Does God Exist? (Part 1: The Kalam Cosmological Argument)

Does God exist? Before discussing the Bible, miracles, or the resurrection of Jesus, we must first answer the foundational question: Is there a God at all?

In Part 1 of our series on God's existence, we examine one of the most influential arguments in the history of philosophy—the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Popularized by philosopher Dr. William Lane Craig, this argument contends that because the universe began to exist, it must have a cause beyond itself.

In this lesson, we discuss:

• Why God's existence matters for truth, morality, meaning, and purpose.
• The major worldviews regarding God's existence (theism, deism, pantheism, panentheism, atheism, and more).
• The three simple premises of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
• Why something cannot come from nothing (ex nihilo, nihil fit).
• Scientific and philosophical evidence that the universe had a beginning.
• Common objections such as "Who made God?" and the fallacy of composition.
• What we can logically know about the First Cause—including why it must be timeless, spaceless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal, and supernatural.

Whether you're a skeptic, a believer, or simply curious about life's biggest questions, this episode provides a clear, accessible introduction to one of Christianity's strongest philosophical arguments.

Recommended Reading:

• I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman Geisler & Frank Turek (Chapter 3)
• On Guard by William Lane Craig (Chapter 4)
• Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig (pp. 111–156)

Join us as we seek actual answers to life's most important questions through Scripture, philosophy, and evidence.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey, welcome to the podcast today. My name is Matt Hayswood. I'm your host. And today we're looking at the existence of God and beginning that conversation. Does God exist? If you are just now joining us, we've been going through Norman Geisler's 12 points that show Christianity is true, which we have already covered. Truth about reality is knowable, and that the opposite of true is false. Now that's pretty common sense. That is pretty logical for most people. But when you deny the obvious, we have to defend the obvious. And when we defended the obvious in points one and two, we were able to defeat several worldviews so far, such as scientism, denialism, agnosticism, skepticism, pluralism, postmodernism, relativism, perspectivism, religious pluralism, and multiculturalism. And many of those are very similar to each other, but today's contenders are the big hitters, if you would. And that's going to be atheism, which says there is no God, naturalism, which says that the natural order is all that there is, there are no supernatural views that are on the table, and materialism, which says that the material world is all that there is. So today's contenders are atheism, naturalism, and materialism. And we're going to use point three of Norman Geisler's 12 points that show Christianity is true in order to address these issues, to address these heavy hitters. And point three is a theistic God exists. And a lot hinges on this point. Now remember, whoever makes the claim bears the burden of proof. And so we as Christians do claim indeed positively that God does exist. So we need to be able to show why that is. And a lot hinges on this. Because really, in our culture today, 5% of Americans identify as atheists, according to a peer review study in 2025. 19% of Americans say that the natural world is all there is in 2025, which is just another way of saying that you're an atheist because God is a supernatural view. 35% of adults in the United Kingdom say that the natural world is all there is. 50% of adults say the same thing in Sweden as of 2025. 34% of adults across 35 countries in this study say that the natural world is all that there is. And 100% of classical Marxism is explicitly atheistic. Now, these are shocking statistics, but there's there's actually even a church where atheists can attend, which is the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, where you can attend this church in order to congregate with people, to enjoy fellowship and bonding with people without actually having to affirm the existence of God at all, which to me is quite uh illuminating and entertaining at the same time. I wonder what they celebrate on Easter. But a lot hinges on whether or not God exists. Because if God does not exist, then there are no works of God. There are no miracles of God. If God does not exist, then there is no word of God. The Bible is a pointless topic because there is no word of God if God does not exist. There is no Son of God if God does not exist. There is no salvation in God if God does not exist. There are no absolute moral values and duties if God does not exist. And there is no meaning nor purpose to life if God does not exist. William Provine, the professor emeritus at Cornell University, said that there are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans either, if God does not exist. The great agnostic atheist Bertrand Russell, who is an agnostic, but I think Marx is right when he says that all agnostics are just gutless atheists. But Bertrand Russell said that the man, that man, is the product of causes which has had no provision in the end, they were achieving all the labors of the ages are destined to extinction. Of course, one of the most famous atheists of our day is Richard Dawkins, who is correct. When he says that