Classical Arguments for God's Existence

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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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On today's program we're going to be doing something a little different.
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I want to use today's program as an additional lesson to the lessons that I'm giving currently at Sovereign Grace Academy.
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Now if you're unfamiliar with Sovereign Grace Academy, Sovereign Grace Academy is our church's teaching ministry that we offer free of charge to the community.
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It's Bible lessons, it's a two-year program to take a person through basic ministry training.
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This is really for all different types of people.
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We make it available for people who may be thinking about serving in their church as a Sunday school teacher or some other way.
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Even an elder at some point may want to go through our program.
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We call this a seminary for everyone or a seminary for every believer.
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So as part of our current class, we are going through the subject of apologetics.
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Now if you're unfamiliar with the word apologetics, it simply means to give a defense.
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And so we've been talking about giving a defense for the Christian faith.
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And right now we're talking about different arguments that are used for the existence of God.
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Certainly you have been in situations where you have talked to people and perhaps there's been a person or persons who has challenged the existence of God.
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I can't see God.
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I can't hear his voice.
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How do I know that he's there? Well, there are classical arguments that have been used for the existence of God.
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And that's what I want to talk about on the program today.
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I want to provide the primary, what are called classical arguments for the existence of God.
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Now, very quickly, there's a lot of baggage that goes along with this that I haven't really addressed.
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But if you are interested in knowing more, you can go and listen to our classes.
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They are available on our website.
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If you go to our church website, sgfcjax.org, you can look up the current Sovereign Grace Academy listing, which is Introduction to Apologetics.
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Because when I talk about classical arguments, what I'm doing is I'm differentiating that between what might be known as evidential arguments and presuppositional arguments.
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There are different ways that we might argue for the existence of God or for the truth claims of the Christian faith.
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And I am what's known as a presuppositionalist.
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So the classical arguments are secondary for me.
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They are not primary.
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My primary argument, of course, is that without God, there is no reason for reason itself.
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There is no reason for rationality.
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There is no reason for anything.
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And so that's the presuppositional approach.
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There's more to it than that.
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And if you're interested in learning more about that, again, go back and look at the lessons that we've done in apologetics, specifically on the transcendental argument for God.
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We did that in a recent class, and you might get more out of the explanation if you go and look at that.
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But today, we're going to be looking at those arguments that are typically referred to as the classical arguments for God, these being, or sometimes referred to as the traditional arguments.
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And these are based not so much on empirical evidence, but rather on rational arguments or reasonable, logical deductions.
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And so that's how these arguments operate.
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They operate in the area of logic and reason.
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If this is true and this is true, therefore this must be true.
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And that is the way that these arguments work.
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And there are basically four categories that we're going to look at today on the program.
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The first is the cosmological arguments.
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Now when I say, I'm saying arguments because there's not one cosmological argument.
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There's cosmological arguments or arguments that fall into this category.
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And then the second is teleological arguments.
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Again, there are different kinds, there are different ones.
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Different Christian apologists use the teleological arguments in different ways, and we're going to talk about how some of those work.
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The next would be the ontological arguments.
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And then finally, the moral arguments.
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Now, those are the base categories that we're going to look at today.
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And in this week's class in Sovereign Grace Academy, if you're a member of the class, we're going to go over these again in class, but I know that time is limited.
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So I wanted to use this extra 30 minutes that I have every week to do the podcast to have an opportunity to essentially go over this with you.
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And if you're in the class, this will be an extra thing for you.
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And if you're not a part of the class, maybe this will cause you to be interested in joining us for a future class.
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We'd love to have you.
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You can join us either in person, we have in-person classes on Thursday evenings at 630 during the term, and the terms are scheduled and it's on our website.
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Or you can join online.
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Now, to join Sovereign Grace Academy, you do have to fill out an application.
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So if you're interested in that, let me know and I can get an application out to you.
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One of the prerequisites of joining the class is that you do have to be a believer, you have to be in good standing with a local church, so that is important.
