Does God Exist?
One of the most important questions to discover an answer to is: Does God Exist? You are offered a clue for your research.
The Color Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhGOosxTLrY
Does God Exist?
The atheist believes that God does not exist.
The theist believes that God does exist.
The agnostic believes neither.
I am a theist, I believe in the existence of God.
Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:17; Acts 17:28 (NIV)
“In the beginning God.” “ He is before all things, and in him, all things hold together.” “For in him we live and move and have our being.”
Skeptic Michael Shermer wrote an intriguing book entitled: “Why People Believe Weird Things.” Shermer’s bottom line is that people believe weird things because they have made the decision to believe weird things. Shermer goes on to say the more intelligent an individual the better their arguments are for why they believe the weird thing.
My atheist friends tell me that my theistic beliefs are weird. I’ve been asked why I believe if I can offer proof that God exists. Today I would like to offer up an evidence that convinces me that God exists. But let me warn you, it’s more of a clue that God exists than proof.
Proof means presenting evidence or argument that establishes something as fact. In the natural world, what we can observe through our five senses, what we can smell, see, hear, touch, taste, is usually what we look for in the way of evidence. Science
has a method of for establishing something as fact.
You make an Observation, you encounter something that grabs your interest.
So you form a question and you wonder why you are observing what you are observing. A question like, how is this possible, or why did this happen?
My friends are in a hurry to go and play ball, so I rush out the door, on my way to joining the group, I trip and fall on the sidewalk. Landing on the sidewalk is a phenomenon, it definitely was observable, as everyone was laughing, and can be studied. I want to know why I fell, so I will never do that again.
You bring all your knowledge, experience, and wisdom to make an educated guess, to form a hypothesis. A hypothesis is what you determine to be a reasonable explanation for what you have observed.
There are lots of possible explanations for the falling event. Gravity is one. Being clumsy, an uneven sidewalk that caught a toe, a distraction like a dive-bombing bird, the pavement was wet and slippery, something hit me, tripped me, a gremlin grabbed my foot, one of the group has telekinetic powers and made me fall, or maybe I tripped over my own shoelace. Lots of possible explanations for the plunge into the concrete, so you pick the one that seems most likely to you based upon your understanding of the world.
You then have to test your reasonable explanation. You have to conduct an investigation to see if your hypothesis accurately predicts or accounts for the observation. I choose what seems like the most likely explanation for the fall, I tripped over my untied shoelace.
Now to prove my explanation I have to conduct so experiments, I have to design an experiment that will prove my hypothesis that untied shoelaces cause people to trip. Next day at school, I go to one that supplies your gym clothes so everyone has the same uniform and footwear. I get 20 of my friends to help me out. I have them line up at one end of the basketball court and ask ten to untie a single shoelace. Then I have them run down the court. Recording how many of my classmates end up eating court. I repeat the experiment 10 times, collecting the data.
The experimenter analyses all the date and discovers whether or not the research confirms the hypothesis. If it doesn’t, its back to making another educated guess as to why the fall happened. If the data does confirm the hypothesis then a theory can be offered up explaining the phenomena.
My theory states that if you run with an untied shoelace you have a 70% probability that you will fall.
So I post my theory on the internet. Others interested in falling, recreate my experiment and sure enough, a 70% probability of tripping because of an untied shoelace is pretty accurate. Together with the community, we have just proven that the reason for my fall was most likely an untied shoelace. My explanation is no longer a hypothesis or a theory, it is a fact.
It is a fact until someone else proves that it’s really the length of the untied shoelace that is the more accurate predictor of a fall. Our knowledge about falling increases once was fact, no is replaced with a corrected fact. If I refute the idea altogether and say that people trip because gremlins are mischievous and like to watch people fall, you most likely would say I believe a weird thing, unless I can provide proof of the existence of gremlins and their behavior.
Observable phenomena, reasonable explanation, experimentation to see if the explanation fits what was observed, produce a theory, unbiased confirmation of the theory and Voilà, you’ve got proof.
You cannot use this method to prove or disprove the existence of God.
Neither can you prove that God exists because ancient texts tell you so. To do so is to create a circular argument that sounds logical but is based on trying to prove something is true by beginning with the assumption that it is true, to begin with.
Neither can you prove that God exists because of your personal experience. Such an argument is far too subjective, people delude themselves all the time by misinterpreting what they have experienced. Ever speak with someone who believes they were abducted by aliens? This would also rule out testimony, as in a court of law, as valid proof.
Now mind you, personal experience is a powerful validation of a theory but is not proof in and of itself because another person cannot repeat your experience.
The only proof we can offer up is a God clue. The evidence we can offer up is one that comes to us through logical inference. The most compelling inference has been around since Plato and Socrates, it’s the causation argument [the Kalam Cosmological Argument].
