image: reasonablefaith.org
Also, you should check out his winning smile.
The other man is one I know personally, and is one of the wisest, wittiest, and most wonderful men I know. He's been a guide to me for the better part of three years, and is a man I'm proud to call my friend. I choose not to name him because right now I haven't asked his permission, but he knows who he is. He was one of my teachers at my high school, Concordia Academy. He became aware of my interest in apologetics, and gave me a new copy of "On Guard", which I proceeded to devour (not literally) and I am much the wiser for having done so. So thank you.
***
What is apologetics? Why should I, a Christian, apologize for my faith? That seems really stupid and somewhat hypocritical, does it not? If I need to apologize for my faith, why should I believe it in the first place. Apologizing implies you believe a wrong has been committed, doesn't it?
Well, although Christians should apologize for some folks who claim to be Christian (*cough* WBC!!! *cough cough*), we should not apologize in the sense of saying, "Sorry that I'm a Christian. I know it's not politically correct to acknowledge my faith, but I'm supposed to now and again, so I'm sorry."
That's bull. Be PROUD of your faith. Stand up for it. Preach it everywhere, because you are commanded to by God.
The term "apologitics" that I speak of actually comes closer to the original meaning of the Greek word apologia than the the way the word "apologize" is used in today's vernacular. It means "Defense", as in a court of law. Apologetics is, put simply, the defense of a belief.
Alright, so this is where the actual apologizing part begins. Fasten your seat belts, you're in for a potentially mind numbing learning experience. I've discovered that people are either fascinated by these topics or bored by them. So, without further ado, here it goes. My first real attempt at defending the Christian faith. Oh boy.
The Universe: Why, and how, is it here?
The Universe exists. This is a fact that we must all accept. Sure, you can say that the universe is a dream we all share, and that when we wake up, we'll die. Or you could stop taking LSD and start thinking rationally.
You might say, "How can you know that for sure? There is no real truth, after all, truth is relative!" To you I say, with no small amount of exasperation, "Is that true?"
Image: My camera
This is Mr. Bugs. His brain is working better than yours, and it is literally non-existent.
For you to accept any of the arguments I'm going to put forth, you must first be a rational, logically thinking person. The argument I will present will be in propositional form, or modus tollens, that is to say that they will be a series of premises followed by a conclusion that, if the premises are proven true, must itself be true as well.
My main argument is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I put it in italics so you would pay attention to it. It is incredibly simple, easy to follow and understand, and is therefore quite popular. It goes like this:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
I will give evidence to support both premise 1 and premise 2, and if I am successful, than logically, the conclusion, or premise 3, must be true. Also, I will add on an additional argument to the Kalam, which I call The Extended Implications of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
Image: theosophical.wordpress.com
I know, I know. It's not exactly fine poetry.
Stop looking at me like that.
Stop looking at me like that.
(I am NOT a professional philosopher, nor am I in any way a master in the school of logic, so it may not be academically sound, but it makes sense to me. Plus, this is not necessarily an academic writing. It's a blog post by a teenager with in interest in philosophy. Cut me some slack.)
My argument goes something like this:
1. Time, Space, and a finite amount of energy (or power) are features of the universe.
2. The universe has a cause.
3. All causes transcend their effect.
4. Therefore, the cause of the universe must transcend Time, Space, and have an infinite amount of energy, i.e. be all powerful.
Read one after another, the premises of the Kalam argument and my own follow in this order:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Time, Space, and a finite amount of energy (or power) are all features of this universe.
4. Given premise 1 and 2, the universe has a cause.
5. All causes transcend their effect.
6. Given premises 3 and 5, the cause stated in premise 4 must transcend Time, Space, and have an infinite amount of energy, i.e.be all powerful.
You see? Simple stuff.
Defense of the first premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument: An argument from self-evidentiality
Ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing comes from nothing.
The first premise actually is simple stuff. It seems so unbelievably obvious, yet there are those who would deny it. I call these people "irrationals". They are often very nice people, even sometimes very smart people, but this one belief makes them seem slightly crazy to everyone they know who grasps basic logic.
Try to imagine nothing. You can't, because nothing is literally no thing. Simply by imagining anything at all, you've imagined something. The closest you could probably come to is a vacuum, and a vacuum is not nothing.
Pictured: Not nothing.
So, since nothingness has no attributes with which to create, we must therefore assume nothing can come from "it", if we can even call nothingness an it. I doubt very much that anyone who is actually in a search for the truth about the universe will disagree with the apparent self-evidentiality of premise one. If you do, all bets are off.
Defense of the second premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument: The defense from infinity, and the defense from the Big Bang
I'm going to give only 2 defenses for premise 2. The first one is kinda mathy, and the second one is kinda sciencey. Both should be enough, in and of themselves, to prove that the universe began to exist at some point.
My first argument is the argument from infinity. I've found a way to word it in modus tollens, so I will, because I LOVE this argument layout. It is simplicity itself, yet so potent for proposing ideas. Anyway...
