Logical Arguments for the Existence of God

Are human beings the most intelligent species to ever exist across the entirety of the universe?

If your answer is yes, you are claiming intellectual superiority over a universe of which humans have explored and studied less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.

If your answer is no, you can't be an atheist.

Before I begin, I want to make something clear:  This not about "proving" the Christian God.  Yes, I am a born-again Christian and I do believe that Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins.  But this is not about proving which religion is "right."  For that matter, it's not even about proving God exists.  It's about acknowledging the very logical possibility of the existence of a Creator.

Atheists like to throw around words like "logic" and "reason" in an attempt to make themselves appear superior and to both degrade and demoralize those who disagree with their reasoning.  After all, if you're not logical or reasonable, you clearly aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer, right?  But if you take a step back and observe the workings on the universe for just a moment, you'd find that it's both unreasonable and illogical to assume there is no God, much less declare this as a fact.

We see varying levels of intelligence in the various species on our own planet.  Insects, animals, humans - we all have differing degrees of intellectual capacity, and it is clear that humans stand at the top of that list.  Right away, that begs the question: What about other planets?  Does any other life exist out there?  If it does, is it smarter than us?

Critics will jump all over that comparison by saying that comparing the possibility of life on other planets to the possibility of a Creator is not equal because we see life on our own planet yet do not see any scientifically measurable evidence of a divine being.  Again, I direct them back to the "levels of intelligence" point from the previous paragraph.

For example, a dog can't design a satellite.  A bear can't invent an energy-efficient vehicle.  Lower forms of life lack the intellectual capacity to understand the concepts required to be able to accomplish what humanity has.  To them, the inventions of humans work by magic.  We, however, know that these things are not powered by magic because we understand the science behind them.

To those life forms, we are the divine beings due to our superior level of intelligence.

With that in mind, now ask yourself the question:  How did the universe begin?  Whatever your answer may be, ask yourself what came before that.  Then ask what came before that.  And before that.  And before that.

No matter what reason you come up with, you can always ask the question, "What came before that?"  This demonstrates the human brain's limitations.  Humanity cannot truly comprehend a hard "start" to existence because our brains tell us something must have come before that.  The law of cause and effect states that for every effect there is a cause.  So our minds tell us that whatever we believe "started" the universe, there must have been something to cause that.

But this plane of existence we call the universe had to begin somewhere, right?  The only option we have left - whether you do or do not believe in God - is to accept that our intellect is too limited to understand what many refer to as the "First Cause" of the universe.

So if we can demonstrate that the human brain is indeed limited, and we can demonstrate that there are varying levels of intelligence right here on our own planet, how can we possibly assume that there's nothing out there with an intellectual capacity greater than our own?

Most atheists will discount believers who invoke the "God did it" response to biblical events that would appear to be scientifically impossible.  Again, I want to reiterate that my goal here is not to prove Christianity but instead prove the possibility of a divine creator.  With that being said, why is the answer of "God did it" so impossible to us?  Regardless of the context, whether it be a miraculous healing or a worldwide flood, why do we discount the possibility that a divine Creator could do these things?

The answer, usually, is because these events seemingly go against the laws of physics and contradict much of what science knows regarding how the universe works.  So let's talk about that for a minute.

Your dog enjoys riding in the car with you.  To him, the car is this sleek red container that he jumps into and it takes him on this amazing ride through town.  He's always known it to be the same shape, color, and size, and there's nothing he can do to change the overall appearance or workings of the vehicle.

Then you buy a new car.  Your dog has no idea why, but his formerly red container has now become a wide green container.  It sounds different, looks different, and smells different.  How could this be possible?  It goes against every understanding he previously had about the appearance and workings of his travel container.

To us, the universe has always adhered to certain expectations.  The planets revolve around the sun, the tide rises and falls, etc.  And although we may put dings and scratches on our world much like that dog would put on the car, overall, it's the same universe it has always been.  Based on that, science has observed certain scientific laws regarding the nature of the universe.  And in our understanding of things, nothing can break those laws.

