Why I'm Not An Atheist
OR
Scientific
evidence for the existence of Creator God:
I
can say that except for epistemic, experiential, logical, coherent
and reasonable evidence for the existence of God, I could be an
atheist.
My belief in God begins
with the following observations:
Because
of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, we
know that: Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its
beginning from outside of itself.
Even if you want to go down the
rabbit trail of “Nothing begins. It only changes from matter to
energy or energy to matter,” this transition from one to the other
always, always, always has a cause. That we consistently observe this
to be true is critically important because scientific naturalists
demand that nothing can be believed without consistent observation
and verification. Every single attempt to promote alternatives to
this premise have only reinforced its truth. Therefore, atheists have
the highest motivation to accept this premise.
Because
of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, we
know that:
.
The universe began to exist. This was not a
transfer of energy to matter or matter to energy. The material
universe began to exist out of literally nothing. Because these two
premises are true and coherent we can know that the following
conclusion is also true: The beginning
of the universe had a cause.
Something that is non-material brought everything material into
existence out of nothing material.
Because
of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
.
Matter and energy cannot precede themselves or preexist themselves
either physically or chronologically.
The reason that matter and
energy cannot precede themselves is because “Coming Into Being”
is an essential an objective feature of time. Time did not exist
until the Big Bang. The First Law of Thermodynamics did not become
relevant or applicable until Big Bang.Because
of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Matter and
energy does not have the ability to create itself or bring itself
into existence from nothing or ex nihilo.
Because of clear scientific
evidence, we know that:
.
Matter and energy cannot exist from infinity past.
An infinite regress is not an acceptable or workable solution to the existence of the universe. Therefore,
whatever brought matter, energy, space, time and the laws of physics
into existence had to have existed in an eternal, immaterial state outside of and
transcendent to these entities.
Because
of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
.
Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in
the necessity of its own nature (It can’t NOT exist), or in a cause
that was / is external to itself.
. If
the universe (which is not necessary) has an explanation of its
existence, that explanation is external to as well as transcendent to
the universe.
Because
that is true:
. Existing outside
of time, the Cause of the universe is infinite or Eternal,
.
Existing outside of matter (which is finite), the Cause is immaterial
or Spiritual,
. Existing as the Cause of time and energy, space,
matter and the laws of physics, the Cause is immeasurably more
powerful than the mathematically precise universe and its exquisitely
Finely Tuned constants and quantities.
. The Cause cannot be
material / natural because neither matter / energy existed until Big
Bang, nor did the laws of physics (i.e., the laws that science has
observed and identified), have anything material to act upon or
govern until Big Bang.
. Therefore the Cause of the beginning of
the universe is not scientific but Personal. The Cause chose to bring
the universe into existence.
. The transcendent Cause of the
universe is therefore on the order of a Mind.
. That Cause is
omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.
“For since the
creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power
and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from
what has been made from what is unseen so that people are without
excuse.” Paul in his letter to the Romans.
Because
of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. The universe
exists.
.
Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
Because
the above premises are true and coherent, the following conclusion
must also be true: The explanation of the existence of the universe
is what we call God.
.
According to atheism the universe doesn’t have an explanation of
its existence. Atheists say that “It just happened. From nothing by
nothing” Over a dozen theories and over a dozen more variations on
those theories have come and gone in a vain attempt to rule out God
as the Cause of a beginning universe. Despite the current scientific
knowledge described above, atheists persist in stating that either
matter has always existed (impossible) or that matter created itself
(also impossible).
Why do they do
this? Because, if there is an non material explanation of
the universe’s existence, then atheism is not true.
And that is because the only explanation that fits the evidence of
how and why the universe came into being is a non material Cause or
what we call, Creator God.
Actually, I believe that some day
there won’t be any atheists. There will be people for God and
people against God but there won’t be anyone so foolish and so
closed minded as to believe that Creator God doesn’t exist. And,
irony of ironies it will be science that will confirm the existence
of God.
Because of
overwhelming scientific evidence, most
atheists do grudgingly admit that the universe did indeed have a
beginning. Unfortunately for atheists, it can be said with absolute
confidence that no cosmogonic model has been:
As repeatedly
verified in its predictions,
As corroborated by attempts at its
falsification,
As concordant with empirical discoveries, and
As
philosophically coherent as the Standard Big Bang Creation Event
Model.
. Hence,
most atheists are implicitly committed to God being the explanation
of why the universe exists.
Because
of clear scientific evidence, we know that: .
. The universe
cannot be infinite. The Borde-Guth-Vilinkin Theorem proves that any
expanding universe must have a definitive space / time boundary, a
point of beginning, a Singularity, a point of Creation. The expansion
property of Dark Matter ensures that the universe will never, nor has
ever contracted and oscillated. It will always expand faster and
faster. The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules out the possibility of
the universe existing from infinity past. Background radiation, as
well as known levels of entropy as well as the expanding universe
confirm the truth of the 2nd Law > The universe had a beginning.
Now in keeping
with the absurdity and incoherence of their belief system, atheists
correctly say on the one hand that an Infinite Regress of Cause is
not workable, while on the other hand they also insist than an
infinite regress of cause is what's happened to allow for the
existence of our universe. While it's not logical, this kind of
thinking is required to maintain the world-view of atheism. On that
note -
Because of clear scientific
evidence, we know that:
.
It is physically impossible to have an Actual Infinite Series of
Things or Events or even moments of Time preceding our today. Nor can
we have an Actual Infinite Collection by adding Things or Events or
moments of Time one to another to another in order to reach today.
This is why we can say with confidence that matter / universe cannot
be infinite and that it hasn't always existed.
To further
explain, imagine units of time as individual books filling a book
shelf that stretches infinitely into the past. You could imagine an
infinitely long street or an infinitely long rope or whatever, but
for this example I’ll use a shelf of books.
While mathematics
is able to deal with abstract or theoretical or conceptual or
potential infinities, and while our imagination can create an
imaginary shelf of books stretching infinitely into the past - sort
of - reality holds no such possibility for us.
. Time is not
imaginary.
. Time is not abstract or theoretical or conceptual.
. Time is real.
. Time is measured in real units.
That’s why
we hear things like, “The universe is 14.5 billion years
(measurement of time) old.
In a scenario
like this, with the shelf of books (units of time) stretching
infinitely into the past you could never actually arrive at today.
Here’s why. In order to reach the last book (what we call today),
you had to have the second to last book or yesterday. In order to
have the second to last book you had to have the third to last book.
In order to have the third to last book you had to have the fourth to
last book and so on and so on. In the case of “no beginning,” you
could never reach today because you could never reach the “first”
day (book) that made possible the second day which made possible the
third day . . . . Since the past is made up of units of real time, in
the case of a beginningless past we would have had to pass through or
travel through infinite time in order to reach today and that is
physically impossible. To reach today, we have to have had a starting
point, a push point, a point of beginning, a point of first cause. If
the past were actually infinite, we could never reach today because
the past would simply extend infinitely into the past. Neither can
we, as some desperate atheists have tried to do, arbitrarily pick a
set or group or point in real time and begin counting from there. Of
course you can do
that, but it proves nothing regarding the beginning of the universe.
The fact is, we have
reached today so we can know not only that the universe had a
beginning, but that time itself had a beginning. Just as a bookshelf
stretching infinitely into the past with no beginning would prohibit
our reaching today, neither can there be an infinite regress of
causes of the universe (eg. previous universes). That would also
prohibit reaching today’s universe. So great a problem is this for
atheists that people like Stephen Hawking simply ignore the origin of
“previous” universes and tries to shore up his atheism by saying
that we didn’t need God to have “this” universe. He might fool
others and make himself a lot of money selling books, but don't allow
him to make a fool of you..
The fact is, the infinite exists only as an idea or as a concept. It
does not exist in material realty.
Because
of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
.
Only in a universe so finely tuned as ours, could we expect
intelligent beings such as ourselves to exist. Note: Fine
Tuning is a neutral secular term in
that it refers to constants and quantities (atomic weight,
gravitational constant, strong & weak force, etc.) being just
right for the existence of intelligent life. That’s in comparison
with the huge range of possible values.
In fact, the natural
range of possible values is from 0 > 10 ^53 or from
0 -
10,0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000000.
Let’s conceptualized this number as represented by a dartboard
(analogy from Astrophysicist Michael Turner:
“Life In The Universe,” in Scientific American).
The distance from one side of the dartboard to the other side extends
across our entire Milky Way Galaxy. With that in mind, let’s look
at the ranges upon which our lives, our very existence depend.
It’s
important to remember that the values of these constants and
quantities were not something that evolved, or something that
“settled in” as the universe aged. These constants were “put
in” at 10^-43 second after
expansion began. As well, you may be interested to note that the
constants, quantities and values that are found in our cosmos appear
to be unrelated in any way. They seem to be random, even arbitrary.
They are almost totally independent of each other. However, they
do share one thing in common. In
fact the only thing
the constants, quantities and values of our universe have in common
is that all of them, every single one of them is independently needed
to be exactly as is, in order for intelligent life to exist on this
planet. If a person will not entertain the idea that a Creator knew
what was required, and brought about the exact conditions for our
kind of life, then the reason that these constants have these exact
values is simply not known. We can measure these constants to find
their values, but beyond that – nothing. What is becoming more and
more clear the longer and deeper that science investigates the cosmos
is the fact that for intelligent beings like us to exist, we needed a
universe this big, this old, with these exact constants, quantities
and values and we needed to be in exactly this galaxy, in this solar
system at this precise location. The more that science investigates,
the less our existence looks like an accident and the more it looks
like a deliberate plan. While individual scientists may disagree, the
facts of science are not ruling out,
but rather ruling in
Creator God as cause of the universe. The Anthropic Principle which
comes out of the discovery of Fine Tuning is a theory that is
falsifiable. Predictions can be made based upon this theory. In fact
astrophysicist Fred Hoyle has done exactly that to discover the
properties of carbon. He states, “I do not believe that any
scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference
that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with
regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars. A
commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a
super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry
and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about
in nature.” Creatures like us who possess free-will choice, reason
and morality would not have arisen without our universe being exactly
the way it is. Jesus has not only gone to prepare a place for us, He
is right now at this very moment, in the midst of suffering, loss and
pain, making us into the kind of people who are fit to be in that
place. Once God has made us the kind of people He wants us to be, He
will remove the conditions that produce suffering, loss and pain
(earthquakes, moral evil, floods and such – things that are created
by the universe as it is). God is not going to remove these things
because of the petulant demands of atheists. He will do this because
these conditions are no longer required. Now, the following will mean
nothing to atheists but let me take some time to give you some
details of what I'm talking about regarding fine tuning.
While there
are several dozen constants and qualities that are known, the most
fundamental constants are the Fine Structure constant, the
Gravitational constant, the Weak Force, the Strong Force and the
ratio between the mass of protons and electrons.
.
What scientists, what ATHEIST scientists call an “astonishing
coincidence” is the fact that at the Big Bang, the ratio of the
strong force to electromagnetism had to have been exactly as it was
or else at 10 to -17 seconds after the start of the expansion, the
necessary binding of helium -4, beryllium -8 and carbon -12 would not
have occurred and life as we know it would not have appeared. .
The exact number and types of neutrinos at 1 second after the
beginning of the Big Bang had to be in place or the expansion rate
would have prohibited the formation of our universe.
Think
about that!
.
If the mass of a neutron were slightly increased by about one part in
seven hundred, then stable hydrogen burning stars would cease to
exist.
.
If the strong force were a long-range force (like electromagnetism or
gravity) instead of a short range force that only acts between
protons and neutrons in the nucleus, all matter would either
instantaneously undergo nuclear fusion and explode or be sucked
together forming a black hole.
Pretty lucky for us, huh, that
all this just happened by chance?
.
If what we now call the Pauli-exclusion principle did not exist, all
electrons would occupy the lowest atomic orbit, which would make
complex chemical interactions impossible.
.
If what we call the quantization principle did not exist, there
wouldn’t be any atomic orbits, electrons would be sucked into the
nucleus and therefore no complex chemistry would be allowed.
.
The gravitational constant must be exactly 10 ^ 40 weaker than the
strong nuclear force or again, no us. For those that are interested,
that’s ten thousand, billion, billion, billion, billion times
weaker than the strong force - exactly!
Pretty lucky for us that
it just happened to work out that way - at Planck time.
.
A change of only 1 part in
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000 in the Gravitational constant as well as in the Weak
Force would prevent life from existing.
.
If the density of the universe and the speed of expansion had been
off by one part in one hundred thousand million million, again, no
life. Remember, these values had to be put in prior to what is known
as Planck time; that is, 10^-43 seconds after the start of the
expansion.
. The
cosmological constant is what drives the inflation of the universe.
It is tuned to 1 part in
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Any variation in either direction
more than that and - no universe. Folks, we humans discover these
facts and we feel pretty good about ourselves for being able to do
so. But a Being exists who not only knew these elements and the
necessity for these exact parameters, He brought these elements into
existence in the only way possible to produce intelligent, rational,
moral creatures.
Now, I mentioned this galaxy wide dartboard
comparison. This expansion rate equation gives us a target within our
galaxy wide dart board that is less than 2.5 centimetres in diameter.
Listen up now because here comes what atheists call the really lucky
part. The amount of fine-tuning of the cosmological constant, one
that we come upon, according to atheists, by accident is like
blindfolding yourself, spinning around ten times (to borrow a theme
from Robert Munch) and then randomly throwing the dart at our GALAXY
wide dart board and hitting the target exactly in the centre of its
2.5 centimetre disk.
Sadly and amazingly, if you’ve made a
philosophical commitment to atheism, this won’t be enough to
convince you of anything Super Natural going on so let me use a
different example..
The entropy per baryon that had to be “put in” PRIOR to Planck
time is 1 part in 10 followed by 1,230 zeros. If that hadn’t been
put in at the Big Bang our life supporting universe would not exist.
This requires an extraordinarily precise arrangement of mass and
energy. To hit this exactly right by accident (as atheists tell us is
the case), we would put on our blindfold, spin around ten times, and
according to atheists, throw a dart randomly at a UNIVERSE
sized dart board and hit the exact CORRECT
PROTON.
Atheists will sometimes
scoff at this by throwing out the term, “the magic of large
numbers.” It’s a meaningless phrase regarding what’s being
discussed here, but it makes them feel secure in their ignorance. Let
me however describe the above equation in yet a different manner.
Scientists have described it this way. Imagine an aircraft carrier
weighing 100,000 tonnes. If the weight of the ship was balanced to 10
^ 1,230 it could not be off by more than billionth of a trillionth of
the mass of a single ELECTRON on one side or the other, or the ship
would capsize. Richard Dawkins allows that the universe is “more or
less finely tuned.”
Are you getting this?
Do you still
think it accidental?
.
One more example. It is estimated that the total number atomic
particles in the entire universe is 10 ^ 80. Got that? Good. The odds
of our universe, even according to atheist scientists, coming into
being by chance or by accident is 10 ^ 1240.
In any other
context, anything greater than 10^50 is accepted, even by atheist
scientists, as impossible. Confront atheists with a universe that had
a beginning however, and impossible no longer matter. Impossible
can't matter because if, on atheism, the Supernatural does not exist,
then “It had to have happened naturally
because here we are.”
If, by this
point your mind isn’t numb with the credulity and gullibility that
atheists force themselves to live with, I just don’t know what it
would take to get you to throw up your hands and demand that atheists
get out of the education business. I mean, just how blind does a
person have to be before s/he stops demanding the right to drive the
car?
This is not a
joking matter any more. Atheist scientists have discovered this
information. They know it, but obviously maintaining their bias
against a Creator is worth throwing away their integrity. It’s
embarrassing. It’s shameful for them to teach “The Universe As An
Accident” to your children. Because these constants and qualities
are independent of and unrelated to each other, as astronomical the
odds of any one of them
being just right, to find ALL of them being as they are in the same
universe, by accident is beyond comprehension.
To figure out
those odds, you would take, say, the Weak Force constant of 1 in
10^100, add to that
the gravitational constant 1 in 10^120, add
to that . . . and so on for ALL the constants and quantities.
No
wonder atheist scientists say that we’re really, really lucky to be
here.
Because of clear scientific
(observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence,
We know that the fine tuning of the universe is due to one
of the following:.
Physical necessity (it had to be this way and no other way),
.
Chance (it’s just a really, really, really lucky accident), or
.
It’s the design of an Intelligence beyond anything we have ever
experienced.
We know it’s not due to physical necessity. In a
secular or natural reality there is no reason whatsoever that ANY
given universe has to exist, let alone a life supporting
universe.
Nor is this fine tuning due to chance. As just shown,
the required fine tuning of our universe is so exquisite that an
infinitesimal change in any one of the necessary constants and
quantities would mean that neither we nor any life would happen. As
shown above, the odds against this happening by chance are
insurmountable.
Even Richard Dawkins doesn’t believe this
happened by chance. He thinks it will be discovered that the
constants and quantities have to be exactly the way they are because
of their relationship to Dark Matter. So, on the one hand he’s
admitting that it’s absurd to think the fine tuning of our universe
is accidental. On the other hand, he has no explanation why
Dark Matter would have THAT
property, why
it would exist at all, or how
it would come to begin to exist out of nothing by nothing.
Some
gullible people have been led to think that if the constants and
quantities of our universe were different, then other life forms
would have evolved. This is simply not
true. Floating fanciful theories and
hoping that they snag a believer here and there is not by any means
good science. “Life” means the ability to take in food and use
its energy, to grow and adapt and reproduce. Without the fine tuning
that we observe, not even atomic matter would exist, not to mention a
planet where life might exist. The fact is, there is not any other
way that the laws of matter / energy could be arranged to produce the
kind of life that we see on planet earth. And if these laws were any
different there would not be any life at all. Again, there is no
reason to expect that a universe as finely tuned as is our universe
should exist by chance, nor is there any need or physical necessity
for such a universe to exist anywhere except for the sole purpose of
supporting life.
Because the above premises are true and
coherent, the following conclusion must also be true:
We do not
experience just the appearance of design.
The design we
experience is apparent and real.
The design that we experience is
from a Designer.
I also believe in
the existence of God because:
.
If God does not exist, then objective morals, values and obligations
(def. below) do not exist.
.
But we know from our interactions with other people that objective
morals, values and obligations DO exist. We know, and we know
absolutely when someone does something “wrong” to us. We don’t
have to wonder for one second what our community or society thinks
about what the person did to us. When we've been wronged our mind
immediately appeals to a moral law that both the victim and the
offender know transcends both of them. So why does that point to God
being the source of objective morals?
Immanuel Kant showed that
just as physical laws can be fully known by examining the physical
world, objective moral laws are fully realized in Jesus and Father
God. Objective moral obligations are as much a part of our real world
as are the laws of physics, mathematics or logic. But if objective
morality is real, then so too is freewill. If we “should” do
something, then it stands to reason that I am able to do that thing.
We tell our children to not lie because we fully expect that they are
able to choose to not lie. Our governments set before us laws of
behaviour because they and we fully expect that we have the ability
to choose to obey those laws. As I stated before, our daily
interactions with others shows we know beyond doubt that objective
moral order is as real and independent of our recognition as is the
natural order of things. Our perceptions of natural and moral laws
are givens of our experience.
.
Objective moral Goodness and Obligations are based on God’s
character. God’s commands are not arbitrary, for they are the
inevitable expression of His Just and Loving nature. And, since our
moral obligations are grounded in the Divine commands that come out
of His Divine character, moral values and duties do not exist
independent of God. Since it's the very character of God that is the
basis of morality, it is only those things that are consistent with
His character that can be considered objectively moral and good..
What God commands or permits is good and what
He forbids is wrong, bad, evil, self-destructive. Therefore examining
what is truly good and right gives us a glimmer of the very character
of Creator God. This may sound like an overconfident statement but
this is our reality. The best explanation of what we experience,
especially regarding morality is not atheism but theism,
specifically, Christian theism.
This is what it means for
morality to be objective vs. subjective, selective or relative to the
situation. Objective morality is not based on the individual’s
character or personality or level of empathy. It is not based upon
that person’s likes or dislikes, sanity or insanity. Nor is it
based on the ebb and flow of the community’s likes / dislikes etc..
Objective morality flows from God's very nature. It is not an
arbitrary or capricious decision of His that constitutes the standard
of morality. The only things that are “good” are those things
that cohere with Creator God's character. The laws of logic, the laws
of mathematics and objective moral realities, which exist independent
of humans, do not exist independent of Creator God. For that reason,
to examine these laws and to examine objective morality is to examine
God Himself.
Why choose
God as the source of morality as opposed to you or me or Hitler?
God
by definition is the least arbitrary stopping point, the least
arbitrary point of final authority. That too is what it means for
morals to be objective. They have a grounding in a final and ultimate
authority. And why should Creator God be the final authority? Because
Creator God is the Greatest Conceivable Being. There is nothing
beyond Him. He is the ultimate power. What He says is what goes. He
has the knowledge to establish moral authority. Creator God is
omniscient. There is nothing that He doesn't know about morality or
about how we humans were created to work best.
Creator God's
character is impeccable, without fault.
God doesn’t just
exemplify goodness. He IS goodness.
God doesn't just exemplify
justice. He IS Justice.
God doesn't just exemplify love. He IS
love.
Creator God has
the moral authority to hold us accountable for the moral obligations
that we obey or disobey. Almost everyone is willing to recognize
an ultimate standard of goodness. Choosing another person as the
ultimate standard of good and bad, right and wrong sets up obvious
and irreconcilable issues of conflict. Any moral construct (don’t
rape, don’t discriminate etc.) that is "invented" or
adopted by mankind and that is truly good for society, will BE good
for society because it coheres with an objective moral principle that
exists independently of humans. Objective means it is right and true
regardless of whether you agree with it or obey it or even know that
it exists. Again, “objective” (not arbitrary, relative or even
absolute) because it comes from the Ultimate source of Truth,
Goodness, Justice and Love - our Creator.
If “man-made”
moral constructs work across time and culture:
. They will work
because they are objectively and ultimately right.
. They will
work because they are based upon standards that are objectively and
ultimately sound.
. They are objectively and ultimately sound
because they originate from the character and command of our Creator
who is the ultimate source of Truth, Goodness, Justice and Love.
The
Christian base for objective morality is based on Truth. In our
interaction with others, when wronged, you and I know in an instant
that it's based upon Truth. Because it's based upon Truth it helps in
the survival of the collective.
The atheist base for morality is
based upon it's “perceived” ability to aid survival. It may or
may not work over time. It is something that will change with the ebb
and flow human desire, likes and dislikes, current ideology and the
ability to meet our immediate need. As such, at any given time,
atheist morality may or may not entail truth.
Now, if a
moral personal Creator God does exist, then we could expect to find
clues of His existence within our relationships. If a moral personal
Creator God exists we could expect to find that objective morality
makes sense. We could expect to find within ourselves the sense of
powerful moral obligations: guilt for not obeying these obligations
and feelings of fulfilment when we do obey these demands. And because
a moral, personal Creator God does exist, this is exactly what we do
find to be true deep within our being and in our relationships with
others.
I believe in God because
of the following philosophical and metaphysical evidence.
. Virtually all
philosophers agree that if there is the slightest chance of God
existing, then He does in fact exist. Even David Hume once wrote, “It
is an established maxim in metaphysics, that whatever the mind
clearly conceives includes the idea of possible existence, or in
other words, nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible. We can form
the idea of a golden mountain, and from there conclude that such a
mountain may actually exist. We can form no idea of a mountain
without a valley, and therefore regard it as impossible.” Descates
agreed. Alvin Plantinga has refined Anselm’s argument as follows.
He asks, “What is the greatest conceivable being?” Our answer
goes past me and you and the Dali Lama and any other "great"
human being we can think of and we come to an omnipotent, omniscient,
omnipresent Being that we commonly call “God” If we could think
of something greater than God, then that is what would be called God.
We can call it a Mind or something else but it amounts to the same
thing ie. The Greatest Conceivable Being That Can Possibly Exist.
Therefore we can know that God exists because:
. It is in fact
metaphysically possible that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists.
.
Because it’s possible that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists, a
Greatest Conceivable Being does exist in some possible reality.
.
Because of the very nature of a Greatest Conceivable Being, if a
Greatest Conceivable Being exists in some possible reality, it exists
in every possible reality.
. If a Greatest Conceivable Being
exists in every possible reality, then it exists in actual reality.
. If a Greatest
Conceivable Being exists in actual reality, then a Greatest
Conceivable Being exists in our reality.
Because the above
premises are true and coherent, it stands to reason that the
conclusion is also true: A Greatest Conceivable Being or God exists.
While all of
these scientific and philosophical arguments point toward a Creator
and away from materialism, there are a several points of evidence
that specifically point away from materialism.
1.
The most important point for me is the atheist claim that life arose
from non-life unaided. Like everything else that atheists say in
regard to origins, this claim flies in the face of all known
experience, testing and evidence. The level and degree of specified,
formulated, coded information that is required for life to begin and
to exist has and always will only come from an Intelligent Source. As
Dawkins himself has said, The study of genetics is pure information
technology. There are no known exceptions to this known fact. So
certain is this fact that atheists are reduced to saying something no
less preposterous than “Everything came from nothing by nothing.”
How sad is that? And as preposterous as that claim is, they also say,
“Inanimate and inorganic gases evolved
into life.” That is such an incredibly sad and pathetic statement,
but what else are atheists to do. While he would never recognize it
as applying to himself and his own world-view, Richard Dawkins has
said, “Our minds are prime environments for parasitic,
self-replicating ideas,” and that “Minds are typically massively
infected.” Sir Richard can't imagine that his and other atheist
minds are susceptible to infection. Yet, how else can we explain
their whole belief system that rests upon an absurd, incoherent and
ridiculous unsubstantiated hypothesis.
2. Most
materialists truly believe that, “Only science is rational. Science
is the only begetter of truth.” Richard Lewontin.
Ya - very
rational - “Everything came from nothing by nothing.” “Inanimate
gases evolved into life.” The statement “Science is the only
source of truth” is not only a philosophical statement and NOT a
scientific statement, it is a poor and ignorant philosophical
statement because the statement itself cannot be tested by the
scientific method. These self-professed intelligent people are making
statements that are self-contradictory. When someone is forced to
make self-contradictory statements it means their bias and prejudice
is so strong that they are willing to operate from a profoundly weak
and unsupported base.
3.
Molecular machines in our bodies are impossible to explain from a
Darwinian perspective. They are huge proofs that Darwin and his
followers are wrong. “There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for
the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only
a variety of wishful speculations.” Microbiologist James Shapiro -
University of Chicago. These biological mechanisms (Eg. The highly
choreographed cascade of ten steps that used twenty different
molecular components to clot blood at the site of a wound; Bacterial
Flagellum; Cilium; The intra cellular transport system and dozens
more mechanisms in our bodies) need all of their various parts in
place in order to function. If one part is missing, there IS no
mechanism. In reality, you would never arrive at such an irreducibly
complex system by a Darwinian process of natural selection acting on
random variation. Natural selection only preserves mutations that
perform a function that aides the survival of the entity. A partial
mechanism would simply not survive nor be retained for long periods
of time. Irreducibly complex systems do not perform any function
until all the parts are present and working together in combination
with one another. Natural selection would not build such an
unworkable system. So exquisite are these molecular machines that one
atheist genetic scientist has commented, “We must constantly remind
ourselves that what we are seeing was not designed.” Like the first
point in this section, when you hear such irrational comments you
know you are dealing with someone who is working with an absence of
evidence and an unsupportable case.
4.
Another point that absolutely points away from material evolution and
toward design is the Biological Big Bang, better known as The
Cambrian Explosion. In this time period we find completely novel body
plans that appear in a geological instant. We find a huge jump in
complexity of life forms with zero transitional life forms in the
fossil record. Massive amounts of new biological information suddenly
appears beyond what any Darwinian mechanism can produce, again in a
geological moment in time. As one evolutionary sceptic has said,
“Just how fast does this evolution have to happen before they stop
calling it evolution?” Darwin himself said that natural selection
never takes sudden leaps yet we have proponents of such a system
trying to tell us that not only has irreducible complexity arisen
suddenly and spontaneously, they say that it’s happened
spontaneously in many species at the same time in many places around
the world. And since there hasn't been a fleck of evidence of body
plan evolution in any species for the last 100 million years, some
atheists are suggesting that the Cambrian explosion must also be an
illusion. They're saying that life must have arisen from non-life,
not once but tens of thousands of times in thousands of places. You
can go along with that if you want, but as for me and my house? Mmm,
nope. Unlike atheism, my world-view actually does demand evidence for
belief.5.
Finally human consciousness is such a problem for a materialist that
they go to one of two extremes. The first is believing that
consciousness is a "natural"
result of increased thinking capacity - i.e. one day computers,
rather than shuffling information, will “evolve”
a consciousness and even a sense of spirituality.
I'm
not joking!
Atheists are that
foolish and more! Or, and this is more common, they are reduced to
saying that the “I” that we all know exists, is just an illusion;
that it does not exist.
Regardless of
either option, Darwinists plead with us to believe that we are
nothing more than a mass of chemical exchanges and firing neurons
even as they display a whole range of personal thoughts, emotions and
pseudo arguments when their beliefs in this area are challenged.
These people look at the human abilities of self-reflection, art,
medicine, the enjoyment of music and say it comes from an illusory
direction of will. In fact, they say that self-will or freewill
choice are also an illusion. Even though the development of our
vocabulary is enormous, our grammar complex and our conversations
deep and meaningful, it all comes, say materialists, without purpose
or meaning. These atheists look at the human ability to codify
language, our unbounded creativity, selflessness, love, the
exercising of our rational faculties, our ability to develop an
argument, follow a line of logic, draw conclusions and frame
hypotheses and call it the simple, random and unguided firing of
neurons. Our strong spirit of enquiry, our research in the fields of
astronomy, mathematics, medicine and physics while noteworthy for
some, is nothing of lasting consequence to an atheist, for all will,
according to atheists comes to an absurd and meaningless end. Yearn
for meaning in life? It too is of no lasting import. It’s the same
illusion that causes us to devote so much of our time to philosophy,
theology and ethics. Or so the materialist world-view claims.
Atheists say that our religious sentiments and practices and our
intense and endless quest for meaning can be traced to some random
mutation eons ago.
The concept of atheism forces us to say that
it’s only the illusion of the “I” that questions not only our
origin but also our destiny. It’s only the illusion of the “I”
that has a refined aesthetic sense that admires beauty and longs to
be surrounded with it. When we cultivate a garden, put flowers in a
vase, or hang up a painting, it’s the illusion of the “I” that
is expressing a love of beauty and a strong creative impulse. Our
poetry, painting, dance, drama and music, our weekly craft groups
where baskets are woven, wool is spun, shawls are knit, and photo
albums are covered, all this, says the ardent materialist, is carried
out for no particular reason save to follow the command of chemical
exchanges.
Reason, language, enquiry, wonder, longing, religion,
morality, aesthetics, creativity, imagination, aspiration and humour,
to such intangible but fundamental qualities, atheists like Bertrand
Russel can only respond, and in the total absence of proofs or
evidence, yet driven by a desperate desire to be free from all
accountability to one’s Creator, they hope that you will agree,
“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the
end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and
fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental
collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of
thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the
grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the
inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined
to extinction . . . that the whole temple of man’s achievement must
inevitably be buried - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute,
are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can
hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on
the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s
habitation henceforth be safely built.”
The atheist’s
philosophical and powerful emotional reaction to the fact of a
universe with a beginning and to the impossibility of life arising
unaided from non life shows that we are far, far more than a mass of
chemical exchanges, more than mere thinking machines.
And
that is why I say:
. Because of
clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, and
.
Because the cosmological argument shows that a Greatest Conceivable
Being exists who is the cause or grounding of reality as we know it,
and
. Because the teleological argument shows more than just the
appearance of design, and
. Because of the Kalam argument that
shows that whatever begins to exist has a cause and an explanation
for its beginning to exist, and
. Because the moral argument shows
that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists who is the cause or
grounding of all objective morals, values, obligations and Truth,
.
I believe that Creator God exists and that Christianity is the best
explanation for the type of world / environment and the cosmos in
which we live.
While any or all the above may or may not give you
pause for thought, the most important basis for my
belief in God lies in a different category.
The palpable presence of God in my life, His counsel, His comfort,
His correction and guidance, His love and mercy and grace, all of
these things are so very real in my innermost being that they compel
me to acknowledge the truth of His existence.
I am so very
grateful that I have been granted the gift of what I call, "Wide-Band
Awareness." This is a Gift /
ability that is shared and immediately recognized by believers from
around the world regardless of race, social stature, gender or
intellectual ability. Roughly 95% of the people in the world know at
some level that there is more to life, that there is much more going
on around us than what meets the eye. There are thin places in life
where we can almost but not quite reach through and touch the other
side of things.
For some reason atheists lack this perceptive
ability and they live out their existence on earth within a very
Narrow Band of Awareness.
This condemns them to examining only a very narrow band of evidence
as they, like all of us, struggle to make sense of life.
I
also believe in God because of the
historicity of Jesus. Except for those who exist on the lunatic
fringe (eg. those who also deny the Holocaust), the reality of Jesus
cannot be denied. In fact, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
cannot be adequately explained away. Something totally other took
place when Jesus appeared on earth.
I believe in God because the
heavens and the earth declare His handiwork. There is simply no
sufficient explanation for WHY the universe began to exist exactly as
it did other than “Creator God.” This
is not an explanation from ignorance because Creator God is the ONLY
conclusion that fits the scientific evidence.
While it's
true that atheists have proposed other theories for the "Creation”
of the universe, it is not because of any inadequacy in or lack of
evidence for the idea of God as Creator. The presentation of
alternative theories is only because God as Creator is
philosophically unacceptable to atheists.
The type of belief in
God that I'm talking about is sometimes called “faith.” But faith
is often misunderstood as being separate from reason or evidence.
That could not be more inaccurate. For one thing, we are told to love
the Lord our God with, among other things, “all our mind.” Second
the Bible describes Faith as being “The substance of, the certainty
of, the essence of, the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not yet seen.” While
one’s faith does not find its origin in evidence (the origin is
purely from God - John 6:44), faith is clearly supported by evidence,
reason, logic and experience. In
other words, my Faith in Creator God is anything but blind or
uninformed. In my opinion agnostics are the only ones who ‘go as
far as empirical evidence will let them.’ Atheists take the next
step because the evidence points to a philosophically and
metaphysically unacceptable conclusion - Creator God exists.
Christians take the next step because of the reality of Jesus Christ,
Son of God, Lord of lords and King of kings who lives within their
very being. Nevertheless, my epistemic and experiential belief in God
is grounded in logic and reason and that is why I'm not an atheist.
In that sense Christian faith can be described as “Choosing to
believe the conclusion that the Bible and God Himself through the
person of Jesus the Christ has presented regarding the evidence that
we have before us.” Faith in Christianity is rejecting the faith
that a very small percentage of people place in atheism.
Faith is
not, as those who fear the idea of a Creator say, believing something
even in the absence of evidence. At bare minimum we have a whole
universe proclaiming the existence of Creator God. When pressed,
honest atheists acquiesce that a Deistic God may well exist, “But
that doesn’t prove a Theistic God.” Well, no it doesn’t. For
that we have the life, death and resurrection of Jesus who said, “If
you have seen Me you have seen Creator God.”
Among other historical
events, proof of His resurrection comes in the form of:
. The
empty tomb
. The dramatic change in character of the disciples
.
The rise of the Christian Church
. The conversion of the sceptic
and Christian killer Paul
. The conversion of the sceptics, Jesus'
brothers, sisters and mother -
all of these confirming the
theistic God as seen in Jesus.
The fact is, faith stems from
evidence. Both atheists and Christians have before them the same
amount of evidence, and both atheists and Christians have drawn the
conclusions they have drawn by faith.
“By faith we (Christians)
understand (choose to believe the Bible’s claim) that the universe
was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out
of what was visible.” Hebrews 11:3
“By an even greater amount
of faith (everything came from nothing by nothing) atheists
understand (choose to believe the implication of atheism) that the
universe came into being by natural means even though nothing natural
/ material existed UNTIL the universe came into being.” For the
Christian, faith is choosing to believe the conclusion that comes
from the evidence put before us both from the existence of a
life-sustaining universe and from what God tells us in His Word.
Faith, for the Christian, is a balance between naive belief and total
scepticism.
While there have been and will continue to be
criticisms of the arguments that I've put forth in this book (what
else would we expect from someone who wants to be an atheist?),
what’s important to note is that a criticism or an objection is not
necessarily the same as a refutation.
When an
intelligent person wilfully abandons reason and begins to posit
finite infinities, causeless beginnings and beginningless beginnings,
I know that I’m dealing with someone involved in a desperate
attempt to avoid a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator
God exists.
When an intelligent person wilfully
abandons classical historical scholarship and begins to deny known
and knowable facts of history, but only as they apply to the person
of Jesus, I know that I’m dealing with someone who is confronted
with a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator
God exists.
When an intelligent person claims to
follow whatever ethical standard is currently in vogue and calls that
a reasonable way to live, I know that I’m dealing with someone
involved in a desperate, fearful attempt to avoid a philosophically
unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
When someone ignores Occam’s Razor and goes in search of ever
more complicated solutions, abandoning one after another, after
another, after another, not because of new evidence but because of a
need to avoid the conclusion indicated by current evidence, and when
that person never returns to a simple solution that coincides with
current knowledge and common sense, I know that I’ve encountered an
individual who has been confronted with a philosophically
unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
Thanks
to advances in science, every year to an increasing degree, we are
pointed by science toward the existence of a Supernatural Creator and
away from the foolish proposition of materialism / naturalism.
That
is why I’m not an atheist.
