How do we know there is a God?Part the second

Some great questions

• Has matter always existed?• Why does anything exist?• How did life begin?• Is God just a God of the gaps?• If there is a God, what can we say about that

God just from observation?

Some books

• Matthew Alper. The God Part of the Brain• Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion• Paul Davies. The Goldilocks Enigma• Paul Davies. The Origin of Life• Antony Flew with Abraham Roy Varghese. There is a God• N.T. Wright. Surprised by Hope

Instinctive behaviours

Orion Nebula

• The Big Bang• The universe - 13.7 billion years old• The Earth - 4.5 billion years old• No-one knows what caused the big bang• A singularity - infinite mass, no space, time• Second law of thermodynamics• The universe must have had a starting point -

or all the stars would have burnt out by now.

Animal Cell

• People in Jesus' time either– didn't believe in resurrection at all– didn’t believe in an immediate physical resurrection.

• What sort of resurrection?– Same body back, warts and all– A disembodied, ghostly body– Bodily transformation into a perfect, physical body

• No-one else believed the Messiah would be killed, much less rise from the dead.

• No spectrum of views on resurrection amongst the early Christians.

• Resurrection view occurred almost immediately after his death.

• Something happened!

So where now?

• No verifiable explanation for the big bang• Both naturalistic and supernaturalistic

explanations have holes• We all live in a conundrum• No verifiable explanation for life

The journey continues…