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And let me know if you have any interest in that.
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You can email me at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
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Again, that's calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
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All right, we're going to begin to go through these.
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We're going to go one at a time, and I'm going to use a textbook, some textbook definitions for some of these.
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And one of the textbooks that I like to use is the Moody Handbook of Theology, and that's what I'm going to be referencing here on some of these.
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So we're going to get started now first with the cosmological argument.
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Okay, we're going to begin now with the cosmological arguments for the existence of God.
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When we look at the universe, we see cosmos and not chaos.
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That's really the basis for the cosmological arguments.
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Cosmos refers to order.
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It refers to when we look at the universe, we don't see a bunch of things that are just randomly and haphazardly put together, but we see a universe that seems to function in an orderly way.
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In fact, the order of the universe and the dependability of natural law demonstrates the existence of God.
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That's the argument.
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That's the heart of the cosmological arguments, is that the order of the universe and the dependability of natural law demonstrate the existence of God.
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So let me give you what Innes says.
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This is from, again, from the Moody Handbook of Theology by Mr.
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Innes, and what it says is this.
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It says, the term cosmological comes from the Greek word cosmos, meaning world.
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This argument is based on the fact that a cosmos or a world exists.
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Because something cannot come from nothing, there must be an original cause that is the reason for the world's existence.
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A man wears a Belova wristwatch.
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Although he has never seen a watchmaker, the fact of the existence of the wristwatch suggests there is a Swiss watchmaker who made the watch.
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The cosmological argument says that every effect must have a cause.
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That is quoted from the Moody Handbook of Theology, page 183.
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Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the cosmological argument.
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This is an argument that was formalized really by Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s.
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He was known for what became known as the five ways of proving the existence of God.
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Now we talk about proving.
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What is proof? Proof is really somewhat subjective, because proof is what is determined by the individual.
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If you say, prove it to me, you have to demonstrate proof.
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Really, this is five arguments for the existence of God.
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An argument might be persuasive, it might not.
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We've talked about this in class.
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Dr.
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John Frame, who wrote the textbook that we're using for our class, talks about arguments.
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He says an argument has to be valid.
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To be valid means it follows the laws of logic.
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It must be sound, which means it's based on truthful premises.
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An argument can be valid, but not sound.
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It can have a valid statement, but not based on sound premises.
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He said it's got to be valid, it's got to be sound, but it's also got to be persuasive.
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So when we talk about proof, proof is what ultimately we're talking about, something that persuades someone to believe.
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And as we have talked about in class, ultimately it's the Holy Spirit of God that opens up someone's heart and regenerates their soul and gives them the ability to believe.
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The desire to believe comes from the work of the Holy Spirit.
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We can never argue anyone into a belief in God or into a belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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That's not what apologetics is.
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It's not about arguing someone into faith.
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It's about giving a defense for the faith that we possess.
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Why do we believe these things? Well, we believe these things because God's opened our heart to believe them, but they're not unreasonable things.
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They have valid and rational reasons for believing them, and we consider them to also be not only valid and sound, but we consider them to be persuasive.
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And so when we talk about the cosmological arguments, the five that Thomas Aquinas formalized, three of them would fall under the category of the cosmological arguments, the argument from motion.
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Everything that moves has a mover.
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The universe is moving, therefore there is a mover that is necessary to have moved all things, and that's sometimes known as the argument of the unmoved mover.
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There has to be a first mover to cause things to move.
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And so that's the one of the arguments of Aquinas was the argument of the unmoved mover.
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And I'm making things very, very simple here.
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Of course, Aquinas was one of the great thinkers of history, and so I'm somewhat simplifying this just for simplicity's sake, but the argument of the unmoved mover is one of the cosmological arguments.
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Another one is the argument of causality.
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We live in a world where we see cause and effect, and effect is always predicated by a cause.
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Something has to cause the effect, and everything is an effect.