But what if something with a greater intellectual capacity does exist out there?  Again, the owner is smarter than his dog, so the owner completely understands why his car changed.  If there's something out there greater than humanity, how do we know it couldn't break what we call the laws of physics in a way that would be perfectly understandable if we shared its level of intelligence?  Why is that so impossible?  To declare these scientific laws 100% universally unbreakable is akin to declaring mankind the most intelligent species in the universe.  It is basically saying, "If we can't understand how it would be possible, it simply cannot be."

Yeah, the dog said that too.

When presented with these arguments, the atheist will typically say something about how there's no evidence that any of the workings of the universe are guided by a divine being and therefore there's no reason add one into our line of reasoning.  After all, if science can explain how a thunderstorm works, why do the religious add God into the mix?

Because nothing happens without cause.  Science teaches humanity how things work.  It does not teach why they work that way.  The question "Why?" is similar to the question "How did the universe begin?" because it can never be truly answered.  No matter what the response, you can always ask "Why?" again.  We know how thunderstorms and earthquakes work.  We know how televisions work and how motor vehicles are operated.  But why do they work that way?  And whatever answer you have in your mind, ask why again.  And again to that answer.  And again to that answer.  Keep going and going, because every scientific response you give - right down to the most basic laws of physics - still do not and cannot give a definitive answer to the question of "Why?"  If you can ask it again, it hasn't been resolved.

Science learns how the universe works, but ultimately has no idea why it works that way.  It's like learning how a car works without acknowledging the fuel that makes it go.

So if we can accept the possibility that humans are not the most intellectually superior beings in all of the universe, then we must also accept the possibility that there is something greater out there.  And if we accept the possibility that there might be something greater out there, we must also accept the possibility that this greater form of intelligence could understand and manipulate the laws of science in ways that the limited human brain cannot.  And if we accept that possibility, then we must accept the possibility that God exists.

Breaking Through the Walls

I never thought I'd find myself in this position.

I work a job right now that I never would've considered taking on my own.  It's a job I sort of fell into - a position that God put in front of me that I didn't expect.  And at the time, I didn't really want it, either.  But I had bills to pay, and I knew that responsibility had to be placed ahead of my anxiety.

It's funny how God teaches us things whether we want to learn them or not.  As you may or may not know, I'm a pretty socially awkward introvert.  I keep to myself in public, I don't have many friends, and I spend a lot of time at home with Laura.  There are those I've encountered throughout the course of my life who take that as arrogance, as though I think myself "too good" for them.  On the contrary, I see myself as not good enough.  I'm boring and plain.  I don't drink.  I'm not into the clubbing scene.  I don't dine in fancy restaurants, and I'm not a concert goer.  I like plain milk chocolate.  Vanilla ice cream.  T-shirts.  The band Chicago.  (That's the first time I've ever admitted that, by the way.)

I don't talk much about my non-writing work online for a couple of reasons.  First off, I work for a well-known worldwide company, and privacy and security are two of the most important aspects of our business.  Second, I prefer not to put too much of my private life out there.  I've been with my employer since moving to St. Louis five years ago, and I hope to remain there for a long time to come.  For that reason, as well as moral obligations, I won't divulge too many details.  But what I can tell you is this:  I make presentations to different groups of people on a near-constant basis, most of whom are initially complete strangers to me.  That puts me in sort of a public-relations type of position that is quite different from my old retail jobs, a spot that does NOT suit an introvert in the least.

But as I said, sometimes God teaches us things whether we want to learn them or not.

In school, I was absolutely terrified if I had to do any sort of public speaking in front of the class.  Oral reports were the worst - they may as well have been Armageddon as far as I was concerned.  I didn't want people to look at me, I wanted to sit in the back quietly and be forgotten.  There were times when the stress and anxiety made me want to throw up.

This past January, I spoke in front of an audience of nearly 80 people for a couple of hours.  And I did it with relatively little anxiety, no speech or script planned, and everything went extremely well. I realize that 80 people wouldn't be considered a lot in the eyes of some, but there was a time not too long ago when I would've quit my job long before I got anywhere near that conference room.

