He used an analogy comparing creation to a row of dominoes falling over onto each other, but the ultimate cause points back to the finger that pushed the first domino. Pearson, cause-and-effect types of reasoning fall under cosmological arguments. In fact, understanding the universe is one of the ways to prove God’s existence. Pearson demonstrated that an understanding of science and faith can work hand in hand. Using the example of Father Georges Lemaître, the Catholic priest who first proposed the “Big Bang theory,” Dr.

Pearson said, “I think when you talk about proofs, there’s this false dichotomy that we have today from pop culture and maybe bad media coverage that says that science and faith conflict.” He believes that many people will deny the existence of God out of a desire to be taken seriously as a scholar or to be seen as a rational person but said that there is no conflict between science and faith. The idea that faith might seem to conflict with both science and reason came up a couple of times during the discussion. Pearson pointed out that though the complicated theory is valid, a child who doesn’t understand mathematics would not be convinced of its truth. He continued, “The problem with proofs for today is when people say you can’t prove these things, people have a different understanding of what they think a proof is than what a proof actually is.” He goes on to explain that a philosophical proof will not necessarily convince everyone who hears it rather, “a proof works if its premises, with the use of the rules of logic, actually support the truth of the conclusion.” Using the idea of a mathematical theory, Dr. Pearson points out, “ are something that we’ve had from the beginning of the time that the Church fathers have been writing about the faith, showing that the god of the philosophers - the ancient Greeks - just so happens to be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Pearson spoke about arguments made by St.

Many arguments for the existence of God come from the middle ages, but the ideas have been put forward by people seeking the truth of God long before that, to the beginnings of Christianity and even centuries earlier in pagan cultures.

A Shorter Summa by Peter Kreeft