I think the most concise answer is no and yes. Many people seem to think that God is not fair and they are 100% right. As a matter of fact God is incredibly unfair. John Piper writes that when you insult someone, the offense grows with stature. In other words, if you slap me on the cheek, I might slap you back. If you slap your mom on the cheek, there might be more serious consequences, if you slap the President on the cheek, you might go to jail for a long time. If you slap God on the cheek (figuratively) by your actions and your sins against him, it is punishable by death.

Therefore when God says to himself that he wants to create people so that they can enjoy his glory and splendor (tangent: the world was a reflection of God's glory and splendor at one point and still can be seen in the beautiful natural scenes and even in the urban worlds.) and that he wants us to get the most contentment out of life by following his rules, and yet we break them. Is not God more than generous and gracious to not put an end to the world on the spot?

I read a book once that portrayed a young girl who had a chance to create little beings in her own litte world. She made them and as such, they were like her children. They loved her and she was crazy about them. They were only about two inches high but she would talk to them, show them things, and play with them. Then one day, one of them was heading to jump off a table. She ran to him and said, "No don't do that you will get hurt." Even though you and I know how foolish that would be for a two inch-tall thing to jump off a table, the being was angry that his freedom was being usurped. From that point on, the creatures did not trust her and finally they did things that the girl had told them not to and they got hurt and then they blamed the girl for it.

I think God is more than fair when it comes to us. He has revealed Himself to us in two ways (I believe) generally in Creation, which we are a part of (ask doctors if they can deny an intelligent Creator) secondly he has specially revealed himself through the Bible. (More later on how the Bible can be trusted, for now we assume that the Bible is fact.) Proverbs 21 says: "To obey the Lord is the fundamental principle for wise living; all who carry out his precepts acquire good moral insight." Try it.

See previous entry for a little backgound. Many people try to just deny God's existence or that there is a divine being. However, to deny that God exists, he would have to exist first and thus by denying his existence we are affirming it. I think that we all have an innate knowledge that there is a greater being beyond this world. Some call this being a force or Mother Earth or something of the sort. The fact is that whatever we call it, there is something that draws us to seek that being. SOoo, if we establish that there is a Supreme Being, then we can begin to accept other things.

why not? Frankly, I come to this question a little at a loss for words because the concept is so large to put my brain around. Basically, I see there being a few answers to this question. First answer: There is something because someone or something caused it. But what caused this someone or something? We will address this later. A second answer: There is something because it happened to come about by chance in a chaotic universe. A third answer: It was a mistake. We are not supposed to be here and we have no purpose in this world but to live and die and cease to exist.

It is obvious which way I lean. I don't believe in evolution because of evidences of creation and the lack of evidence to support the theory of evolution. For instance, it seems that if there was an evolution of the species then we would have found fossils of a 'birdfish' or something of the sort.

Beyond this are the different arguments in favor of a Creator. As alluded to in the previous paragraph, you and I have a cause (our parent's caused us). That cause has a cause and that cause (your grandparents) was caused by your great grandparents. So that cause was caused by the cause that was caused by the cause...etc. So there is a really long line of causes. These causes either have to come to point of origin. Either there was a cause that caused itself or there was a cause that was always there. The former cannot not be true because for a cause to cause itself it would have to exist and not exist at the same time and that can't happen because 1 cannot equal 0. So there had to be a cause that always existed. That's enough for now, I am tired. I am going to think about the rest of this question in the next post.

Why is there something instead of nothing? This to me is the foundational question that leads to all the others. I think in this postmodern world we need to begin here because we can no longer have the luxury of assuming that everyone has gone to Sunday School. Therefore the question must be addressed, why are we here on this earth and why is there an earth. Don't get me wrong I don't presume to say that I know the answers to all of these. I do believe that there are many very powerful points and arguments that have been made throughout the years that shed some light on this subject.

I think it is pertinent to start with the existence of God since we claim that He is the source of all life and others claim there is no God or that God is not relevant. How do we know that God exists if we cannot sense him. How do we know that God is relative, i.e. what is God for you is not God for me. What is God? and if God is more than what, who is God? What is all this about the Trinity? How can God be three in one? Is God all powerful? Is God all-loving? If God is both of these why are there famines allowed? Did God give us the Bible? If so how do we know He did?

These are just a few of the questions that penetrate the minds of many of us and I think it is important to think about them because they are common questions today. So on my next entry, I propose to begin with the question of why is there something instead of nothing.

I think Ryan has a good idea in his skeptic's corner. He is working out his questions and creating a good discussion. I wanted to do something similar. But in this case instead of debating somethings that I see as foundational, I would like to move beyond to other things. For those of you who enjoy to talk about theology as I do, I thought I might begin this blog and see where it leads. Though i just used the word 'theology', I think it's ok to debate a number of topics in order to better understand where we stand. No doubt several gray issues will be brought up but that will be good.