A Bit of Orange

One of my many fans wrote in on this article to offer the following comment, Edited slightly for brevity:

Begging the Question is a logical fallacy that involves already assuming the thing you’re trying to prove to be true, in the lead up to the conclusion of your argument. By labelling God as a “neccessary being” you are putting God’s existence into the definition of God – saying he has to exist. Therefore, you are begging the question. I could do the same with anything. For example, lets say I make a claim about a Wolf King, and the definition of the Wolf King is that he created all wolves. Well, wolves couldn’t have existed if he didn’t, so he is a necessary being, and he must exist. Furthermore, it is never stated why infinite regression is impossible. To clarify, I do not claim to know where the universe came from, but you do. You claim this start point to be God, in other words you claim that the start point is both sentient and aware. You also claim, I assume, that this start point is your specific religion’s start point. To recap, you asserted that infinite regression is impossible, and beyond that you are begging the question by claiming God as a necessary being. Thank you, and I look forward to a response.

And I was delighted to offer the following response.

Sup, Yup?
I am not begging the question, but I understand why it sounds like that. On the surface, it does look like we are saying, “We define God as a being that MUST exist, so obviously a being which MUST exist must exist. Thus, God exists.”

But the reason we define God as a being which MUST exist is not arbitrary, the way authors have tended to define elves as creatures with pointy ears. The necessity of God’s existence is derived, first from his self descriptions. The Bible tells us that God always has been and always will be. We are not forcing into Christianity something which the Bible does not already teach. The only other religion which claims an eternal God outside the Bible is Islam, and I’m not entirely sure about Islam (though it is clear they borrowed much of their ideas of God from the Bible, and the Koran even says so).

Next we can argue back toward that by way of the universe- the universe is time, space, matter, and energy. Nothing can be eternal in the past by ways of consecutive days, and the laws of physics tell us the universe must have had a beginning, and so we know the universe must have come into being.