Teaching Others to Defend Christianity: What Every Christian Should Know - Couverture souple

Buse, Cathryn S

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1633570509 ISBN 13 : 9781633570504

Editeur : CrossLink Publishing, 2016

Synopsis

Teaching Others to Defend Christianity deepens your faith, equipping you to be an effective witness. These six lessons are for those desiring an intellectual study to have confidence in God's existence and strengthen one's faith in Jesus Christ.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Cathryn Buse graduated summa cum laude with a master’s in engineering from the University of Alabama Huntsville. Post-graduate, she worked on military weapons systems, commercial rocket manufacturing, and NASA design programs. Living in Decatur, Alabama with her husband, Kyle, and their two sons, Cathryn is passionate about teaching apologetics.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

Teaching Others to Defend Christianity

What Every Christian Should Know

By Cathryn S. Buse

Cross Link Publishing

Copyright © 2016 Cathryn S. Buse
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-63357-050-4

Contents

PREFACE, 
INTRODUCTION, 
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK, 
DOES GOD EXIST?, 
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, 
OPTION 1: THE UNIVERSE IS ETERNAL, 
OPTION 2: THE UNIVERSE CREATED ITSELF, 
OPTION 3: THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED, 
WHO MADE GOD?, 
CONCLUSION, 
THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, 
EVIDENCE OF NON-DESIGN, 
DESIGN OF THE UNIVERSE, 
DESIGN OF THE HUMAN BODY, 
IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY, 
CONCLUSION, 
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, 
MIND VS MATTER, 
ANTHROPOLOGY, 
FROM MAN, 
FROM NATURE, 
FROM GOD, 
CONCLUSION, 
WHICHGOD IS IT?, 
RELIGIOUS EXCLUSIVITY, 
CONTRADICTION OF RELIGIONS, 
THREE MAJOR WORLD VIEWS, 
CONTRAST WITH CHRISTIANITY, 
SEPARATION FROM GOD DUE TO SIN, 
TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY EXCLUDES, 
WHO WAS JESUS?, 
VALIDITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL TEST, 
INTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST, 
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST, 
CONCLUSION, 
VALIDITY OF JESUS CHRIST, 
CONFIDENCE IN THE DEITY OF CHRIST, 
CONFIDENCE IN THE RESURRECTION, 
CONCLUSION, 
PARTING WORDS, 
NOTES, 
DEFEND THE FAITH MINISTRY, 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR, 

CHAPTER 1

Does God Exist?

Psalm 14:1 The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."

Lesson 1

The Cosmological Argument

INTRODUCTION

This study is a six-week investigation into the foundational truths of Christianity. It will logically progress from atheism (there is no God) to belief in Jesus Christ (the Son of God). It seems difficult for an atheist to understand why they need to believe in Jesus for reconciliation to God if they don't believe there is a God at all. So we will spend the first three weeks looking at different ways to be confident that a God does exist. After establishing that a God must exist, we have to determine which God it is. We will show the unique solution provided by the Christian God that sets Him apart from all other world religions. That solution comes to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So we will then confirm the authenticity of the accounts of His life found in the New Testament. Lastly, we will investigate the impact of those claims found in the New Testament and assess their validity. The overarching idea is to show how we can move from the idea that there is no God to faith in Jesus without having to remove our intellect from the process. The belief of Jesus is not built on invented stories but on the solid foundation of truth in every way that it is studied.

STUDY

Does God exist? Either He does or He doesn't; there is no in-between.

It is reasonable to suggest that if there is a God, then He would have left us enough evidence to determine that He does exist. But God still has to allow us to make a choice about Him, to exercise faith. If God gave us absolute proof that He existed, then you could not deny Him anymore than you can deny the sun in the sky. Therefore, you couldn't choose to believe in Him anymore than you choose the sunrise to start the day. But if He gave us no proof, then we could never get to a point to find Him. Consequently, He has to leave us just enough evidence so that those who want to find Him can.

The proof of God's existence that many people demand to see is oftentimes in a physical sense of proof. How can we say God exists if we can't physically touch him, feel him, or see him? Not everything that we are sure exists can be proven through those types of physical measures. Things like love, intelligence, sadness, air, or gravity can't be seen directly yet they are very real things. The evidence we have for the existence of those things is found in other ways: love can be demonstrated; gravity can be experienced; intelligence can be presumed; sadness can be felt. There are cumulative evidences of the effects of these things that let us know they do exist. The fact that those things are invisible does not make them any less real.

God gave us enough evidence to determine that He does exist. We can't touch God directly, so we have to prove His existence through other ways. So what would that evidence be if we can't weigh, measure, or observe God directly?

º Experiential. We can experience God on a personal level. For the believer, this can be very real evidence for God's existence. Unfortunately, however, that doesn't always stand up as evidence in the mind of an unbeliever. They may feel or experience things themselves, but they choose to attribute that to something other than god. They may use the words fate or luck or even just a generic term of providence. Using experiential evidence won't even help when discussing other religions either. Muslims attribute things to Allah, Buddhists attribute things to karma, a Christian may say things are divine intervention, and an atheist would say it's a mere coincidence. How do we know which is the truth?

