This article presents 10 Reasons Why God Exists.
It is a common misconception amongst Atheists and Agnostics that belief in God is based largely on wishful thinking.
In fact there are innumerable strong arguments for the existence of God.
This article will list just 10 reasons why God exists. For more, check out ‘Refuting Atheism’ and my Book.
Reasons Why God Exists #1#
Why does anything exist at all?
This question (first posed by Gottfried Leibniz) is often passed over as absurd by Atheists. Yet it is of the most critical importance. If God did not bring into being everything (or even something) from nothing then why is there anything at all?
There is nothing necessary or inevitable about the existence of single particle. The Universe did not need to be. So why is it, at all?
Admittedly, it can be countered that this is a classic fallacy, an argument from ignorance. Just because we do not know what caused existence, does not mean we should assume ‘God did it’.
However, this line of argument has its own problems. Assuming God exists is not some groundless assertion; it is a matter of inference to the best explanation.
It is difficult to ignore that the Universe appears likely even inevitable if God exists, and unlikely perhaps impossible otherwise. In short, belief in God appears to be the default explanation for existence as we know it.
Atheists have not yet come close, to providing a coherent or even comprehensible ‘explanation’ for the world existing.
The self-deluding mathematical mumbo-jumbo that passes for such an explanation cannot pass muster except as poor fiction. John Lennox states:
The world of strict naturalism in which clever mathematical laws all by themselves bring the universe and life into existence, is pure (and, one might add, poor) fiction. To call it science-fiction would besmirch the name of science.
Quoted here
Reasons Why God Exists #2#
The Kalaam Cosmological Argument
Atheist philosophers, would in the past, dodge the issue of explaining how the Universe came to be. Their argument was that it was infinite and eternal, in itself.
Then, the evidence for the Big Bang theory, proved that all of space and matter essentially came into being from nothing.
Professor Robert Jastrow, powerfully captures the unmistakable Divine and Mystical implications of this discovery:
The instant of the explosion marked the birth of the Universe. The seed of everything that has happened in the Universe was planted in that first instant; every star, every planet and every living creature in the Universe came into being as a result of events that were set in motion in the moment of the cosmic explosion. It was literally the moment of Creation.
Robert Jastrow (cited at Great Throught Treasury)
In any case, the Universe cannot be infinite. Because, an infinite series of moments leading to the present is impossible. This is beautifully explained by Theologian, William Lane Craig here. Thus it is clear the Universe came into being from non-existence.
Craig has further developed Imam Ghazali’s age old Kalaam Cosmological Argument which argues the Universe must have a cause, since it is not infinite and anything that begins to exist must be caused. Moreover he convincingly establishes that only a Personal agent of great power i.e. GOD could have caused the universe:
Finally, Ghazali argued that 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….
… the cause of the universe is permanently there, since it is timeless. So why isn’t the universe permanently there as well? ….
Ghazali maintained that the answer to this problem is that the First Cause must be a personal being endowed with freedom of the will… Freedom of the will enables one to get an effect with a beginning from a permanent, timeless cause..
This argument has never been successfully refuted. It vividly shows that a Personal, Transcendent, Supremely Powerful, Timeless and Immaterial Creator is the only rational explanation for the Universe existing. I have summarised it as follows, for the sake of clarity:
- The Universe had a beginning.
- All that begins to exist must have a cause.
- The Universe must have a cause.
- The cause must be timeless.
- A timeless entity can only cause a temporal effect if it possesses free will.
- Therefore the Universe was caused by an act of free will by a Personal Agent of tremendous power, who is also Immaterial and Transcendent .
Reasons Why God Exists #3#
The Fine-Tuned Universe
As science has progressed, it has revealed startling facts about the Universe. One of the best reasons why we can know that god exists, is the phenomenon of fine-tuning.
It appears that a huge variety of parameters are ‘just right’ to produce a universe and planet suited to life, like our own.
There appears to be a mathematical precision to the Universe that indicates that it was deliberately fine-tuned, so life on earth – human life – could emerge.
Taken together these facts seem so overwhelming that they almost negate the possibility of of the Universe being purposeless or uncreated. See a breathtaking description of these facts here.
