Episode 1: Infinite Regression

Show Transcript

Jay Lee [00:00:00]:

Hey, this is Pastor J Lee, and I want to introduce you to God. The Intro to God podcast. Episode one infinite regressions. You. Um hey, guys, pastor J here. Welcome to the first episode of the Intro to God podcast. Now, I have to tell you, this podcast has been a long time coming for me. I've been thinking about doing this podcast probably for about three years now.

Jay Lee [00:00:47]:

And actually, if you've listened to the trailer episode, you know, really much longer. I served as a Christian pastor for over 13 years. And so in that time, I've had a lot of conversations with people about God and faith, about Jesus and the Bible. But the vast majority of people that I've talked to over the years were people who already believed in God. And so I really wanted to create a space where those of you who don't believe in God or are agnostic or maybe just trying to figure out exactly what you believe about God and all this spiritual stuff, a safe space where you can engage in these conversations in a real and authentic way. And I do hope that this will become a conversation. So I have set up a website. It's Intro to Godpod.com, and I've set up a box there where you can record messages and send me your feedback and your questions.

Jay Lee [00:01:46]:

Now, you can also send me, like, an email through the website as well if you don't want it to be public. But it would be way more fun if you would record messages of your comments and your questions so that I can play them on the podcast. And so I do hope that this will become a real conversation. Now, full disclosure, my hope is that you will meet God along the way. And maybe if you're here, you're kind of also hoping that you might meet God along the way as well. And I'll be sharing information with you guys in hopes to persuade you of some things, but not in a debating sort of a way where I'm trying to hammer you down into submission with some piece of evidence or some piece of information. I'm not really interested in those kinds of conversations. And honestly, if you're coming from a place where you're just looking for an argument or just seeing if you can try to stump me, then this is probably not the podcast for you.

Jay Lee [00:02:45]:

Really, all I want to do is share with you guys some insights and some information that I've learned along the way, things that I've personally found to be very compelling. And I want to share those with you to see if maybe you find them compelling as well, and maybe you won't. Something that I've learned over the years is that things that I might find extremely compelling there's always going to be some people out there who think, eh. But I share these things in hopes that there are some of you who are listening to this who might be moved by some of these things that I've learned along the way. Now, more full disclosure. I am a Christian pastor, so I'm not just hoping that you will meet God along the way, but that you would meet the God of the Bible, that you would meet Jesus. But we're not going to start our conversation there. I want to start our conversation actually one step even further back and have a conversation in this season just about the possibility of the existence of any God.

Jay Lee [00:03:53]:

And I want to start there because I feel like for many of you, you're coming from a place where even the idea that there is some god out there who exists pretty much occupies the same space in your brain as the exist instance of Hercules or Thor or even Superman. That the idea that God exists is really just kind of occupying this space in your brain of just pure fiction and fantasy and no more likely to be true than the possibility that Superman really exists somewhere in the universe. And so for season one, and I almost feel like I should call this season zero, I want to cover three of the classic arguments for the existence of a God. Now, I don't really think that I can argue you into believing that God exists by sharing these three arguments with you. In fact, I don't know if anybody comes to really, truly have a faith because somebody presented some rational arguments to them. If I knew that I was only going to be able to have one conversation with you, it probably wouldn't be the stuff that we're going to talk about here in season one. Not that it isn't important stuff, but if I knew that I was only going to have one conversation with you, we'd probably go straight to talking about Jesus. But I do think that these arguments and maybe it's even better to call them questions I think there are three really compelling questions.

Jay Lee [00:05:25]:

These three questions, though neither of them is a silver bullet that is just going to absolutely prove that God must exist. But when you put the insights of these three questions together, I think they make a compelling case that maybe it can remove some barriers in your mind and maybe some preconceived notions out of the way so that you can have more of an openness to the possibility that God really might exist, to sort of move the question of God's existence out of the place in your brain that is occupied by Thor and Hercules and Superman and move it more into an objective place that says, okay, I don't know if God exists, but I can at least consider its possibility. Seriously? And so that is the direction for season one of this podcast. Three arguments for the existence of God is what some call the cosmological argument. Some people call it Calam's argument, or the argument of the first mover. But really what it boils down to is a question about the origins of life and the universe. I don't know how much thought you've put into this, but have you ever maybe as you were lying in bed trying to drift off to sleep, and you pondered the question, where did it all come from? Where did the planets and the stars and the galaxies come from? Where did you and I come from? And I guess for the person who believes in a God, there's an out there, right? You can say, Well, God created it. Maybe you feel like it's sort of an easy out.

Jay Lee [00:07:37]:

But for a person who doesn't believe in a God, I think the question becomes much more difficult to answer. Can we explain the existence of the universe and the existence of you and I without appealing to some God or some supernatural element, some element outside of the natural order? Is there a way to explain the universe by purely naturalistic means? And so I think a lot of modern people believe that science has enabled us to answer that question. Yes. That through what we have discovered, through biology and geology, chemistry, physics, that science has enabled us to explain the existence of the universe by purely naturalistic means. And we don't have to appeal to some sort of supernatural cause such as a god. And so let's just try to tease that out for a moment. And let's just start with us, you and I. What might you say if I asked you, where did you and I come from now? Probably you would say, well, we came through the process of evolution, right? That life on this planet evolved over time, that lower life forms, through the process of mutation and natural selection, have resulted in more and more complex living organisms and the diversification of living organisms on this planet and different species, one of which resulted in us.

