Reasons For God’s Existence (How Do I Know That God Exists?)

            If you had been born into a Christian home, you would have been drilled/trained thoroughly with the notion that there is God. Hence you may not have given this topic adequate research.

            What if your [non-theist/non-Christian] friend(s) wants you to explain as to why you think God exists? What if they say that God’s existence is implausible when there is so much evil in our world? How would you rationally and reasonably defend your belief in God’s existence?

            To say that the Bible reveals God’s existence to a non-Christian is not a good answer because a non-Christian does not believe in the Bible, to begin with.

            How then do we explain the existence of God (with reasons outside the Bible)?

            J. Warner Wallace of Cold Case Christianity explains that there is evidence outside the Bible that is best explained by means of God’s existence, “There are a number of circumstantial lines of evidence pointing to the existence of God, and the diverse, collective nature of this evidence is most reasonably explained by the existence of a Creator.”¹

            So for instance, we know for a matter of fact that our universe began to exist. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that God created our universe because everything that exists should have a cause. Since our universe had a beginning, there should be a Beginner or a First Cause who created our universe. So God must have been the cause for the existence of our universe. This is otherwise termed as the Cosmological Argument for God’s Existence.

            J. Warner Wallace explains the Cosmological Argument as follows:²

(1) The Temporal Nature of the Cosmos (Cosmological)

(a) The Universe began to exist

(b) Anything that begins to exist must have a cause

(c) Therefore, the Universe must have a cause

(d) This cause must be eternal (uncaused), non-spatial, immaterial, atemporal, and personal (having the ability to willfully cause the beginning of the universe)

(e) The cause fits the description we typically assign to God

            Our universe is incredibly well designed. Consider the “Fine Tuning” of our universe (The Teleological Argument For God’s Existence). “The fine tuning refers to “just right” properties. Our universe has several properties that are set to precise values, and slight changes to those values would prevent life as we know it, claims an article on the Biologos website.³  

            Take the gravitational constant as an example, “The strength of gravity has to be exactly right for stars to form. But what do we mean by “exactly”? Well, it turns out that if we change gravity by even a tiny fraction of a percent—enough so that you would be, say, one billionth of a gram heavier or lighter—the universe becomes so different that there are no stars, galaxies, or planets. And with no planets, there would be no life. Change the value slightly, and the universe moves along a very different path. And remarkably, every one of these different paths leads to a universe without life in it. Our universe is friendly to life…”⁴

            Brett Kunkle of Stand To Reason explains why God is the best explanation for the fine tuning of our universe, “Scientists tell us there are more than 50 "just right" details in the universe that make life on planet earth possible. What are the chances of this happening? Really smart guys who calculate this stuff tell us there is a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent chance. In other words, there is no chance for chance. Instead, a finely tuned universe points to a Fine Tuner, God.”⁵

            Here’s J. Warner Wallace’s formulation of the Teleological Argument:⁶

(2) The Appearance of Design (Teleological)

(a) Human artifacts (like watches) are products of intelligent design

(b) Many aspects and elements of our universe resemble human artifacts

(c) Like effects typically have like causes

(d) Therefore, it is highly probable the appearance of design in the Universe is simply the reflection of an intelligent designer

(d) Given the complexity and expansive nature of the Universe, this designer must be incredibly intelligent and powerful (God)

            The Moral Argument For God’s Existence argues for the existence of God because of the presence of objective moral values. An article on the website of the Apologetics Press details the moral argument as follows:⁷

The moral argument for the existence of God has been stated in a variety of ways through the centuries. One way in which the basic argument has been worded is as follows (see Craig, n.d.; Craig and Tooley, 1994; Cowan, 2005, p. 166):

Premise 1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.

Premise 2: Objective moral values exist.

Conclusion: God exists.

            Some object to the moral argument by claiming that God cannot exist because of the rampant moral evil in this world. Ravi Zacharias demonstrates that this question is absurd/self-defeating, “When you say there’s too much evil in this world you assume there’s good. When you assume there’s good, you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that’s who you’re trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there’s no moral Law Giver, there’s no moral law. If there’s no moral law, there’s no good. If there’s no good, there’s no evil. What is your question?”⁸

            Atheists strive to explain God away as the causal factor for objective morality. Some atheists do so by claiming that there is no objective morality.

            Atheists believe that man is an animal and they deny objective moral values:⁹

“Allegedly, man not only descended from fish and four-footed beasts, we are beasts. Charles Darwin declared in chapter two of his book The Descent of Man: “My object in this chapter is solely to show that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties” (1871, 1:34).”

Atheists find themselves in a conundrum: (1) They must admit to objective morality or, (2) They must contend that everything is relative—that no action on Earth could ever be objectively good or evil. Rather, everything is subjective and situational.

…Relatively few atheists seem to have had the courage (or audacity) to say forthrightly that atheism implies that objective good and evil do not exist. However, a few have. Some of the leading atheists and agnostics in the world, in fact, understand that if there is no God, then there can be no ultimate, binding standard of morality for humanity. Charles Darwin understood perfectly the moral implications of atheism, which is one reason he gave for being “content to remain an Agnostic” (1958, p. 94). In his autobiography, he wrote: “A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones” (1958, p. 94, emp. added). If a person has the urge to suffocate innocent children, like a snake may suffocate its victims (including people), then, if there is no God, there is no objective moral law against suffocating children. If a person impulsively drowns a kind elderly person, similar to a crocodile drowning its prey, then, if atheism is true, this action could neither be regarded as objectively good or evil.

…The moral argument for God’s existence exposes atheism as the self-contradictory, atrocious philosophy that it is. Atheists must either reject the truthfulness of the moral argument’s first premise (“If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist”) and illogically accept the indefensible idea that objective morality somehow arose from rocks and reptiles, or (2) they must reject the argument’s second premise (“Objective moral values exist”), and accept the insane, utterly repulsive idea that genocide, rape, murder, theft, child abuse, etc. can never once be condemned as objectively “wrong.” According to atheism, individuals who commit such actions are merely doing what their DNA led them to do. They are simply following through with their raw impulses and instincts, which allegedly evolved from our animal ancestors. What’s more, if atheism is true, individuals could never logically be punished for such immoral actions, since “no inherent moral or ethical laws exist” (Provine, 1988, p. 10).

            Since atheism is inundated in a dilemma, it cannot negate God based on moral values. However, the Moral Argument reveals the presence of a transcendent God.  

            Is this all we got?

            No, these are the basic arguments for the existence of God. But there are more. Kalam Cosmological Argument is a case in point. Dr. William Lane Craig christened the argument Kalam Cosmological Argument, wherein Kalam is the Arabic word for ‘medieval theology.’

            The formulation of this argument is as follows:¹⁰

1. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a cause of its beginning.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its beginning.

Dr. Craig offers three reasons to support premise (1):

1. Something cannot come from nothing.

2. If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing.

3. Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise 1

Premise 2 is also true because:

        1. The number of past events must be finite.

      2. Since the past involves a series of events that has been formed by adding one event after another. It cannot be actually infinite. Hence, the universe cannot be eternal. It must have had a beginning.

    3. The standard Big Bang model states that the universe had an absolute beginning.

    4. The Second Law of Thermodynamics implies that the universe had a beginning. This law states that unless energy is being fed into a system that system will become increasingly disorderly. Since our universe is constantly expanding it will soon become disorderly (into a state of heat death). If our universe did not have a beginning, then by now, we should be in the state of heat death of sorts. Since we are not in a disorderly state now, we can confidently assert that our universe had a beginning.

So there are good reasons to believe that our universe had a beginning. Dr. Craig then analyses the First Cause, “What properties must this cause of the universe possess? This cause must be itself uncaused because we’ve seen that an infinite series of causes is impossible. It is therefore the Uncaused First Cause. It must transcend space and time, since it created space and time. Therefore, it must be immaterial and non-physical. It must be unimaginably powerful, since it created all matter and energy. Finally…this Uncaused First Cause must also be a personal being. It’s the only way to explain how an eternal cause can produce an effect with a beginning like the universe.”

            So to conclude, four arguments for the existence of God have been discussed here. They are the Cosmological, Teleological, Moral, and Kalam Cosmological arguments. These arguments provide more than sufficient, adequate and reasonable reasons to believe in God’s existence.

Endnotes:

¹https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/cumulative-evidence-and-the-case-for-gods-existence-free-bible-insert/

²Ibid.

³https://biologos.org/common-questions/what-do-fine-tuning-and-the-multiverse-say-about-god/

⁴Ibid.

⁵https://www.str.org/articles/does-god-exist#.XlZzJCEzZhE

⁶https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/cumulative-evidence-and-the-case-for-gods-existence-free-bible-insert/

⁷http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4101

⁸ https://apologetics315.com/2013/01/ravi-zacharias-on-the-problem-of-evil/

⁹http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4101

¹⁰https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/the-kalam-cosmological-argument/

Websites last accessed on 27^th February 2020.

Can Science Disprove God’s Existence?

            A common diatribe emanating from the atheistic bandwagon is that science has conclusively disproven the existence of God and the authenticity of Historic Christianity.

            Has science conclusively disproven the existence of God? On what basis?

            Scientific materialists argue that all the workings of the universe can be explained without a need for God. Consider Stephen Hawking’s arguments against God’s existence, here’s an excerpt:¹

"I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science," Hawking, who died in March, wrote. "If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?"

"Did God create the quantum laws that allowed the Big Bang to occur?" Hawking wrote. "I have no desire to offend anyone of faith, but I think science has a more compelling explanation than a divine creator."

Hawking's explanation begins with quantum mechanics, which explains how subatomic particles behave. In quantum studies, it's common to see subatomic particles like protons and electrons seemingly appear out of nowhere, stick around for a while and then disappear again to a completely different location. Because the universe was once the size of a subatomic particle itself, it's plausible that it behaved similarly during the Big Bang, Hawking wrote.

"The universe itself, in all its mind-boggling vastness and complexity, could simply have popped into existence without violating the known laws of nature," he wrote.

Because the universe also began as a singularity, time itself could not have existed before the Big Bang. Hawking's answer, then, to what happened before the Big Bang is, "there was no time before the Big Bang."

"We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in," Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."

            Inasmuch as scientists from the atheistic camp cry foul to God’s existence, an article in the Time magazine authored by Dr. Amir Aczel questions science’s authority to debunk God’s existence: [Emphasis Mine]²

But has modern science, from the beginning of the 20th century, proved that there is no God, as some commentators now claim? Science is an amazing, wonderful undertaking: it teaches us about life, the world and the universe. But it has not revealed to us why the universe came into existence nor what preceded its birth in the Big Bang. Biological evolution has not brought us the slightest understanding of how the first living organisms emerged from inanimate matter on this planet and how the advanced eukaryotic cells—the highly structured building blocks of advanced life forms—ever emerged from simpler organisms. Neither does it explain one of the greatest mysteries of science: how did consciousness arise in living things? Where do symbolic thinking and self-awareness come from? What is it that allows humans to understand the mysteries of biology, physics, mathematics, engineering and medicine? And what enables us to create great works of art, music, architecture and literature? Science is nowhere near to explaining these deep mysteries.

But much more important than these conundrums is the persistent question of the fine-tuning of the parameters of the universe: Why is our universe so precisely tailor-made for the emergence of life? This question has never been answered satisfactorily, and I believe that it will never find a scientific solution. For the deeper we delve into the mysteries of physics and cosmology, the more the universe appears to be intricate and incredibly complex. To explain the quantum-mechanical behavior of even one tiny particle requires pages and pages of extremely advanced mathematics. Why are even the tiniest particles of matter so unbelievably complicated? It appears that there is a vast, hidden “wisdom,” or structure, or knotty blueprint for even the most simple-looking element of nature. And the situation becomes much more daunting as we expand our view to the entire cosmos…

…The scientific atheists have scrambled to explain this troubling mystery by suggesting the existence of a multiverse—an infinite set of universes, each with its own parameters. In some universes, the conditions are wrong for life; however, by the sheer size of this putative multiverse, there must be a universe where everything is right. But if it takes an immense power of nature to create one universe, then how much more powerful would that force have to be in order to create infinitely many universes? So the purely hypothetical multiverse does not solve the problem of God. The incredible fine-tuning of the universe presents the most powerful argument for the existence of an immanent creative entity we may well call God. Lacking convincing scientific evidence to the contrary, such a power may be necessary to force all the parameters we need for our existence—cosmological, physical, chemical, biological and cognitive—to be what they are.

            So it’s adequately evident that science lacks the authority to question God’s existence let alone disproving it.

            Could science be the only way to determine truth? Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, John Lennox says, absolutely not, “Well, obviously science cannot be the only way to truth. Why? Because that's a logically self-contradictory statement. If science were the only way to truth, then the statement, "Science is the only way to truth," would be given to us by science, but it isn't. So the thing falls at the very beginning. But looking at it more broadly, you see, if science were the only way to truth, you'd have to close half the faculties at least at Biola. You'd have no literature, you'd have no theology, you'd have no art, you'd have no music, and so on. There are so many other intellectual disciplines that are perfectly rational, but they are not the natural sciences.

            Now of course, in German, the word for science is wissenschaft, and that covers actually all academic disciplines really. But when we're speaking English, "science" really stands for the natural sciences. Therefore, it's a very dangerous idea to suggest that the natural sciences are the only way to truth. And one of the best comments on it was made by another Nobel Prize winner, Sir Peter Medawar, who worked here in Oxford. He said it is so easy to see that science, natural science, is limited. Why? Because it cannot answer the simple questions of a child. Where do I come from? Where am I going? And what is the meaning of my life? And he pointed out, it's to literature and philosophy and of course theology that we need to turn for answers to those questions. Indeed, the really big questions of life and meaning are not answered by the natural sciences.”³

            Finally, William Lane Craig posits four different truths – ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics and science itself – that cannot be proven scientifically. This is in addition to the logical and mathematical truths that are part and parcel of the scientific method, but these too cannot be proved empirically: ⁴

From a scientific description you can make no inference whatsoever about statements of value, about good and evil, or right and wrong. This is the old distinction between what is and what ought to be…That is a statement of value, or ethics. Thus the whole realm of ethical inquiry is closed to the scientific method.

...the whole question of what it is permissible to do to animals in scientific research. Are you allowed to just do anything you want, to torture or kill an animal, in any way you want in scientific research? That is not a scientific question, that is an ethical question that science really cannot speak to. And if one denies that there is any ethical truths about these sorts of things, then there can be no objection to using human beings as human guinea pigs in this sort of medical research. The world was horrified when it learned that at camps like Auschwitz and Dachau Nazi scientists had used prisoners for medical experiments on living human beings. For example, at Auschwitz, Mengele took pregnant women and used them for vivisection.

A second area is the area of aesthetics. Like the good, the beautiful cannot be determined by the scientific method…there are aesthetic truths, and I think we all intuitively know it. There is an objective difference between the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and the ceiling in this room. And yet this whole realm of the aesthetic is closed to the scientific method and scientific proof.

Number three, metaphysics. There are truths about the nature of reality which we all accept and yet which cannot be scientifically proven. [7] For example, how do you know that you are not a brain in a vat? Maybe you are just a brain in a vat of chemicals being stimulated with electrodes by some mad scientist to make you think that you are sitting here in this room hearing this lecture. In fact, he might even be stimulating you to think right now that it is impossible that you could be a brain in a vat. There is no way scientifically to disprove such a hypothesis…Or the belief that other minds exist cannot be proven scientifically. Other persons could just be mindless automata whose behavior exactly mimics your behavior as an organism having a mind. There is no way to prove scientifically that other minds even exist.

Finally, number four, science itself. This is perhaps the most amazing paradox of all, that science itself cannot be justified by the scientific method. So that if you say that you should only believe that which can be scientifically proven, you would throw out science altogether…

…science is permeated with assumptions which cannot be scientifically proven, and yet which lie at the root of scientific theories…

…The Copernican Principle states that we occupy no special or privileged place in the universe. This principle underlies all of modern astronomy and astrophysics, otherwise you could say that distant galaxies run on entirely different laws of nature than the ones that we know here on earth. And yet the Copernican Principle is something than cannot be proved scientifically, it is simply an assumption that you have to make.

…According to the Continuum Hypothesis, between any two points on a line there is always another point. This underlies all of modern spacetime theories in physics, and yet again it is a hypothesis which simply cannot be proven scientifically…

…And so in all of these different ways – ethics, aesthetic, metaphysics, science itself – our knowledge is predicated upon truths which cannot be proven scientifically, and yet which are part and parcel of what we know about the world.

…the scientific method in no way undermines belief in God because there are beliefs about the world which cannot be scientifically proven but which we are entirely rational in accepting. The laymen might say that we accept these things by faith, but I would prefer to say they are among the deliverances of reason. And in the same way the person who experiences God as a living reality in his life knows God in such a way that for him God’s existence is a properly basic belief. And thus I think it would be more accurate and less misleading to say that belief in the existence of God is among the properly basic deliverances of reason, and that faith is that relation of love, trust, and commitment which ought to characterize our walk with God.

            So to conclude, can science disprove the existence of God?

            No! Never!

Endnotes:

¹https://www.livescience.com/63854-stephen-hawking-says-no-god.html

²https://time.com/77676/why-science-does-not-disprove-god/

³https://www.biola.edu/blogs/think-biblically/2019/can-science-explain-everything

⁴https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/lectures/has-science-made-faith-in-god-impossible-tamu-texas/

Websites last accessed on 30^th January 2020.