Theologian Richard Swinburne aptly shoots down the hand-waving dismissal of these facts by some Atheists who claim that if the Universe was different we would not be here to comment upon it.
He likens it to a scenario where an insane man locks a victim in a room with a card-shuffling machine, warning that the first draw of the machine must consist of aces from each deck or an explosion will be triggered off that will kill the victim.
When against all odds the machine brings up the required cards the victim is naturally surprised. The kidnapper, however claims it is unsurprising since he would not have been around to see it if the outcome had been any different!
The second attempted refutation of cosmic fine-tuning is the multiverse hypothesis which presumes the existence of a potentially infinite number of other universes and argues that our universe is the one that is randomly suited to life. This argument is blatant violation of Occam’s Razor, and also cannot be empirically tested and therefore pseudoscientific.
Why this universe actually exists and why we exist in it therefore cannot be satisfactorily answered until we admit that the Universe does indeed appear to have been fine-tuned for intelligent life.
Reasons Why God Exists #4#
Natural Events Are Always Divine Events
Perhaps one of the very best reasons to believe that God indeed Exists, is often overlooked by both believers and sceptics.
C.S Lewis proved that natural laws do not cause actual natural events.
He gives an analogy of two balls on a billiard table, on a lurching liner. One hits another. They move according to the law of motion. However, the law of motion does not itself move the balls.
So what about the strong winds that caused the ship to lurch? These too, move according to the laws of nature but are not actually moved by by those laws.
Tracing back each natural event in the chain, draws a complete blank in finding any ‘instigator’ for events in nature.
In one fell swoop, this brings down the whole edifice of materialism, proving laws of nature have no agency to act and thus no explanatory value in understanding the actual source of events.
This puts paid to the absurd idea that ‘natural explanations’ will ever mean that belief in God is unnecessary. Lewis states:
(Laws) … produce no events: they state the pattern to which every event – if only it can be induced to happen – must conform, just as the rules of arithmetic state the pattern to which all transactions with money must conform – if only you can get hold of any money…the incessant torrent of actual events which makes up true history… must come from somewhere else.
To think the laws can produce it is like thinking that you can create real money by simply doing sums.
… in order for there to be a real universe, the connections must be given something to connect; a torrent of opaque actualities must be fed into the pattern.
If God created the world then He is precisely the source of this torrent, and it alone gives our truest principles anything to be true about. But if God is the ultimate source of all concrete, individual things and events, then God Himself must be concrete, and individual in the highest degree.
… Book-keeping, continued to eternity, could never produce one farthing.”
C.S Lewis
Thus, we can rightly infer that God did not simply instigate the initial event i.e. the Big Bang, but rather his hand is instigating every major and minor event in nature, even today. This essentially rules out both Deism and Atheism as satisfactory explanations of reality.
Reasons Why God Exists #5#
Life Cannot Come From Non-life
Abiogenesis is the name given to the idea that life began through perfectly natural means.
Charles Darwin suggested this in one of his letters where he speculated that a few simple chemicals in a ‘warm little pond’ might have formed the first living organism as a result of weather conditions.
Living in an age where little was understood about the incredibly complex nature of the simplest molecule, Darwin’s musings might have had a degree of credibility.
However, by the twentieth century it had become readily apparent that the formation of a simple molecule capable of reproduction from non-living matter was so improbable an event, as to be virtually impossible, unless there was a miracle.
From my vantage point, ‘natural’ mechanisms are always divinely-ordained as discussed in previous section.
It is nonetheless interesting to see how utterly hopeless any attempt to explain away life’s origin has been. Surely, this is one of the most excellent reasons to acknowledge why God truly exists!
The following citation adequately summarises the failure of a naturalistic explanation of life:
The transformation of an ensemble of appropriately chosen biological
monomers (e.g. amino acids, nucleotides) into a primitive living cell
capable of further evolution appears to require overcoming an information hurdle of superastronomical proportions (Appendix A), an event that could not have happened within the time frame of the Earth except, we believe, as a miracle (Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, 1981,1982,2000).All laboratory experiments attempting to simulate such an event have so far led to dismal failure (Deamer, 2011; Walker and Wickramasinghe, 2015)
EDWARD J.STEELE, IMMUNOLOGIST CITED HERE
It was precisely the advance of chemistry and molecular biology that convinced the eminent Atheist Philosopher, Anthony Flew to become a believer in the existence of God. He correctly concluded that
“Super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature”
Reasons Why God Exists #6#
Irreducible Complexity & Darwin’s ‘blind spots’
Darwinian Evolution proposes that random mutations accumulate over time to cause new species to emerge from common ancestors.
