1. The Argument from Change

Sorry for the long gap between announcing the series and post #1.  I got whisked away to visit my family spur of the moment and then time just got away from me!

The argument from change is one of St. Thomas Aquinas' "The Five Ways".  These will be the first five arguments about which I write. 

"Everything in the world that we know and experience undergoes change" (Reasons to Believe, Hahn, pg. 32). 

Babies grow to adults.  Acorns turn into oak trees.  Yet an acorn is not an oak tree...YET.  An acorn only has the potential to become an oak tree.  An acorn is lacking what an oak tree has.  It cannot become an oak on its own, for nothing can give itself what it does not have.  The oak tree cannot exist before the change occurs.  Therefore it cannot change itself.  It needs something outside of it to change it.  BUT the things which are changing the acorn and exist outside of the acorn are changing, too.  (Air, water, decomposers, sunlight, soil...)  All of these things are in need of being acted on or they cannot change.  No matter how many things exist in these series, each one needs something outside itself to change.  All together these things equal the universe- which is changing, too!  Something- some force- must exist outside the universe which is not changing.  This is one of the things which is meant by God. 

If the Universe equals space, matter, and time, then God exist outside of space, matter, and time.