Journalist Case

Positives of Theism:

Theism (in general) is attractive because it offers what the majority of mankind consider to be satisfying answers to the questions answered by developed worldviews. Theism offers an answer to the question of the ultimate first cause of everything. In addition, there is a good basis for morality in living, and for meaning in human existence ----giving life value.

Criticisms of Theism ---With Theistic Responses:

Atheists, pantheists and others, however, have questioned theism with various objections. The three main ones are:

1.) The universe doesn't need a first cause ...it might be eternal.

Theists reply that all finite things must have a beginning, and everything that begins to exist has a cause. This is self-evidently true, because every finite thing exists in time, and you can always go back in time to the beginning point of any finite thing. In addition, every finite thing is "dependent", meaning that it exists because it is the result and effect from some something(s) that produced the finite thing at its beginning. --Real things cannot possibly come into being from absolutely nothing. (...in other words: no dimensions, no forces, no matter, no time, no vacuum, no quantum energy, no physics, no alternate universes or "strings", and no God. ...Nothing.)

--So, finite things must have a beginning to their existence. The universe is such a "dependent" and finite thing, which must be the resultant effect from something prior. There cannot possibly be an infinite series of finite things (allowing the universe to be infinitely old), because no matter how many finite individual things there are (such as galaxies), it is always possible to number them, confirming that an infinite number of finite things (beings) is not possible. -- So, again, every finite thing (including the universe) must have a beginning, and everything that begins to exist has an adequate cause for its existence.

Beyond these points, the theistic view is strongly coroborated in the facts of the universe that actually exists, because the origination of the universe (including its matter, forces, dimensions and time) is something which cosmologists say arose out of an event called the "Big Bang" some 15 billion years ago. --So, the best science as it is now understood, says that the universe did have a beginning. The Big Bang is understood to have begun from a "singularity," which is a "point" with zero dimensions, matter or time. This "singularity" was at the "beginning" of (and "before") the existence of time, space, matter and any forces connected to matter (such as gravity, nuclear forces, or electromagnetism). Before the Big Bang there was no space, time or matter. These facts as cosmology scientists