"Well, if God created everything then who created God?"

   So I head this the other day as I was of course in a coffee shop in my neighborhood.  My favorite thing about reading my Bible or Christian themed books in the coffee shop is that in this city (which is world famous for being one of the most Atheistic cities in north America) is that you don't have to bring study questions, because the people in the coffee shop will ask you hard questions every time.

  So I am there reading away, and this fellow stands over my table as he is passing by and says you don't really believe that stuff do you?  I love this question by the way, I understand it offends many Christians.  But I love that people take a stance one way or another.  The hardest thing that I encounter is people who could care less about issues such as the Bible or God.  So I say, "Yes I do, I'm surprised that you don't, why don't you sit down and tell me why you don't believe the Bible?  So he gladly sat down and said to me, "The Bible says that God created everything, but that's a circular argument because who created God?!" he giggled and waited for my answer.  I had seen this many times before, many people expect that this is the first time we have heard this question and that it is a knock down argument and there is no answer to it.  Well actually I have been hearing this question since long before I was a Christian, in fact I remember hearing it on the playground of my elementary school.  I don't mean to be dismissive but really its a playground type question. 

  So, first off Christians dont believe in a "created God" and the question assumes that God is created and created Gods dont exist.  It is impossible for a timeless and spaceless being to come into existence, no thesit believes in a "created" God.  I showed him from John chapter 1 that people who believe the Bible believe in an uncreated God. Then I went ahead and asked the man "if we were to find machinery on the dark side of the moon, would we be reasonable to assume that it came from intelligence? or would we have to first assume that that said machinery formed itself by natural causes?"  He said that It would obviously be from an alien race. I then asked if we would first need to know who that alien race was and know about them before we would pause at the answer that that machinery was produced by them?"  He said no.  "So why then do we need to know who made God before we can pause at the answer that God created the universe?" "In order to recognize that an explanation is best, you don't have to have an explanation of the explanation."  Also now because of the Big Bang, we can understand that the universe, all matter, energy time and space came into existence.  Something must have caused this because everything that comes into being has a cause.  This cause must be timeless, space less, and supernatural, since acted outside of time space and nature.  That sounds like what we usually call God.  We chatted for another 20 minutes and exchanged numbers.  I'm expecting to meet up next week.

I will expand further in another blog but for now, the main ideas are, that for in order to recognize that an explanation is best, you don't have to have an explanation of the explanation.  You can used examples like machinery on the moon or finding artifacts here through archaeology. Also talk about what could have caused the universe to come into existence at the big bang.

 Karl Sagan is famous for saying "In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?" [Carl Sagan, Cosmos, page 257]

  In our age of astrophysical cosmology we just cant stop at the idea that the universe has always existed.  Because of the Big Bang we understand that the universe came into being, so that points to a transcendent cause of the universe.  I still meet people who believe that the universe is eternal, but really they just haven't caught up with contemporary cosmology.

Its my goal to keep these blogs short and just talk about my experiences, so I know there is tons of more information but Ill share it in another entry.

"Can we be good without God?" "I dont need the Bible to tell me whats moral or not"

I think this is one area of arguement that anyone can have an opinion on.  I hear it a lot recently.  Christians will bring up the idea that morals are grounded in the nature of God and that He has written them on our hearts. Atheists often confuse this arguement with that they cannot be moral people.  In fact as Christians we believe you dont need the bible to know whats moral but that God himself has written the moral code on all of humankind's hearts.

The arguemnet lies in what is the basis for morals and do absolute morals exists?

I was recently in a conversation with friends, where they were talking about the horrors commited in the name of God and religion.  The crusades, religious intollerance etc.  I think that most people will affirm that absolute morals do indeed exist.  While I was in school we were always taught that "everything is relative" but I rarely see that being believed and put into peoples lives.  As my friends and I were discussing this topic, we did agree on the idea that somethings are really right, and somethings really wrong. 

As they said that God does not exists because of all the evil that religion causes, I said that it is true that a lot of evil is done in the name of religion, but in the case of Christianity it is the people acting outside of the Christian worldview who are commiting these evil acts.  Jesus never acted in these ways or condones this behavior.  Also this behavior is actually anti biblical.  It goes against what the Bible teaches.  Remember how when they came to arrest Jesus, and Peter pulled his sword and cut off the guards ear.  Jesus told Peter to put his sword away and healed the guards ear. 

Next I asked why they believed theseacts to be evil.  I then heard arguements such as "its wrong to hurt others, its wrong to take away someones freedom, its wrong to kill, its wrog to torture, its wrong to take away peoples possesions" etc etc.

I asked where these absolute moral standards came from.  If we are products of naturalism, where in naturalism can morals come from?  When a lion kills another animal, its kills it...it doesnt murder it.  Or when a pack of hyeanas take a fresh kill away from a leopard, they take it they dont steal it.  Because animals are not moral creatures.

If our origins are only naturalistic how could we have come up with this morality.  Philosopher Michael Ruse says “morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands or feet or teeth.  Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory.  I appreciate when someone says love thy neighbor as thyself they think they are referring above and beyond themselves never the less such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is issusory”

 But if you do observe abolute morals, that some things are truly right and some things truly wrong, then you must agree that God exists.  Because without God as the source of the moral code, who can say what is right or wrong.  Who can say that behaviors we observe in the animal kindom are truly wrong only when they happen to us humans?  Without God as the objective standard for the moral code then we are just floating around in relativism and we have no right to say what is right or wrong, good or evil.

But we do observe moral absolutes, to not would make life unlivable.  Therefore God exists.