º Presumption of fact. Many people demand proof of the existence of God but not everything is proven in the same way. When people make that claim they are generally expecting a proof through the scientific method but we accept many other things as proof even though they are not attained through experimentation or through sensory evidence.

We can prove something by providing enough evidence to establish the presumption of fact. And that fact will stand to be true based on solid presumption unless the fact can be refuted otherwise. This is what is used even in our own court of law. We cannot repeat the past so many times we rely on presumption of fact to establish what most likely occurred.

For example, you walk into a room and find a glass of water sitting on the counter. You didn't witness anyone pouring the water into the glass, but you can presume that someone did in fact pour water into the glass. There is the presumption of fact that someone poured a glass of water, and that fact will stand to be true unless someone can refute it by proving otherwise. In the same way, we have the presumption of fact that because of what we can observe in the world, there must be a god who is responsible for its existence. That fact will stand to be true unless it can be proved otherwise.

COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

The universe exists; therefore, its existence must be explained in some way. We have to answer the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"2 This is defined by the relationship between cause and effect. And there are several laws, known as the laws of causality, which explain this relationship.3

1. Every material effect (or anything that exists that had a beginning) must have a cause. You cannot have an effect without a cause; you cannot have a cause without an effect. In other words, an effect must have a cause or else it ceases to be an effect. Likewise, a cause must have an effect or else it ceases to be a cause.

For example, if water is poured into a glass, then it will be full of water. The cause is the pouring of water. The effect is the glass has water in it. The glass could not have water in it (effect) without someone pouring it in (cause). And you can't have someone pour water into the glass (cause) without water being in it (effect).

2. The effect must always follow the cause. The cause will never follow the effect. The glass cannot have water in it, and then water was poured in.

3. The effect is always an adequate effect related to the cause. The effect and cause must be adequate to one another. So if we observe an effect, there must be an adequate cause.

Water being poured into a glass (cause) did not result in a river flooding (effect). That effect is not adequate to the cause.

If the universe (a material entity) exists, something must have caused it. The universe is the effect, so what was the cause? There are only three possible options for this:

1. The universe is eternal. The universe has always existed and will always continue to exist. An eternal universe would not need a cause because there was never a time when there wasn't a universe.

If the universe is not eternal, then there are two possible explanations within that.

2. The universe is not eternal and it created itself.

3. The universe is not eternal and it did not create itself.

Option 1: The Universe Is Eternal

In the 1920s, scientists relied on the argument that the universe was eternal to avoid having to account for a god. If the universe were eternal, then it would have no beginning or end. There would be no need for a "first cause" of the universe. These scientists developed the Steady State theory (or infinite universe) based on the idea of continuous creation of matter in the universe.5 If this theory were true, then there would be no need to find the cause for this effect. Only things that have a beginning need an explanation as to how they began. If something is eternal, it does not require a cause.

However, in 1915 Einstein's Theory of Relativity indicated that the universe had a starting point in time. Decades later through the Hubble Telescope, scientists observed that the universe was expanding and thus concluded the universe must have a starting point from which to expand. They even coined a term to refer to this beginning: the Big Bang Theory. It shows they discovered the universe goes back to a singularity event where everything started. The Big Bang Theory basically admits that the universe began at some point. At first glance it seems odd to use the Big Bang Theory in a proof about God but it does give theists an advantage. Science has proven the universe had a beginning. Therefore, something had to have caused it to begin.

The idea of an eternal universe is also disproven through two laws of thermodynamics.

1. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that neither matter nor energy is created or destroyed in nature. Matter can be converted to energy and energy can be converted to matter but the total of amount of matter and energy in the universe will remain constant. So we have the same amount of matter and energy now as we have always had. Following this law, it makes it impossible for the universe to create its own matter.

In other words, there couldn't have been an eternity of one atom that eventually spawned additional atoms and energy to grow into the amount of matter we see today. Matter cannot be further created so what we observe today is what we started with. It had to have been placed here by some cause.

This strikes the first blow to the Steady State theory's assumption that the universe continuously creates its own matter. This also indicates that the universe had a beginning. Some cause had to initially establish this finite amount of matter and energy because matter and energy cannot still be created within nature itself.

2. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all things tend towards entropy — or disorder and decay, unless energy is applied into the system. For an example, look at your backyard. If you leave it to itself, it will grow full of weeds unless you put energy into it, which would be you cutting the grass. This means that the Universe is running down like a clock continuing into decay and disorder. But if things are moving towards disorder, then at one point things were fully ordered. Our "clock" was fully wound up.

More importantly, it shows that the universe is not in a steady state. Something that is eternal would be in a steady state because it would not show any degeneration. Eternal things do not decay. Since our universe is degenerating, it is not eternal. It shows the universe has a beginning, and it will have an end.