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That's the point of this argument.
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If everything is an effect, there has to be a cause for everything, and that cause must itself be uncaused.
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It must be the uncaused cause, just like the unmoved mover.
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The uncaused cause must exist.
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There must be a primary first cause of all things.
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Therefore, we would identify that as God.
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And so looking at the unmoved mover and the uncaused cause is similar, but not exactly the same.
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And the third is like it, and this is the argument from contingency.
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And this is the argument of everything depends on something else.
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So everything in the world depends on something else for its existence.
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I depended on my parents for them coming together and producing me, and of course they depended on their parents and so on.
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Everything is contingent on something else, dependent on something else.
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But the Christian God as described in the Bible has what's known as aseity.
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Aseity is the doctrine of God's self-existence, that God exists in himself, and he has the power of existence in himself.
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And so when we talk about God's existence, God does not exist contingent on anything else.
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He is not dependent on anything else.
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And because everything else in the universe is dependent upon something else, there must be this one independent personal being.
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And personal is not demanded by this argument, but we'll talk later about why personality matters.
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But this independent being who is the first uncontingent or one that is independent of others, and that which we would refer to as God.
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So these make up some of the cosmological arguments.
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Now, sometimes it's easier to simplify these for sort of an on-the-street conversation.
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So how would you use the cosmological argument in a street evangelism conversation? Well, you might say something like Ray Comfort, who is one of my favorite evangelists.
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Ray likes to tell people, he said, you see that building over there? And I'll say yes.
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How do you know that building had a builder? They would say, well, the building itself is proof that a builder exists.
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How do you know it had an architect? Well, the building itself had to be designed and had to be put together.
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The order of the building and the shape of the building and everything demand that.
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And he says, well, if the building demands a builder, creation demands a creator.
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And that is a form of the cosmological argument.
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It's a simplified form.
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You say if a building has to have a builder and a painting has to have a painter, then creation certainly has to have a creator.
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Another form of the cosmological argument is the argument that nothing comes from nothing.
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And so if it was ever argued to the point that everything that exists now came from nothing, then that argument would fall apart because nothing comes from nothing.
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If there was ever a time when there was nothing, then there would still be nothing.
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And so when we talk about nothing, and this is the Latin phrase, ex nihilo, nihil fit.
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Out of nothing, nothing comes.
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This is where we get into the conversation of there has to be a first.
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There has to be something that has always existed.
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And the cosmological argument is that that thing that has always existed is the personal being that we call God.
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So that's the basis of the cosmological argument.
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Okay, now we're going to look at the teleological arguments.
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Now, the teleological arguments comes from the Greek word telos, which means a purpose, an end, or a goal.
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And the universe does not only demonstrate order as we talked about in the cosmological argument, but it also seems to demonstrate purpose, that it was made not only with order, but an order which points towards a purpose.
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For instance, the earth itself is perfectly designed, and this is where the idea of intelligent design comes from, is perfectly designed to sustain life.
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And as far as we have been able to discover in all of the universe, it's the only planet that has all of the features necessary to sustain what we understand to be life.
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And so the teleological argument is that purpose exists, not only order, but purpose.
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And in that purpose, we see God's hand at work.
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And again, this is the argument that this is an argument for the existence of God.
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Now, I want to read again from the Moody Handbook of Theology, just read a quick paragraph.
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God's harmony is observed throughout the universe and world.
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The sun being 93 million miles distant is precisely right for adequate climate on earth.
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The moon's distance of 240,000 miles provides tide at a proper level.
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The earth's tilt provides the seasons.
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A conclusion is clear that God, the master designer, has created the magnificent universe.
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The alternative that the world happened by chance is no more possible than a monkey being able to create the work of Shakespeare on a typewriter by haphazardly playing on the keys." Now, some of you may have heard that argument about the monkey sitting at the typewriter, or even a group of monkeys sitting at typewriters and producing the works of Shakespeare, and that how impossible would that be? Well, the same level of impossibility comes when we realize just how many necessary things there are in regard to how the world has come to sustain and continue to produce and sustain life.
