Reasoning to Christianity from Ground Zero Adapted from "When Skeptics Ask" by Normon Geisler and Ronald Brooks

 

1)    There are self-evident truths (e.g., "I exist," "Logic applies to reality")
a.    These are called "First Principles," or "undeniable assumptions."   They are "undeniable" in that the reality of the assumptions must be assumed in order to refute them.  For instance, to argue that you do not exist you must first assume that you do exist, else you would both not be able to hear the argument in the first place nor care to respond.
2)    Truth correpsonds to reality.
a.    That is to say, "That which is true is that which is real."
3)    Truth is knowable.
a.    All other views are self-defeating; to state "truth is not knowable" is to engage in logical confusion, since obviously the truth that truth is unknowable is itself knowable, thus invalidating the premise at the outset.
4)    One can proceed from self-evident truths to the existence of God.
a.    The Argument from Creation (proceeds from "I exist"
i.    The universe had a beginning.
ii,    Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else.
iii.    Therefore, the universe was created by something else.
iv.    You cannot have an infinite regress of causes.
v.    Therefore, the cause of the universe must itself be Uncaused.
vi.    An Uncaused Cause must have reflexive existence (that is, existence within itself, or uncontingent existence).
vii.    God is Uncaused, and has reflexive existence (He is because He is).
 
-- Put another way: --
 
viii.    Finite, changing things exist.  (For example, you.  You would have to exist to deny that you exist; so either way, you must exist.)
ix.    Every finite, changing thing must be caused by something else (If it is limited and it changes, then it cannot be something that exists independently.  If it existed independently, or necessarily, then it would have always existed without any kind of change.)
x.    There cannot be an infinite regress of causes.  (In other words, you can't go on explaining how this finite thing causes this finite thing, which causes this other finite thing, and on and on, because that really just puts off the explanation indefinitely.  It doesn't explain anything.  Besides, if we are talking about why finite things are existing right now, then no matter how many finite causes you line up, eventually you will have one that would be both causing its own existence and be an effect of that cause at the same moment, which is irrational.  There are two kinds of an infinite series: abstract and concrete.  Abstract infinitude exists only in mathematics.  Between any two points there are an infinite series of points, no matter how close those points are, so long as they are distinguishable along one dimension.  Now, if we make those points two bookends, and put them three feet apart, there are a mathematically infinite series of points between them.  Nevertheless, we cannot get an infinite number of actual books between them, no matter how thin the pages.  Nor does it matter how many feet of distance we place between the book-ends; we still cannot squeeze an infinite number of books there.  This is called a concrete infinite series, and no such thing exists.)
xi.    Therefore, there must be a first Uncaused Cause of every finite, changing thing that exists.
b.    The Argument from Morals (Proceeds from "values are undeniable")
i.    All men are conscious of an objective moral law.  (For instance, even the most obtuse relativist would take offense if you walked up to him on the street and for no apparent reason struck him in the nose.  He has a sense of moral "ought" that "you oughtn't've done that".  Why, if all morals are truly subjective?  Also, even the most dense relativist would agree that it ought not be that he/she be raped, tortured, mutilated, or murdered.  There is an objective moral standard that all men know, even if they don't practice it.)
ii.    Moral law implies a moral Lawgiver.  (Morals are not like natural laws.  Natural laws describe what is.  Moral laws describe what ought to be.  You cannot infer moral laws from nature; killing our young is morally wrong, yet several species practice it, and that cannabalistically.  Even relativists who demand that morals are subjective are actually being objective in this dictating a subjective morality and fighting against the objective.  Thus, any moral "ought" comes from beyond the natural universe.  You can't explain it by anything that happens in the universe and it can't be reduced to the things men do in the universe.  It transcends the natural order and requires a transcendant cause.)
iii.    Therefore, there must have been a moral Lawgiver.
c.    The argument from Design (proceeds from "Design implies a Designer")
i.    All design implies a designer (The basis for information sciences.  If you find the phrase "kill the cat" encoded in roman characters on any surface, you would not infer that this information had spontaneously arisen; you would instead correctly assume that the information was encoded onto the material by an intelligent -- if twisted -- encoder.)
ii.    There is great design in the universe  (secular scientists are confounded by this.  There is something known as the "Anthropic Principle" that underlies all science; that is, the universe appears to be minutely tuned [actually to the order of the Planck Constant, which is the absolute smallest value that can be measured due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle] for the support of human life.  Also, the DNA molecule turns out to be a binary, 4-bit encoded information system that is error-correcting, self-replicating, and impossibly advanced.  Etc.)
iii.    Therefore, there must be a Great Designer.
5.    God is a Necessary Being.
a.    "Necessary Being" means both that He is Uncontingent (His existence is reflexive and self-consistent) and that He is the source of all existence, being the Uncaused Cause.  What this directly implies is that if He did not exist, we would not exist; yet if we did not exist, He would continue to exist; His existence is Necessary, while ours is unnecessary.
b.    This involves the Argument from Being, which in simplest form says that once we get an idea of what God is, that idea necessarily involves existence.  It can be stated in brief as either:
i.    Whatever perfection can be attributed to the most perfect Being possible (conceivable) must be attributed to Him (otherwise He would not be the most perfect being possible).
ii.    Necessary existence is a perfection which can be attributed to the most perfect Being.
iii.    Therefore, necessary existence must be attributed to the most perfect Being
 
