More on the question “How Do We Know God Exists?” (week 2 of Tough Questions, Jan. 25, 2015)
Link to essay by Peter Kreeft, Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God HERE
Link to debate (video) between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox HERE
Link to debate portion (video) “Has Science Buried God?” between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox HERE
Link to “Is Anything Worth Believing In?” John Lennox at Yale University HERE
Outline of talk:
HOW DO WE KNOW GOD EXISTS?
How do you know God exists? ______________________________________________
I. Today’s challenges to Belief in the Existence of God.
Scientism: for example, Carl Sagan (Cosmos). Scientism is not science. It is a reduction of knowledge to data alone. The known data about the universe does not require God, and the idea of God is far more complicated than naturalism.
Popular atheism: for example, The American Atheists
The New Atheism: for example, Sam Harris (The End of Faith); Christopher Hitches (God is Not Great); Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion). “The New Atheism” says that religion is not only nonsense, but dangerous, and so should be countered, exposed, and discredited.
Practical atheism: living as if there were no God, sometimes claiming “agnosticism”
NOTE: Malcolm Muggeridge said that if God is dead, something is going to take His place; it will either be megalomania or erotomania—the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.
II. Basic Arguments for the Existence of God:
NOTE: Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.”
1 The cosmos is evidence of God. Design implies designer. Cause assumes first cause.
Ps. 19:1-4 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. . . . Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
2 The fact that we want to believe. How can we even have a concept of God if there is no God?
3 Our moral sensibilities. Where does the sense of “ought” and “ought not” come from?
III. Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God
From The Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ronald Tacelli, SJ (Intervarsity Press, 1994)
1The Argument from Change
2The Argument from Efficient Causality
3The Argument from Time and Contingency
4The Argument from Degrees of Perfection
5The Design Argument
6The Kalam Argument
7The Argument from Contingency
8The Argument from the World as an Interacting Whole
9The Argument from Miracles
10The Argument from Consciousness
11The Argument from Truth
12The Argument from the Origin of the Idea of God
13The Ontological Argument
14The Moral Argument
15The Argument from Conscience
16The Argument from Desire
17The Argument from Aesthetic Experience
18The Argument from Religious Experience
19The Common Consent Argument
20Pascal’s Wager
IV. The Lord’s Prayer as a Theistic Manifesto
(chapter 8, I Want to Believe)
God Is “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name . . .”
God Wills “Your kingdom come, your will be done . . .”
God Gives “Give us this day our daily bread . . .”
God Forgives “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive . . .”
God Protects “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .”
God Rules “Yours is the kingdom, power and glory . . .”
V. Doubts and Excuses
Doubt is not the opposite of belief—it is simply the horizon between what we know with certainty today and what we hope becomes clearer in the future. (see chapter 6, I Want to Believe)
And then there are excuses…
NOTE Romans 1:19-22
“What may be known about God is plain to them [human beings], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
So, what are our excuses? (see chapter 14, I Want to Believe)
“I Don’t Know If I Can Believe in God When I See All the Suffering in the World.”
“I Think There Must Be Many Paths to God, So I Don’t Know Whether I Can Commit to One Way.”
“If God Wants Me to Believe, He Should Show Himself.”
“I’m Not Bad Enough to Need God.”
“I’m Not Good Enough to Deserve God.”