Does God Exist?預覽

Something From Nothing

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth …  Genesis 1:1 NIV

Did you know the Bible predicted that the universe had a beginning nearly 3,400 years before science did? What about the fact that the last 100 years of scientific evidence have continued to reinforce the claim made on the first page of the Bible that the universe had a beginning?

Most people don’t know that. And it’s really unfortunate. Most people today have been told that science and the Bible are in opposition to each other. That you have to choose to be a person of science or a person of faith. A person who believes in the Bible or a person who believes in scientific research.

It’s crazy to think that prior to the 1800s, almost no one saw science and faith as enemies. In fact, some of the early Church Fathers talked about the two sources God provided for us to discover truth: nature and Scripture. One of these Church Fathers, a man named Augustine, made the bold claim that the idea of science and faith being opposed to each other comes from people misunderstanding science and misinterpreting scripture. Not only that, but the vast majority of the fathers of modern science were committed Christians. It was their faith in an intelligent designer and an ordered universe that motivated them to investigate this universe through the scientific method. Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion in the early 17th century didn’t lose his faith in God. Instead, he described his discovery of these laws as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”

Throughout the majority of human history, Christians have seen science and the Bible as tools given to us by God to discover the truth of who He is, the beauty of His creation, and our role in all of it. Each of these tools has a role to play in that journey of discovery. Science is really good at teaching us the mechanisms of how everything works and the makeup of everything around us. The Bible, on the other hand, is more focused on helping us understand the Maker of it all and the meaning behind it.

So, with that understanding, let’s look at the first argument for the existence of God: Something from Nothing.

The argument goes like this: If a thing begins to exist, there must be a cause for its existence. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause for its existence.

We know the first statement is true because things don’t just pop into existence out of nothing. For a really bad example, you, reading this plan right now, began to exist at some point. Common sense tells us you didn’t just pop into existence from nothing, but that instead there was a cause for your existence. What was that cause? Your parents getting frisky.

Another bad example: When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, no one assumes that they magically created a rabbit out of thin air. Why not? Because we know that things don’t just magically pop into existence out of nothing!

When we look at the philosophical and scientific evidence, we arrive at the logical conclusion that the universe is not eternal, and instead had a beginning at some point.

And if the universe began to exist at some point in the past, then there must be some cause for the universe's existence. Because remember, if something begins to exist, then there must be a cause for its beginning. The question becomes: What is that cause?

If the universe consists of all space, time, matter, and energy, and those things didn’t begin to exist until the universe began, then the cause for the universe must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and immensely powerful to be the cause for all of those things. Because things don’t cause themselves to exist, otherwise things could just pop into existence any time. The universe having a cause outside of itself indicates there is something outside of nature, beyond our universe, that must have caused its existence.

Now, to be clear, this argument by no means proves that Christianity is true. What this argument does is make the case that the scientific and philosophical evidence indicates that there is something outside of our universe that caused the universe to exist. So, what is that spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and powerful cause?

That cause is what we call God. And as we continue on this journey, we will make the case that the cause isn’t just any God, but is, in fact, the God of the Bible.