[To shorten this to a somewhat more palatable length, the original post was split in half. Because my intention was to present a solid philosophical argument to a philosopher, I decided to recruit an honest-to-God scientist to "moderate" the discussion and keep all of us honest. It turns out that my scientist friend didn't really like anybody's effort to make a coherent argument for God. Our correspondence will be included in the followup post, to be titled "The Philosophical Argument for God."] Some questions have easy, straightforward answers: What is the sum of three plus four? How old are you? What did you have for dinner? Do you like chocolate? How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man?  Okay, so maybe that last question wasn't that easy or straightforward, but it turns out the answer is 42.* Other questions, for example such as our existential questions, may not have one clear and correct answer to existential questions such as: Does God exist? What happens when we die? How did this universe originate from nothing? What existed prior to the Big Bang? How was life created from inanimate matter? However, just because these other questions are extraordinarily more difficult to answer doesn't mean we shouldn't even bother to put out any effort looking for the answers. These are some of the most consequential questions we could ever seek to answer, because the truth could change the way we live our lives from day to day. Philosophy professor Dr. Alex Malpass recently caused a minor sensation on the internet when he tackled the … [Read more...]