Imagine you are walking thru a forest with a friend. And you come across a ball sitting on the grass. It’s a football. And as you pick it up…you realize it’s not just any football. It’s finely stitched together and covered with signatures from the victorious England squad who beat Germany in the 1966 World Cup!
What would your reaction be? Hey – wait a minute. This is valuable. The way England are playing these days…I can’t foresee us winning another World Cup soon…we need to treasure this and look after it!
You might also wonder – who does this ball belong to? They must be gutted that they lost it!
And as these thoughts are running around your mind…your friend says to you…”Just leave it. Let’s keep walking.”
Any reasonable reaction to that would be – “Huh? Wait a minute. We can’t just leave it here. Someone carefully stitched this together. And it’s so valuable…it MUST belong to SOMEONE.”
But your friend goes on – “It doesn’t belong to anyone. It wasn’t stitched together it just happened in the forest all by itself. Let’s not look into the reason this football is here and who it belongs to……”
Now – in your mind, please expand the size of that football. Let it grow to the size of the Universe itself.
These strange responses from your friend about the football are so familiar to me. Because I hear them and read them all the time.
- The Universe just happened.
- It doesn’t belong to anyone
- It wasn’t carefully stitched together
In the same way that these reactions are pretty strange and unreasonable when applied to the football…they are also strange and unreasonable when applied to the universe. Only much more so.
This is the essence of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. You can learn a bit more here:
Is it reasonable to believe that God exists? Well – the Kalam Cosmological Argument says this:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause
- The universe began to exist
- Therefore the universe has a cause
Are the premises of this argument reasonable? I would say – YES absolutely! Our own life experience tells us that Premise 1 is true. Things don’t just appear! There is always a cause behind them.
What about Premise 2? Well Scientists have been telling us that the Universe exploded into being at a point in the past – the Big Bang. I’m not going to argue. Many have…but their theories have not really stood the test of time. Big Bang Cosmology is the predominant scientific understanding.
So if Premise 1 is true and Premise 2 is also true, then it follows that Premise 3 must be true.
The Universe has a cause.
The only way we can prove the Universe didn’t have a first cause…is to find a way to reject Premises 1 and 2. Personally – I wouldn’t reject them. And I’ve not read or heard any convincing arguments to cause me to want to reject them. So this means that Premise 3 stands.
Strikes me that…if the Universe has a cause…that cause must be incredibly powerful, outside of space and time. And for anyone who has ever taken a cursory glance at a Bible will tell you…that sounds very much like God.
“Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding.” Isaiah 40:28, NLT
Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God. Psalm 90:2, NLT
Now…speaking of miracles…if we can just get England to play better in the next World Cup!