Anyway, I don't tell you these things to pat myself on the back or solicit anyone's praise.  I'm proud of the things I've accomplished, but I know there are millions out there who've done far greater and more important things with their lives than I ever will.  I tell you these things because I want you to know something:  If you run away from every situation that scares you, you could wind up closing doors on absolutely wonderful opportunities.  If you let nerves stop you from doing something, if fear makes you cower in the corner, if challenges make you tuck your tail and run, you will never know what you are truly capable of.  You will never learn, never grow, and never really feel a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction with your life.

Don't get me wrong - I totally understand the fear, especially when the critics in your life want to do nothing but bury you beneath it.  I've cowered in the corner more times than I can count, and when challenges come along, the instinct to run away is still the first thing that pops up.  I'm still an introvert.  I still prefer to stay home and avoid public places.

But if I need to do something that initially sparks those fears, I now find that there's a bravery just beyond the anxiety that I can call on when I need to.  If I find out today that I've got to speak in front of a group of 100 tomorrow, I'll be OK with that.  Not because I'm not scared, but because I allow God to put me in situations to teach me what I can accomplish.  To show me what I can do.  And if you never step out of that comfort zone, you'll never know what comfort really is.

Because the honest truth is that there's nothing more comforting than knowing you are no longer imprisoned by fear.

God bless,

Kevin

The Atheist Dilemma

For the last four years, I've made it a goal of mine to try to understand atheists.  I stress that word - understand ­- because no amount of logical thinking leads me to a resolution wherein I might agree with them.  I mean, I know God exists from my own personal interaction with him, so that won't change.  But I had hoped to at least be able to understand their point of view - to be able to follow their line of reasoning to a point where I could say "You know what? I get it.  I see why you believe there is no God."

I mean, I can understand why some might ask "How do you know your God is the right one?" or "How can you claim to know God's intentions?" or the ever common question of "If God is so good, why does he allow bad things to happen to innocent people?"  I understand these questions.  I have answers of my own, but again, they come from my personal interaction with God - something that the non-believer wouldn't have had without first taking a step of faith.  So I can see why someone who does not have a relationship with God might ask these things.

What I can't fathom is why people claim the absence of God to be an absolute fact.  Not one specific God, mind you, but any God.  The statement "There is no God" to me is akin to being handed a sealed box and told "There's no cookie in this box."  If you haven't opened the box to find out, how can you know for sure?  We've explored such a small fragment of a fragment of a fragment of the entire universe.  How can humans presume to know so much from that small fragment that we can actually say "There is no God."?  We haven't explored the entire universe - the entire cookie box, so to speak - so how can we say for sure?

I've talked with a lot of atheists over the past four years.  I've tried to engage them in debate.  I've tried to get them to explain to me what it is that makes them so certain that God does not exist.  Most of them sidestepped my questions.  I'd get responses like, "I'm not here to teach you.  Go look it up yourself," or the ever common "I can't help you if you're too stupid to see common sense."  It's hard to get any real answers from them.  And if they did afford me the opportunity to ask deeper questions, most stopped replying at that point.

Part of the problem, I've noticed, is that atheists state you cannot use religious texts to support your claims, nor can you use the idea that "God did it" to explain things that science claims to be impossible.  So trying to get them to acknowledge the possibilities of a divine being would mean trying to do so through human means - scientific means.  Of course, we have no scientific evidence that directly links our universe to a God, so atheists conclude there is no God.  The most confusing circle of logic for me is when you ask them how science proved there is no God.  They state it is not up to science to prove it - it is up the religious community.  Then why do they cite science when trying to support their claims that there is no God?  "You can't prove a negative," they say, meaning you can't prove it if you say something doesn't exist.  But you can - I can open the box and see whether or not there is a cookie inside.  If it isn't, I've proven there is no cookie.  With God, the universe is the box.  We have yet to explore the entire thing, so how can we say if the cookie is there or not?

