Evidence for the Existence of God

An anonymous commenter asked me to produce evidence for the existence of God. I see no reason not to oblige.

Dr. Walter L. Bradley "received his B.S. in Engineering Science and his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Texas in Austin." He is no scientific slouch. He is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University, but he is perhaps best known for his scientific evidence for the existence of God. I've read the thing myself. Frankly, it's over my head. (Math is not my strong suit.) The argument shows that the universe requires Design, not randomness.

Imagine that you are walking in the forest and come across a rock. You think, "Oh, look, a rock." Naturally occurring, of course. Nothing to really see here. Move along. Then you come across a rock on top of a rock. "Interesting," you think, but still possibly naturally occurring, and you move on. When you come to a pile of 10 rocks carefully balanced on one another, do you think, "Oh, look, how interesting! I wonder how that happened in nature?" or do you think, "Someone else has been here."? You see, the complexity of the universe begs for a Designer. Watch any nature show you wish. Make sure it is a naturalistic nature show -- predicated on Evolution without God. It seems impossible for them to avoid the term "design" when they describe animals and plants in nature because it is manifestly obvious that things are too complex to happen at random and end up so precise.

Philosophy, too, likes to enter into the fray. If there is no god, the argument must be "something comes from nothing." One Evolutionist (if I knew his name, I'd credit him) argued, "For something to come from nothing takes a long time." It's the only possible conclusion. Why is it, then, that the theists are considered irrational while the atheists are arguing something that is so illogical? There are indeed many philosophical arguments for the existence of God. There is the Ontological Argument, the Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, the Moral Argument, the Argument from Religious Experience, and the Argument from Miracles. Some are good arguments; some aren't. For instance, there is Pascal's Wager, but Paul refutes that in 1 Cor. 15. One argument says that because we can conceive of a perfect being, He must exist. I find that odd, since we can conceive of lots of things that don't exist. Others are hard to avoid. The Cosmological Argument has various forms. One actually came from Aristotle, who was not a Christian. His was the "first mover" argument. "If there are effects, there must be a first cause -- an uncaused cause." One argues that nothing comes from nothing. Therefore, if anything is, something must have "necessary being" -- God. The Kalam Cosmological Argument argues that all that we know is caused, so it must have a First Cause. (Trust me; I'm really abbreviating these arguments. You should really look into them yourselves.) The Teleological Argument is the argument of Intelligent Design. Nothing as complex as the universe we live in occurs by chance. It has all the indications of design, which requires a Designer. Moral arguments come in various forms, but argue from the fact that there is a moral law to the need for a Lawgiver.

Philosophy is nice, but there is so much more. Dr. Hugh Ross offers Astronomical Evidences for the Existence of God. Dr. William Lane Craig answers critics of the Caused Universe argument. Dr. Ross offers some of the parameters of the universe that strongly argue for Design.

Now, mind you, I'm no scholar in these arguments. I'm a reader. I can do the searches. I know how to find websites like godandscience.org or doesgodexist.org. A simple Google search for "evidence for the existence of God" pulls up more hits than I can manage. There are papers by PhDs, simplified versions for students, and pdf's. Even Kant, who was famous for arguing that you cannot prove the existence of God, argued that God must exist if there is any reason to believe in morality.

Two common errors are made in this question. One is the error of the atheist: "No evidence of God exists." This is so fundamentally false that I can only imagine how they keep it up. I can only think that they "ignore the elephant in the room", so to speak. They willfully choose to deny all the evidence offered. Evidence is out there. The second error, however, occurs on the other side. The theist tries to argue, "We can prove that God exists." This is equally false. "Proof" requires that evidence is sufficient to require belief in the truth of the claim. Scripture itself tells us that this won't happen. People can choose to ignore evidence and choose to believe all sorts of crazy things. Ultimately we know that natural Man is hostile to God and unwilling to receive things of the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:14). Proof of God doesn't exist.

There is one other common error, although this one comes from both sides. This error says that faith and evidence are contradictory. This error defines "faith" as blind. "If there is evidence," so many people argue, "it is not faith." The Greek word for "faith" is actually defined as "to be convinced". We become convinced by many things and it doesn't exclude the evidence. Both sides make this error. Don't you make it.

Now, I have just scratched the surface. There is evidence. There are arguments. There are reasons beyond "blind faith" to believe that there is a God. It is certainly possible to reject those reasons, but to suggest "there is no evidence" is simply not true.