Why God

An atheist, with whom I’ve had hundreds of fruitless exchanges, stated, “I'm looking for your God with all my heart and soul, but it seems my requirements for avoiding delusion indicate that your God doesn't exist.”

After all these exchanges, I believe that he is only being provocative. He has already confided that the only reason that he continues to challenge me is to evangelize – to prevent others from falling prey to my arguments. Therefore, my response below is an unsympathetic summary of some of my argumentation:

THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN: While we both agree that the universe is incredibly fine-tuned, you prefer to believe in an unlimited number of universes, expecting that one of them would prove to be the benign universe that we know. You believe in this without any hard evidence whatsoever! Instead, it is so much easier to believe in a Designer.

We both acknowledge that, by conservative estimates, we have over three billion bits of DNA information in our cells. While there is no evidence of even a single protein self-assembling, you have chosen to believe that the genome just self-assembled rather than being the product of Design.

Even the simplest form of life is incredibly complex, but here too you prefer to believe that it just happened, although there isn’t a shred of supportive evidence.

Furthermore, you prefer to believe that our laws of physics just happened from an explosion, even though we have no evidence that this can take place. Nor can you explain what maintains the laws and why they seem to behave in such an other-worldly manner. Nor do you have any explanation for freewill and consciousness if this world is merely materialistic.

Instead, by merely invoking the Designer, we have an adequate explanation for all the phenomena.

THE MORAL ARGUMENT: Against the dictates of our heart, you have had to abandon that idea of moral absolutes like “genocide and torturing babies is absolutely wrong.” In doing this, you have condemned yourself to a life of irrelevance, inconsistency and meaninglessness – a life that must necessarily contradict your presuppositions.

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: Existence requires an initial cause generated from One who is uncaused and transcends the universe. Otherwise, you necessarily fall into infinite regress. Most atheists and evolutionists refuse to even deal with this issue saying, “We can’t go beyond the Big Bang, nor do we care to.” However, we must ask the question: “If the Big Bang is fact, what caused it? Where did the initial singularity come from and the laws that governed the expansion.” However, our Designer explains all of this, and this explanation is good for all questions and doesn’t require endless leaps of faith as naturalism requires.

THE TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT: This argument argues from intelligibility to the conditions of intelligibility – immutable measures (logic, reason) and One who designed the amazing correspondence between mind and the external knowable world. All rational conversation must rest upon these presuppositions, whether we realize it or not. The “Privileged Planet” also recognizes how the features of this earth, sun, moon, solar system, and our position within it, maximizes the potential for knowability.

BIBLICAL PROOFS:
1. Miracles (Especially the Resurrection)
2. Fulfilled Prophecy
3. Changed Lives and Changed Societies
4. External Evidence
5. Internal Evidence (Consistency among the various teachings)
6. Wisdom of the Bible

I will not go into detail regarding all of the Biblical proofs. Even though the evidence for God is ubiquitous – wherever we look – the Bible acknowledges that we have an aversion to the evidence despite our protestations otherwise:

• The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 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 men are without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)

We don’t seek after God, as Scripture asserts in so many places. Consequently, there has to be supernatural intervention. Therefore, my prayer for you is that, if you really want to know, you will turn to the One who can give you that knowledge:

• But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deut. 4:29)

Without this intervention, even the best arguments – airtight arguments – will not suffice! It required a life-threatening encounter with a blood-thirsty chain saw to attune me to the reality of Christ. I pray that you will not require such a dramatic wake-up call.