Welcome to our first week of Tuesday Morning Apologetics (TMA). This is going to be a weekly occurrence and the goal for it is to provide you with information about the various arguments for the existence of God. I’ll also be defending these arguments at certain stages as well. Additionally, I’ll be presenting these arguments whether I believe they are good or not. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know if I don’t think they are good. But I don’t plan to give my opinion right off the bat. I’ll just present them the best I can and I hope that you will decide whether or not you think they are any good before I give my opinion on them.
I thought we’d start with the first argument I learned for the existence of God. The Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA). I think that a lot of modern Apologists have probably started their journey learning this argument. Most of us heard this argument professionally from Dr William Lane Craig (WLC), founder of the online ministry, Reasonable Faith. After all, he is the foremost Christian debater and defender of the KCA today.
While WLC is the main defender of the argument today, the KCA is actually a very old argument. Back in 11th and 12th centuries AD, a muslim named Al-Ghazali started developing an argument for the existence of God. He eventually wrote a withering critique against the views of greek philosophers entitled, The Incoherence of the Philosophers. In this book, he argues that the idea of a beginningless universe is absurd. The universe must have a beginning, he declares, and since nothing begins to exist without a cause, there must be a transcendent Creator of the universe.
The KCA runs as follows:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Right off the bat, some of the people who think the argument is sound will claim that it doesn’t argue for the existence of God. Only that the universe, if it began to exist, has some kind of cause. That cause could be God or it could be something else. More likely, they say, it's something else. But later on we’ll see why this argument is, in fact, intended to show the existence of God.
As it stands, you can probably see why this argument is so popular. It’s short and pretty easy to memorize. The premises (1. and 2.) seem intuitively true and the conclusion (3.) follows naturally. Even better, this argument is a deductive one. Meaning that if the premises are true, then the conclusion not only follows naturally, but necessarily. So, the person who rejects the argument needs to refute the premises and, at first glance, that seems pretty tough to do.
Although the premises seem like they are intuitive and don’t need defending, there’s still plenty to be said about them and we’ll be going through all that in later posts.
I hope you’re excited for this new addition to NECAministry online content. So, what do you think about the KCA? Is it a sound argument or is it riddled with unjustified biases? Does it actually show that God exists or perhaps just some entity named Rick? Please feel free to comment below and ask questions!
SOURCES:
Craig, William. Reasonable Faith 3rd Edition (pg.111). Crossway
Craig, William Lane. On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (p. 74). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.