Friday 7 February 2014

Evidence for God

Quite often in discussion with atheists or agnostics, one hears the throw-away comment that there is no evidence for the existence of God. What they mean, of course, is that they do not accept whatever evidence and arguments they may have seen or heard. Usually it also means that they have not looked seriously or in any depth, or, due to their mind set, that they would not accept any evidence however compelling.

It is openly admitted by all that one cannot "prove" the existence of God, just as one cannot "disprove" it. However, without trying to do that, we can examine evidence pro and con, if only to establish that belief in God's existence is not "blind faith" or "irrational" as some are known to say, ad nauseum. Therefore, I offer up the following list of evidence that can be taken to support the existence of God:

1. The universe had a beginning:
For centuries scientists assumed that the universe was eternal; i.e. had no beginning. When evidence for the Big Bang first arose, it was dismissed and argued against. One telling argument was that if the universe had a beginning, it would need to have been caused by something outside the universe. That idea was uncomfortably close to suggesting the existence of a creator, so materialists could not even consider it. Indeed, they went to some lengths (e.g. steady-state cosmology) to avoid it. And they still do with their various "multiverse" concepts, for which indeed there is zero evidence.

Meanwhile, for thousands of years, Judeo-Christian faith has firmly taught that there was indeed a beginning, and a creator. The Big Bang theory presently used to describe the universe's beginning therefore accords with Christian beliefs.

2. The universe is incredibly fine tuned to allow life:
It has been known for several decades now that if the universe's initial conditions, or any of a dozen or so fundamental physical constants had been different, in some cases by the smallest differences, then elements, stars, planets, life and people could not have existed. To modern physics, most of these constants appear to be arbitrary in that they could just as well have had different values as far as the theories and physical laws are concerned.

Of course, if there is a creator God, then he would have done the fine tuning to get a universe that served his purposes, which presumably include us. That seems like the simplest answer (Occham's razor and all) to the fine tuning question. Again, the best that materialist cosmologists can offer to "explain" this fine tuning is their multiverse concept, which has zero supportive evidence and which only bumps the fine tuning problem up to the next (imaginary) level. After all, what would cause an infinite number of universes to continually pop into existence, each with a random set of physical constants and initial conditions? A multi-creator perhaps?

3. The laws of physics are highly ordered and rational:
Not only is the universe finely tuned, but the fundamental physical laws governing its operation appear to be exquisitely aesthetic and simple enough for mere humans to understand and write down on a single page. It is an existential mystery why the universe should be so well ordered and in such beautiful ways.

Here too, we note that if the universe was designed by a perfectly wise and rational creator, then it would be well ordered, regular and understandable, following clear and aesthetically pleasing rules. And if humans were formed in the image of God, then they would be able to study and at least partially understand those rules.

4. The beginning of life on earth:
How life could begin from non-life on planet Earth has engaged scientists for more than a century. Although numerous clever schemes have been suggested, none of them has born significant fruit, and all have fallen far short of the minimal necessary attributes for a living being to exist, grow and reproduce itself. The time scale between when the newly-formed Earth could have supported life (e.g. water remains in liquid state on the surface) and the emergence of the first living cells is quite short, making the problem that much more difficult.

Now if there were an intelligent creator in the picture, it could have thought about how best to design and make what it wanted out of its universe, and been able to put together the building blocks and create living cells from them. I hope science will continue to look for natural processes that could explain abiogenesis, but I expect that the early conditions on Earth, chemistry, laws of thermodynamics, the lack of probabilistic resources, and so on, will continue to be against them, so that they remain far from a credible naturalistic answer.

5. The appearance of design in life:
Once life gets started, evolution will take over and neatly explain the complexity of life we currently see on Earth, as well as in the fossil record. Or so say the naturalists. While Darwinism is good at explaining how gene allele frequencies change in populations subject to environmental and other pressures, the theory has fallen far short of explaining how complex novel features have come about in plants and animals during the 600 million years or so since the first simple multi-cellular life forms inhabited the planet.

The analyses and tests of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement clearly show that random mutation and natural selection cannot generate novel proteins requiring more than a few amino acid differences. Meanwhile, even the closest proteins with novel functions usually differ by many amino acids. Evolution can only work if each step in the supposed development chain benefits the species in which it occurs, and most small changes in protein sequences render the protein inoperative. ID has looked into many so-called examples of novelty in various species and shown that they arose by the addition of significant new information to the DNA, and not by an accumulation of small, random changes, as demanded by unguided evolution.

With a creator in the picture again, developing new proteins and novel features to living beings is straightforward. Intelligence is the only known source of complex information that specifies useful structures and functionality. Thus, the best cause for the existence of such information, which is what DNA is in essence, is a creator, which of course, points us again to God.

6. The historical existence and person of Jesus Christ:
I now switch from science to history. Several ancient, non-biblical documents refer to Christ or Jesus, so we know he did exist. Most of his disciples were martyred for their belief in the events they saw and in some cases clearly reported. Moreover, the same disciples went from being frightened and clueless, to being bold and certain of their belief in the risen Christ. Assuming the gospel accounts are even partly true (see below), then Jesus is an important historical figure. No one can deny that his existence has changed the world.

