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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Turner

Bara: The Kalam Cosmological Argument

It's good to see each 1 of you here this morning.

I'm excited about this morning's message.

No less than an hour ago, I had a huge black widow climb right across my hand.

But nevertheless, if I go down, you know what to tell the emergency room physicians of what might have happened.

I want to thank Edvin Holt for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

I'd been dodging him for about a whole year to preach this because I've been feeling a little intimidated, but he's a good brother and he's a good friend and encouraged me just to get up here and do it.

1 of the reasons why I was so intimidated was because of the message I felt God wanted me to speak on today.

So I want to speak on why I believe God exists.

Because in the current climate, science has become so supreme that the idea of belief in a deity is almost laughable.

I went to a secular university in Detroit, was a science major, and I ran into many tough things I had to deal with and friends I had to talk to, and I just always wanted to find out, are there good reasons to believe what we believe?

Okay, so I'm going to talk about just 1 argument that I found very compelling in my study, and we're going to look at what's called the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

It looks at the beginning of the universe and it tries to demonstrate that theism is far more plausible than atheism, okay?

So belief in the deity is more plausible than non-belief.

Usually these are presented in a cumulative case.

We also have an argument from the design of the universe, the teleological argument.

Arguments from objective morality, arguments for the Bible, Christ, the resurrection.

So usually you present a cumulative case.

We don't have that luxury this morning, so I'm going to look at 1 argument that I found compelling and hopefully you do likewise.

You know, I'm no philosopher, I'm no Christian apologist, I'm just a medical student.

I'm gonna present this how I understand it and try to demonstrate how I find it to be very compelling.

It means to create something out of nothing.

Father God, I pray that you would be with us this morning.

I pray that you would be with me, help us to get through this in a timely fashion.

I pray that You have promised wherever we gather, you would send your spirit.

I need you to remove anything that may separate me from you.

Anything I might say that may not glorify your truth, please remove that from my mouth.

The classic text that people go to is 1 Peter 3 15, if you want to turn there.

1 Peter 3 15 says, but sanctify Christ as your Lord.

Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks for the hope that is in you with meekness and with fear." It says to give a defense or to give an answer.

We see throughout the New Testament Paul did this on many occasions.

He would always combat the skeptics of the day and have reasons of why he believed what he did.

I went to the best source I know, Wikipedia, and I pulled this.

I didn't even like say it was from Wikipedia.

Anyway, a field of Christian theology that aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defend the faith against objections, and expose the perceived flaws of other worldviews.

That's what we mean when we say apologetics.

It means to have good reasons why you believe what you believe.

My friends in particular, it's hard to talk about Jesus or even the Bible until you get past saying, you know what, God is plausible before you can even get to Jesus.

That's what we're going to try to demonstrate this morning.

Before we get into the argument, this is what Sister White has to say about the role of evidence.

Many, especially those who are young in the Christian life, are at times troubled with the suggestions of skepticism.

How can I be freed from all these doubts and perplexities?

God never asked us to believe without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base our faith.

Yet God has never removed the possibility of doubt.

Our faith must rest upon evidence, not demonstration.

Those who wish to doubt will have opportunity, while those who really desire to know the truth will find plenty of evidence on which to rest their faith." We're going to get to the rest of this quote.

We're going to get to the other half at the end.

That way if this doesn't go as well as I want, nobody's going to sneak out the back because you want to hear the rest of this quote.

And we're gonna see what evidence she believes is very profound, which I agree with her.

Alright, so the Kalam cosmological argument.

The universe began to exist, therefore, the universe has a cause.

You might be wondering, kalam, what does that mean?

It just means Islamic practice of seeking theological knowledge through debate." There's lots of ways to formulate this argument.

This is from a gentleman, Al-Khazali, in the 12th century, because he felt that the Greek philosophy of an eternal universe was kind of corrupting his body of believers, his theistic believers.

Other people like Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Anselm, Plato, Aristotle, all these people formulated similar arguments to show that the universe can't be eternal, it had to have a beginning, and they're going to try to demonstrate how that beginning had to have been God.

The way that we formulate this is called a syllogism.

What that means is there's a major premise, whatever begins to exist, a minor premise, the universe began to exist, the conclusion.

This is important because I want you to notice this is logically airtight.

That means if the first premise is true and the second premise is true, the conclusion follows logically and inescapably.

So what you need to do is be able to give reasons to defend the first premise and the second premise, and if somebody wants to debunk this argument, they have to show that either premise 1 or 2 is invalid.

A couple other things about this argument.

You also notice it says nothing about God.

First of all, to show that the universe had a beginning and had a cause is a huge step in the right direction for atheism, or for theism, rather.

At the end of this argument, we're going to switch to, this is the deductive part of the argument, okay, we're going to switch to inductive reasoning and look at what characteristics this cause must have, okay, and we're going to see those fall right in line with the God of the Bible.

So we're gonna go point by point and talk about each of these premises to see why they're more believable than their negation.

Bara: The Kalam Cosmological Argument

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