A New Direction

God has been doing some awesome stuff in my life the past few months. My internship at Manassas Baptist has been just awesome and I have learned so much there. Unfortunately, it looks like I will not be there much longer. Leaving that church will be hard, especially because I have developed relationships with the kids. But God is leading, and I know that the only thing I can do is follow because I want to be with Him every step of the way. So, that leads me to some other updates.

A couple of weeks ago, I e-mailed a pastor (Dave Waters of Sunset Hills Baptist in Alexandria) asking him if their church needed help with their youth group (I had heard that they were looking for a part-time youth guy). He e-mail me back with, "We have things covered." I e-mailed back with "ok! God speed!" (these e-mails were longer and more detailed, but those are the basics). A couple of days later, I received an e-mail from this pastor again, saying that he wanted to meet and have lunch. So, we met and things went really well. I turns out that although they were kinda set, they are a bit unsure about the future. So we talked and got to know each other (for only three hours). He told me that if in praying about this He feels that God is wanting us to move forward, we will. The next morning, I got an e-mail saying "let's move forward."
Amy and I had dinner with Pastor Waters and his wife. It was a great meeting. Afterwards, Amy seemed fairly excited about this job. For me, that was a good confirmation. I felt that God was leading us this way, but to see Amy get excited is always a good sign! Later that week, I got another e-mail saying that we should take the next step and I will be meeting with Sunset Hills deacons next Thursday. I am very excited about all of this, but I need all of your prayers! Pray that I continue to focus on God's leading and that I honor Him every step of the way.
There are some other things that are moving as well. In talking with Pastor Bradley during marriage counseling, I have learned about a new ministry starting up on George Mason's campus. Most of this is still in the works and I think some aspects will be a struggle, but God will provide. Please pray for this ministry and for everyone involved in it. I will talk about it more later.

Now, on to some things I will be covering in upcoming posts. I just started reading Bart Ehrman's book "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" and I want to go through this book on the blog, so be on the look out for my thoughts on the Introduction, coming sometime next week!

Hey all

Sorry I haven't written a blog post in a while. Life can easily become very crammed and it can be hard to sit down and write. I won't be able to write a long post, but I do want to update everyone on some things in my life.
I started working at Manassas Baptist Church almost three weeks ago and things seem to be going great. I am getting to know the kids and the staff, which has been awesome. I will need everyone's prayers as I begin to really start zonign in on some full time ministry opportunities for the fall and also for everything I will be apart of this summer!
Amy and I are doing great and the wedding day is approaching ever faster (which I am so totally pumped about!!)
Other than that, things are pretty sweet. I got a new phone plan so now I can text! WOO-HOO!

As for this blog...I think I will do one last post concerning the existence of God. I want to cover the Moral Arument and Jesus. After that, I think I want to do some posts on historical research on Scripture. I think it will be quite interesting!

The Existence of God: The Teleological Argument

The Third Argument: the Teleological.
(Teleological= telos [end, purpose]+logia [science, study]= "the study of purpose." So this argument has to do with the end purpose of things around us, usually the Universe/Nature.)

This probably the most widely known argument out of the ones I have presented. It comes in many-a-shape and form. It is even used in the Bible (Rom. 1:20)! A form of this argument is sometimes called 'The Argument from Design.'

William Paley forms the argument thus:
1. Human artifacts are products of intelligent design.
2. The universe resembles human artifacts.
3. Therefore the universe is a product of intelligent design.
4. But the universe is complex and gigantic, in comparison to human artifacts.
5. Therefore, there probably is a powerful and vastly intelligent designer who created the universe.

Ok. So where to start on this one. Let's start with a quote from an awesome dude named G.K. Chesterton, "So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot." So, let's look at the premises:

The first premise: Human artifacts are products of intelligent design.
If it really needs to be said, this is a VERY uncontroversial argument. If it was made by a human, it had some degree of intelligence behind it.

The second premise: The universe resembles human artifacts.
This is where much controversy arises. To say that the universe resembles human artifacts seems somewhat to be subjective and explanations of certain resemblances can be quite convincing, but the fact remains that there are resemblances to the appearance of intelligence behind the universe. The whole argument, I think, resets on this one premise. How do we go and provide support for this premise? Well, I don't think that there is any true way to provide an evidence that is irrefutable (as one of my good friend's always says, 'There are good arguments for really stupid things.'), but I do believe that there are strong evidences that can be provided.

Okay, so the first support I want to provide is from the Fine-Tuning argument (another form of a teleological argument). This argument states that, "the fitness of the universe for life either involves a series of staggering coincidences, or is the result of intelligent design" (taken from here). For example, George Wald, a Nobel Prize winning biologist, said, "When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution, the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility." Scientists have been able to determine that in order for life to even have the possibility of arising in the universe, at least 34 parameters must just so, or else our universe would never produce life (or it would be so unlikely that it is considered not possible), more info here.

The third premise: Therefore the universe is a product of intelligent design.

Again, this really depends on if whomever you are talking about accepts the second premise. If they do accept the second premise, then it follows that intelligent design is behind the universe.

The fourth premise: But the universe is complex and gigantic, in comparison to human artifacts.

This follows pretty nicely. I mean, nothing we humans have ever created has even come close to the complexity and size of the universe and nothing we create ever will.

The fifth premise: Therefore, there probably is a powerful and vastly intelligent designer who created the universe.

This is the very logical conclusion of the understanding of these premises. Remember, the strength of this argument relies on premise 2.

Something I want to say here is that while I think this argument is strong, I do not think that it is unbeatable. The strength of the argument for God's existence is not in one argument alone, but rather in all of the arguments together. So, that being said, take this argument and put it together with the others that you have amassed and use them to tell other about Him.

Grace and Peace be with you.