Whatever exist has a cause for its existence.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.
The premise is that there is a cause for everything that exists. True or False?
I think the answer is true. Even in the study of quantum mechanics, we may not understand what we are observing, but we know something caused these foundational building strings to come into existence.
The proposition is that the universe does indeed exist, it is. True or False?
Unless you believe that you are in the Matrix, I think the rational conclusion is the world we live in is real. So again the answer is True.
The conclusion is that if something exists it has to have a cause.
If you believe that the first cause argument is sound, then from the existence of the universe you can infer that there was a first cause. The question then becomes what is or was the first cause. In solving problems, Occam’s Razor states that the simplest solutions tend to be the right ones.
I am not going to use the Bible to prove that God is the first cause, but I want to highlight what the Bible says about the universe.
Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that humanity is without excuse.
There is something within the fabric of the universe that reveals that the first cause is God.
Job 12:7-9 (MSG)
"But ask the animals what they think—let them teach you; let the birds tell you what's going on. Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics. Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories. Isn't it clear that they all know and agree that God is sovereign, that he holds all things in his hand—
There is something within the fabric of nature that reveals that the first cause is God.
You don’t have to look beyond the fine-tuning of the Universe to understand that the best possible explanation for life as we know it, is a Creator who fine-tuned it.
https://biologos.org/common-questions/gods-relationship-to-creation/fine-tuning
Mathematicians have crunched the numbers and proclaim that the odds of life just happening on this planet all on its own is nil. No chance.
I have a short 3-minute video that explains this idea of fine-tuning.
The Fine Tuning Universe
“Scientists of all worldviews agree that the physical constants of our universe and the conditions of the early universe are exquisitely fine-tuned for life.”
https://biologos.org/common-questions/gods-relationship-to-creation/fine-tuning
Life in the universe could not exist without fine-tuning. Life in the universe exists.
The question now is how did the fine-tuning happen? Our current level of investigation offers no scientific explanation as to how the fine-tuning could just randomly happen. If there is not a natural explanation, if there is no mathematical probability of life randomly occurring, then is there a supernatural one?
You might say that you don’t believe in the supernatural. By supernatural, I mean that there is a reality beyond which our five senses cant observe, measure and experiment upon. By supernatural, I mean phenomena that defies a natural explanation, a surprising deviation from an observer expectations. By supernatural, I mean an event that operates outside the accepted laws of the physical universe.
You say you don’t believe in the supernatural, but do you believe in consciousness? Consciousness is humanity’s self-awareness that includes sensations, thoughts, memories, and emotions; “we cannot see it, hear it, touch it, taste it or smell it.” “Consciousness has no physical presence …our consciousness has no measurable dimensions. Yet, our nonphysical thoughts somehow mysteriously guide the actions of our physical human bodies.” The scientific method cannot be used to prove the existence of consciousness, therefore you could deny its existence, but how can you ignore the phenomena that are a part of your everyday life. The consciousness is scientifically supernatural.
(Bhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/02/does_god_exist_1.html)
If you believe that you are conscious you believe in the supernatural. If you believe that there exist things outside the provable bounds of science, then belief in God being the first cause of the Universe is reasonable. Belief in what we call God as the first cause is not a weird thing to believe at all.
It’s weird to think this incredible universe just happened. The thought of a multiverse to increase the probability for life as we know it is weird. The smarter you are the better arguments you have for your weird thought.
Does God Exist? I’ve given you a clue. Where is it leading you? Who is it leading you to?
God of Wonders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seSl-h6WMD8
Does God exist? Yes. Prove it. The fact that we exist infers that there is a first cause that has brought us into this existence. That first cause is God. Would you agree with Michael Shermer that it’s a weird thing that I believe God exists or is there validity in the first cause argument which makes my belief a reasonable faith? My atheist friend still thinks I’m weird.
Science can’t disprove the existence of God. Likewise, theology can’t prove the existence of God. If you allow science to answer the “how” question and theology to answer the “who” question you can believe in both science and you can believe in God at the same time. To definitely side with one at the exclusion of the other takes a certain type of faith that one might consider weird.
The existence or nonexistence of God is a matter of faith. Once you have decided that the first cause argument is convincing, that as the Bible says, In the Beginning God, the next question is who is this God is? Questions like it are: how does this God deal with the Universe? Is this God knowable? Does this God hold me accountable for my stewardship of the Creation? All questions you should ask yourself.
If you still are not sure about the existence of God I have a challenge for you. The challenge is simply this. Ask God to convince you of His existence. He did that for me, He will do it for you.
Romans 1:20 (MSG)
By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being.
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