Last week, we stepped out onto the back porch with the Bible skeptic Michael and looked up at the moon, stars and planets. From this common ground, we asked ourselves, “Did the universe have a beginning, or has it always been here?” The answer, of course, is the first step of a far-reaching journey attempting to answer the question, “Is God dead?” After asking this initial question last week, we summarized our thoughts by making the following claim: 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause 2. The universe began to exist 3. Therefore, the universe had a cause We then concluded that the first claim is straightforward, and almost no one disagrees; everything that begins to exist has a cause. But the second claim, “The universe began to exist,” we said, is set at the heart of the argument because how a person answers this claim points either to a creator or points away from one. For these reasons, there is much to be said about the second claim here this week.