the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect, if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. And you know what? If God does not exist, Richard Dawkins is right. If God does not exist, then at the end, there is no design, there's no purpose to life, there's nothing but blind, pitiless indifference if God does not exist. But what God are we talking about specifically? So I want to I wanted to impart to you just a few different definitions of God and clarify the kind of God that we are defending in the 12 points. We are going to defend what is known as theism. It is true that a theistic God exists. Classic theism, if you would. And theism says that there is an infinite personal creator who exists beyond the world who created the world. But some people won't defend that God. There's also another view called deism, which is basically God exists minus the miracles, the great clockmaker where he winds up the universe and just kind of sets it off, doesn't get involved at all, no miraculous events pouring into the creation. It's God without his personal involvement, without miracles. That's deism. But there's also finite goddess, which says that God exists, but he's limited in power and perfection. This is where we get that process theology from, where this God is still kind of figuring things out. He doesn't know all things, he doesn't have the power to do all things according to his will, but he is a finite God, which is finite godism. And then we have pantheism, which is God is the universe. You are God, I am God, that chair is God, all is God, and God is all. That's pantheism. And then there's panantheism, which is the universe is in God, but the universe is not God. Kind of like water in a sponge. The water is in the sponge, but the sponge is not the water, and the water is not the sponge. That's panantheism. And then there's polytheism theism, which says that there are many limited gods that do exist in the world, but they're all limited in their power and perfection. And then, of course, there is atheism, which says that there is no God. And so we, as Christians, are going to defend what is called theism, classic theism, that we believe in an infinite personal creator who exists beyond the world, who created the world. So the question is, is what evidence do we have for God's existence? After all, the late Christopher Hitchens would have us believe extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We'll talk about that in a future episode. But what evidence do we have? Because remember, the burden of proof falls on the one who makes the claim, and we do make the claim that God exists. So how do we go about proving this or giving evidence for the existence of God? Well, we're going to offer up several arguments for the existence of God. And there are five types of arguments, five families of arguments. And the first type of argument is a cosmological argument, which looks at the cosmos of the universe. It looks out there and then determines from the evidence out there that there is of God. Now, there's multiple types of cosmological arguments. There's the Kalam cosmological argument, there's Aristotle's uh contingency argument, there's Leibniz. Geisler has one of his own. There's many types within this, but in general, all of these look out there in the cosmos for the evidence of the existence of God. That's a cosmological argument. But then you also have teleological arguments, which is arguments from design. Arguments from design. They see design, and some of those arguments look out there, the design of the universe, that it is fine-tuned. And then some of them look inwards, such as the design of the human body or of DNA. They look inwards and outwards, but they see design and therefore conclude a designer. So those are teleological arguments. You also have moral arguments, which is arguing from moral experience of values and duties. You have ontological arguments, which is uh an argument from definitions and concepts, which are more difficult to grasp for most people. So I'm probably not going to go into that just a whole lot, but there are ontological arguments that are valid. And there's also transcendental arguments which argue from the impossibility of the contrary. Meaning, not only does God exist, it's impossible for God to not exist from the impossibility of the contrary. I actually like the transcendental arguments, but we're probably not going to focus on that because most people find that difficult to kind of grasp. We're actually going to spend time today on what is known as the kalam cosmological argument. The kalam cosmological argument. And I love the kalam cosmological argument for several reasons. It's dead simple, it's easy to remember, it's very logical, it's airtight, it is a good syllogism, but it's very simple for people to grasp and understand. And the Kalam cosmological argument goes like this premise one is whatever begins to exist has a cause. Premise two, the universe began to exist. So therefore, the conclusion must be the universe has a cause. See, it's dead simple. It's easy to remember, there's no explicit God language on the front of it. So it is not very uh confrontational from the outset, and it's just very straightforward. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore, the universe has a cause. So, in order for somebody to not like that conclusion, to disregard the conclusion of therefore the universe has a cause, they have to show three things. One of three things that the terms that we're using are ambiguous and not clear, the propositions of the first two premises are not true, or the logic is invalid in order to reach this conclusion. They have to show a logical fallacy as well. So the propositions have to be false, the terms have to be unclear, or there has to be a logical fallacy in order to escape this argument. And so we're going to take this step by step, look at each premise, break it down one by one, and talk about it, show evidence for why that is true, and deal with objections along the way, plus just general objections of the overall argument. So the first premise is whatever begins to exist has a cause. So the truth of this premise is self-evident because something cannot come from nothing. It is pretty self-evident. Something cannot come from everything, so whatever begins to exist has a cause. So the question is, what is nothing? There's a lot of talk about what nothing is in many of the communities these days. But my favorite definition of what nothing is is what Aristotle said. And he said that nothing is what rocks dream of. So why can't something come from nothing? Well, because there's nothing to come from. It is the absence of everything, including potential. And so one of my favorite ways to show that something cannot come from nothing is to use math. I think Euclid's geometry is it treats math correctly, uses math as proof. And many call math the language of the universe. So if we wanted to talk about this first premise here and use math as our language, what would we describe nothing as in mathematical terms? Well, we would describe it as zero. That's that's what would have to represent nothing. Well, if all you have is nothing in the beginning, what will you always get if you only have nothing? Well, you could draw it up on the board. And I'll do that. I'll say, okay, all we have is zero. So I'll draw a bunch of zeros on the board. I was like, you can do any math equation you would like, but you still have to produce something, but all you have to work with are zeros. All you have to work with is nothing. So what's zero plus zero? Zero. What's zero times zero? Zero. What's zero minus zero? Zero. What is zero squared? Zero. Zero divided by zero. Technically undefined, but zero. You cannot get something from nothing. And you can prove it using math. And it's it's very effective for people. In fact, nobody's been able to uh uh meet this challenge, except one lady in a class who ended up taking nothing but zeros. She was a math teacher and she drew zeros, a bunch of zeros on the board or on a napkin in the shape of the letter one. She says, See, I got one out of zeros. It was very clever, very funny in order for that to happen. But the reason why this doesn't work, why you can't get something from nothing, is if you look at it, you get one something, maybe all kinds of amazing things can happen when you get that one something. The trick is getting that one something. That's the hard part. So if we have one something, we would talk about that as the number one. And maybe that one something can do a whole lot of stuff, which would be amazing. But the problem is is getting that one. Because what is the span between zero and one? Nothing and something, right? How many you could ask it this way how many times can you divide one in half? Infinite. There's there's no end because numbers are infinite. There is an infinite space in between nothing and something. It's not only not possible to do it, it's impossible to do it. So whatever begins to exist has a cause because something cannot come from nothing. This is simply the founded upon the law of causality. The law of causality, which says that every effect has a cause, which comes from this idea, this this foundational truth of nothing happens without a cause, because you cannot get something from nothing. We look at everything in causal fashion. This is what we would call an analytical truth, which is one of my favorite words in philosophy and in apologetics. This is an analytical truth. The law of causality and ex nihilho nihil fit, getting something from nothing, you cannot do that, is an analytical truth, meaning it is true by definition. The law of causality is true by definition. So some other things that are true by definition are such as bachelors are not married. That's analytically true. That's what it means to be a bachelor. You cannot produce a married bachelor. If you have somebody that's married, he's not a bachelor. And if you have a bachelor, guess what? He's not married. That's what it means to be a bachelor. That's true by definition. There's no such thing as a one-sided stick. There's no such thing as a four-sided triangle. There's no such thing as an odd even number or an even odd number. See, these are analytical truths. These are true by definition. And that's the same thing with causality. It's true by definition because causes, if you have a cause, then you have an effect. And if you have an effect, you have a cause. They come together. That's what it means to be an effect. So, some common objections is that you'll find, especially from the scientific community, it's a premise one regarding the law of causality, is that modern physics supposedly shows that we can get subatomic particles, which are virtual particles, from nothing. Therefore, we have proof, we have scientific proof that you can get something from nothing. So this is all nonsense, they would say. And of course, this is going to come from your boy Lawrence Krauss, who wrote the book A Universe from Nothing in 2012. And a quote from there says, Our physics shows that we can get subatomic particles from nothing. And it's funny, I remember debating an atheist friend of mine who did not believe that God existed, and we talked through the Kalam cosmological argument, and he actually couldn't believe that he had to