Grace be to the highest Lord Jesus Christ, king of kings, Lord of Lords.

I will begin by laying out the argument:

There are things which come into existence.

Everything which comes into existence is caused to exist by something else.
There cannot be an infinite series of past causes.
Therefore, there exists a first cause which did not come into existence. In other
words, the first cause always existed.

Let us look at each of the steps in the argument:

Premise 1. “There are things which come into existence.”

Many things have come into existence. This article is coming into existence as I
write it. You came into existence and so did I. This premise is not controversial.

Premise 2. “Everything which comes into existence is caused to exist by something

else.”
It is obvious that nothing can cause itself to come into existence. Anything that
causes itself to come into existence has to exist before it exists. This is
impossible. Perhaps something can come into existence from Nothing without any
cause whatsoever. Can a thing just pop into existence with absolutely no cause?
This also does not seem reasonable.

When my children were young, they would sometimes draw on the walls. If I walked
into the dining room and saw a picture of Pinky and the Brain drawn on the wall in
Permanent Magic Marker I would have asked “Where did this picture come from?” My
daughter Elizabeth might have said “It came from nothing, Dad. Nothing caused it.
It just popped there. I think it is quite strange — don’t you?” Would I have
accepted this? No! Things do not come into existence from Nothing without cause.
So, we have good reason to think that premise two is true. Everything which comes
into existence is caused to exist by something else.

Premise 3. “There cannot be an infinite series of past causes.”

Is the series of past causes infinite? Can the universe have an infinite past? The
answer is that it cannot. First, there are philosophical reasons to think the past
cannot be infinite. Second, there are scientific reasons which support this view.

A few philosophical reasons:

Why can’t the past be infinite? The answer is that it is impossible to complete an
infinite series by addition. The series of past events is complete. Think of this
mathematical fact. Why is it impossible to count to infinity? It is impossible
because, no matter how long you count, you will always be at a finite number. It is
impossible to complete an actual infinite by successive addition.

The past is complete. This claim means that the entire series of past events ends
now. It ends today. Tomorrow is not part of the series of past events. The series
of past events does not extend into the future. It is complete at the present. If
it is impossible to complete an infinite series by successive addition (as it is
impossible to count to infinity) the past cannot be infinite. If the past is
finite, that is, if it had a beginning, then the universe had a beginning. We have
strong philosophical reason to reject the claim that the universe has always
existed.

A Few Scientific Reasons

I will not develop these. Rather, I will simply point them out.

Big Bang theory does not prove that the universe had a beginning, but it supports
this claim.
The second law of thermodynamics does not prove that the universe had a beginning
but it also supports this claim.
We can see that we have good philosophical and Scientific reasons to reject the
idea that the Universe has always existed.

About the Universe, there are only three alternatives:

The universe has always existed. It has an infinite past.
The universe was popped into existence from nothing with absolutely no cause.
The universe was caused to exist by something outside it.

We have strong reason to reject the first two alternatives.

Alternative Three is the most reasonable. There was a first cause. This cause
existed eternally. It initiated the big bang and created the universe.
First, the first cause is not a part of the space-time physical universe because it
caused the space time universe to begin. Therefore, it is outside of space and
time. It is not physical. Second, it has a great deal of power. Third, it is a
personal agent. This means it is not an inert force but it must have aspects of
person hood; namely, that it wills. How do we know this? This is because it is the
best answer to the question of why the Big Bang happened when it did. Why not
sooner? Why not later? All of the conditions for producing the Big Bang existed
from eternity. The only kind of cause we know of that can initiate an effect when
all of the conditions are already present is the will of a personal agent.

I have not argued that it is logically impossible that the universe popped into
existence from nothing without cause. I have argued that it is more reasonable to
hold that it has a cause and that this cause is a non-physical personal agent —
God.

So, it seems that the first argument is fairly strong. The existence of the
universe is better explained by the existence of God.

Reason Two: The Existence of Objective Moral Obligations is Better Explained by the
Existence of God.
People experience a sense of morality that leads them to hold strongly that certain
things are right or wrong for all people in all cultures. For example, it is wrong
to torture another person just for fun. It is wrong for me today. It is wrong for a
citizen of the Philippines and it was wrong for someone living in 500 BC. If it is
true that it is wrong to torture another person just for fun, then our moral sense
picks up something real and objective about morality.

Some philosophers have argued that without God there can be no objective morality
at all. In fact, I used to argue for this claim myself. I have changed my mind
about this point. I think there can be objective moral goods without God. For
example, Aristotle believed that there are objective facts concerning what helps
human beings flourish. Human flourishing is clearly a moral good. Thus, there can
be some objective moral goods without God. It is more difficult to find room for
objective moral obligations without God.