1. Actually infinite constructs are impossible in reality
2. The universe is a construct that exists in reality
3. Therefore, the universe cannot be infinite
Understanding premise one of this defense requires an understanding of the difference between potential infinity and actual infinity. And, when it comes down to it, the difference is one of brackets. A potentially infinite sequence would be this: 1, 2, 3, 4,...
That sequence is infinite, because there is no real end to how for you could go. You can take the highest number you can think of, add 1, and boom! An even higher number comes into existence. You can do that to infinity.
Conversely, you can remove any one of those numbers from anywhere on the list, and it will still be infinite. Say you remove the number 164,284,645,347,343,782. You still have an infinity of other numbers in the list.You could remove every even number from the list, from two onward, and still have an infinite amount of odd numbers.
That's all cool stuff as a hypothetical practice, but as an actual, physical reality, infinity is obviously impossible. Take those same numbers, and place them in a set {1, 2, 3, 4,...}. This set is impossible. Why? Because we have just shown that the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4,.... goes on forever, and therefore cannot be contained in a set. It is an actual impossibility to place a second bracket on the end, because the end cannot exist.
Placing bookends on any infinite set removes its infinite status. Now imagine those brackets as the constraints of time or matter. The observable universe has an estimated 10 to the 80th atoms. Remove one atom, and how many do you have? You have 10 to the 80th minus one. No matter how many atoms you have, if you subtract from that number, you will have less than before.
"But matter cannot be created or destroyed, so your example is invalid!" Fine. I'll use a classical example to prove the logical incoherency of actual infinity. It's a classic thought experiment called Hilbert's Hotel, developed by David Hilbert, the German mathematician.
Imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and every one is full. Someone comes to the front desk and says, "Hey, I'd like to rent a room for the night." The man at the desk says, "Actually, we're full. But if you wait a moment, I can free up a spot for you. I'll let you move into room one, and have everyone else move one room over."
image: englishcentral.com
Yes? No, wait...yes. NO! Is this a trick question?
You could conceivably do this even when adding another infinite number of guests. No, I'm serious. Hear me out. If the people in room two move to room four, and the people in room three move to room six, and the people in four move to room eight, and so on into infinity, then every guest would be in an even numbered room, leaving an infinite number of odd rooms for the new group of infinite guests to move into.
So far, it seems fine, right? As confusing as it is, it all makes a certain kind of sense. Until everyone accept the people in rooms one and two move out. Then you have subtracted infinity from infinity and gotten two. In case you were wondering, THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! If a mathematician tried to subtract two identical quantities and come up with nonidentical results, he'd simply be wrong. Not because of some arbitrary rules imposed by "the man", but because that's how the universe works.
If infinity is impossible in actuality, then that means time cannot be infinite. Time is an actual thing. It must have started somewhere. After all, if the universe began at a time infinitely in the past, we wouldn't be in the time we are currently in. Why? Well, we wouldn't be here yet because there would still be an infinite amount of time between the past and the present.
Besides, we have solid scientific evidence that all of space and time began with a singularity somewhere around 13.7 billion years ago. There's cosmic background radiation, the cosmic red-shift in stars, and then there is the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem.
This last theorem comes up a lot when discussing the idea of a finite past. I looked it up; most of it is beyond me. However, in essence what it says is that ANY universe (or collection of universes for those of you who hold to M-Theory or the many worlds hypothesis) that is expanding must have a finite past.
(Oh, and by the way, the concept of space expanding from the Big Bang is definitely more complicated than it sounds. Space did not expand outward into nothingness. Instead, there was nothing, and then there was everything, and then everything itself expanded itself. Think of galaxies and all other stuff in space as little dots on the outside of an expanding balloon. They will appear to be moving apart, when in fact it is the area around them expanding...)
Sorry.
The implications of the funny sounding theorem from before is that no matter what, the universe had a beginning. That is, given it's correct. It's a highly contested and controversial theorem, but the same could be said about literally every single theory put forth in an attempt to explain the origins of the universe.
Which is why, as I wind up these arguments, I'd ask you to do more research into these topics yourself. All I've done here is present the best evidence I have found for the argument for existence that seems to make the most sense. It's up to you to decide for yourself where you think the truth lies.
But remember, there is only ONE truth...you either know it or you know a lie. Truth is constant, how we interpret it is subjective.
Summary: Premise One and Premise Two are valid...
....so therefore, the universe had a cause.
My own individual points seem to be as self evident as premise one. If our universe does in fact have a cause, this cause must have qualities that transcend those of the universe. If this were not true, then you could just say the universe created itself.
Does this prove Christianity? Certainly not. It does support intelligent design, that is to say, the theory that "Some features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected force such as natural selection.
Of course, nothing I've spoken of here touches on natural selection. That is a completely unrelated, yet highly contentious topic. Which is why you should join me next time for...
A Crash Course in Christian Apologetics Part 2: Is Evolution Believable, and What Does it Mean in Relation to Christianity?
A Crash Course in Christian Apologetics Part 2: Is Evolution Believable, and What Does it Mean in Relation to Christianity?
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