believe that you can get something from nothing. He he thought that atheists actually don't say that. I said, That's that's not true. I was like, all of the guys you've been quoting quote Lawrence Krauss on this matter, who wrote a whole book. He's like, No, he didn't. And in fact, we had a bet saying that, well, if you can show me that he says that, that I'll buy you a steak dinner. And so I just send in the link to the book. It's literally the title of the book, A Universe from Nothing. And so he still owes me a steak dinner, which I did not get, but this is coming from Lawrence Krauss. But the problem is that subatomic particles come from the swirling vacuum of energy, which is not nothing, because he describes it in his book. This swirling vacuum of energy, and we talk about uh gravity and then negative energy and positive energy. And anyways, you don't have to know all the nitty-gritty details of it, but what you can know from that is that when you start describing this as doing something such as swirling, you can definitely say that whatever that is, even though I don't know everything about that, I know one thing for sure. That's not nothing. Because what he does is he commits the fallacy known as equivocation. He commits the logical fallacy known as equivocation, which is using a word in a different sense, different senses, in the same argument. So a funny example of this is you can think about this. I deposited my money in the bank. The fishermen sat on the bank, therefore the fisherman sat where money is deposited. So the word here is bank. And we use it in one sense, bank as where you hold money, and then bank as on a river. And then in the argument, we switch senses without telling anybody. And that's exactly what Lawrence Krause does when he argues that you can get something from nothing using science. He commits the fallacy of equivocation because he said, we say you cannot get something from nothing. He goes, Oh, yeah, you can. You can get something from nothing. And in fact, you can get it because of all of this science that I show. And in the middle of that, what he does is he changes the meaning of nothing. When we started off, we meant what Aristotle meant: that nothing is what rocks dream of. It's literally no matter, no energy, no space, no time, no laws, no potential, no anything. And then Krauss redefines this to quantum fields and energy and physical laws and space and potential and something without telling you he changed the definition in the process in order to make you feel dumb. And therefore he says, see, we can get something from nothing, but that doesn't fly because it's a logical fallacy. You cannot validate things using invalid thinking and reasoning. And in fact, many atheists will even quote David Hume. I've seen Richard Dawkins do this several times, as if, you know, we can just do away with the law of causality, and that even Hume had shown that that is possible philosophically. But in one of his letters, in letter 1.187, he says, quote, David Hume says, I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that a thing could arise without a cause, because it's impossible. Not only is that not true, it's not even possible for it to be true. Now, his whole point was we may not be able to observe the cause, and therefore we may not be able to know exactly what or why or how all the intricate details of it. But of course, just like he says, that doesn't mean it doesn't follow that there is no cause. No, that is absolutely absurd because the law of causality is an analytical truth. Because when you have an effect, you have a cause by definition. So when somebody tries to deny the law of causality, you can say, Well, what caused you to do that? You might as well hear them trying to say, Well, we have found scientific evidence showing that you can get a triangle with four sides. When you try to deny the law of causality using some field like science, well, that's a problem because you just you just basically said, Oh, I I've I've been able to prove scientifically that I can produce a married bachelor. No, that's not even possible. Not only do I need not even need to look at the evidence, we know that that is not true and that it cannot be true in any world. It's an impossibility. So the the premise stands. Whatever. Begins to exist has a cause. Premise one succeeds because it cannot help but succeed because it is true by definition. It is analytically true. So premise two is that the universe began to exist. Whatever began to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. And we know that the universe began to exist because of two fields of study: science and philosophy. Those are the two fields we're going to look at to show that the universe began to exist. The way to scientifically show that the universe began to exist is through what is apologists called the Great Surge, an acronym known as the Great Surge, S-U-R-G-E, which are our five scientific evidences of the beginning of the universe. The second law of thermodynamics is the S. The universe is expanding, is the U. The radiation afterglow is the R. The great galaxy seeds are the G. And Einstein's theory of general relativity is the E. So we have surge, S-U-R-G-E, as our five evidences for why the universe began to exist. And so we'll take these in part, but don't freak out. Because here's the cool thing about the beginning of the universe is 98% of the people already believe this. They're probably not going to argue this point, which puts them in an awkward position. But just so you know, if you have somebody that does deny that the universe began to exist, one of the first ones you want to look