The crucial point is that all this happens blindly. Mutations survive and are passed on to offspring only because they help the organism survive. Recently, supporters of intelligent design have successfully challenged this idea.
Micheal Behe for example, has in his bestselling book ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ shown that there are some aspects of molecular biology that demonstrate irreducible complexity.
This means that there are some biological systems that are made of several parts which could not function unless all the requisite parts are present at the same time. This refutes the gradual changes anticipated by Darwinists.
At the level of species, there are numerous examples of irreducible complexity, which has also been described as the whole package phenomenon by Dr. Geoffrey Simmons.
Here follow, just a few instances of complex systems in biology which defy the step-by-step trial and error evolution suggested by Darwinists and give us a further reasons to see why God exists.
- Sense Perception:
All sensory perception requires the concurrent existence of a) an organ or cells that are sensitive to stimuli, b) nerves that convert these into electrical impulses and C) areas in the brain that perceive these impulses as sensations of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell.
As such, sensory perception could not have evolved in a series of unrelated biological mutations that came to work together by sheer dumb luck.
The eminent scientist Sir Fred Hoyle gives a number of other examples of animal structures and behaviour that contradict Darwinian theory, in his book ‘The Intelligent Universe’:
2. An elementary spider’s web would not have trapped much food, he notes.
3. The intricate dance of the worker bees which communicates the location of food to other bees cannot be explained through small random mutations over time, as the complete system of communication is required from the very outset.
4. Cleaner fish feed on the parasites of larger fish. How could this relationship have evolved? How did the small fish avoid being eaten by the large fish?
5.Finally, a species of flatworm known as Dicrocoelium dendriticum lives in the following mind-boggling manner: The eggs of the flatworm are contained in sheep’s droppings scattered on the grass, a snail eats them, and they hatch inside it. The snail leaves the larvae in its slime trail. The larvae then paralyse a passing ant. The ant is then fixed to a blade of grass, which is eaten by the sheep. And so the cycle starts again.
Needless to say, no amount of imagination and hand-waving can resolve the dilemma of how a species of flatworm could have developed such a means of reproduction in a step-by-step fashion, since the absence of any stage in this process would have meant that the flatworm would never have existed!
Reasons Why God Exists #7#
Divine Design In Evolution
Darwinian Theory struggles to explain several features of the natural world. These appear to be better understood and explained, If ‘creative leaps’ and divine front-loading of evolutionary pathways are accepted.
- The Gaps in the Fossil record. Most scientists like to claim that the fossil record provides clear, irrefutable evidence for evolution. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Darwin’s own day, the fossil record was recognised as not demonstrating the existence of the intermediate or transitional life-forms that his theory demanded. He explained away this fact as being due to the imperfection of the fossil record. 150 years later, over hundreds of millions of fossils have been dug out. Yet the transitional forms are still missing. Now and again, an alleged transitional is found but almost always, its identification as such becomes hotly disputed within the scientific community. To date, not one single clear and unambiguous transitional fossil has been found. The story that emerges from the fossil record is not gradual evolution, but the sudden emergence of species, periods of constancy, and finally substitution with a different species. This narrative is inconsistent with gradual microbe-to-man evolution as touted by Darwinists and far more consistent with ‘creative leaps’ that Theistic Evolutionists might expect. The well-known evolutionist Niles Eldrege has this to say:
No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.
- The Cambrian explosion. The fossil record shows the emergence of countless different complex animals in an incredibly short geological period. This period of rapid ‘evolution’ (around 530 million years ago) is generally known as the Cambrian explosion. Stefan Bengston, the Swiss palaeontologist explains why these facts remain most uncomfortable for the Darwinist:
If any event in life’s history resembles man’s creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants.
