Perhaps as nonsensical as it gets

Wow what a day so far. Just getting back from a holiday (Labor Day) where there were multiple people out the days before and the days after the holiday is always a wild ride. And here I am just getting to the point where I usually am at 8:30 in the morning. Hey, three hours “late” isn’t all that bad nor does it even matter much in this neck of the woods.

I just received an email from someone who made a statement and then added “insh’allah” to the end of it. Given the context and the “allah” I figured it meant God willing and I was by and large correct. It actually means “if God so wills it” which is a tad different but not all that much so. Deo volente is the Latin form of the Arab phrase which is more in keeping with Christian expression. That having been said I was always impressed with the monotheism Islam and the intellectual contributions that Muslims have made to the defense of monotheism. Probably the most striking contribution that few Christians are aware of is the Kalaam cosmological argument for the existence of God. Now, of course, there have been other cosmological arguments as well (Aquinas’ Third Way being a popular one) but I have at least an emotional attachment to the Kalaam which exists quite independently from its philosophical merits.

In college I was a new Christian and a voracious reader. I would read books that were not required (**gasp**) for any of my classes and would largely center around (**gasp** **gasp**) theology and philosophy. It was there I was introduced to Schaeffer, Lewis, VanTil, Huxley, Buckley, Descartes, Hume, Plato, and a host of others that God used to form me into who I am today. The first really well-constructed argument I came across for God’s existence was the Kalaam cosmological argument. I sought to understand it and looked for attempts at its refutation.

There are many who believe that this argument (and others like it) are the best intellectual arguments for God’s existence. I happen to agree. With the caveat, of course, that no one has ever had a genuine intellectual barrier to accepting Christ as their Lord and Savior. Not even me. Rank rebellion has a tendency to reduce the intellect to garbage.