Why belief in God is a rational position

From Claudia Kalmikov on Christian Post.com (Mar. 3, 2023):

Can we prove with certainty that God exists? As I stated in a former article, "Why Certainty Isn't Necessary for Belief in God," I pointed out that we don’t live by certainty. We live by what is reasonable to believe. We live in confidence.  We can’t prove that God exists, but He has given us enough evidence to point to His existence.

There are several arguments for the existence of God. But here I will apply just two of them to show that everyone can be reasonably convinced that God exists, and that therefore, belief in God is a rational position.

The Kalam cosmological argument

The argument has three premises. The first is that whatever begins to exist has a cause. The second is that the universe began to exist. The conclusion is that therefore, the universe has a cause.

Let’s look at premise number one. Do things pop into existence by themselves? No! This is self-evident. Isn’t it? We just know this. So, if someone ever tells you he doesn’t believe in the law of causality, then simply ask, “What caused you to come to that conclusion?”

Can you think of something that exists that has no cause? God does not have a beginning. He is the uncreated creator. He is the uncaused cause. Since He exists and He isn’t created, then it follows that the first premise shouldn’t say that everything that exists has a cause. That’s why it says that everything that begins to exist has a cause.

How about premise number two? The second premise claims that the universe began to exist. Up until the last 200 years ago, people took an Aristotelian position that the universe was eternal — that it always existed. But since the time of Einstein, scientists know that the universe actually began to exist, and there’s very little debate about this. There was a big bang. We just know who banged it!

One of the main pieces of evidence for the universe having a beginning is the second law of thermodynamics, which says that the universe is running out of usable energy. But if it is running down, then it could not be eternal. What is winding down must have been wound up. So the question is then, who wound it up? The creator would have to be one who is intelligent, transcendent, and not subject to time or the universe. Someone outside it who freely chose to create the universe in time. The creator would have to be the first cause. Uncreated in order to avoid an infinite search (infinite regress) backward for its cause. That would mean the creator is a supernatural being, God. [read more]

Interesting, thought-provoking arguments. ✝️