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And so that seems to be the purpose for which it was made.
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William Paley popularized the teleological argument with his analogy of finding a watch on the beach.
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He said if one was walking on the beach and found a stone, he might surmise that that stone got there somewhat accidentally or arbitrarily.
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But if he found a wristwatch and he picked up the watch and he looked at it and it was ticking away and it had the right time, and he noticed that this watch was certainly made and it was made with the purpose of keeping time, and in fact, it is actually keeping time, that only a fool would say that that came about through random processes and accidental chance happenings.
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No, that intelligent time piece requires an intelligence to create it.
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And therefore, when we look at a universe, which seems to not only have order, as we said before, but also it has purpose in the design, like a watch, then that's one of the arguments for the existence of God.
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The teleological argument, again, is looking at the world and seeing the order and knowing that that order and that design and that purpose has a personal being behind it.
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One of the illustrations that sometimes is used is the Grand Canyon was clearly formed by non-rational natural processes, but Mount Rushmore was clearly created by an intelligent designer.
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And so when we look at the world and we see all the complexities of life and all of the complexities of the human person and all of the complexities that are required for maintaining that life, it's impossible that we would conclude anything but that this has been designed by an intelligent being who had a purpose.
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And that is the teleological argument or that is the teleological arguments fall into that category.
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Now we're going to talk about the ontological argument.
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Ontological argument is the argument of being.
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Of course, we've been talking about God's being or God's existence throughout the other arguments, but this one comes more from a philosophical perspective.
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And I want to say from the outset, when it comes to this argument, I consider this one to be the least persuasive, but it's one of the classical arguments and certainly one that we should not ignore.
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It's been discussed and debated, and when this conversation is brought up, it's one of the ones that we need to understand.
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So the argument, I want to read first from the Moody Handbook of Theology, and I'm going to read the whole paragraph here for you.
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The term ontological comes from the Greek present participle ontos and means being or existence.
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The ontological argument is philosophical rather than inductive.
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The argument reasons, quote, if man could perceive of a perfect God, who does not exist, then he could conceive of someone greater than God himself, which is impossible.
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Therefore, God exists, end quote.
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The argument rests on the fact that all men have an awareness of God.
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Because the God concept is universal, God must have placed the idea within man.
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Excuse me, let me say that again.
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God must have placed the idea within man.
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Anselm was the first proponent of this view, and in the thinking of some, this argument has limited value and few would affirm the usefulness of the ontological argument.
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Now that's from the Moody Handbook of Theology, but as I said earlier, I kind of understand why they would say that, because I kind of feel the same way.
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I feel like this has not as much persuasive value, especially on the street level conversation, that some of the arguments might.
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Descartes was, and you're probably familiar with Rene Descartes.
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He was the one who was famous for saying, I think, therefore I am.
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Again, another argument about existence, because what he was saying is I think, therefore I exist.
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Even if I thought that I didn't exist, that thinking would prove that I do exist, because my thought is proof to me that I, in fact, do exist.
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And so Descartes had his own version of the ontological argument, and it goes like this.
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Our idea of God is of a perfect being, and therefore, or excuse me, it is more perfect to exist than not to exist than to exist.
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Therefore, God must exist.
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Let me say that again.
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Our idea of God is of a perfect being.
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It is more perfect to exist than not to exist.
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Therefore, God must exist.
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So this, again, this is about the subject of existence.
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Existence is greater than non-existence.
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At least that's one of the premises of this particular argument.
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Existence is better than non-existence.
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Now, some do not agree with that.
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As Dr.
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Frame pointed out in his lectures, such as the Buddhist, their goal is non-existence.
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Their goal is nirvana, which is the search and the goal of nothingness.
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So not everyone would assume that existence is better than non-existence.