The argument of Russell's Teapot has been brought up on more than one occasion.  If you are unfamiliar with it, the concept came from a philosopher named Bertrand Russell.  He stated that if one claimed a teapot was out in space orbiting the sun, it would make no sense for people to believe him just because they can't prove him wrong.  My problem with this notion is that technically, there are circumstances in which his claims could be verified.  If we had spacecraft traveling longer distances, or if we used a satellite or unmanned craft, we could verify or disprove the claim.  But for the sake of argument, let's just say we couldn't verify his claim.  Does that mean that it is a fact that there's no teapot out there?  Or would it be more reasonable to say  "There could be a teapot, but we have no way of proving it."?  Because regardless of whether or not it could be proven, if the teapot is out there beyond the reach of human observation, then the claim is correct.  How, then, can we say for a fact that there is no teapot based solely on a lack of observation?

Science is often quoted by the atheists I've spoke with.  The concept that science has learned how the various systems and mechanics of the universe work - systems that were once attributed a God or Gods - seems to make some atheists believe that the only reason early man believed in God was because we couldn't explain things like eclipses or the rising/falling of the sun.  Once science learned how they worked, atheists say the need for God disappeared.  Again, this seems illogical to me.

This argument could be compared to a man who discovers a car for the first time.  He disassembles it, studies it, reassembles it, and figures out how to use it.  That's what we've done with science - we've learned how the various systems of the universe work, how the human body works, how the earth has changed over the years, and invented ways of managing all of it in our day to day lives.  None of this explains how the car (universe) came to be or who assembled it in the first place.  If matter can neither be created nor destroyed, then we all must have come from some unknown piece of original matter.  OK, so where did that come from?  And whatever the answer is, how then did that come into existence?  How did the space in which this matter resides come into existence?  How did the very laws of the universe come to be formed, and what holds them in place?

I don't say these things to somehow "prove" God did it all.  I say them to illustrate just how little we know - too little to be able to say for sure that he didn't.

One person encouraged me to watch a Discovery Channel special where Stephen Hawking explains his theories about how life in the universe began.  I watched the entire special online so that I could learn what this well-known and highly-respected scientific mind had to say about the origins of the universe.  Unfortunately, zero questions were answered.  If anything, it gave me even more questions to ask.  Hawking postulates that the beginnings of the universe itself spontaneously popped into existence from nothing.  Comparing to a certain type of particle (I watched this a while ago, so I don't remember the name) that has been observed to pop in and out of existence randomly and spontaneously, Hawking says it's very possible that the same could be said of the initial makings of our universe.  How this argument disproves God in his mind is beyond me - if anything, it supports the Christian Genesis story.

When faced with these questions, most atheists reply with "Well, we are still learning and experimenting every day, so the questions we don't know the answers to will one day be answered."  But for me, the important questions will not be answered.  You can tell me how something works, but if you cannot tell me how it came to be and why it happened that way, it will not disprove the existence of God.  You can describe how each of the processes of the universe function together and why they are necessary, but if you can't tell me what makes them go, why they work that way, what fuels the engine of this plane of existence, then you cannot rule out the possibility of a God as the driving force behind it all.

Contradictions in religious texts are another hot button topic for atheists - if there are apparent contradictions in the text, then it must not be true.  First off, most of what seem to be contradictions can be explained by differing points of view.  Think of it this way: You're walking down a crowded New York City street minding your own business.  You hear a commotion behind you and turn around to see a car smash into another car.  The two of them then hit a bus while fleeing pedestrians run in all directions.  Some are knocked over and trampled, others escape just fine, and still others stand still watching the chaos.  The police arrive and start interviewing people.  Do you think each person's account of the accident is going to be identical?  It's unlikely.  Does that mean the event didn't occur?

