Dear Parishioners,

Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest things to explain to people. I think one of those obvious things is the existence of God. I along with many people have a certain intuition that God must exist. After all, without God we have no reason to believe in other truths like morality or that the laws of nature are consistent. Yet, there are many people that do not have that same intuition. It can be a struggle to talk to them about the faith and simply telling them that they just have to believe or they should try praying won’t work because to them it sounds superstitious. They are looking for a reason to believe before they try any practice that might help them believe. So, in order to help you talk to someone like this in the future, I want to provide a very simple argument for the existence of God. Whether or not they accept it, at least they cannot deny that there is reason for people to believe God existence.

This argument is called the Argument from First case (also known as the Kalam Cosmological argument). First, everything that began to exist was caused to exist. To say otherwise would be saying that something comes from nothing, and no one has ever observed that happening. Even microscopic particles that seem to come into existence need gravity and a universe to exist in. Second, the universe began to exist. Our best theories about the universe is that it began in the Big Bang and almost all scientists believe in it. Also, there is the problem of entropy (heat death) which will naturally happen in any closed system for a certain amount of time. The conclusion: something caused the universe to exist. This being had to be powerful enough to make everything exist. It also needs to be outside of space and time because the universe exists in space and time. Lastly, it needs to be personal because there had to be a particular time chosen for the universe to begin. So, this being meets our expectations of what God is.

I can say more about this argument. But that’s all the space I have today. Feel free to let me know if you share it with anyone and how it went.

God bless!

Fr. Carter

P.S. We have recently hired a new Director of Religious Education. Her name is Fran Burke. Fran has several years of experience running Religious Education at St. Anselm along with their sports program and youth group. I think everyone involved in Religious Education will be pleased with her. Speaking of which, we are still accepting registrations for Religious Education.