The Existence of God

There seems to be a time in everyone's life where they contemplate whether they believe in a creator. Everyone you speak to and ask the question, "Do you believe in God?" will have more than a yes or no answer in response, as most people have done some rational thinking about the subject. Common answers are, "Yes, there must be something out there. I don't think we just happened." or on the other hand, "No, God is just a way to explain things we don't have answers for yet." But we have all come to some conclusion about the existence of God. The intent of this article is not to argue for or against the existence of God, but to merely put forward both sides of the argument.

It's all based on the Bible

The quickest way to settle the argument of the existence of God is to establish whether or not the Bible is fact or fiction, for it states that God does exist, and that all that is within it is true. I knew a man who was coming home from a business trip interstate. He arrived at the airport, and since it was not out of the ordinary for him to make such trips, there was no one to meet him. As he walked through the airport lounge, he was approached by a robed man offering flowers. The man accepted a flower from him, and then asked, "Excuse me, who do you represent?" The man replied that he represented one of the many religious faiths. Taking this to be an opening to share about his faith, the robed man began to tell the business man about his beliefs. The business man listened for a while and asked, "How do you know all that is true?" The man replied, "Well, listen to the words from my holy book. Don't they comfort you?" The Business man said, "Well, the words in any holy book can be comforting. How do you know that what you believe in is true?" The robed man tried but could not really think of anything substantial. The Business man then pulled form his brief case a Holy Bible. Pointing to it he said, "This is my Holy Book, and there are three reasons I can know for sure that it is true." He then began to tell the man the three reasons that the Bible is true. The first evidence is historical. It has been found that places and events in the Bible can be historically shown to have really existed or have happened, more so than any other holy book belonging to any other religion. Historians have more copies of the text itself dating back to just years after the originals were supposedly written than for almost any other historical text in existence, (such as the writings of Plato or the historical records of ancient historians.) The second evidence is that in no other book is there as many prophecies stated that have been fulfilled. While there are prophecies in the Bible that have not been fulfilled yet, and it is always possible that those which have not been fulfilled will not be, all the prophecies that have been fulfilled have been fulfilled with great accuracy. It is also so that there are more prophecies that have been fulfilled in the Bible than any other book. There are prophecies in the Bible that are being fulfilled even in this age, such as the creation television and the internet and the introduction of a cashless means of purchasing goods and services (plastic cards.) The final evidence is the continuity across all the books of the Bible which seems utterly impossible considering the way in which it was compiled. The authors of the various books of the Bible lived in different countries, spoke different languages, and lived hundreds of years apart, the Bible being written gradually over 1500 years. Only a supernatural being not constrained by time, space or language barriers could have written the Bible. Yet people still reject the Bible, and even those who claim to be theologists take portions of the Bible and say that they must be 'illustrative' of something we could not otherwise understand. Some claim to have found contradictions in the Bible, while others give satisfactory explanations for these apparent contradictions. The fact remains that there is still a debate.

What now?

Putting the validity of the Bible on the back burner, those who try to argue for the existence of God based on what the Bible says are left unarmed. Only rational argument can ensue. There are four main philosophical arguments in this debate. The first is discussed in the article the origin of life. It is argued that the existence of God is self evident when we look at the complexity of our world. Even for someone who has no scientific knowledge the world around us is more complex than anything we know. Something so complex surely requires the intelligence of a creator to create it such that it works properly. All the parts of a watch blowing around in a hurricane could never come together to form a working watch. The watch requires a designer. Some say this is not a good parallel with the way evolution works, but in effect it is, for according to evolution, all the basic parts of life (molecules) were present in not a hurricane but an ocean, which was churned up until life began. The parts of a watch are specific in size and shape for the watch to function. So it is with life. Those who oppose the existence of God have no substantial counter argument to this. There are those who will insist that, while fantastically improbable, there is the chance that the parts of a watch could be blown together by the wind, or that life could have began in a churning ocean, but this is more absurd as a person who refuses to leave their home in case an aeroplane falls on them.

Related to this argument is the idea that if all events have a cause, (and no one debates that this is true) then according to determinism, (see Free Will And Determinism) all events can be traced back to an original cause. Since all causes are themselves events, we are left with an infinite regression, as the so-called original cause must have had a cause, which must have had a cause, and so on.

