Today's sermon will look at three arguments for the existence of God.

Book Recommendation - Timothy Keller – The Reason for God
https://shorturl.at/zBCDY

---
#1 – COSMOLOGY

Atheist scientist Stephen Hawking – almost everyone now believes in the big bang, 15 billion years ago the universe and time itself had a beginning.

Christian scientist Francis Collins - "...A bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point."

The idea is that there was nothing, and then, there was the entire space-time material universe. There was a beginning.

And so the argument is:
- If there was a beginning, there must be a beginner.
- There could be no natural cause, because there was nothing

Can everything come from nothing?
Did no-one create something from nothing?

Christianity aligns well with this idea – “In the beginning, God created…”
An eternal being, existing outside of space time and matter, created everything.

Counter Arguments
- Multiverse
- Quantum events can create universes
- Infinite chain of causes, no ultimate origin

Either something caused everything,
Or, nothing caused everything.

This is not a proof, doesn’t lead to, oh! Must be God!
Just an opening for the possibility of God.

---
#2 - FINE TUNING

The fine-tuning argument posits that the remarkable precision of the physical constants and conditions in our universe, which allow for life, suggests intentional design by an intelligent Creator.

The following gives a sense of the degree of fine-tuning that must go into some of these values to yield a life-friendly universe:
Gravitational constant: 1 part in 10^34
Electromagnetic force versus force of gravity: 1 part in 10^37
Cosmological constant: 1 part in 10^120
Mass density of universe: 1 part in 10^59
Expansion rate of universe: 1 part in 10^55
Initial entropy: 1 part in 10^ (10^123)

We don't usually find this level of complexity and think, "It's probably just random."

The universe's parameters are so finely tuned that even slight alterations would render life impossible, implying intentional design. A creator who carefully crafted the universe to support life.

The Bible speaks to how creation itself points toward a creator.
Psalm 19:1: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."
Psalm 139:14: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
Romans 1:20: "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 people are without excuse."

Counterarguments:
Multiverse Hypothesis: Our universe is just one of countless others, each with different physical constants. According to this view, the existence of a life-supporting universe is not improbable, but rather inevitable given the vast number of universes.
God of the Gaps: The fine-tuning argument relies on gaps in our understanding. They caution against assuming that every unexplained phenomenon points directly to God.

---
Base on #1 and #2, Frank Turek asks a great question:

"How does something come from nothing with extreme fine tuning?"

---
#3 - MORAL ARGUMENT

Is there such a thing as right and wrong, good and evil?
Where’s does that sense come from?

Premise: If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
Premise: Objective moral values do exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

“If there is no God, then there is no ultimate basis for morality. Morality becomes subjective and arbitrary.” – Timothy Keller

“Morality points to a moral lawgiver. Our sense of right and wrong reflects an objective standard.” – Lee Strobel

Important Note: This is not an argument that theists are better than atheists or that atheists can do no good. The argument is that atheists have no standard by which to justify what they call good and evil.

Counterarguments:
1. Evolutionary Adaptation
Unselfish traits helped the tribe and led to greater survival. Problem: Why do we think it’s right to help a stranger who’s drowning outside of our tribe? When no ones looking, why does our conscious plague us to do the "right" thing?

2. Cultural Relativism
Keller tells of an anthropologist, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, who believed westerners shouldn’t impose their morality on other cultures, because morality is relative. And yet, when she went into cultures where women were oppressed, she decided, we must place human rights over defending cultural relativism. We cannot just be bystanders.
Where does this come from?

If there is no God, there is no moral law giver.
Therefore there is no good.
Which means you can't call your actions objectively good. As Keller says, the best you can do is say, "I like this."

Christians would say that God wrote the moral law on our hearts.
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. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them."

---
Either...

Infinite past – no beginning, no beginner
Multi-verses leading to eventual finely tuned universe
Morality is just a social construction to further the species.

Or

God, created – called it good, called you good
Finely tuned everything because he is a master creator. More than just finely tuned, he made if beautiful so you would step back in aw and the more you discover the more in aw you’d be.
He wrote the moral law on our hearts so that something of who he is would be inscribed on our souls which means every human knows something of who God is.

---
The invitation of this series is not to be convinced, intellectually drubbed into submission, but to be welcomed. To get to the place where you could be open to experiencing something.

C.S. Lewis Tells this great story:

I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real.

In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper.

But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic.

In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary.

As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

---
We are more than just a group of people in 2024 who believe in a personal, loving God.
We are part of a community of people, that goes back thousands of years, who have had a relationship with God. And it is into that, that we would like to welcome you.