Deprecated: Implicit conversion from float 1807.5 to int loses precision in /home4/myhumbm8/public_html/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-image-cdn/src/class-image-cdn.php on line 1029
Deprecated: Implicit conversion from float 1807.5 to int loses precision in /home4/myhumbm8/public_html/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-image-cdn/src/class-image-cdn.php on line 1029
Deprecated: Implicit conversion from float 1807.5 to int loses precision in /home4/myhumbm8/public_html/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-image-cdn/src/class-image-cdn.php on line 1029
Defending Christianity in a secular society can be challenging. But being able to intelligently defend your worldview is so important.
This is a definite goal of mine; to build self-confidence when it comes to sharing my faith and the WHY behind it.
Defending Christianity is a mandate directly from the Word of God. The Bible says:
But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man who asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.
1 Peter 3:15
But sometimes it can be hard to do that. Defending Christianity in our secular culture is becoming increasingly more difficult, especially with so much hostility growing towards the Christian faith.
So the questions is: “What can I do to defend my faith?”
Well, one thing you can do is study Christian apologetics so that you can be prepared to defend the truth when the time comes.
Don’t know what apologetics is? You can learn more about what Christian apologetics is here. But in a nutshell, it’s the art and science of defending the Christian worldview with reason and evidence.
And don’t worry. You don’t have to have all the answers. But being able to present some intelligible, reasonable arguments will make your argument more convincing. And it will make defending God’s Word so much easier for you.
So, let’s dive into how you can start defending Christianity today!
There are several types of arguments from which to defend God’s existence. In this post, I would like to explore two argument types. I will explore the other two arguments (totaling four) in a follow-up post.
The Cosmological/First Cause Argument
The Cosmological/First Cause argument for the existence of God essentially argues that everything has a cause. And there must have been a First Cause because the universe had a beginning or a starting point. Something or someone must have created it, sparked the series of causes that formed life. An uncaused cause.
That uncaused cause is God.
Modern science supports that the universe has a beginning point. This point of origin, as scientist’s term it, is the “Big Bang”. But what is the Big Bang exactly, or what caused it?
Science teaches us that this Big Bang just happened out of nowhere. A blank nothingness suddenly decided (how can nothingness make decisions?) to become something. How can nothing form something? If there is nothing, then something cannot exist, right?
This argument can be broken down into three parts:
- Everything that exists has a cause; something caused everything in existence.
- At some point in time, the universe began to exist.
- The universe then must have a cause.
It makes no logical sense to think that ‘nonexistence’ brought forth existence. What changed within the space of nonexistence that sparked life? If you put nothing in a jar, close the jar, and then reopen it, there will still be nothing in the jar.
The next question, naturally, then becomes, “Then who created God?”.
God is the uncaused cause. God is the spark, the “big bang”, the consciousness that created life. He is the First Cause that made it all happen. The First Cause must exist outside of time and space in order to create time and space. The First Cause is the beginning and therefore does not have a cause.
The First Cause is infinite.
If we are claiming that life as we know it has a beginning, then something outside of life’s parameters must have begun this life; something outside of the laws that govern all that we know.
When I first started studying this argument, my next question was: Then why can’t life just be infinite? Why can’t life itself be the eternal, uncaused cause? Why does the infinite First Cause have to be a personal God?
Well, an infinite number of anything cannot have an ending or a beginning; it must go on forever in either direction. And since we know the universe had a first cause (supported by science), it cannot be infinite. Life had a starting point, so it is not the eternal variable here. This is, of course, a very oversimplified breakdown.
But here is a quote that sums it up very nicely: “The only thing that would not have to be given existence is a thing that exists as its very nature. It is existence. This something would always exist, have no cause, have no beginning, have no limit, be outside of time, and be infinite”. ~ Author unknown
Again, since we know life itself had a beginning, life itself is not the infinite variable; there must be an infinite Creator.
So, who created God? No one, he is the infinite, uncreated, uncaused cause.
And this God is a personal God. How can our Creator NOT be a personal God? All it takes is for us to look around us. Everything under the sun was purposefully designed and strategically placed. There is an aesthetic about nature and its inhabitants that simply would not make sense if it was all brought about by accident.
What reason would an accidental Big Bang have for giving the zebra its beautiful stripes? Or the peacock its bright feathers. What need would the random Big Bang have for making the leaves change colors in the Fall? Or create a plethora of beautiful sea creatures.
The symmetry and well-planned order of life is reason enough to believe that a Creator put thought and careful attention into each intimate detail of the world that surrounds us.
The Creationism/Intelligent Design Argument
Essentially, the Creationism argument is the religious belief or argument that God created the world, as it says in the Bible. Life exists because of a divine creator.
The Intelligent Design argument is sort of the expansion pack to that argument. One does not have to be religious to buy into the idea that an intelligent designer created the world around us. Intelligent Design says that the complexities of existence are best explained by an Intelligent Designer.
Humans, for example. We are complex creatures. In fact, every species or organism on this earth is composed of a web of complexities and internal workings that make them function.
As humans, we have two symmetrically placed eyes, ears, hands, feet, legs, and arms. Our five senses help us make sense of the world around us and allow us to experience pleasure.
Each part on our body serves a function, and each part alone has its own web of anatomical structures that make it all work.
Do you ever think about the fact that we are standing on a giant ball that slowly rotates around an even bigger ball that could burn us all to smithereens? And yet somehow, we are just the right distance away not to get obliterated. The sun serves its purpose on our planet, and so does the moon and stars, and gravity.
Life. Every piece of existence fits together perfectly like an intelligently designed puzzle.
All the variables of life collaborate in visible and invisible ways to make life flow and keep running the way it’s supposed to. The seasons operate like clockwork. The insects in the forest are needed to keep things in balance. Water evaporates and is returned to the earth from the clouds when it rains.
Everything is so amazingly balanced.
I can go on forever! But the point is, how can so much beauty, balance, and logical design be an accident?
Defending Christianity from this point-of-view can be an easy way to start the conversation before transitioning into more complex questions about the Christian faith.
Always Be Prepared to Give an Answer
So, what do you think? Is it all an accident? I certainly don’t think so.
A design must have a designer. A creation must have a creator. If we were big blobs of random mess with no logic to our anatomy, then that’s one thing.
But each part of us was purposefully placed to function as part of a whole. I don’t know about you, but that’s no accident.
Be ready to give an answer because the answers are definitely there. And these two arguments are great places to start.
This concludes Part One. Click here for Part Two!
Resources:
https://www.existence-of-god.com/first-cause-argument.html
https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/cosmological-argument.htm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/creationism_1.shtml
You might also like:
What is Apologetics: The Art of Defending Our Faith
5 Reasons You Can Trust the Bible
Defending Christianity with 4 Apologetics Arguments: Part Two
