At the camp, I touched on three of the four major arguments for the existence of God. These are the Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, and the Moral Argument. I left out the Ontological Argument for the sake of time (and energy!).
In detailing the Cosmological Argument, which essentially says that God is the "Uncaused Cause," I was confronted with some interesting questions. One student, for example, stated that her friend could not adhere to such an argument because in a sense, Christians are asking nonbelievers to believe the argument that "something cannot come from nothing" to explain the existence of the universe, but then expect that concept to be thrown out when in relation to God. Essentially, the question has to do with the idea of "infinity." Infinity is, crudely, defined as "never ending." Logically, an "actual infinity" cannot exist. I explained the concept in this fashion:
Imagine that we are all on a train and we are on an infinitely long track, attempting to get off at this moment in time. Once we get off of the train, the track is no longer actually infinite, but was instead only potentially infinite because it had a stopping moment. That is, because we are here right now means that the universe had to have a beginning and it is therefore not actually infinite in its existence.
Still, while this argument holds ground in terms of the existence of the world, how do we explain a God who is biblically understood as "actually infinite," without being hypocritical in our logic? Are we really asking unbelievers to accept an argument and then asking them to ignore that same argument in relation to God...or even eternal life? This essentially is what one of the students of the camp emailed me with after the fact, and our discussion is outlined in a follow up blog found here:
The Infinite God: Part II
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