Is it silly to believe in God? Is there any evidence that He exists? If He does exist, who is He? Is He the God of the Christians? Is He good or bad? Why should I follow or trust Him? These are some tough questions. While I don't have ALL of the answers, I have good reasons and evidence for why I believe what I believe. For my next series of blogs, I will share some of the things I have learned and some of the reasons I believe what I believe. I would like to state again, that I don't have all the answers. This is a very complex subject and there is a lot written about it. I will try to present as much as I know and when I am done, I will recommend some good books on the subject for you to dig deeper and do more research if you would like. We will begin with why I believe that God exists.
Is it silly to believe that God exists? To some it may seem so. Many would argue that religion is based on faith and secularism is based on evidence therefore a belief in God is invalid. A great book on this subject, and I will probably revisit it a lot throughout this series, is Timothy Keller's Making Sense of God. In it Keller argues that "reason and proof must start with faith in reason and belief in some particular concept of proof" (Keller 2016, p.34). He goes on to say that there is even more faith involved in ordinary rationality than that as many great twentieth-century thinkers (Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Wittgenstein to name a few) have argued that all reasoning is based on prior faith commitments to which one did not reason (p. 34). An example that he gives is the faith we have that our eyes, ears, minds, and memories are not deceiving us (p. 34). Their reliability cannot be tested without using and therefore assuming their reliability (p. 34). We do not know that we aren't in some sort of alternate reality and aren't plugged into some sort of machine feeding us that reality like in the movie The Matrix (p. 34). We just have faith that the reality we know is THE reality. The assertion that science and empirical evidence are the only ways to understand reality also requires faith (p. 35). Science is only fit to investigate the natural world but not fit to investigate whether anything exists beyond it (p.35). To assume that it is the only way to explain reality is to assume that every phenomenon has a NATURAL cause (p. 35). Evidence points to the fact that the universe did not always exist. Something caused it to happen. It had a beginning. In order to make the claim that everything exists within a natural realm you have to be able to proove that matter or energy which the universe is made of is either eternal or have the capability of creating themselves (Miller, 2010). The Second Law of Thermodynamics implies that the first option is impossible and the First Law implies the second option is impossible (Miller, 2010).If the universe cannot possibly have created itself, then it is plausible to believe that something created it. That something would have to exist outside of it and therefore would exist outside of the constraints of space and time making it impossible for us to explain using something that could only explain the natural realm. This being would be SUPERnatural.
More evidence that points to the existence of a creator is the order and design that is seen in the natural realm. The Earth is located in just the right spot in relation to the sun. If it were any closer, it would be too hot for life to exist. If it were any farther away, it would be too cold. Coincidence? Also just look at plants, animals, people, and just nature in general. Pick up a biology book and read about how complex life is. Even something as tiny as a cell is so complex. It is so tiny but is necessary for life to exist. The oxygen we breathe here on earth and the water we drink are necessary for life to exist. There is a reason we haven't found life anywhere else. That is because these conditions for life don't exist everywhere. But they exist here. What are the odds that everything winds up in the perfect harmony that we see here by accident. I'm guessing very astronomical. There are so many more examples I could give, I could do several more blogs on how amazing life is and that it exists (and I might in the future) but for now I will leave it at what I've said and perhaps later I can recommend some reading if you'd like to know more. But to sum it up, I think the design and order that is seen in things is another reason why belief in God is plausible.
A third reason why I believe God exists is the existence of morality. Going back to Tim Keller's book Making Sense of God, Keller states that most secular people today hold a set of ethical beliefs about the nature of human life (Keller, 2016, p. 41). They are committed to science and reason, to progress and the good of humanity, and to the rights, equality and freedom of every human being (p. 41). He goes on to state that Secularism is marked by a call to take active responsibility for making a better world and for the betterment of other people of all races and ethnicities (p. 41). They would argue that removing religion from the world would help us to realize these values (p. 41). The problem is, they cannot explain where these values come from. None of them can be proven empirically and they do not follow logically from a materialistic view of the world (p. 41). From a materialistic view of the world, you are made strictly of matter with no soul. You have no purpose. There is no after-life and the world will eventually burn up in the death of the sun. Nothing we do here in this world matters because it will not make a difference in the end (p. 42). If this were true, we should be inclined to live as selfishly as possible (p. 42). It does not make sense to be considerate of other people as there is no real benefit for it in a materialistic world. While there ARE people who live pretty selfishly, there is something in us that knows that is wrong. What put those values in us? I believe that the existence of those values point to the God who put them in us. Tim Keller does a great job of explaining this more in depth in his book and I highly recommend reading it whether you are a believer or a skeptic (It is written to be geared towards skeptics).
In summary, I have shown why I believe that it is plausible to believe that God exists. You may say that I have't proven anything but I can also say that you can not absolutely prove that the universe always existed and everything in it was created by it. None of us were there at the beginning of time to see how everything began so it is difficult if not impossible to come up with absolute proof of how it happened. Every explanation is theories based off of evidence. They all require some degree of faith to believe. Belief in God is no different and no less plausible in that regard. There is good evidence if you look at the laws of thermodynamics, the order and design of everything, and the existence of morality. There is more that I will try to get to later. But for now I will conclude part 1 with what I have presented so far. I hope and pray that you have found this helpful. I look forward to sharing more in part 2!
References
Keller, T. (2016). Making Sense of God. New York, NY: Viking.
Miller, J. (2010). "The Laws of Thermodyamics Don't Apply to the Universe!"Apologetics Press. Retrieved from http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=3704