by Natasha Crain
1. What Evidence Is There For God's Existence?
3 Major Arguments that provide compelling, objective evidence for God's existence :
1. Cosmological Argument
2. Design Argument
3. Moral Argument
1. Cosmological Argument
- The Universe had a beginning
- Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else
- Therefore, the universe was caused by something else, which we call God
2. Design Argument
- The Universe and life at least have the appearance of design rather than having the appearance of formation by chance (if you were to find a watch in an empty field, you would instinctively conclude that it was designed and not just an accidental formation in nature)
- Imagine you just discover upon a cabin in the woods, you discover your favourite music is playing, your favourite video game is on television, your favourite drink is in the refrigerator. Would you think this existed by chance or assume someone prepared it for you? It would be hard to imagine that a place so perfectly tailored to your personal needs would have formed that way by chance!
3. Moral Argument
- Objective moral standards exist outside of personal opinion
- The best explanation for the existence of objective moral standards is the existence of a moral lawgiver (Romans 1:18-23)
2. How Could A Good God Allow Evil And Suffering?
God create everything good. God did not create evil because evil is not a thing. Instead, evil is the corruption of a good thing (eg. rotting of a good tree or wound on your body)
"Corruption"
- Human Corruption or moral evil
- Natural Evil (eg. Tornadoes, Hurricanes)
Where does corruption come from?
Freewill. God wanted us to freely love Him, just like a forced love is no love at all.
Why doesn't God just stop moral evil?
God can't force us to freely make good choices. Therefore, the only way God could destroy evil would be to destroy our freedom. However, a world of automata - of creatures that worked like machines would hardly be worth creating.
What about natural evil?
Natural evil is the byproduct of good processes and/or result of moral evil. Earthquakes are the consequence of plate tectonics, or the movement of giant plates under the ocean floor. Without these plates we would have no continents. They are necessary prerequisites to human survival on the only planet known to have life. Our planet requires oxygen and a warming sun and water in order for us to live here, even though we recognize that people can get sunstroke and drown in the ocean. So too, it seems that plate tectonics are a central requirement for life.
Millions of Africans die of starvation because their corrupt governments don't allow the necessary food to reach them - not because earth doesn't produce enough food. This problem circles right back to individual free will. This example of seemingly natural evil is actually the result of moral evil.
3. Why Would God Command The Genocide Of The Canaanites?
Deutoronomy 9:5
"not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that He may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
God said His command was indeed an act of Judgement in guilty people - something in a completely moral category than an unmerited massacre of innocent lives, as is always the case when humans command genocide.
Deuteronomy 18:9-14
Leviticus 18:20-30
The land itself threw out the people who lived there ......
- so what more for God who is the most holy?
- only God knows the depth of people's depravity and whether or not they will repent in any given circumstance (Genesis 15:16)
God wasn't willing to execute judgement until their sinfulness had reached a very specific limit. It's simply not reasonable to think that humans are in a position to evaluate how fair a divine judgement was based on the limited perspective we have.
4. How Can A Loving God Send People To Hell?
God is perfectly good, and that He has written His moral laws on the human heart
Psalm 18:30
1 John 1:5
Romans 2:14-15
Sin is a transgression against those laws
Justness is the quality of fairly conferring deserved rewards and punishments against a standard of right and wrong. If sin is real and God is just, there must be a penalty for that sin. Though there's disagreement on what exactly hell is and how long it will last, we know that it's a very serious (and just) punishment of eternal separation from God.
5. How Can God Judge People Who Have Never Even Heard About Jesus?
#General Revelation : What God reveals by Natural Means
God's general revelation is what He has revealed of Himself through the natural world and our moral conscience. The Bible says that every human is accountable for acknowledging this level of revelation. In other words, the Bible says there are no people who are ignorant of God's existence and moral requirements.
* What God has revealed of Himself through the natural world (Romans 1:19-20)
* What God has revealed of Himself through our moral conscience (Romans 2:14-15)
# Special Revelation : What God Reveals by Supernatural Means
It's not possible to simply look at the splendor of creation and our moral conscience to deduce the specific truths that an all-powerful Creator had a Son who lived on Earth, was fully human and fully God, died for the forgiveness of our sins, and was resurrected. For us to learn about these truths, God had to reveal Himself in supernatural ways, such as through the Bible and Jesus. This is called His Special Revelation.
What about those in the OT who have the General Revelation but not the Special Revelation of Jesus?
There are many questions about God, our lives, and eternity that we simply don't have clear answers to in the Bible. That's okay. The fact that there are questions we can't answer with certainty doesn't detract from the truth of what we do know : God is perfectly just, so we can be confident He'll do what is fair on judgment day.
6. Why Would God Need People To Worship Him?
Worship is responding to all that God is with all that we are. It is a natural response to an appropriate understanding of who God is, not an act of reluctant humility before an attention-seeking Creator. Bible tells that mankind was created in God's image, so every human is equal in value. No human or thing deserves worship because no human or thing is inherently more valuable than another. We need to appropriately recognize that God is unlike any human or earthly thing. God is a perfect Being and the Creator of all. God actually deserves worship. However, even though God deserves our worship and Bible says we should worship God doesn't mean God "need" us to worship Him. God doesn't actually need anything at all to complete His character or existence, He is perfectly self-sufficient. Any idea that God need our worship is unbiblical and mistaken.
God Wants our worship not because He is arrogant. Arrogant involves having an inflated sense of self. A perfect God can't have an inflated sense of self. He has an accurate understanding of His immeasurable worth. God wants us to worship because He knows we'll be fulfilled by it. We were created by Him, so worshipping - responding to God with all that we are - realizes our very purpose. Worship is a lifestyle, not a weekly event.
7. Why Is God So Hidden?
A. If God exists, He would make Himself more obvious to us
Freewill is our ability to make choices without external coercion. Human freewill is necessary for us to genuinely love God and by remaining somewhat hidden, He gives us space to either genuinely seek Him or avoid Him
B. God has not made Himself obvious to us
God has revealed Himself us; perhaps not in the overly obvious ways we might desire, but in ways that God has deemed sufficient for allowing us to find Him when we search. Instead of taking away our freedom to make morally decisions of loving Him and coercing us into believing Him, God gives us sufficient revelation and promises that when we diligently seek, we will find.
8. Is Faith In God The Opposite Reason?
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