Watch this OK Go video and then there'll be a test. Pay special attention to the beginning and the end:
OK Go probably had no idea they were doing it, but their video serves as a fine illustration of two of medieval philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas' famous Five Ways of demonstrating the existence of God. Here are two questions that might help clarify the relationship between Aquinas' argument and the video.
First question: What do you think are the chances of an entire system like this one coming into existence apart from the very intelligent engineers standing on the platform at the end of the video? What would have happened, do you suppose, if one of those dominos was missing? Do you think it reasonable to believe that the system could have resulted from the chance arrangement of its parts?
The atheistic materialist has to believe something very like this about our universe which is far more complex than the Rube Goldberg device designed by these engineering students. The materialist, though, doesn't hesitate to tell those who believe that the Rube Goldberg device required the input of intelligent engineers that they're being irrational. Just read Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett or their epigones.
Second question: If the series of causes and effects that comprise our universe had a beginning, like the sequence of events in the video, then it must have had a cause that triggered it. What was that cause?
The skeptic could buck the consensus of modern cosmologists and try positing an infinitely old universe that had no beginning, but that means the sequence of dominos would be infinitely long with no first falling domino. If there is no first falling domino then it's hard to imagine how the series of falling dominos would ever get started.
The skeptic might retreat to the safety of granting the reasonableness of believing that there was an initial cause of the universe, but then ask why anyone should think the cause is the God of theism. Consider, though, what's entailed by the acknowledgement that the universe had a cause: An adequate cause or explanation of the universe must, it's reasonable to assume, be very powerful and very intelligent. It must also be outside the universe and outside time, and it must be a personal being since what it causes or explains contains personality (human beings). This may not be precisely the God of traditional theism, but it's certainly something very much like Him.
The skeptic, in full flight now, might just say, as many have, that the universe is just there, a brute fact. It has no cause and no explanation. It just is. But, of course, not only is this a waving of the white flag of surrender and fleeing the field, it's also a science-stopper. It's also more than a little ironic because it's a favorite retort of the opponents of intelligent design to allege that ID is the science-stopper. The charge is false in the case of ID, but it's certainly not false to identify the view that the universe has no explanation a science-stopper.