at is the second law of thermodynamics, which is it just states that the usable energy is continually decreasing. This is the law of entropy. Everything naturally moves from order towards disorder. And so if the universe had existed forever, it should have already reached maximum entropy, is what it's called, the heat death of the universe, where no stars burn, no work can be done, and nothing changes. Yet stars are still burning and energy is still available. So what does that tell you? The universe is not forever in the past. Otherwise, the universe's energy would have run down by now. So think about it like this: if you have a car filled with gas and you turn the car on and it's just running there. Now eventually that car will stop running because it's going to run out of gas. Well, that's the same thing with the universe. We have a finite amount of energy, and this energy is running down, but it hasn't completely run down. So what does that tell us? Well, it hasn't been running forever. So same thing. If I have an hourglass, if I walk into a room and I don't know when the hourglass was flipped, but I walk into the room, there's an hourglass going, and it's about halfway full of sand on the top, halfway full of sand on the bottom, and the sand is still rolling. The one thing that I know for sure is that hourglass hasn't been there forever. Because if it had been there forever, it wouldn't have any kind of change whatsoever. So the second law of thermodynamics shows that the universe cannot be infinite in the past. We also have the universe is expanding, the the Big Bang, if you would. Edwin Hubble discovered that the galaxies are moving away from one another, right? Space itself is expanding. And running the expansion backwards means that everything was once closer together. So continue tracing it backwards, and the universe reaches an extremely dense, extremely hot beginning, which they call the singularity. And before that was nothing. And so this is what is known as the Big Bang Theory, which just shows us that the past is finite. It's not infinite. You can draw this on the board. You can see the kind of cone going forward out this way. So if you rewind that backwards, well, eventually those two lines are going to intersect. And that's the beginning where space, time, matter, energy, the laws of physics, everything came into being at that point at the singularity. Right. This was a huge discovery that upset every scientist in the world when this happened. Because it used to be that the atheists thought that the universe was eternal, and then that the Christian thought that God was eternal. And so we just attributed everything to an eternal something. So it was different strokes for different folks. You believe in an eternal universe, I believe in an eternal God. So we're really kind of in the same boat. We just attribute it differently. And so it was different strokes for different folks until they discovered that the universe itself had a beginning. They discovered this themselves. The eternal universe is no longer really a viable theory. I think this is where they're eventually going to get back to because that's what's going to force them. It's going to force their hand eventually when they start thinking clearly about the thing, about these things. But the universe is expanding. The R is for the radiation afterglow, right? So if the Big Bang happens, we would expect lots of other things to kind of give some evidence towards this idea of the Big Bang. And the radiation afterglow is one of those things, right? The universe still contains the leftover heat from its beginning. So just so it's not blowing up every day, if you would, if you have a campfire and you light it, when the when the fire's done, the event is done, there's still radiating heat coming from that campfire. When you shoot a gun off and it goes bang, a little bang compared to the Big Bang, well, there is still heat on the barrel of that revolver as well. So in 1965, astronomers discovered that the cosmic microwave background, which is the CMB, which is this faint radiation that fills the universe uniformly. And it's exactly what scientists predicted should remain if the universe began in an extremely hot, dense state. So it's been called the the uh the smoking gun of the Big Bang, if you would. It's a faint echo of the intense heat from the Big Bang that was detected in 1965. It's the smoking gun of the Big Bang, which shows that, hey, that beginning actually happened in the past. So that's the radiation afterglow. We also have G, the great galaxy seeds, right? The universe began with precisely the right tiny irregularities, if you would. There's these things called the great galaxy seeds. It contains incredibly small fluctuations and densities, and these tiny quote unquote seeds allow gravity to form galaxies and stars and planets and things of that nature. And it's it's just this precision beyond coincidence, right? So George Smoot called it the fingerprints of the maker. He also called it machining marks of the creation. And this was discovered in 1992 from the Kobe satellite, and it just reaffirms what Edward Hubble had already discovered that the Big Bang, the universe, really did begin to exist. But even without that, this is exactly what Einstein had predicted with his theory of relativity, which says that space, time, and matter came into existence together. This is the E of our surge, the that Einstein's general theory of relativity, which says that everything must come into existence at the same time. Space, time, matter, and energy are inseparable entities. They must come in together, right? So if you have matter