Opening Statement - Shandon L. Guthrie

As far as reasons to believe in God, I could only begin to scratch the surface in any attempt to delineate a full-scale presentation of an argument for God's existence. On my web site I have advanced one particular argument that has received attention in contemporary circles of theism that I find convincing. By way of summary, let me briefly present the argument.

(i) Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence.
(ii) The universe began to exist.
(iii) Therefore, the universe has a cause.

The first premise is generally not challenged since it appears to have a common-sense approach to explanations of created/originated items. The second premise receives ample justification both philosophically and scientifically. With respect to philosophical proof, the notion of our universe being infinitely old instead of having been born some 15-20 billion years ago entails that there is an actually infinite number of things that exists, namely the age of the universe. But transfinite calculations, though successful and appealing on paper, are self-contradictory and cannot possibly be any sort of physically real quantity of years for the universe. With respect to scientific support, the Big Bang model is the dominating theory today and enjoys much support. Dr. Stephen Hawking, in his latest book, admits that virtually all people now believe in the Big Bang.

But if the first two premises of the argument are true, and I think that they are, then the conclusion (iii) follows logically and inescapably. The best explanation for the cause of the space-time universe, since the cause brought space and time into being, is that God is probably the culprit. This seems true given that the cause must be non-spatial and timeless, not to mention extremely powerful and intelligent, in order to bring about a magnanimous entity like our universe.

This, along with the absence of any better explanation for the universe's origin, seems to point to the existence of God as a highly probably fact.