The problem in a nutshell is that the gradual step-by-step evolution predicted by Darwin is incompatible with the sudden and rapid appearance of so many different, complex animal groups in a short space of time. This is especially so since some of them -trilobites for instance- had highly complex and developed organs such as eyes.
- The Problems of mutation-based evolution. There are basically three problems with identifying mutations as crucial to the evolution of organic life. First that point-mutation is incredibly rare. Second, that few (if any) such mutations have been observed to add genetic information to the genome, most actually delete such information or else have no effect on the species as a whole. Third, few such mutations actually provide advantages to the organism in the battle for survival. Generally mutations, if inherited at all, have the opposite effect. Pierre Grasse makes the following comment:
Some contemporary biologists, as soon as they observe a mutation, talk about evolution. They are implicitly supporting the following syllogism: mutations are the only evolutionary variations, all living beings undergo mutations, and therefore all living beings evolve. This logical scheme is, however, unacceptable: first, because its major premise is neither obvious nor general; second, because its conclusion does not agree with the facts. No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.
- Negative traits in animals that natural selection leaves untouched
One of Grasse’s most potent criticisms of Darwinism was that natural selection appears to leave many characteristics in organisms untouched that are harmful to their survival. This could not be the case if natural selection was as effective as Darwin assumed. Dr. Maurice Bucaille bolstered Grasse’s criticism with the following examples:
…it is a well-known fact that certain conifer plants produce chemical compounds that irresistibly attract coleoptera which then devour them. The production of these chemical compounds is therefore responsible for the death of the plant. This process has been going on for millions of years: natural selection does not intervene to save pine and fir trees from destruction by insects. Similarly, the antelope is able to escape its enemies by its extreme speed, and yet there are species of this animal whose hooves contain glands that secrete a particular odour, which, as the antelope runs, is left on the ground. All the attacking carnivore has to do is follow the scent in order to track down its prey. Thus the graceful antelope is left unprotected by the theories of Darwin! Another example; of a harmful individual attribute is the excessive growth of horns, which can constitute a handicap. Finally, we are all familiar with the case of the deer, whose antlers impede its movement through the forest.
Maurice Bucaille
What If Darwin is right?
Let us for the purposes of argument; concede that all the aforementioned criticisms of Darwinian evolution stand refuted. Moreover, let us imagine that some ‘silver bullet’ or ‘smoking gun’ is someday found that forever lays to rest all objections to this theory and establishes it as an incontrovertible fact of life. Where would this leave the God hypothesis? The answer, although it may be surprising to some, is that the God hypothesis would not be in the least bit affected by any such development.
Why? Because God would remain the best, most consistent, most probable and most lucid answer to the most important question of all: why did all the massively, enormously, hugely, vastly, astronomically improbable events occur (despite the odds) that made evolution possible and created man from a microbe.
Reasons Why God Exists #8#
I think, therefore God is…
No fact about the world, I believe to be true, is beyond doubt or question. Even scientific facts reach me through the fallible testimony of my senses. I might be dreaming, living in a simulation or hallucinating. As such all such knowledge can be doubted and questioned.
So what cannot be doubted? Rene Descartes answered this question centuries ago…I think, therefore I am.
If today I assumed that my senses were deceiving me, I would not possess knowledge of anything except the undeniable reality that ‘I’ existed as a conscious and thinking being. Because if I did not…then who was doing the doubting? Clearly I exist. I exist even if the universe does not. I exist even if the Big Bang never occurred and evolution never happened.
Having established this fact. The question would then arise ‘how did I get here?’ there does not appear to be any possibility of answering this question without concluding that ‘I’ was created by a being more powerful than ‘I’.
So, the only two things I know is that I am and my Creator is. All arguments, evidence, deductions and inductions gained through a source (human perception) that can be doubted cannot dilute these facts that cannot be doubted, refuted or denied.
