event (or whatever the infinite is made of) to cross, so you can never cross the infinite. The universe has to have had a beginning, and it could not have come into being uncaused. Its creator is God.
The next question is how God can be infinitely old and uncreated. God is a spiritual creature outside of time (He created it), so He is not bound by the laws of the physical world. Aside from Divine revelation, we can only speculate about the nature of the spiritual world. Since He is not bound by the laws of nature, He can be uncreated, and since He is outside of time, an infinite amount of events does not have to be completed before a certain event happens for Him.
Next, atheists can object by saying that this first cause does not have to be an intelligent being; it could just have been a random event. I admit that this is a legitimate objection, but I don't use the cosmological argument to prove that God is an intelligent being. All this argument proves is that something we call "God" exists, but it doesn't prove that God has all the attributes Christians believe He has.
Without God, there are no morals. I'm not saying you can't be moral without God; atheists can be better people than some "Christians." It's just that without God, morals are subjective; they're no more important than the type of music you listen to. Without God, we can't criticize others for being immoral; we can't criticize Hitler, Saddam Hussein, or Jack the Ripper. Without God, life is as meaningless as the action figures children play with. Without God, we're meaningless molecules that just so happened to come together and be intelligent.
With God, however, life has meaning. With God, humans are special creatures with dignity that deserve to be treated with love and respect. With God, there's an objective reason to be moral; we CAN criticize murders and thieves.
One objection atheists raise to this argument is that there really are no moral absolutes; they say that morals merely evolved to help mankind survive. But is this really true? Can we really say that morality is totally subjective? There have been morals in every culture. While some have been far worse than others (even going so low as to sacrifice humans), no culture that I know of has ever condoned murder, torture, and thievery done for fun. Even the Aztecs who sacrificed humans did so because they thought they were pleasing the gods; they would not have done it had they known it doesn't please God. They had good intentions but bad ideas.
Take this example: There are seven people left on earth, and they decide to rebuild civilization. However, six of them don't like the seventh one, so they decide to torture and kill him. They rip his eyeballs out with a burning hot poker and pour acid into his eye sockets before finally killing him. Can anybody really condone this? Can anybody truly say that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with this? I doubt anyone can.
Many atheists have tried to explain how there can be an objective morality without God, and I will not try to refute each of their arguments here. Rather, I will give another form of the moral argument that shows how none of those arguments can work.
There are five groups, individuals, or things that can possibly bind us to a moral code. They are: 1) Ourselves, 2) An individual or group of individuals with authority (such as our parents, the president, etc.), 3) Society, 4) A moral force in the universe that's just "there" (or nature), or 5) God.
First, we cannot bind ourselves to any moral code. If you are on the same level as the one binding you, then he has no authority over you. This is different than moral relativism. In moral relativism, you choose your own morals, but you can always change them. With what I'm saying, once you bind yourself to a moral code, you cannot change it.
Secondly, no individual or small group of individuals can have the authority to bind you to a moral code. As humans we are all equals, and people have no binding authority on their equals.
Thirdly, society as a whole cannot have any moral authority. One person or small group of people can't have moral authority over you, and neither can a very (emphasis on very) big group of people.
Fourthly, it is illogical to believe in some "moral force" floating around in a universe without God (that would most likely be naturalistic). The only non-personal entity that may be able to bind you is nature, but it doesn't have moral authority. Nature is not a being; rather, it is just the whole of the physical universe. Since nature is not a being, it does not have a will or intelligence, so it cannot bind anyone to any moral code.
Fifth, the only option left is God, and He CAN bind us to a moral code. Since only God has the ability to bind us to a moral code, the only way to try and refute the moral argument is with moral relativism. However, as I have shown, moral relativism is false, so there IS an objective morality, and God DOES bind us to it.
We all have innate desires - desire for sleep, food, drink, friendship, love, sex - and they can all be satisfied. When we're tired we can sleep. When we're hungry and thirsty we can eat and drink. When we want friendship and love we can have friends, relatives, and boy/girlfriends and spouses. All of our innate desires that nature gives us can be satisfied; however, only one of them cannot be satisfied by anything in this world - the desire for ultimate happiness and meaning in life, even after death.