What is the difference between a moral good and a moral obligation? A moral good is
a state or situation that, morally, is better to have than not. We might think
that it is a better situation, morally, if a person can fulfill some of her
potential than if she cannot fulfill any of it. A moral obligation is a duty. If I
have a moral obligation to do some action, then I have a duty to perform it. If I
refrain from doing the action, I fail at one of my duties, and I am in that sense
blameworthy.

What I will argue is that objective moral obligation is better explained by the
existence of God than by atheist stories. I will not argue that objective moral
obligations are impossible without God. I will argue they are more likely if God
exists. If I am correct, objective moral obligations will be evidence for God’s
existence.

Before I go any further, I must make it clear that I am not claiming that one must
believe in God in order to be moral. I am not claiming that statistically those who
believe in God are more moral than those who do not. I am also not claiming that
our knowledge of morality depends upon God. This argument is to the effect that
objective moral obligations themselves are surprising in a universe without God.
They do not fit.

We have different kinds of obligations. Some are prudential, such as “you should
prepare for the final exam.” Others have to do with playing a game such as “you
cannot move your bishop along the horizontal.” Others are moral. One fact that
separates moral obligations from other obligations is that non-moral obligations
are actually conditionals. For example, you should prepare for the final exam if
you want to do well in the class. You cannot move your bishop along the horizontal
if you want to play chess according to the rules.
We can call this kind of obligations conditional obligations. There are two things
to observe about conditional conditions. First, if the condition is not fulfilled,
the obligation does not hold. Second, it is up to the person involved if she wants
to fulfill the condition. So, it is up to you if you want to play chess according
to the rules. If you do want to play according to the rules, then you have the
obligation not to move the bishop across the horizontal. If you do not care about
doing well in the class, you don’t have the obligation to prepare for the final
exam. It is up to you if you care.

Moral obligations are not conditional in this way. Suppose you are in a situation
in which it would be morally wrong to lie. Someone might want to say that your
obligation is conditional. In other words, the moral claim is the following: “If
you want to be moral, you must tell the truth in this particular situation.” This
sentence is true. If you do not speak the truth, you are not acting morally in that
situation. Notice that you are free to reject the condition. You can decide to act
in a way that is not moral. If you decide to reject the condition, however, you are
not released from the obligation. You may choose to act to fulfill your obligation
or not to fulfill it. Either way, the obligation still holds. This observation
about moral obligation is a feature of our widely shared concept of moral
obligations. It is part of what it means to be under such an obligation.

Part of what makes moral obligations objective is this fact that whether they apply
is not up to us. We are not free to refuse to “play the morality game” the way we
can refuse to play chess and move the pieces however we want.

There is one more thing to notice about our different kinds of obligations.
Conditional obligations are related to conditional purposes. If my purpose is to do
well in a class, the obligation to study is binding on me. If my purpose is to play
chess according to the rules, the obligation about how I may move my pieces holds.
As I said, these conditions are in some sense up to us. Therefore, the purposes are
up to us. We can opt in or opt out. Moral obligations seem to be related to purpose
as well. If we want to act the way a human being ought to act, we should not lie in
a specific situation. The purpose in an unconditional obligation is an
unconditional purpose. It is not up to me but it holds.

Given these observations about the nature of obligations, and about moral
obligations in particular, we can see that the existence of objective moral
obligations makes sense if God is real. They might not be impossible without God,
but it is surprising that the universe would develop objective, unconditional
purposes for human beings simply by accident.
God, if he exists, is a powerful person who creates the universe (and human beings)
for his own reasons. Some of these reasons constitute human purpose. Christianity,
for example, specifies that part of God’s purposes in creating us is that we would
embody and practice various virtues that reflect his own goodness. In this view, it
is no surprise that there are unconditional obligations.

If God does not exist, then, although there is a causal story about how human
beings emerged, these causes do not provide reasons or purpose for our existence.
Objective moral obligations are surprising on this view.
A Short Summary

I have briefly presented two arguments for the existence of God. Of course, there
are many other arguments to consider on both sides, and each could be developed in
much more detail. I have presented enough, I think, to suggest that it is more
reasonable to believe that God exists than that He does not exist.
So, we see that some of the things we observe about the natural world ground a
strong inference to the claim that God does exist. This gives us reason to consider
with renewed openness the possibility that God has entered the space-time universe
and revealed Himself through the person and life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.I
have not claimed to prove with mathematical certainty that God exists. I have,
however, provided good reasons to think that He does. If someone wishes to argue
successfully that God does not exist, he must first, provide an answer for each of
my arguments and second, he must offer arguments that God does not exist. Until He
does this, we can conclude that we have good reason to claim that God does exist.

God bless, and may the O eternal, O divine and O Forgiving Messiah and Lord Christ
have mercy upon us. AMI'IN