01-Evidences is it reasonable cause of universe

Is It Reasonable To Believe In God?

Acts 14:15-17 (NKJV)
15 . . .the living God, who made the
heaven, the earth, the sea, and all
things that are in them, 16 who in
bygone generations allowed all
nations to walk in their own ways. 17
Nevertheless He did not leave
Himself without witness, in that He
did good, gave us rain from heaven
and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts
with food and gladness."

Romans 1:19-20 (NKJV)
19 because what may be known of
God is manifest in them, for God
has shown it to them. 20 For since
the creation of the world His
invisible attributes are clearly
seen, being understood by the
things that are made, even His
eternal power and Godhead, so
that they are without excuse,

The number of Americans who
do not identify with any religion
continues to grow at a rapid
pace. One-fifth of the U.S.
public – and a third of adults
under 30 – are religiously
unaffiliated today, the highest
percentages ever in Pew
Research Center polling.

In the last five years alone, the
unaffiliated have increased from
just over 15% to just under 20% of
all U.S. adults. Their ranks now
include more than 13 million self-
described atheists and agnostics
(nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as
well as nearly 33 million people
who say they have no particular
religious affiliation (14%).

• Are there better
arguments for God’s
existence than against
it?
• What is the best
explanation for the
existence and
continuance of the
universe?

“A delusion is
something that
people believe in
despite a total lack
of evidence.”Richard
Dawkins

Faith is the great cop-out,
the great excuse to evade
the need to think and
evaluate evidence. Faith
is belief in spite of, even
perhaps because of, the
lack of evidence.
Richard Dawkins

✦ Faith is not some mystical,
unexplainable conviction arrived
at without evidence. (Isaiah
1:18)
✦ Faith is a conviction arrived at by
examining the evidence and
accepting the most reasonable
conclusion. (Heb 11:1; Rom
1:20; 10:17)

Hebrews 11:1-3 (NKJV)
1 Now faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen. 2 For by it the
elders obtained a good testimony.
3 By faith we understand that the
worlds were framed by the word
of God, so that the things which
are seen were not made of things
which are visible.

Today the theory of
evolution is about as
much open to doubt
as the theory that the
earth goes round the
sun.
Richard Dawkins

✦ Questions were asked of
students & professors who
claimed to be atheists in an
attempt to demonstrate that
naturalistic evolution is not the
result of scientific ‘proof’ but
rather a theory requiring one to
‘believe’ in something that
cannot be proven.

✦ Atheist ‘CLAIM’ that science has
‘proven’ their position
✦ Yet the question of HOW and WHEN the
Universe began CANNOT be
scientifically PROVEN -
✦ An adequate explanation for the obvious
design in our world CANNOT be
answered by science -
✦ The origin of life and its complexities
CANNOT be scientifically explained!
✦ Where is the science proving the change
of one ‘KIND’ to another?

✦ Cause And Effect — The Cosmological Argument The Most
Reasonable Cause For The Material Universe?
✦ Order of The Universe — The Teleological Argument - The Most
Reasonable Cause For Organization?
✦ The Irreducible Complexity of Living Things - The Most Reasonable
Cause of Life & its complexities?
✦ Mind, Ethics, & Reason – Anthropological Argument - The Most
Reasonable Explanation For Consciousness?
✦ Religion, – The Spiritual Argument - The Most Reasonable
Explanation For Man’s desire to Worship, Seek God, & The Bible?

The Most Reasonable Cause For The
Material Universe?
✦ Did the universe always
exist?
✦ If the universe had a
beginning, then it needs a
first cause.
“The Cosmos is all that
is or ever was or ever
will be”
(Carl Sagan 1980, Cosmos, p. 4).

Material Universe?
“The Cosmos is all that
is or ever was or ever
will be”
(Carl Sagan 1980, Cosmos, p. 4).
✦ Did the universe self-cause itself?
✴ In order to self-cause itself it would
have to not exist (to cause
existence) and exist (in order to be
caused) at the same time.
✴ Therefore, this option is ruled out
because it violates the “Law of
non-contradiction”.

The 1st Law of Thermodynamics
1. Energy can be neither created nor
destroyed (conservation of energy).
2. Thus power generation processes and
energy sources actually involve conversion
of energy from one form to another, rather
than creation of energy from nothing.
(Einstein's famous equation - E = MC2 -
energy (E) is equal to matter (M) times the
square of a constant (C).)
Material Universe?

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
1. Heat can never pass spontaneously from a colder to a
hotter body.
2. As a result of this fact, natural processes that involve
energy transfer must have one direction, and all
natural processes are irreversible.
3. Thus the entropy of an isolated system always
increases with time. (Entropy is the measure of the
disorder or randomness of energy and matter in a system.
- Both energy and matter in the Universe are becoming
less useful as time goes on).
Material Universe?