So the original cause unclear by both parties. The Big Bang doesn't hold up, since no one can answer the question of what caused the events that led up to the explosion of nothing. Those in favour of creationism cannot satisfactorily explain how God is not subject to causality, since many things seem to demonstrate that He is subject to causality. Events cause God to be angry. Events cause God to intervene in people's lives. While saying that God is mysterious or beyond the realms of human understanding seems to be a cop out, it is in fact a valid argument. To illustrate how, imagine that you are a two dimensional being. That is to say, you are completely flat; flatter than paper. You can move across a plane forwards, backwards, left and right, but there is no up and down in your world. The only experiences you have externally to yourself are the sensations you receive at your edges; the closer you get to something, the more of a tingling feeling you get. In this way you can sense the size and distance of other two dimensional objects around you. But living in this two dimensional world is not to say that a third dimension does not exist. Imagine now that a three dimensional object comes crashing through your world. To us it is a spherical ball, but to you, it is the most strange experience you have ever had. This object which you believe to be two dimensional suddenly appears from nowhere. It gets larger very quickly, and then shrinks and disappears as quickly as it came into existence. Having no knowledge of the third dimension, I put it to you that you, while constrained by the limitations of being two dimensional, will never be able to understand the phenomena you just experienced. Likewise, God lives in a dimension beyond our own, and we can never understand what it is like for him in his world.

Another argument put forward is that of morality, (see Morality for further discussion.) To summarize, it is the view that without God there is no morality, therefore God exists. It is this premise that without God there is no morality that is under attack. To establish both bases, those for the existence of God say that if there were not some reason to be moral, that reason being that God knows what is best for us and wishes the best for us, then there would be no reason to be moral. It certainly seems that there is no real reason to be moral if we consider the apparent subjectiveness of moral values, (though no one lives in practice as though there is no objective moral values). However, the argument falls short, since there is good reason to be moral without God, that reason being that without morals the human race will destroy itself. People realise a very important lesson early in life, and that is that everyone is essentially selfish and will usually strive to serve their own needs and desires above others. If this is the nature of man, then any rational person will agree that moral obligations are necessary in preventing our own self destruction and utter chaos. More over, moral obligations are self serving, for if we strike a deal that if I don't steal your property then you won't steal mine, then my own needs are served, namely that my property is somewhat safe.

The final argument that I will discuss is the most heated in the existence-of-God debate. For if God is all good, then why is there evil in the world? Why do people steal, kill and destroy? Why are there earthquakes and hurricanes, fires and floods? Why do I cut my hand when I pick up the wrong end of a knife? Those who argue in favour of the existence of God will say that these things are not God's intention, but are due to the corruption caused by the original sin of man, prompted by the Devil. But then we ask why would an all good God create the Devil? A possible response is that the Devil, once an angel, rebelled against God. This still begs the question, why would God create a being that was capable of rebellion, or any evil for that matter? Is this to undermine the power of God, that in Heaven he does not have complete control? It is most commonly argued that for a being to have free will, (which is preferable to being a robot) it must have the ability to freely choose between options, and clearly this will include the option to good or to do evil. So it is argued that God gave the Devil and man free will, and both freely chose to do evil. If you read my article on bringing love back to a loveless relationship you will find that love is a choice - it has to be by definition, for if I have not chosen to love you then of what value are my actions? And so God created a being with free will so that it might be able to express love to God. Is this to say, however, that God, as almighty as He is, has a need? We have another problem in that if God is actually incapable of doing evil, yet has free will (which He must do since He claims that He loves us) then we have a contradiction. Either God is at least capable of evil, or He does not have free will.

Sad but true

The sad truth of it all is that we must all decide what we believe at some stage. Many of us claim to be atheist or agnostic, which is another way of saying that they find the whole issue too daunting, and are procrastinating with their decision. Many people leave their decision till they are on their death bed. Some are convinced that God does exist while others have found spirituality without appealing to the existence of a God. Many people argue that they don't need God, though it doesn't follow that just because you don't need something it doesn't exist. Likewise, merely because you don't believe in the existence of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And so we must choose, and we must choose wisely.