Reasons Why God Exists #9#
I Am A Soul
Every particle in your (and my body) has been replaced endlessly during our lives. My brain is today made up of a completely different set of atoms and sub-atomic particles than it was a few months or years ago. As Roger Penrose says:
…there is a continual turnover in the material of any living person’s body. This applies in particular to the cells in a person’s brain, despite the fact that no new actual brain cells are produced after birth. The vast majority of atoms in each living cell (including each brain cell)—and, indeed, virtually the entire material of our bodies—has been replaced many times since birth (The Emperor’s New Mind, Penguin Books, 1989, pp. 24-25)
In other words, brick by brick I am being rebuilt each day, with the illusion of a physical form that is unchanged. Yet astoundingly, my self-awareness and consciousness has never been disrupted or affected by this process of continuous re-creation. I am therefore an non-physical being, with an ever changing physical form. My consciousness precedes my body, and is therefore capable of existence without it.
Think of this, how do the particles in your brain that hold your memories from decades ago, hold these memories? They are completely different from those that formed your brain when those events took place, yet the information that is ‘you’ has passed from that set of particles to another set of particles seamlessly.
‘I’ am therefore a non physical mind that ‘materialises’ during my earthly stay with particles coming and going from my physical form as new water constantly flows in the same river. All naturalistic explanations of life and consciousness are therefore bound to fail. Only God can explain why ‘I’ exist.
Human consciousness cannot be an accidental by-product of material processes that it is capable of existing without. This leads me, to conclude that God injected consciousness wilfully, purposely and purposefully into the human form.
Reasons Why God Exists #10#
Science (and Free-will) is Dead, Without God
The idea that we are cosmic accidents imbued with a sense of consciousness that is unintended cannot be rationally maintained.
Here are some reasons why:
- If I am hostage to the chemistry and physics of my brain, I cannot possibly have free will. This means I cannot choose to think or do something. Yet think of a time when somebody asked you think of something…remember? See you just chose to think of something after being prompted by a person who is not subject to the chemical reactions, or physical properties of your brain. This demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that your ability to think something or do something can be intentional. This can only mean that ‘you’ are not controlled by the matter in your brain, but rather ‘you’ utilise your brain, in the same way you use a computer.
- If my thoughts are controlled by the random firings of neurons, these firings should be just that -random. If the firings were random, the thoughts produced of them of necessity would also be random. It would not be possible for blind accidental chemical reactions to all match up consistently and allow me to have a consistent sense of personal experience, and co-ordinate my thoughts in a way that would allow me to write this article. If Einstein’s thoughts were random, he would not have been able to work consistently on the theory of relativity! So for thoughts to be consistent and organised, it is necessary that there be a ‘self’ over and above the physical structure of the brain, and its electrochemical events.
- If ‘I’ was an illusion created by the brain’s biochemistry or physical composition, this would mean all my thoughts and beliefs are known to me only because my brain,which is a hunk of matter with random chemical reactions going on within it. Being true, this would also mean that Darwin believed in evolution by natural selection because his brain forced him to do so, not because he was convinced of its truth by the scientific evidence. If on the other hand atheists accept that he chose to believe in it, because of scientific proof, they are inadvertently accepting that Darwin was not controlled by the chemistry, physics or biology of his brain, but was able to use his brain to think freely, and intentionally. This can only mean that there is a ‘controller’ of the physical brain, which is itself non-physical.
- Scientists can explain in great detail the biological, chemical and physical facts that underpin my ability to see a ‘picture’ in my mind’s eye. However, the brain itself does NOT contain this picture. The picture which my brain ‘connects to’ is purely non-physical. If my brain was transparent all that we could see within it would be chemical and electrical activity. The image – maybe of my best friend or favorite film star-would be nowhere to be found anywhere within the physical structure of the brain. The mind is therefore non-physical, although it connects to the brain to transfer consciousness onto the physical plane of existence.
- Evolution by natural selection is claimed to have preserved traits that help an organism in the battle for survival, and passed them on to the next generation. However, humans could have survived even if they did not understand science, maths, philosophy or have any concept of truth or falsehood. As Alvin Platinga points out the probability of human reason being reliable is low if naturalism is true. However if this is the case, then the probability of Darwinian evolution is also low, being known to us only by unreliable means! The only way out of this to accept that our consciousness and cognition is not dependent on our biological structure and was produced by a rational Agency i.e. God.
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