As outlined in the last few blogs there are good arguments that God exists but
as I mentioned in my first blog Christians KNOW God exists. Why, because God the Father sent God the Holy Spirit to indwell us. We don’t live the Christian life on our own. God (Holy Spirit) himself takes up residence in the believer. Now it is up to the believer how much He allows the Holy Spirit to direct his/her life but we and non believers can tell simply by observing the person’s life. To what degree is the FRUIT of the Holy Spirit evident in their life; Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Goodness, Kindness and Self Control? Moreover are they using any of the GIFTS of the Holy Spirit to build up the Church and themselves; Prophecy, Gift of Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues, Words of Wisdom, Words of Knowledge, Discerning of Spirits, Gift of Healing, Miracles. Sadly too many of us still want to do our own thing and the Holy Spirit is not as evident in our lives as He should be. What a different world it would be if we Christians were all truly giving the Lord His rightful place as King and meant it when we pray “your Kingdom come your will be done on earth this day as it is in heaven”.
It is important to remember our best witness to non believers for the existence of God is our life’s walk and our testimony not the arguments we can muster.

Yesterday we looked briefly at two arguments for the existence of GOD: the Ontological and Cosmological arguments. Today we will look at the TELEOLOGICAL (intelligent design) and MORAL arguments.
TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: This argument has come roaring back into prominence in recent years. As mentioned in my first blog, eminent scientists such Dr Dean Kenyon have turned to intelligent design as an explanation for the breathtaking complexity of the DNA (instruction manual) and mico-machinery of a single cell. Evolution’s mechanism of natural selection and mutation can’t explain where the complex information (instruction manual) came from for the first cell let alone add all the new complex information to go from “goo to you”. In addition, the incredible degree of cosmic fine tuning in the universe has led scientists to conclude that such a delicate balance of physical constants and quantities as is requisite for LIFE cannot be explained in any other way than intelligent design. By “LIFE”, scientists mean that property of all organisms to take in food, extract energy from it, grow and adapt to their environment, and reproduce. In the absence of fine-tuning, not even atomic matter or chemistry would exist, let alone planets where life might evolve. Prominent atheist, Richard Dawkins’ (author of The God Delusion) red herring “who designed the designer” has no bearing on the fact that the best explanation of the obvious appearance of design in the universe is a designer. Therefore of the only three possible alternatives/explanations: physical necessity, chance or design – the most plausible of the three is the hypothesis of INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
MORAL ARGUMENT: This is a very convincing argument particularly the argument for God on the basis of the objectivity of moral values and duties.
A very straight forward formulation of this argument is as follows:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2.Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore God exists.
When we talk of moral values we mean, is it good or bad (evil) whereas with moral duties, is it right or wrong. To say that something is objective is to say that it is independent of what people think or perceive e.g. the Holocaust was objectively wrong even though the Nazis thought it was right. To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or evil independetly of whether any human believes it to be so.
As Richard Dawkins says “There is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference …. We are machines for propogating DNA… It is every living objects sole reason for being”.
Without GOD there is NO basis for the objective moral values that do exist. We also know that God’s moral law is “written on the hearts” of all men as “their conscience bears witness to them” Romans 2:14-15. hence even the Richard Dawkins of this world know that murder is morally wrong but their world view can’t explain why.
In summary, on an atheistic , naturalistic world view, there is no basis for affirming the existence of objective moral values and duties.
In short, the moral argument brings us to a personal, necessarily existent being who is the locus and source of moral goodness.
The Moral Argument with the Cosmological and Teleological arguments provide powerful evidence for the existence of GOD.

Last blog, I said I would introduce some of the arguments for the existence of God by natural theology, that branch of theology that seeks to provide warrant for belief in God’s existence apart from the resources of authoritative, propositional revelation (bible). Most of the material I am quoting today comes from William Lane Craig’s excellent book “Reasonable Faith”.

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: Plantinga argues that “Man” has an innate, natural capacity to apprehend God’s existence even as he has the natural capacity to accept truths of perception (like “I see a tree”). God has so constructed us that we naturally form the belief in His existence under appropriate circumstances (such as moments of guilt, gratitude, or a sense of God’s handiwork in nature), just as we do the belief in perceptual objects and for example, the reality of the past. Hence belief in God is among the deliverances of reason, not faith. Many philosophers even Plato have tried to provide a rational basis for belief in God. Plantinga is only one of many that have used the ontological argument that God exists: basically if God is conceivable, then he must exist. Check them out in Craig’s book Reasonable Faith or on their website www.reasonablefaith.org.

COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: In contrast to the ontological argument, the cosmological argument assumes that something exists and argues from the existence of that thing to the existence of a First Cause or a Sufficient Reason of the Cosmos. It has been defended by great minds such as Plato, Aristotle, al Ghazali, Maimonides, Anselem, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley, Locke and Leibniz. Quoting from al Ghazali (1058-1111) who argues for a FIRST CAUSE ” Every being which begins has a cause for it’s beginning; now the universe/world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning (at a certain moment in time)”. Since the discovery by Hubble that the universe is expanding which led to the Standard “Big Bang” Model of the beginning of the universe, it is accepted that the cosmos had a beginning and “based on the second law of thermodynamics, it is stuck on a one way slide of degeneration and decay towards a final state of maximum entropy, or disorder. As this final state has not been reached it follows that the universe cannot have existed for an infinite time” quote from Paul Davies, “The Big Questions: In the Beginning”, ABC Science Online, interview with Philip Adams, http;//aca.mq.edu.au/pdavieshtml.
Since the universe had a first cause then its cause had to be outside of the Space, Matter, Time, cosmos that it brought into being. This being according to Aquinas; God is Pure Being itself subsisting and is the source of being to everything else, whose essences do not involve their existing. G. W. F. Leibniz (1646-1716) does not argue for the existence of an Uncaused Cause, but for the existence of a SUFFICIENT REASON for the Universe. Nothing happens without a sufficent reason – why is there something rather than nothing. He argues that the reason for the universe’s existence must be found outside of the universe, in a being whose sufficient reason is self contained. God is a metaphysical necessary being. These are the two most prominent Cosmological Arguments for God but there are others.

Tomorrow let’s look at the TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT and the MORAL ARGUMENT.