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But the base, one of the premises of the argument is existence is greater than non-existence, and God, to be God, must by nature have all perfections, and existence is a perfection, because it's better to exist than not to exist.
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And therefore, God must exist, because he is perfect.
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So again, you may not be persuaded by this argument, but I hope you understand it a little bit better now.
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Okay, now we arrive at the last argument of the four classical arguments for God, the cosmological arguments, the teleological arguments, the ontological arguments, and the moral arguments.
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And the moral arguments, if you look in Dr.
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Frame's book and you're studying along with our current series as we're going through apologetics, you'll notice that he spends a lot of time on the moral argument.
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He says he believes that this is actually really one of the most persuasive.
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And while I won't have time to go through everything he says in the textbook, I do want to at least explain what the moral argument is so that we all understand it as we come into class to discuss it.
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So the moral argument is the argument from, or the arguments from, ought.
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And so when we talk about ought, we're talking about something that is required of us, something that we ought to do rather than something that we ought not to do.
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Mankind does not operate only in the realm of is and is not.
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We operate also in the realm of ought and ought not.
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And the moral argument basically goes like this.
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Because ought exists, there must be a standard against which it can be measured, and that standard is God.
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Maybe, and I don't know this for sure, but maybe in your interactions with apologists online, maybe you have seen the statement, by what standard? And the argument by what standard is often attached to some type of a moral conversation.
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Someone says, well, it's wrong to do thus and so.
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And the question is, well, by what standard is it wrong? By what standard do you make that argument? And if your standard is not God, what is it? All right, I'm going to quote again from the Moody Handbook of Theology.
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The moral argument acknowledges that man has an awareness of right and wrong, a sense of morality.
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Where did the sense of moral justice come from? If man is only a biological creature, why does he have a sense of moral obligation? Recognition of moral standards and concepts cannot be attributed to any evolutionary process.
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The biblicist recognizes that God has placed a sense of moral justice within the human race in contradistinction to all other creation.
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So this not only is really an argument of morality, but it's also what the Moody Handbook also refers to as an anthropological argument.
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It's an argument specifically for man.
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Men have an inherent sense of ought and ought not.
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And that inherent sense of ought and ought not must have come from somewhere.
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And this is where Dr.
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Frame begins to really press the issue of personality.
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Because God is not an impersonal God, but he is a personal God.
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And impersonal forces do not create ought.
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They do not create necessity.
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They do not create justice.
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Is and is not is not the same as ought and ought not.
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And we move from the is to the ought when we deal with the subject of morality.
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Schaefer says this.
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He says, there are philosophical and moral features in man's constitution which may be traced back to find their origin in a God.
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A blind force could never produce a man with intellect, sensibility, will, conscience, and inherent belief in a creator.
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So the moral argument is not saying, and let me be very clear, it is not saying that unbelievers cannot have a moral compass.
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They can.
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In fact, they often do.
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Unbelievers do have a moral compass because God has placed the knowledge of his law in their heart.
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In fact, that's the moral argument for God is that all men do have a moral compass.
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And while not all men agree everywhere on every speck and detail of morality, there is a universal understanding that there is ought and ought not that men are responsible for.
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And so this universal understanding of ought and ought not is what we refer to as the moral argument.
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And as I said, there's so much more about this, and we're going to discuss some of it in class, but I hope that this helps clarify what we mean when we talk about the moral argument for the existence of God.
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So there you have it.
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Those are the classical arguments for the existence of God.
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We looked at the cosmological arguments, which are arguments based on order and things like causality and movement, things like that.
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We looked at the teleological argument, which is the argument of purpose.
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We looked at the ontological argument, the argument of being.
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And finally, we looked at the moral argument, the argument of ought and ought not.
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Hopefully that was helpful for you, and hopefully you enjoyed today's podcast.
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If you have any questions or you'd like to engage further on this subject, or you'd like me to go deeper, I would encourage you to send an email to calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
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Thank you for listening today to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe.
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And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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May God be with you.