but no space, where do you put it? And if you have space but no time, when do you put it? And if you have space and time and no matter, what are we talking about? So General Robert Judy predicts that a dynamic universe rather than an eternal universe, a static one, um, rather than an eternal static universe, which we live in a dynamic universe, right? It laid the theoretical background or the groundwork for the expanding universe that was ultimately discovered at the cosmic beginning. And Einstein initially resisted the implication and he introduced what was called the cosmological constant to force a static universe versus a dynamic universe. And later, as the observational evidence started to show that the universe is expanding, Einstein actually abandoned that idea altogether. So time, space, and matter are all co-relative, and those things must come into existence all together. So taken together, this is the whole picture of the surge, the second law of thermodynamics, the universe is expanding, the radiation aftergrowth, the great galaxy seeds, and Einstein's theory of general relativity really kind of give a great, comprehensive scientific picture that the universe indeed did begin to exist. Robert Jastro, in his book God and the Astronomers, rightly said that for the scientists who has lived by his faith and the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak, and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. And of course, this is exactly what God reveals himself in the Bible to show, right? Romans 120 says that for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and the Godhead, so that they are without excuse. This is exactly what the Bible told us to expect. That when we look at the universe, we are going to clearly see that it says exactly what God says. Romans 19:1 says that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. Creation is not silent, it points to its creator. We should expect to see God by looking at the cosmos. So we know that the scientific evidence shows that the universe began to exist. But of course, people have been arguing about whether or not the universe has existed long before this evidence started coming out. So philosophically, before all the scientific evidence, we can know that the past cannot be eternal because an infinite something cannot exist except as an idea. So even if scientific evidence showed otherwise in the future, you're not left unequipped because philosophically you can defend the finite past with this analogy of a domino. This is this is, I think, the most clear way. I'm not crazy about William Lane Craig's version of Hilbert's hotel. I understand, but I think it's really hard to understand. It's not very clear for most people, I don't think. But I think the domino analogy is actually pretty helpful, which says that the past must be finite, because in order to have today, if you can imagine dominoes lined up in a room and today's domino is falling over because today is here. But in order for today's domino to fall over, you needed yesterday's domino to fall over to cause all the events of today. But in order to have yesterday's domino fall over, you need the day before, and so on and so forth. So we know for sure that we're here today because in order to deny that, you have to exist to deny that. So today's domino is going to fall because of yesterday's and the day before, and so on and so forth. So you have to get the dominoes to fall. So you have to go all the way to the end of the room and click the first domino, and all of the dominoes will fall, and eventually we'll make it to the domino we call today, and that domino will fall, and here we are. Now here's the problem. What if that line of dominoes is infinitely long? So now you got to go touch the very first domino in an infinite strand of dominoes. How long will you be walking? You're gonna be walking infinitely, forever. But if you're walking forever, then you can't go click the first domino. But if you can't click the first domino, then the dominoes aren't gonna fall. And if the dominoes aren't gonna fall, then today's domino is not gonna fall. But today's domino is here, it's falling as we speak. So what can we conclude about this? Well, the past dominoes cannot be infinite because the dominoes had to start falling somewhere. So we rightly conclude that the universe began to exist. Premise two succeeds, no doubt. Therefore, premise three, the universe has a cause, right? The terms have been made clear, the premises shown to be true, and the logic is valid. Therefore, the conclusion is true, regardless of feelings on the matter. The universe has a cause. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore, the universe has a cause. The terms are clear, the premises are true, therefore, the conclusion follows necessarily, unless there is an obvious logical fallacy that has been missed. And sometimes when you go through this argument, you'll find that you'll you'll talk on premise one for a while and you'll get them to agree, and then you'll move on to premise two, and then they'll disagree, and then they'll finally agree to that, but then they'll come back to premise one and disagree there because they know that it follows logically all the way to the end. And so here are some of the common objections you'll get to this argument. So one of them is if everything needs a cause, then what cause God? You can bet your bottom dollar, this will be the very first response. This is what uh Bertrand Russell said that led him away from the faith, what caused God. This was the primary thrust of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, was who created