Third, it is unclear why, if you had undertaken any serious study of apologetics, "things like faith were easily ripped apart since they could appeal not to reasons, but only authority." Faith is an existential response to God, à la Kierkegaard, but it is founded in facts. The natural theology of Thomas Aquinas and the Thomists, when coupled with the historical apologetics of N.T. Wright, Gary Habermas, and William Lane Craig, provides a sturdy intellectual foundation for the Christian faith. And if you've read the New Atheists, you know they have nothing on Aquinas. Dawkins attempt to tackle the Five Ways in his book The God Delusion, for instance, is quite demonstrably pitiful.
This is where the emotional pleas are made. After all, how could anyone have read these great apologetical works and not have arrived at the same conclusions at you. Clearly, the only explanation must be that I did simply not "undertake any serious study".
If we are to abide by Kierkegaard's Existentialism and take our necessary leap of faith, we must admit that we are uncertain of our choice. For if we possessed certainty in our decision, faith would be rendered moot and the consequences of our decision assured. Let us now suppose that there are two men, a Muslim and a Christian. Each desires to take this leap of faith, knowing that their reason and study have brought them only thus far and the next step to God must be taken only through faith. Which one then will be taking a step closer to God and which one will leap only into the abyss? Have we a way to tell? If faith is our only means of knowledge, both paths are indistinguishable. A man may have faith in a great many things, but if those things have no basis in reality then his faith has served not to guide his steps, but rather to obscure them altogether.
Now let us observe Aquinas' Five Ways. The first three are quite similar and jointly form what is commonly referred to as the Cosmological Argument. This apologetic maintains that since actions have causes, we can trace this unbroken chain of events all the way back to the beginning to determine what set them in motion. The argument goes on to postulate that since nothing can cause itself to happen, something outside of the known universe must represent this initial cause.
This cause is said to be God who created everything from nothing. God was able to do this, it is claimed, because He resides beyond the realm of time, reason, and physics and is not bound by the rules dictating how everything else must behave. Despite the fact that there is no evidence for this belief, for the sake of argument I will concede that something from outside of our reality could have created something from nothing. Even if this were true, nothing presupposes that this thing must be personified. It could just as easily be a natural event. To go one step further and claim that this new cause is now more than a cause, that it has godlike attributes is simply a claim for which we have no evidence. All we have managed to do is move the chain of events one step further back, yet we are no closer to answering our original question than we were before.
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