Conclusion: the universe is NOT eternal

Option 2: The Universe Created Itself

If the universe is not eternal, then that means it is finite. It has a beginning, and that beginning must be explained. Going back to our possible scenarios, the first assessment of a finite universe is that it created itself. Restating that in light of our understanding of the laws of causality, this would mean that the universe would be both the cause AND the effect. Could that be possible?

From the earlier example of the water-filled glass, that would mean the water-filled glass caused itself to be filled with water. The effect (the glass full of water) must also be the cause (the glass full of water). It is illogical to think the cause and effect could ever be the same thing.

It also means that the universe would have to exist in order to create itself. And now we have some circular logic. How can something create itself if it doesn't exist yet?

As stated by theologian R.C. Sproul: "For something to bring itself into being it must have the power of being within itself. It must at least have enough causal power to cause its own being. If it derives its being from some other source, then it clearly would not be either self-existent or self-created. It would be, plainly and simply, an effect. Of course, the problem is complicated by the other necessity we've labored so painstakingly to establish: it would have to have the causal power of being before it was. It would have to have the power of being before it had any being with which to exercise that power."

Breaking that down, it means that first something must have the power of creation within itself. Unless something has enough power to create itself, it is only an effect and therefore requires a cause. But it is compounded by the fact that in order to create yourself, you would have to already exist to create yourself. It becomes a circular logic problem.

If an entity cannot account for its own existence, meaning it could not have caused itself, then it is dependent on something outside itself to explain its existence. This is known as contingent. The question becomes whether the universe is contingent or not. If it is contingent (dependent on something to create it), then what is it that is responsible for its existence?

Conclusion: the universe did not create itself

Option 3: The Universe Was Created

We've established that the universe has a beginning and therefore is an effect requiring an adequate cause. And we've established that the cause could not be the universe itself. That leaves us with the only logical option that the universe had to be created by something other than itself.

So what was it? We can deduce a few characteristics of that cause based on our knowledge of the laws of causality.

1. Whatever created the universe must have existed before it. The cause must come before the effect. The creator of the universe could not come into being AFTER the universe exists. So whatever made the universe existed before the universe in order to create it.

2. Whatever created the universe must be superior to the universe. The creator has to be greater than the created; the creation cannot be superior to the creator. For example, computers are only as smart as we make them.

3. Whatever created the universe must have a different nature than the universe.9 Everything in this universe is finite and contingent (that is what we have just established through this analysis). Nothing that we observe here in this universe is capable of creating this universe. This finite, contingent universe of matter is unable to explain itself, so the creator of this universe must be different from what is here in the universe.

Some people may struggle with this point about creating something of a different nature by confusing the idea of creation with procreation. We, as humans, can "create" another human in our common vernacular, but that is in actuality procreation. We reproduce another human, instead of making a human ex nihilo, or out of nothing. A child I create is formed from preexisting DNA. The creation of the universe would have to be formed using nothing at all. It would go from nothing to then suddenly everything.

The creator of this universe must exist outside this universe. The universe by definition consists of time, space, energy, and matter. Therefore whatever caused the universe must exist outside of time, space, energy, and matter. You can call it whatever you want — aliens, Bob the Builder, or the cosmic originator — but those characteristics are what we attribute to God. Even if you don't want to call it God, the fact remains that something outside of our universe is responsible for creating this universe.

Who Made God?

The natural progression from this point is to then question who made God. If God made the universe, then who made God? But, remember, only things that have a beginning require a cause to bring it into being. We haven't proven that God has a beginning (unlike our proof that the universe has a beginning). Since God is eternal, He has no beginning, and therefore does not require a cause.

How can we assert that God is eternal? Are we avoiding the question by making that claim? Not at all. Because we exist now, something had to have existed forever. Since science has proven that the universe has a beginning, then there was a time when there was no universe. But we know that nothing produces nothing. We can't get something from nothing.10 If there had ever been a time when nothing existed (no universe and no eternal God), then there would still be nothing now.

Because something does exist now, it follows that something had to exist forever — and we would assign that something to be a creator, or God. R.C. Sproul states: "Indeed, reason demands that if something exists, either the world or God (or anything else), then something must be self-existent. ... There must be a self -existent being of some sort somewhere or nothing would or could exist."

These arguments explain the existence of matter and our physical world. But we also have a world of the mind, intelligence, morality, information, and emotion. Those things can't come from nothing, just like matter can't come from nothing. Intelligence (for example our DNA code) cannot generate itself. Things of the mind, or knowledge, cannot come from nothing either. We are alive with a working mind, and we are aware of our existence. Something had to give us that awareness, something bigger than ourselves.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Teaching Others to Defend Christianity by Cathryn S. Buse. Copyright © 2016 Cathryn S. Buse. Excerpted by permission of Cross Link Publishing.
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Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: CrossLink Publishing
• Date d'édition: 2016
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1633570509
• ISBN 13: 9781633570504
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 194
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible