God is a rational and scientific reality, which can only be continuously denied due to ignorance or arrogance or a fatal combination of both.
Nonetheless the shrill exclamations of Atheist cyber-warriors unthinkingly shouting ‘superstition’ and ‘childhood brainwashing’ refuse to die down.
It seems that many of them will persist in attacking the strawman that believers are naive or stupid followers of pre-scientific superstitions. Inspite of the fact that some 89% of Nobel Prize winners in the 20th century believed in God.
This article will briefly enumerate a few of the seemingly endless reasons why an objective mind cannot fail to be convinced by the evident reality of God.
This is only part of the massive amount of evidence which some Atheists choose to ignore behind platitudes, sweeping statements and truckloads of bile borrowed from Christopher Hitchens & Richard Dawkins.
Alas, it won’t convert ideological Atheists whose confirmation biases will prevent them from engaging with the arguments presented.
Yet, I hope some of those confused by the perception that Theism is based on blind belief, not rational arguments and scientific observations will find it helpful.
REASONS TO BELIEVE
- The Existence of the Universe: From nothing comes nothing. It is therefore impossible that the Universe could have existed without a cause. Why is there something rather nothing? Absolutely nothing about the universe suggests it could ever come into being itself anymore than a hovering ball could be uncaused and self-existent. Imagine such a ball popping into being an expanding to the size of the universe! If this is impossible, so is any attempt at explaining the Universe without an external cause. Everything in the physical universe is contingent, not necessary or self-explanatory. Therefore the Universe needs a necessary cause to explain why it is even there. Atheism has no possible answer for why there is something rather than nothing. Can science explain it? No, because science is about explaining how physical state A changes into physical state B. Why are there any Physical States at all? (as Professor Swinburne notes) This is not a question that Science is equipped to answer, no matter how many gaps in scientific understanding are filled. The only logical explanation is a Personal one i.e. a Personal Being not part of the physical universe, chose to create it as an act of Free will. Thinking that Science can answer why the Universe exists without God, is like believing that finding out the recipe for a cake will explain how it came to be! The Universe and it’s laws can no more come to be than a cake can bake itself without any reason, or any personal agent to bake it!
- The Beginning of The Universe – Big Bang cosmology and the impossibility of an actual infinite series of moments establish the Universe had a clear beginning. What begins to exist requires a cause. This cause is outside of space-time and so always existed. It also non-material since Matter only exists in space-time, The only way an eternal cause can cause an effect at a particular moment is if it has free will. Only a Personal Agent could therefore have caused the universe to exist. This Transcendent, Powerful creator is what we mean by God.
- The Fact the Universe is Mathematically structured and intelligible to rational minds. Why would a random arrangement of blind matter be Mathematically structured or rationally intelligible? Galileo said it best “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe”. Science is only possible, because we have a rational universe. A rational, Mathematical Mind created a universe for mathematically aware and rational beings. “God explains why science explains” as Richard Swinburne notes. An accidental Universe could not be expected to be orderly or understandable as Science requires in order to work. Dr Keith Ward explains how the existence of God best explains that Mathematical nature of our Universe: “…if there are necessary mathematical equations existing even before the Universe, the obvious place for them to exist is the in the mind of God, the Supreme Cosmic Intellect. It is God who can select a world from all the available possibilities and so God’s creative choice can explain how a physical universe comes from a set of ideas , mathematical or otherwise in the mind of God“
- The Fine Tuning of the Universe, permitting life against astronomical odds. If any of these parameters had been minutely different the universe or life on earth would have never happened.The Universe appears to be manifestly designed by God so life on our planet could happen. The multiverse cop-out explains nothing, deferring the matter to why any universes with their meta-laws even exist and blatantly violates Ockham’s Razor.
- Human uniqueness: Human beings have morality, language, writing, mathematics, science, art, literature, laws, religions, hobbies, cultures, politics, education, architecture, engineering and a unique ability to understand the universe. Such abilities are so vastly different from the abilities of all other animals that any evolutionary explanation is manifestly insufficient. Clearly man has many abilities not just advantageous to his survival or explainable in terms of differences in his anatomy. Furthermore, the probability of these abilities developing if humankind has a special place in God’s creation is very high, whilst totally unlikely under any naturalistic scenario.
- The Existence of consciousness in human minds, when we could have just been meat-robots with no internal thoughts. Thoughts have no physical properties i.e. mass, volume, spatial location and thus, it is clear we have a non-material self or soul that ineluctably comes from God. Nobel Prize winning Neuroscientist Sir John Eccles stated it wonderfully: “We have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world“
- Near -Death Experience studies have proved that human beings can have full consciousness even after brain activity has ceased. They are multiple reports of brain-dead patients able to see what is happening to their bodies and details are corroborated after they return to life. This would be impossible if Atheism was true and all thinking was dependent on the Brain . The existence of non-physical consciousness appears to be a verifiable fact, meaning that rash rejection of God due to his ‘Supernatural’ or disembodied existence is inconsistent with Scientific evidence.
- Reason and Science depend on God. Human thoughts without a soul would be completely determined by physical events in the brain. As the blind random chemical events in the brain cannot lay claim to objective truth, there would no reason to trust our reason or science, if Atheism was true.
- God makes events happen in nature. The Laws of Nature describe the pattern of natural events. However actual events never happen unless they are instigated by a person or agent. C.S Lewis explains that concrete actual events are clear evidence of God operating from outside of nature. The laws of nature are not causal but descriptive, so for instance winds move according to to the laws of physics, they are not moved by them. On the Atheist perspective there is no explanation for why natural events happen at all.
- God explains why matter obeys the same laws across space-time. Matter has no free will or power to act and at the sub-atomic level all objects are essentially the same. As matter cannot choose to act in the same way across all of space-time it follows it is made to act by a Force beyond it. So what actually makes matter act in the same predictable ways? What gives atoms, chemicals, molecules, cells and organisms their unique properties? Logically, God is our best explanation. Moreover the fact that the laws are cohesive suggests a Single Mind behind the Universe, not multiple ones.
- Why has the Universe lasted, why does it continue to exist? The fact that the universe of things that did not have to exist at all, continues to exist now and has been sustained for around 14 billion years is explicable only in terms of a Divine Sustainer who keeps the Universe in being from moment to moment. Why God? Why not just ‘We don’t know’?because our uniform experience suggests purposeful, co-ordinated actions can only be carried out by an Intelligence.
- God must be as a First cause or nothing would exist right now. Peter Kreeft states: “Existence is like a gift given from cause to effect. If there is no one who has the gift, the gift cannot be passed down the chain of receivers, however long or short the chain may be. If everyone has to borrow a certain book, but no one actually has it, then no one will ever get it. If there is no God who has existence by his own eternal nature, then the gift of existence cannot be passed down the chain of creatures and we can never get it. But we do get it; we exist. Therefore there must exist a God: an Uncaused Being who does not have to receive existence like us—and like every other link in the chain of receivers.”
- Alvin Platinga has shown that belief in God is as rational as believing that other people have conscious minds, which we instinctively and universally believe. Why do we believe this, despite it not being provable? Because people appear to act as we do, so we believe it based on analogy. Equally, we feel the world is a designed by analogy to the way we design things. Even Richard Dawkins accepts that biological organisms appear to be designed for a purpose. Equally he accepts that the sense of wonder produced by the beauty and order of the Universe, makes one feel that one wishes to worship God. The fitrah or nature of man recognises God even if he tries to suppress it. The natural human belief in the world being designed should thus be regarded as the default explanation . Atheists therefore shoulder the burden to provide strong evidence that design is an illusion, and the sense of God’s existence that people feel when admiring the beauty of a sunset, or the gratitude they feel to ‘life’ when things go well, is entirely delusional. The believer is entirely rational to believe in God, until a better explanation can be given. Saying ‘we don’t know but you don’t know its God’ is to ignore the strong impetus within humankind that we do know it is God, at least at the subconscious level. The reason we know this according to the Quran, is Allah himself held audience with all of humankind before our worldly creation and took from us all a testimony of his existence (7:172)
- The near-impossibility of life starting on earth without a miracle. All advances in bio-chemistry have underlined the massive obstacles to the first self-replicating molecule forming by chance processes. As science has progressed, the gap for divine intervention to start life has not shrunk, but positively exploded. It takes a blind faith in Atheism to still believe God was not involved.
- The existence of coded information in DNA, showing a intelligence operating in nature. Bill Gates has described the DNA code as being like Computer Software, but far more advanced than anything humans have devised. It is impossible, even in principle for random processes to produce symbolic meaningful information. Language, coded information, are unmistakable signs of Intelligence . Anthony Flew was forced to abandon his life long Atheism because of these facts.
- The existence of irreducible complexity in molecular biology, making step by step random evolution impossible.
- The incredibly fast development of complex organisms in a short geological period, unexplainable by gradual undirected evolution (The Cambrian explosion)
- The lack of any evidence of mutations adding information to the genome, and the problems with lack of time for tiny, incremental mutations.
- Beneficial mutations would need to be cumulative, which seems incredible if happening by chance over and over and over again. Cumulative mutations clearly speak of purposeful design. Stephen M Taylor writes: “The French anti-Darwinist scientist Andree Tetry pointed out that it’s not just a question of mutations being beneficial, they also have to be cumulative. Each mutation has to relate to the previous one, and occur at exactly the right place and time. Imagine the thousands of separate genetic mutations which would be needed to produce birds’ wings, for example. Each one would have to be exactly the right kind of mutation in terms of the previous one, to create the next step along the line of development to wings, and each time the odds against these occurring accidentally would increase massively.”
- The apparent process of fully formed organisms appearing and disappearing in the fossil record, without transitional forms that can be verified.
- The insurmountable odds against Microbe to Man evolution if God did not direct evolution. If however God directed the process, with the aim of producing creatures including us, each of the massively improbable events becomes very probable.
- The existence of universal morality, which humans believe to be objective. Without God, rape, child abuse, cannibalism only seem wrong due to evolution. They are not actually wrong. Equally as free-will is impossible if we are constrained by physical events in our brain, moral responsibility is impossible. Prisons and courts should be abolished if Atheism is true.
- The need for justice – humans strongly and passionately desire perfect justice. It is difficult to see why evolution would instill such an irrational desire within us, given the impossibility of universal justice on earth. Equally we are averse to the suffering of others and seem to want everyone to be happy all the time even though this is logically impossible. Why do we have desires that are biologically redundant, uniquely human and practically impossible? I agree with C.S Lewis that such desires arise from our inner need for the life Hereafter where all this does exist. The world we have cannot be the complete reality, only the afterlife can make sense of our human needs: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world”.
- Without God existing this universe, its life-permitting laws, its biochemistry that supports life, consciousness and the stunning series of events that led to you reading this article as are so unlikely as to seem impossible. It is rational to believe in explanations that raise the probabilities of things existing as they do. The God explanation makes all these unlikely events into highly probbable ones given God’s desire to create this world and creatures such as ourselves.