Now, to borrow from C. S. Lewis, who can we say that Jesus was? If he was a self-deluded fool, why would people follow him and die for him, even beyond his grave? If he was a malicious or power-hungry man, why did he allow himself to be killed? If he was just a prophet and a "good man", why did he tell his followers lies about himself? The gospels make it clear that Jesus claimed to be the very Son of God. So if that is not true, what was he and how can we square that with the historical records?

7. The existence and accuracy of the bible:
The bible was written over a period exceeding 1000 years, by more than 30 human authors, yet it all hangs together and shows the story of God's ongoing revelation of himself from Moses time, up to the first century Roman world. This is a longer time and more authors in agreement than for other religious writings.

Some of the gospels and epistles were written mere decades after Christ's death around 29AD, while others still living could remember what did (or did not) happen, to corroborate or refute what was written. Moreover, the bibles we have today are in excellent agreement with the oldest copies in existence (e.g. the Dead Sea scrolls), and all true modern translations (as opposed to paraphrases) largely agree on the meanings of the passages. Thus, we can be certain that the bible we read today tells pretty much the same story as it did to the ancient Jews and early Christians.

Sure there are occasional minor discrepancies, a few lost words, and some minor uncertainties about word meanings, but the bible books remain the most intensely-studied, attacked but vindicated, and corroborated ancient texts in the world. Together they clearly point us to God as the main actor in creation.

8. The existence of miracles:
It is understandable that many people do not believe in miracles. If you have never experienced one, they seem far fetched at best. On the other hand, a large number of credible people claim to have witnessed or been involved in events which can only be described as miraculous. To write ALL of these off as wishful thinking, hallucination, deception, or confusion, is to make the error of trying to disprove a global negative. You cannot possibly know that ALL supposed miracles are false, and if even two are true, then miracles do exist.

In particular, the Roman Catholic Church investigates supposed miracles very closely and only accepts as miraculous, those which cannot be explained by any other means. Miracles do not usually violate physical laws, but to believers, represent the supernatural realm acting within the natural realm. I have a physical metaphor to describe what happens during some miracles, but will save that for another posting. For now I will just say that there are enough credible reports of seemingly miraculous events that I must take their existence seriously. To deny all miracles out of hand is merely to say that you do not accept the evidence, not that there is no such evidence.

9. Various philosophical arguments:
From ancient Greece, to medieval theologians, to modern philosophers, numerous people at various times have come up with logical arguments purporting to "prove" the existence of God, or at least of some supreme "first cause" or "supreme being". For example since the time of Anselm, there have been various "ontological arguments" put forward, with varying degrees of success. In addition, Thomas Aquinas produced five logical arguments for God, and more recently, Kurt Godel tried to prove a god-like existence mathematically. These are just a few of the many.

While many of these so called "proofs" sound dubious or suspicious to modern thinkers, skeptics have had a hard time effectively refuting them. Sometimes atheists denigrate the arguments without apparently understanding them, or claim that they have been refuted when that is not true. So it comes down to who you believe and what your basic axioms of life are. But it cannot merely be stated that there is no rational argument for God's existence.

10. The existence of morality, consciousness, free will:
A dyed in the wool naturalist has a hard time accounting for universally held moral values, has to conclude that consciousness is an illusion, and must believe that free will does not exist, despite the almost universal human tendency to accept these things as obvious. It is impossible to go through life without applying the concept of right and wrong, without being self aware and introspective, and without believing that you are largely in control of the things you do. On the other hand, these three come easily and naturally (so to speak) when you accept a creator God who gave us each a spirit in his image.

11. The existence of truth, beauty and reason:
Similarly, if we are just bundles of chemicals, come together by chance, with no ultimate purpose, then what (if anything) do these three words mean? Why should we assume that logic and reason are valid when they are just neurons firing in response to stimuli? Why should the abstract words "true" and "false" have any connection to reality (whatever that may be)? And how do we define "beauty" when it is just a collection of sensory inputs to a complex biological network?

Yet we all understand truth, use reason every day, and experience beauty in life. The easiest explanation for this is that God created us and the world that way. That may seem too simplistic, but naturalistic worldviews, if they are consistent, have a hard time with these.

12. The firm belief of the majority of humans:
Finally, truth should not be decided by popular vote, of course, but the fact that the vast majority of the human race has believed and still believes in God, or some sort of supernatural realm and forces, must count as evidence of some sort. Scientism has tried to "explain" religion from an evolutionary perspective, but such stories are shy on real evidence and tend to misunderstand religious belief as it is held and practiced by most people. In contrast, if God exists, then belief in him and acceptance of his revelations clearly follow.

Each of these pieces of evidence has just been introduced here. Many books have been written exploring these arguments and the facts behind them. Obviously, I cannot do justice to any of them in a blog posting, but all of them can be investigated in depth, from both pro and con perspectives, on the Internet if one wants to find the truth for oneself. I encourage you to do so. Christianity has survived every attack against it for almost 2000 years now, and God has been around a lot longer. As we say, "all truth is God's truth", so there is no harm in searching for truth with an open mind.

Once again, while no one can "prove" that God exists, and while one may take exception with some of the above arguments, all of them cannot be discounted out of hand and simply written off as "irrational blind faith". Materialism does a much poorer job explaining many of them than do faith in God and Christianity.

To paraphrase Blaise Pascal, there is enough evidence to satisfy those with some faith, but not enough to convince those without. Perhaps that is the way God intended it to be!