Jay Lee [00:09:22]:

And so, basically, we can answer the question where you and I came from by appealing to evolution. And so then the next question that I would probably ask you is, well, evolution had to start somewhere, right? There had to be some living organism to be able to go through this process of evolution that eventually resulted in all the different life forms on Earth. And so where did that living organism come from? Because when we're trying to explain the existence of things in the universe by purely naturalistic means, then there's sort of this law of cause and effect, right, that if there's an effect, there must be some cause that precedes it. The effect which is us. The cause was evolution. But those first living organisms that went through this process of evolution, they had to come from somewhere too. They themselves are also in effect. And so what was the cause behind those first living organisms? And so at this point, I think we might appeal to the fact that there was a time in the distant past where there were certain conditions present on the earth, the right mix of chemicals on the Earth, what some scientists call the primordial ooze.

Jay Lee [00:10:47]:

Just this right sort of material in the right sort of environment with the right conditions present, came together to form the first chemical compounds that would become the first amino acids, which eventually would become the first single celled organism, which could then undergo over billions of years, this process of evolution. And so the answer is, there were certain conditions present on this planet that allowed the first living organism to form. And so then the next question that I would ask is, where did the planet Earth come from? And the material that was present on the planet Earth that could, under the right conditions, become that first single celled organism which could then undergo the process of evolution, right? Because, again, if we're trying to explain the existence of the universe by purely naturalistic means, then there's sort of this law of cause and effect and the existence of the Earth itself is also in effect. And so there must be some cause that precedes it. And so at this point, maybe we would appeal to Big Bang, right? That there was a point in the very, very distant past, billions and billions of years ago where all the matter in the universe was super condensed. And that at some point, that super condensed ball of matter I don't know what to call it, I am not a scientist. But that super condensed ball of matter exploded out and over billions and billions of years with just the laws of physics and chemistry working on that matter. It eventually became everything that we see in the universe, the stars and the planets and the galaxies.

Jay Lee [00:12:37]:

And so Big Bang is the cause that resulted in the effect of the Earth and the conditions that were present on the earth, which then resulted in the effect of the first single celled organism coming into existence, which then resulted in the effect of evolution acting upon that single celled organism so that it became all the living things on this earth, including you and me. So big bang. And so then, inevitably, I'm going to ask the question, well, where did all of that matter come from? All of that matter that was super condensed, that exploded out and became everything that we see in the universe, where did that matter come from? And I think you're starting to see the tension for the person who's trying to explain the existence of the universe by purely naturalistic means. Because even though science has enabled us to go further and further back in the timeline of existence and with theoretical physics, even back to the point of the start of the universe itself, right? But no matter how many steps backwards science allows us to take in the timeline of the universe, but it still leaves us with the same problem of not being able to get back to the beginning. Because every time we take one step back in the timeline, we then have to explain, well, what was the cause that preceded that step? And then if we take another step back, what was the cause that preceded that step? And so at some point, if we're trying to explain existence without appealing to any god or any supernatural outside of the natural order element in the universe, we would have to be able to get back to a point. Where nothing sprang into something which is not only scientifically extremely difficult to explain, but maybe just as importantly, I think logically and philosophically, it's impossible, right, for nothing to somehow spring into something. And so what that leaves us with is sort of an infinite regression backwards when we try to explain the existence of the universe by purely naturalistic means. Because no matter how many steps back you take, you still have to explain what preceded that step.

Jay Lee [00:15:08]:

Recently I've even heard that scientists are now appealing to the existence of other universes. That the matter that became the Big Bang in our universe is actually a result of something happening in another universe. But you can see how that would not solve the problem because then you'd have to ask, well, where did that other universe come from? You're just taking one more step back and no matter how many step backwards you take, you'll never be able to resolve that problem world. Now, you might be thinking, well, okay, but that doesn't prove that God exists. And I would say that I agree with you. That doesn't prove that God exists. And I think it's sort of an easy out to sort of brush aside the point of this argument because it doesn't necessarily prove the existence of God. I totally agree with that.

Jay Lee [00:16:16]:

But I think what it does prove is that there are some serious logical problems with explaining the existence of the universe without appealing to something outside of the natural order. And I think what it strongly suggests, just from a purely logical standpoint, is that there is probably at least one eternal thing that exists that the only way to resolve this problem of infinite regressions is to come to the conclusion that there must be at least one eternal thing in existence that could possibly start this chain of cause and effect. Now, again, that doesn't necessarily mean that the eternal thing is God. You could theorize that the universe itself is eternal. Though I think just in general, the idea there is anything that exists that is eternal is hard to square with a purely naturalistic perspective on the universe. But it is true. It doesn't necessarily mean that that eternal thing must be God. But I think it does suggest very strongly that there is probably at least one thing that exists that is eternal that could possibly start this chain of cause and effect.

Jay Lee [00:17:42]:

Could it be God? Maybe. Could it be that the universe itself is just eternal? Maybe. But the point, I think, is that it gives you something to think about, that maybe science hasn't completely explained away the need to appeal to something supernatural, meaning just outside of the natural order to explain the existence of the universe and to explain our existence. And I know that I said that we're not really talking about the God of the Bible in this season yet, but I think it is worth noting that the idea of a God who exists eternally and who initiated the creation of the universe right in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. This idea of an eternal God who was the first cause and the first mover to initiate this chain of cause and effect suddenly becomes at least an option to consider that maybe there's more to the possibility of God existing than you thought. And so that is our first episode. I want to thank you so much for joining me on this journey, and I hope that you'll continue to journey with me. And I want to hear what your thoughts and your reactions and your questions are.

Jay Lee [00:19:10]:

And so you can visit us@introtogodpod.com. And if you have any feedback or questions, please leave me a message. You can record the message straight from your phone or your browser, but let me know that you're out there listening and let's go on this journey of discovery together. If you're enjoying the podcast and want to support us, please take a moment to share this episode with somebody, visit our website. Intro to Godpod.com next time. Episode Two Intentionality.