Innate desires are different from "artificial" desires such as money, cars, living in a fantasy land, or power. While these artificial desires vary from person to person (not everyone wants power or the same kind of car), our innate desires do not. Everyone gets hungry, thirsty, and tired; everyone yearns to be loved. These artificial desires come from outside of us - society (such as power), fiction (such as a fantasy land), advertising (such as a new car), etc.; our innate desires, however, come from within. Our innate desires are given to us by nature, and they can all be satisfied. Our artificial desires, however, cannot always be satisfied. We cannot always rule the world; we cannot always have the newest sports car.
Deep down inside of us we all desire something that this life cannot satisfy - the desire for ultimate happiness and meaning in life. Even the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre once said, "There comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven 'Is that all there is?'" No matter how much we have in this life, it can never completely satisfy us. If life ends in oblivion (as almost all atheists believe), then there can be no ultimate meaning in life; you can never have complete happiness. Since all other natural desires can be satisfied, it is logical to conclude that this one can also. However, since it cannot be fulfilled in this life, we must conclude that it will be fulfilled in another world. The satisfier of this desire is God, and what actually satisfies us is eternal life with Him.
To the atheist who claims to be completely happy, I can only ask him to look deep inside of himself and consider whether or not he is really happy. I know that I yearn for an ultimate happiness that I do not yet have, and others have said the same. I cannot prove that anybody else has this desire. However, I know I do, and I know that many other people do as well.
This argument doesn't prove the existence of God or that He has most of the attributes Christians believe He has. What it DOES prove (or, at least, demonstrate to be probable), however, is that there IS life after death in which we will be happy. Does this life after death have to be connected to God? Not necessarily. Most atheists don't believe in an afterlife, but some do. Those that do (I'm fairly sure) believe that it is just an extension of this natural life. In my opinion, an afterlife without God is just a way (albeit unreasonable) to reconcile one's atheism either with the desire for life after death or the belief in the afterlife (there are proofs for life after death, and these proofs might have convinced them, or they might just believe for no particular reason). Personally, I think that God is the most probable and most logical explanation of the afterlife. While this argument doesn't prove God directly, it does prove something that suggests God's existence.
1) The universe displays a great amount of design.
2) Either it was designed or came about by random chance.
3) It couldn't have come about by random chance.
4) So it was intelligently designed.
Most people agree with the first premise; the universe displays (or, at least, seems to suggest) a very fine amount of design. Just take a look at life. We have been able to create computers and robots that seem to be alive, but nothing we have even comes close to being truly alive. Just to give two examples of how the human body seems intelligently designed, let's look at DNA and RNA and the immune system.
DNA is a double-stranded molecule that carries the information for the physical characteristics of a person. It is written in a four-letter language, A, T, C, and G, with each of the letters standing for a nucleotide base (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine). On the two strands, A always pairs up with T, and C always pairs up with G. A DNA strand would look something like this:
A-T
T-A
C-G
G-C
Right here, we see signs of design; when we see information written on something (like on paper or on a floppy disk), we know it came from an intelligent source.
Now, for protein synthesis, the DNA has to unzip, and one strand becomes the template for which RNA is made. RNA, unlike DNA, is a single strand, but, like DNA, it also has nucleotide bases (but uracil replaces thymine). Each nucleotide on the RNA strand is the same as the nucleotide on the DNA strand that was attached to the template (with the exception of uracil, which replaces thymine). It looks something like this:
DNA RNA
A U
T A
C G
G C
Again, we see signs of design here. How does the body read the DNA and know how to make the correct RNA nucleotides? How can random chance produce a mechanism that can read information, process it, and use it to create something else? This would violate the law of causality, which says that an effect cannot be greater than its cause.
Now let's take a look at the human immune system. When a pathogen enters the body, the first two cells that attack are phagocytes and macrophages, both of which are killer cells. I'm not too concerned with the phagocytes; I want to focus on the macrophages. Macrophages tear up the pathogen into little pieces and transmit it to the helper T-cells, which analyze the organism's DNA and send out signals to the B-cells and killer T-cells. The B-cells use the information to make antibodies, which then go out and attack the pathogen; each type of antibody can only attack one specific type of pathogen. The killer T-cells process the information to know which types of cells to kill. Again we see a process by which the body can acquire information, process it, and do something with it.
These are just two examples of how natural, biological processes in nature show signs of an intelligent creator. If these processes were programmed by random chance, then they would almost certainly (I'm almost inclined to say 100% certainly) be defective, but they aren't.
Who is this intelligent creator? It's God. I think this argument is a nice companion to the cosmological argument because the cosmological argument doesn't prove that God is intelligent, but this one does.
