#1 The Evidence of the Beginning of the Universe (The Cosmological Argument)
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore the universe had a cause.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, most scientists assumed a universe with no beginning and no end… The last seventy years have led to the very solid conclusion that the universe began at a single moment, commonly now referred to as the Big Bang. Calculations suggest it happened approximately 14 billion years ago.
// Francis Collins, The Language of God
It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.
//Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
// David Hume, Philosopher and Skeptic
The Bible is unique among the documents of ancient history in positing an absolute beginning…Hinduism and Buddhism posit endless cycles of time stretching into the indefinite past. The Greeks and Romans believed in the eternity of history…Now modern science tells us the Bible is right. The universe was indeed formed out of nothing.
//Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity?
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S.U.R.G.E
Second law of Thermodynamics: The universe is running out of usable energy, thus it is not eternal—it had a beginning.
Universe is Expanding: Edwin Hubble discovered the expanding universe and deduced that the universe had to have at some point in the past been together.
Radiation from the Big Bang: Discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson won the Nobel Prize for discovering this afterglow from the Big Bang explosion—the heat can still be detected.
Galaxy Seeds: the NASA satellite COBE discovered and measured the temperature ripples which enabled matter to congregate by gravitational attraction into galaxies in the background of the Big Bang radiation. A discovery Stephen Hawking called “the most important discovery of the century, if not of all time.”
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity: This theory (which is 99% verified) demands an absolute beginning for time, space, and matter. It shows that time, space and matter are co-relative, meaning they are interdependent—you can’t have one without the others.
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#2 The Evidence of Ethics (The Axiological Argument)
If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
Objective moral values do exist.
Therefore, God exists.
Here are the two things that hold me in awe: the starry hosts above, and the moral law within.
//Immanual Kant, Philosopher
Humanity knows of a Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior about which they really agree…What is the sense in saying the enemy was wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazi’s at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced? There is a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table.
//C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Romans 1.19-20: since what may be known about God is plain to them, 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.
Romans 2.14-15: Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.
# 3 The Evidence from Intuition (The Argument from Intuition)
Men are intuitively religious.
They are so because God exists.
We are made in such a way as to be worshipfully inclined.
// Christopher Hitchens, Atheist
The religious impulse, has always been a perennial feature of humanity.
// Peter Berger, Sociologist
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
// C.S. Lewis, Atheist turned Christian
If there is no God then all moral statements are arbitrary, all moral valuations are subjective and internal, and there can be no external moral standard by which a person's feelings and values are judged.