God? If everything needs a cause, then what caused God? Well, there's two big problems with this. And I've got a whole podcast on this, I'll let you go listen to, but just briefly, the biggest problem is it's a straw man fallacy. It's a straw man, right? The argument is not everything needs a cause. The argument is whatever begins to exist needs a cause. But is the God of the Bible a God who began to exist? Does anybody claim that? Of course not. You're talking about the wrong God, therefore you're you're attacking the wrong argument all together. And you also make a category mistake, right? You're talking about different things than what we are talking about. It's a category of mistake, like when you say, What does the color blue smell like? Or how much does triangles, uh triangle nests weigh, or how tall is tomorrow? Those are category mistakes because we're talking about a different God altogether. That's not the God that we would defend, right? Psalm 92, before the mountains brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. See, the God of the Bible is from everlasting to everlasting. It is not a God who is created. That is a different category altogether. That is finite godism. That's why we define those at the beginning, so that you know that, hey, we're not talking about finite goddess. We're talking about theism, the eternal personal creator of the universe who did not begin to exist. So if you want to know more of this, I invite you to go listen to the Actual Answers podcast, the episode that I think it's episode number two is who made God. This is a very popular question, but it's a straw man fallacy and it's a category mistake altogether. So I invite you to listen to that. But that will for sure be the very first response you're gonna get. Another response that you're gonna get is they're gonna say to the Christian, hey, you're committing the fallacy of composition, right? What is true within the universe is not necessarily true of the universe. Remember, in order for this argument to succeed, the terms have to be clear, the propositions have to be true, and the logic has to be valid. So they're gonna say, hey, the terms are clear, the the propositions that you made, those are true, but the problem is, is you have a logical fallacy. You committed the fallacy of composition. They're they're attacking the logic of this. And the fallacy of composition goes like this the thing, assuming that what is true of the part is true of the whole. So you could say, each brick is light, therefore the building is light. Each piece of the puzzle is simple, therefore the puzzle is simple. Each dollar bill is worth one dollar, therefore, the whole pile of dollar bills is worth one dollar. Or every grain of sand is tiny, therefore the beach is tiny. So they're saying that is true of us. That, hey, you're saying all these things uh about the things within the universe, but that is true only within the universe, but not the universe itself as a whole. Well, the problem is that this is also a straw man fallacy. So we did not argue in this argument from the parts to the whole, but that the universe, the whole, began to exist, which is true. So we actually didn't argue from parts to whole, we argued from the whole in the beginning. The universe, the whole, began to exist, therefore it has a cause. The whole has a cause. So it's a straw man fallacy to accuse us of the composition fallacy. But even so, the of the point can be said that not all compositions are fallacious to begin with, right? If you have each tile is blue in the kitchen, therefore the floor in the kitchen is blue. Well, that's not fallacious, that's true. If every tile in the kitchen floor is blue, then the floor is blue. If each sugar cube in a pile of sugar cubes is sweet, therefore the pile of sugar cubes is sweet. If each team member is committed, therefore the team is committed because all the team members are committed. Each volume is well researched, therefore the encyclopedia is well researched. So just because you want to talk about a composition issue in general, it actually doesn't necessarily mean that all compositions are fallacious. So you actually have to show that it's fallacious. So you could you could kind of have a logical response to this, such as every part of the universe began to exist. The universe is the totality of all the parts that began to exist, therefore the universe began to exist, therefore, the universe needs a cause, law of causality. So remember that just because they accuse you of the composition fallacy doesn't mean that you have actually committed it. They have to demonstrate how you have committed that fallacy, right? Whoever makes the claim bears the burden of proof. And so if they claim that, they actually have to show that, not just merely state that, but it's aimed at the wrong arguments all together. Another response that you're going to get is that you're sneaking in the word creation to imply a creator, which you can only say cause, not creator. Now, this actually happened to me. I was talking to my friend Dustin. We're working through this, and we ended up, he ended up agreeing to the Kalam cosmological argument. Took a while, but we got him there. But he said, he noticed that I was saying creation and creator. And he said, You can't do that because you argued for a cause. So all you can say is cause, not creation, not creator. You haven't shown that you're sneaking that language in. And actually, in that conversation, I actually disconced this and just let it go because I just started calling God the uh the great uncaused cause, just to kind of keep the uh conversation flowing. But it