when one of the things I think that’s
happened in the religious community is
you see people who are brought up in
religious homes and they’re taught the
stories of the Bible they’re never
taught any deeper philosophy or theology
that attaches to that so they have sort
of a children’s eyes view of what God is
and and how to how to think about God
you sort of think of God still as the
old man in the sky who’s controlling
things what if what in your opinion is
the most reasonable proof of God what
have you found to be the most convincing
proof of God’s existence well I think
that those are two questions for me my
favorite argument for the existence of
God that I find the most compelling is a
version of the cosmological argument
which goes like this
whatever begins to exist has a cause
something can’t just come into being
from nothing secondly the universe began
to exist I think we have both good
philosophical arguments and scientific
evidence for the finitude of the past
from which it follows third therefore
the universe has a cause and when you do
a conceptual analysis of what it is to
be a cause of the universe you arrive at
a being which is an uncaused
beginningless timeless spaceless
enormous ly powerful personal creator of
the universe so for me that is a very
convincing argument for God but I find
that with university students that’s not
the most convincing argument you can
ignore philosophical arguments for the
finitude of the past or scientific
evidence for the beginning of the
universe but the argument that they find
I think the most compelling is what I
call the moral argument and it would go
like this one if God does not exist then
objective moral values and duties do not
exist that is to say in the absence of
God everything’s becomes
socio-culturally relative to but
objective moral values and duties do
exist there are some moral absolutes
some objective values and duties
therefore God exists now this is an
argument which is impossible I think to
ignore because every day you get up you
answer by how you treat other people
whether you regard them as having
intrinsic moral value or whether they
are mere means to be used for your ends
and so this argument I find tends to be
the most convincing for people