The Argument from Consciousness for the Existence of God

The Reasons to Believe #57

Our Reasons to Believe Scripture passage for today is 2 Corinthians 10:5. It reads, "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." 

Our Reasons to Believe quote for today is from C. S. Lewis. He said, "All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that's my job...And I'm prepared to say on that basis if anyone thinks the Gospels are either legends or novels, then that person is simply showing his incompetence as a literary critic. I've read a great many novels and I know a fair amount about the legends that grew up among early people, and I know perfectly well the Gospels are not that kind of stuff."

Our Reason to Believe powerpoint today is titled "The Argument from Consciousness for the Existence of God" from "The Handbook of Christian Apologetics" by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli:

When we experience the tremendous order and intelligibility in the universe, we are experiencing something intelligence can grasp. Intelligence is part of what we find in the world. But this universe is not itself intellectually aware. As great as the forces of nature are, they do not know themselves. Yet we know them and ourselves. These remarkable facts -- the presence of intelligence amidst unconscious material processes, and the conformity of those processes to the structure of conscious intelligence -- have given rise to a variation on the first argument for design.

1. We experience the universe as intelligible. This intelligibility means that the universe is graspable by intelligence.

2. Either this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the products of intelligence, or both intelligibility and intelligence are the products of blind chance.

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