wasn't until later I realized that I probably shouldn't have given that up because I actually looked up the definition of creation later, because that was his issue was the word creation. And you can look it up for yourself. But a Mary and Webster, literally, creation is the definition is here, the action or process of bringing something into existence. So I was right to use the creation language because that's exactly what it means to be creation, is to bring something into existence, which makes it analytically true, right? Remember, to posit an effect, you must posit a cause. Because if you have an effect, you therefore automatically have a cause. And if you have a creation, you therefore have a creator, because the universe is the effect, therefore we have the cause. The effect, cause. If the universe is created, which comes into existence, which we would agree, then the universe has a creator. This is an analytical truth. I shouldn't have given this up. And to be analytically true means that you couldn't bring any evidence against this at all. So I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have given up that ground at all. Because we are talking about a creation. Therefore, we must be talking about a creator. Why? Because what's a creation? It's the universe coming into existence, bringing something into existence, and the universe came into existence. Therefore, we rightfully say the universe is a creation. Therefore, we rightfully must say the universe has a creator. Because every effect needs a cause. Every creation needs a creator. Every building needs a builder. Every painting needs a painter. These are analytical truths that extend from the analytical truth of cause and effect. Of course, he didn't like that. And he said, you know what? You need to stop. You can't know anything about the cause of the universe. So we work through the argument. We called it the great uncaused cause. And he said, stop. All you can say is that the universe has a cause and you cannot know anything about the cause of the universe. Well, what's the problem with that? Well, you simply just have to ask, how do you know that about the cause of the universe? See, if you say I can't know anything about the cause of the universe, you have therefore made a knowledge claim about the universe. So obviously, something can be known about the cause of the universe because you know that I can't know something about the cause of the universe. Therefore, your argument fails. It is Self-defeating. So in order to say that, you actually give it up. You load up the gun, you shoot the gun, and you shoot yourself in the process instead of me. But it's a good question is, you know, what can we know about this cause of the universe? Well, one of the things we can know is that the cause of the universe coming into existence must be timeless because time was created, according to Einstein's theory of relativity. It is co-relative. So therefore, if time was created, the cause of the universe must be timeless. But it also must be spaceless because space was created as well. That's one of the one of the things that is co-relative: time, space, and matter. So if space had a beginning, the cause must be spaceless because the the space wasn't there in order to do it. It must also be immaterial because all of matter came into existence at the time. Time, space, matter, co-relative, must come into existence all together. So therefore, that cause must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. Of course, this is exactly what the Bible starts to paint as a picture of God, John 4 24. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. He is immaterial. But this cause must be also powerful, right? In order to have the ability to cause a universe, that is some kind of power. That's I can't do that. You can't do that. Of course, that's exactly what the Bible says. Psalm 147, 5. Great is our Lord and mighty in power. His understanding is infinite. Well, this cause must also be intelligent in order to know how to do this. How to get something from nothing? Well, that's that's pretty incredible. You have to be intelligent in order to do that. Proverbs 3.19, the Lord of wisdom founded the earth by understanding he established the heavens. It also must be personal in order to have a decision that was made to bring something instead of nothing. Because anything that is not personal is going to go according to its nature. And if there's only pure nothingness, then all you're going to get is nothingness. But in order to do something other than that, a decision has to be made. But decisions are only coming from people, personhood. So therefore it must be personal at some level. But it also must be supernatural as well. Why? Because all of nature was created. So the natural world cannot be the cause. That's self-creation, which is a contradiction in terms that is A and not A at the same time and in the same uh respect. So it's not even possible. So therefore, the cause must be supernatural because all of nature came into existence. So the attributes of the cause, just from this one argument, it's it must be timeless, spaceless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal, supernatural creator of the universe, which of course is exactly who God is. Therefore, the evidence leads us to a theistic God, which means that naturalism fails, materialism fails, and atheism fails. And it is absolutely true, therefore, that a theistic God exists. And the evidence points us to that without a doubt. So whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. I'm Matt Hayeswood. Thanks for listening to this episode. I'll see you next time.