Does God exist???
I wish I had said this!! I like it!!!
There are many arguments for God's existence. Says Bobby Bambino. I will focus here only on one. Note that this is only argument about the existence of a supreme being and that this does not address any particular religion's truth claims; specifically, it says nothing about the truth or falsity of Christianity and the claims of Jesus of Nazareth.
I will give the syllogism below and discuss the two premises briefly afterward.
1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.
We define God as that cause. Observe that once we accept the two premises, the conclusion follows inescapably, so the soundness of the argument rests on the validity of the two premises. I will look at the second premise first because I will need to say less about it; for you, as a scientist, are probably familiar with big bang cosmology and the current big bang model. This asserts that the universe began as an initial singularity which began to expand at a very rapid rate. The universe, as well as all of space, time, and matter came into begin with the initial singularity. Without the initial singularity (notice, I can't say "before" because there was no "before") there was nothing; at least, nothing scientifically observable. Hence, whatever caused the big bang is outside of space, time, and matter. As scientists, we know that this is the generally accepted model of the origin of the cosmos.
Now onto the first premise. This is a first principle of metaphysics; that all effects have a cause. In fact, all of science is based on this principle. When we study a phenomenon, we ask "what caused this? how did this come to be?" So postulating that everything that begins to exists has a cause is completely consistent and indeed a cornerstone of all of science.
The alternative is that the universe popped into being, uncaused out of nothing. In other words, we have non-being causing being. But how can nothing cause something? For by definition, "nothing' is that which has no properties- in particular, it lacks the property of causality. It also lacks potential. So it is a metaphysical absurdity to think that something can come from nothing. Let us take this further. I"m sitting here at my computer, alone in my room. But I have no fear that all of a sudden an elephant is going to pop into being in my room and eat my computer. And if something can come from nothing, I would be justified in being concerned that an elephant would pop into being in my room. Or a tiger, or a gun, or anything. But this is simply silly to worry about. We have no evidence of any such thing happening. Never in this world do we postulate that something came from nothing.
So when you consider the reasons for holding to these two premises, it seems we have in overwhelming amount of evidence to being that each premise is very plausible. Hence, it is very plausible that the cause of the universe, which we are calling God, exists.
does God exist
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