Four things that testify to the existence of God: Creation, the existence of good and evil, moral absolutes, and the laws of logic. CREATION According to the second law of thermodynamics, known as Entropy, energy is constantly being transformed into a less usable form. Therefore, the universe MUST have a beginning, otherwise it would have run out of energy ages ago. However, according to the first law of thermodynamics, known as Conservation of Energy, matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can be altered from one form to another. Therefore, the beginning of the universe could not have been "natural," as all matter and energy exploding into existence from nothing violates this law. GOOD AND EVIL Do you believe in the existence of good and evil? How can anything be judged to be evil if there is no perfect good to compare it to? If evil exists, then there must be the opposite--good. The philosophers refer to God as being the ultimate good. He is the measure by which all other things are compared. If God does not exist, then there is no such thing as good or evil—they are just philosophical illusions. MORAL ABSOLUTES Do you believe in moral absolutes? If God does not exist then objective moral values don’t exist. There is no absolute standard of right or wrong. Is it wrong to murder an innocent human being? Why? How do you know that murder is wrong? Morals cannot be based on our feelings. Otherwise everyone’s morals would be different. What is right or wrong is not determined by a majority either. If so, then Hitler would not have been wrong had he won World War 2. Brutally torturing and murdering 6 million innocent Jews and 4 million innocent Christians would not have been wrong? If Germany had won the war, this idea would have been supported by the majority, and therefore it would have been “right.” No matter what the outcome of that war was, Hitler was wrong. That’s because there is something outside of humanity, something greater, something objective, that determines what right and wrong is--God. THE LAWS OF LOGIC What is your basis for believing in the laws of logic? Laws of logic, including non-contradiction, must be assumed to exist as a precondition of intelligibility, or we could not reason or know anything. Science itself would be impossible. Similarly, we must assume that there is uniformity in nature, that those laws are equally true everywhere in the universe at every given moment. I would add that we must also assume that our memory and senses are generally reliable. And finally, I would add that it must be assumed that there is an absolute standard of what is right and wrong. This last is included because the belief that we SHOULD be rational, logical, etc. is essentially a moral standard. If the universe exists without a Creator Who is rational, logical, true, and good then there is no rational reason for believing in those preconditions. They may just as easily not be true. We could only say that they have been true in our limited experience. Since no one has experienced the future, if someone asserted that he or she has finally discovered two contradictory claims that are both true, you have no basis for dismissing such an assertion. Would you base it on your assertion that nature is uniform and the law of non-contradiction appeared to be true in the past? What if uniformity also stopped being true? Simply arguing that it always has is circular reasoning. After all, conditions of the universe constantly change. What if logic and uniformity were to decay like everything else (entropy of logic)? Furthermore, we cannot simply say that these preconditions are descriptions of the properties of this universe. Laws of logic and absolute morals are both abstract concepts. In fact, on that note, if you are a materialistic atheist, how can you believe that these concepts even exist, as they are not matter? Simply believing that these preconditions of intelligibility are true because it appears to work is not the same as knowing that they are true. That is arbitrary. Laws of logic are God’s standard for thinking. Since God is an unchanging, sovereign, immaterial Being, His thoughts would necessarily be abstract, universal, invariant entities. This is the only basis for believing in them. This is not to say that you as an atheist cannot reason, etc. Belief in the Creator isn’t essential for these things to be true, but rather His existence is merely required, whether you believe or not, for those things to be true. You are effectively standing on a Christian paradigm to make your argument that Christianity is not true. Therefore, the atheist position is self-contradictory. “I don’t believe in air.” “Air must exist, without it you could not breathe.” “We don’t need air to breathe. After all, I don’t even believe in air; and I can breathe just fine!" “You could not make that argument without using air to do so. It doesn't matter if you believe it.” "It is not important that we have a reason for things like logic and the reliability of senses and memory. It is enough that we are able to act upon them. We can know lots of things, even though we may not have a reason for those things we take for granted." But such reasoning is arbitrary and specious. Believing in something is not the same as knowing something. "Creation doesn’t have to be true in order for us to know things. After all, I don’t even believe in creation; and I know lots of things!" But this response is fallacious. It would be like the critic of air saying, "We don’t need air to breathe. After all, I don’t even believe in air; and I can breathe just fine!" The argument is not that breathing requires a profession of belief in air — but it does require air.
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