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I'm ashamed to admit that I was one of the obnoxious atheists you referred to in the beginning of the show. I left a snide comment on your blog in the summer of 2013, and you shot me down easily with Aquinas' arguments which I had never heard of before—the only arguments I had previously heard from theists were something like "because I have faith" or "because the bible says so", but admittedly I never sought out any real arguments because I am rarely confronted by theism, living in a largely atheist country in Europe. I cringe every time I think of how insulting my comment was, and I would like to offer an apology. I am still an atheist, but a far more humble one, thanks to you.

This is the first logical explanation I have ever heard of for the existence of God. I went to 8 years of Catholic school as a kid and the experience made me an atheist. I have been an agnostic for a long time, but after listening to this podcast, I might change my mind. Thanks.

Hi, Eric. Emer. Prof. Thomas E. Woods, Jr. explains in his audio recording entitled "No, You're Not a Dummy For Believing in God" (TomWoodsTV, YouTube, Oct. 27, 2014) that, using the Thomistic terminology, an essentially ordered series requires the First Cause to contain all actuality and no potentiality, i.e., for it to be pure actuality; or, in other words, for the First Cause to be all potentiality fully realized, i.e., fully actualized.

This by itself gives a rather detailed definition of God, since logically there are an infinite number of potentials which can be actualized, this requires the First Cause to be infinite action, i.e., that God is the collection of all action which is logically possible to take place, which includes all thoughts which are logically possible to think. Since the potential for such thoughts is logically infinite, we already have the concept that the First Cause must be infinite in intellect, i.e., that it is omniscient: having an infinite intelligence and knowing all that is logically possible to be known. We also have the concept of the First Cause being omnipotent, because it is the collection of all logically possible action, of which is infinite. Additionally, we have the concept of God being omnipresent, since as Emer. Prof. Woods explains in his aforecited audio lecture, a perfect copy of a thing is that thing. This is actually called the Law of Identity in the field of logic, which requires that A = A. Since God is the collection of all action, all actions are simply subsets of God. From the Law of Identity, we also get the concept of the Oneness of the First Cause, i.e., of monotheism, because to posit different Entity which had all these properties yet which is not in fact the Entity we had previously been discussing would be equivalent to saying that A != A.

For much more on these matters, Eric, including the answers to your other concerns, see my below article, which details physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics. The Omega Point cosmology demonstrates that the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point: the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity having all the unique properties traditionally claimed for God, and of which is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause. The Omega Point cosmology has been published and extensively peer-reviewed in leading physics journals.

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, https://archive.org/details/Th... , http://theophysics.host56.com/... .

Additionally, in the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of Prof. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos.

James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk[at sign]4ax[period]com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/foru... , http://archive.today/a04w9 .

While my understanding of physics is quite limited, I followed some of the links you have and found Redford's article ( http://theophysics.host56.com/... ) "The Physics Of God...". Tipler's Omega Point Cosmology is fascinating. I read only a couple of dozen pages, most of which is way above my head but the parts of Tipler's theory I was able to comprehend were things that I myself have purported to my Atheist and Atheistic Libertarian friends. Not in the vernacular of a physicists of course. But I have understood some of these things for some time because these very concepts of the nature of things and of God are delineated in the pages of the Bible if one pays close attention to what is being said. As a believer I have always resented "Religion-dom" as I call it, for their inability to explain or defend their position as being rational and not antithetical in any way to logic or reason. They are always falling upon their wrongly defined view of Faith. The proper definition of faith does not demand one leave their brains in their back pocket. It, in fact, is perfectly harmonious with the concept of reason and logic and of course real science as well.

Yes, "...the just shall live by faith." but for one to believe in God he must first believe that He IS. And the Bible clearly says this and it says how he could be known but that they denied the creator and became vain in their imaginations and worshiped the creation (there's your Materialists) rather than the creator.

Thanks Tom for airing this program and your unabashed defense of the rationality for the existence of God as a Libertarian. Very well done.

I just listened to your show on God. Here you give a "logical" proof on the existence of God. My problem is that in the entire "proof" you never actually defined the term "God". In logic, one can never prove anything without beginning with assumptions (axioms) and definitions. In America and elsewhere, the term God is generally assumed to be the God of the bible, a being with human attributes such as jealousy, anger, needs, etc. If by "God" you mean the prime mover, and nothing else, then you might just as well call this the laws of physics in our universe. It's a far stretch, however, to go from that (which atheists all accept) to Yaweh of the old testament bible, or Jesus of the newer version.

Interestingly, God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see my below article, which details physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics. The Omega Point cosmology demonstrates that the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point: the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity having all the unique properties traditionally claimed for God, and of which is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause. The Omega Point cosmology has been published and extensively peer-reviewed in leading physics journals.

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, https://archive.org/details/Th... , http://theophysics.host56.com/... .

Additionally, in the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of Prof. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos.

James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk[at sign]4ax[period]com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/foru... , http://archive.today/a04w9 .

I just ordered Feser's book, thank for the reference

I have one question about a thing, I did not understand. Maybe someone can help me out with this. It is clear, that god can't be perfectly good and perfectly bad at the same time, just as the egg, tom mentioned, can' be hot and cold at the same time. But why should we define badness as a lack of goodness (or cold as a lack of warmth) and not the other way around? To understand what I mean, maybe think about Goethe's attempt to show, that darkness is not a lack of light, but light a lack of darkness.

Great resource Tom. Trent Horn has a good resource page I've used for better defending/arguing that there are good reasons to believe in the existence of God.

Thank you for this source. will be keeping up with this!