R.C. Sproul

Because anybody just opens their eyes and looks at the world, they know there has to be somebody who put all that together.

What that lady was doing was articulating the cosmological argument.

And the old argument, look at the world and explain the origin of the world on natural causes, is one that in spite of the massive critique leveled by Kant and his followers, is still a very, very effective argument for the existence of God.

And what I'm going to try to do here in the brief time is to reduce that argument to its basic essentials and try to give you a way in which you can articulate the argument

that will be effective in dealing with the skeptic.

Now, I'm not saying that this volume is going to convince everybody of the existence of God, but certainly you'll be able to give a credible reply for the reason why we maintain a confident belief in the notion of God, the Creator.

I'm going to do this both in terms of giving a brief outline for a positive defense, and then at the same time, an outline for a critique of alternate views that persist in our world today.

And I'd like to, before I do this, give you a little personal testimony on this.

I've dealt with this basic argument again and again and again and again and again, not only at the grassroots level,

But with professional philosophers, those who are philosophy professors, with professional atheists, you know, that is that their whole identity intellectually is found there.

I've articulated this argument with postdoctoral graduate professors and teachers at Harvard, at Yale, and all other kinds of places.

And I've yet to find someone put a hole in this argument.

And I find people befuddled and somewhat annoyed, but they are suddenly get on a defensive about this particular argument.

It's very simple in the form in which I give it.

The basic argument is this, that nature indicates and evidences the existence of something

that is self-existent and eternal.

That's what we're trying to demonstrate.

Now that in and of itself does not give us Yahweh, the God of the Bible, and we're not going to at this point establish a whole thoroughgoing notion or doctrine of God on the basis of this argument initially, but all we're going to try to answer is the objection that science and modern philosophy has ruled out the possibility of an eternal creator, okay?

Now, here's the way we do it.

The first thing we try to demonstrate or get people to affirm is that something exists now.