Material Universe?
“The Second Law of thermodynamics is
probably the most powerful piece of legislation
in the physical world. It ultimately describes
every process we have ever discovered: it is
the final Court of Appeal in any dispute relating
to action and procedures, whether they are
naturally generated or man inspired.
It draws the conclusion that in our universe
there is an overall reduction in order, a loss
of available energy that is measured as an
increase in entropy. . .”
[Geisler, Unshakable Foundations,
Bethany House, 2001, pg. 74]

Material Universe?
“. . . So the available stock of order is
being exhausted. Akin to the dying battery
of a flashlight, useful energy is being
dissipated into entropy after which none
remains for use… For us to live in a
universe in which the Second Law of
thermodynamics holds, then, it must be
a universe that has a starting point, a
creation.”
[Geisler, Unshakable Foundations,
Bethany House, 2001, pg. 74]

Material Universe?

Material Universe?
✦ A healthy, rooted tree does not fall over
because a fly flies into it.
✦ An encyclopedia is not produced by
spilling ink onto a stack of paper.
✦ These are not adequate causes. For
whatever effects we see, we must
present adequate causes.

Material Universe?
“If the existence of the cosmos as a
whole needs to be explained, and if
it cannot be explained by natural
causes, Then we must look to the
existence and action of a
supernatural cause for its
explanation”
[Mortimer J. Adler, How to Think about God New
York: Macmillian, 1980) pg. 131]

Order of The Universe?

((2000), The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the
Origins of the Universe p. 296, (NewYork: Pantheon).
“At first, the absence of a beginning appears
to be an advantage to the scientific
approach. There are no awkward starting
conditions to deduce or explain. But this is
an illusion. We still have to explain why the
Universe took on particular properties—its
rate expansion, density, and so forth— at an
infinite time in the past”

The Milky Way Galaxy: Vital Statistics
Diameter 100,000 light years
Thickness (Nucleus) 20,000 light years
Thickness (Disc) 2,000 light years
Number of Stars 100,000,000,000
60x60=3600
3,600 x 24 = 86,400 – (seconds in a day)
86,400 x 365 = 31,536,000 (seconds in a year)
186,000 x 31,536,000= 58,656,960,000,000 (#
miles light travels in 1 year) –
58,656,960,000,000 x 100,000 =

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the
Evidence of Evolution Reveals a
Universe Without Design (1996) by
Richard Dawkins (Norton
Publishing).

Publishing).
”Even the most ardent atheist concedes
that design is all around us. To a
Christian, the design we see all around us
is totally consistent with the Bible’s
explanation that God created all.
‘All appearance to the contrary, the
only watchmaker in nature is the blind
forces of physics, albeit deployed in a
very special way. A true watchmaker has
foresight: he designs his cogs and
springs, and plans their interconnections,
with future purpose in his mind’s eye.

Publishing).
Natural selection, the blind,
unconscious, automatic process
which Darwin discovered, and
which we now know is the
explanation for the existence
and apparently purposeful form
of all life, has no purpose in
mind. . . . It has no mind . . . . It
does not plan for the future . . .
it is the blind watchmaker.’

Hebrews 11:1-6 (NKJV)
1 Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a
good testimony. 3 By faith we
understand that the worlds were framed
by the word of God, so that the things
which are seen were not made of things
which are visible. . . . 6 But without
faith it is impossible to please Him, for
he who comes to God must believe that
He is, and that He is a rewarder of
those who diligently seek Him.

Not Only Is It
Reasonable To
Believe In God - It
Is Unreasonable
NOT TO!

Acts 17:30-31 (NKJV)
30 Truly, these times of ignorance
God overlooked, but now
commands all men everywhere
to repent, 31 because He has
appointed a day on which He
will judge the world in
righteousness by the Man whom
He has ordained. He has given
assurance of this to all by raising
Him from the dead."

Charts by Don McClain
Prepared October 10-12, 2013 - Preached October 13, 2013
West 65th Street church of Christ
P.O. Box 190062Little Rock AR 72219
501-568-1062
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Genesis 2:1-7 (NKJV)
1 Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host
of them, were finished. 2 And on the seventh day
God ended His work which He had done, and He
rested on the seventh day from all His work
which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the
seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He
rested from all His work which God had created
and made. 4 This is the history of the heavens and
the earth when they were created, in the day that
the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

Genesis 2:1-7 (NKJV)
5 before any plant of the field was in the earth
and before any herb of the field had grown.
For the LORD God had not caused it to rain
on the earth, and there was no man to till the
ground; 6 but a mist went up from the earth
and watered the whole face of the ground. 7
And the LORD God formed man of the dust
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life; and man became a living
being.

01-Evidences is it reasonable cause of universe