by Melinda @ http://str.typepad.com
I was discussing the ABC news debate with someone and noticed something I'd missed. Some of you probably already noticed it. Kelly, one of the atheists, responded to Ray's design argument by posing what she clearly thought was the unanswerable question: If everything needs a cause, then who created God?
Ray didn't get the chance to answer, but this is well-tread territory in philosophy and apologetics (not everything is a scientific question). Briefly, God is a "first cause," which is sufficient in an of itself to stop the infinite regress of "well who created that" and provide a sufficient answer. "First causes" belong in a category of philosophy that stretch back to ancient times. It's not an ad hoc, desperate move. It's a very rational answer. (For much more information on this, see William Lane Craig's work on The Kalam Cosmological Argument.)
It isn't only the Christian who has to answer this question of the first cause, so does the evolutionist. We know the universe isn't eternal, otherwise the finite energy would have run out. We know that all event have a cause. But for the atheist and evolutionist, all causes and events are natural so the "first cause" has to be a natural one, and so far no natural cause can stop the infinite regress since none is sufficient to be the ultimate first cause. This universe clearly had a beginning so evolutionists point to something prior to that beyond this universe and time. There are several theories about what this could be, but since that is also a natural state then something had to cause that and the infinite regress starts up again. So far there's no sufficient answer in science for the first cause.
There's a gap in the explanatory power of evolution and atheism. Who's punting to faith and who's inserting a "god" into the gap?
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Ken Samples offers five reasons God exists on YouTube.
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