Other contradictions arise from scientific discoveries that seem to counter the Bible's claims.  The great flood, for example, is often cited as being scientifically impossible because the atmosphere can only hold just so much moisture.  This is where the "God did it" argument gets so much flak. But is it impossible that God did it?  Well, to disprove the idea, one would first have to disprove the existence of God.  We already know we can't do that, so how can we rule out the "God did it" possibility?  Yes, it seems like yet another easy answer to explain something that, at the time, couldn't be otherwise explained.  But again, without disproving God, we can't know that for sure.

And why is the existence of such a divine being so impossible to begin with?  We see differing levels of intelligence in our own world.  A dog can't perform complex mathematical calculations.  A monkey can't draw up designs for a suspension bridge.  We are the most intellectually superior beings on this planet.  But what about the universe?  Are we really so pompous as to think that there is nothing out there that might possess a higher level of intelligence than we do?  And if there is something out there with an intelligence beyond our own, why is it so unfathomable that this level of intelligence might allow it to manipulate the laws of time and space in ways we cannot? 

One atheist recently argued with me that the ability to imagine something doesn't make it exist.  "I could tell you that there are sixteen magic unicorns living in the core of Mars, but that wouldn't make it true.  Without empirical evidence to support that claim, one would have to conclude that it is false."  Just because you can think of an absurd concept doesn't automatically mean that ANYTHING we cannot observe ourselves is automatically untrue or nonexistent. How can we presume we are so intelligent that we know whether or not there is a divine being? How can we presume that the fact that this being has never physically shown itself to us means it isn't there? How can we presume that our understanding of scientific principals is the highest understanding there can ever be? For that matter, how can we presume that this is the only universe? How can we presume there are no other planes of existence - alternate dimensions or universes where God may reside? Humans can't even make it back to their own moon, yet they presume to know enough to declare no sort of divine being could have ever existed.  It boggles my mind.

During these conversations, I've been accused of being unable to think objectively, rationally, or logically. How is it objective, rational, and logical to assume that there is no God when we have not discovered each and every place intelligent life may exist? How could humans possibly have observed the presence or absence of a God if we've not yet explored every inch of the universe (or other universes, if there are any)?  I've yet to have an atheist provide any real answers to any of these questions.

Another argument often posed is that a loving God would not allow the injustices of the world to happen.  People seem to think that God's purpose is to heed to every request/demand we have and solve the problems of society. We still have world hunger? Blame God. Men raping women? Blame God. Children dying of disease? Blame God. The problem is that they are placing God on the same level as humanity and judging his actions accordingly. But as the creator, he is above any other being and therefore above judgment. How arrogant are we to expect to tell a divine being what he should or should not do?  He possesses a higher level of intelligence and understanding than human beings are capable of, and to expect to understand everything he does is unreasonable.

In reality, man has been given free reign over the Earth. These things don't get fixed by God because they're not God's responsibility to fix. They are our problems, our trials, and our responsibilities.  If our children are starving, it's because we aren't taking care of them.  Not God, but us.

The final, and possibly the most common, argument against the existence of God is the actions of people who claim to follow him.  Religious zealots wage war on unbelievers.  Homosexuals are shunned by churches.  Priests are molesting children.  It's easy to highlight the belief systems of these types of people because their actions are quite the opposite.  Religion is an easy front - in the eyes of the offender, saying "God told me to do it" provides a way of shirking moral responsibility for their crimes.  But man is responsible for man's crimes, no matter who they try to blame.  If someone walked into a mall with a gun and started shooting everyone in the name of atheism, it wouldn't mean that all atheists are evil.  Further, this entire argument holds no water because the shameful acts of an evil man have no bearing on whether or not God exists - regardless of what the crime was. 

So, sadly, after all of this I find myself no closer to understanding atheists than I was four years ago.  I just don't see how it is logical to state "There is no God" without proof.  The atheist will respond to that statement by saying "I don't see how it is logical to state "There is a God" without proof.  I can understand that, but it makes far more sense to me to at least acknowledge the possibility rather than write it off entirely.

I'm sorry, guys.  I really do want to understand.  It just doesn't seem rational to me.

God bless,

Kevin