-- OR --
 
i.    If God exists, then we conceive of Him as a necessary Being.
ii.    By definition, a necessary Being must exist and cannot not exist.
iii.    Therefore, God exists and cannot not exist.
6.    My existence is not necessary.
a.    What this postulate states is that you will continue existing if I stop doing so; my existence is not necessary.
7.    Therefore, theism is true (there is a necessary Being beyond the world who has created the contingent things in the world and intervenes in the world.)
a.    God is necessarily transcendant; what that means is that He is not part of His creation.  In order to be an Uncaused Cause, He cannot simultaneously be an Effect of His own causality; that would involve an irrational causality loop.  He therefore must be external (i.e., "not part of") His creation, thus invalidating both pantheism and panentheism.
b.    The objection from the problem of evil can be solved.
i.    The objection:  How can evil exist if there is an all-powerful, good God?
ii.    God created man with free moral agency.
iii.    To violate man's free moral agency is to force him to do that which he is not willing to do, and therefore would be morally untenable.
iv.    To not have created man in the first place would be to not have created a possibly good thing, which would also be morally untenable.
v.    Therefore, evil is resident within us, and we are its authors.
vi.    Also, the objection assumes unnecessarily that God has not dealt with the problem; He has.  He died in our place, and will culminate history shortly.
c.    The objection to miracles can be solved.
i.    Objection:  Miracles cannot exist.
ii.    Answer:  This is a faith-statement not based on observation.
iii.    Observation in fact supports the concept of miracles (for instance, our existence).
iv.    Once you allow for an all-powerful Uncaused Cause, you necessarily also must allow for miracles.
8.    The Bible is an historically reliable document.
a.    History is an objective study of the past.
b.    There is great historical, archaeological, and scientific evidence to confirm the reliability of the Bible
i.    All archaeological finds relevant to the Bible have vindicated the Bible against its critics; for instance, the existence of the Hittite Empire, etc.
ii.    All scientific inquiry has validated the Bible, and in fact many great scientific insights of modern man were previously revealed in Scripture (such as the sphericity of earth, the stretching of space, the material nature of light, the polydimensional nature of spacetime, oceanographic currents, the hydrologic cycle, sterilization proceedures, etc.)
c.    (corollary) The Bible gives a reliable record of the teaching of Jesus Christ.
9.    Jesus claimed to be both fully human and fully God.
10.    He gave evidence to support this claim.
a.    The fulfillment of prophecy  (Down to the most minute detail, including the time and place of His birth, He had previously revealed Himself through the prophets thousands of years before His Incarnation.)
b.    His miraculous and sinless life.
c.    His resurrection  (A fact of history that is unassailable, except through religious bias against it).
11.    Therefore, Jesus is both fully human and fully God.
12.    Whatever God teaches is true (Necessary perfection implies that He cannot lie)
13.    Jesus (God) taught that the Old Testament was the inspired Word of God, and He promised the New Testament.
14.    Therefore, both the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God.
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