Evaluating the Evidence for God’s Existence
Below is an outline for the doctrine of God’s existence. This material is from the Foundations of Christian Thought course at Christ Community Church.
I. The Existence of God
Charles Spurgeon
“The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity.”
A. The Definition of God: The infinite, personal, creator of the universe.
1. Infinite: What’s the problem with claiming that God is infinite? God being infinite is the fact that God existence necessarily transcends time and space, and therefore can be spoken of as “infinite” in qualitative sense—not quantitative.
W.L Craig stated, “when theologians speak of the infinity of God, they are not using the word in a mathematical sense to refer to an aggregate of an infinite number of elements. God's infinity is, as it were, qualitative, not quantitative. It means that God is metaphysically necessary, morally perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, and so on.”
With regards to our definition of God—we have two sources of reasoning that inform our conclusions about him: (1) Special Revelation and (2) General Revelation.
God is the maximally greatest possible being; who exists by the necessity of his own nature. This is referred to a “perfect being” theology. When we use the term “infinite” we are using a qualitative term to refer to all of God’s superlative attributes. Meaning, that every attribute that God has, he has it infinitely—it is an infinite perfection.
This definition is also the primary philosophical reason why we affirm monotheism and no other scheme (polytheism, henotheism, pantheism, Panentheism, or atheism). If God is by definition the greatest conceivable being, then there cannot be two greatest conceivable beings.
Let’s look at the testimony of Scripture: Gen. 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The heavens and the earth are finite—they have physical parameters, boundaries and characteristics as well as spiritual ones. This verse presupposes that God existed before the beginning began—and is not therefore the product of his own creation. Thus he is not finite (like the creation) he is infinite—without the confines of creation.
2. Personal: God is not some infinite force, mere presence, or transcendent “it”—God is a personal being who has all the essential properties of personhood, namely that he is self-determining, self-aware (self-conscious), moral, sympathetic (anthropomorphism: communicating with us in the limitations of our knowledge, physicality, and passing emotional states), and, as we discover in the incarnation, he is actually empathetic—he doesn’t just stoop to communicate with us in our language, literature, and human limits, but actually takes on that form in order to reaech us with his love.
Heb. 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin.
Gen. 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Again, this statement presupposes that God is a personal being. Precisely because creation is an act of the will, and impersonal forces don’t make sovereign, free-will decisions.
3. Creator: God is the uncaused cause of everything in the spectrum of creation—including the natural world, the supernatural (spiritual) realm.
Gen. 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, obviously the verse asserts that God is the creator of all that is within the spectrum of creation—including the heavens and the earth.
Monotheism is the classic Judeo-Christian view of God—there is one eternal, personal God who created all things within the spectrum of creation.
B. Arguments for God’s Existence: We are using an inference to the best explanation argument. But understand that God’s existence is mainly assumed in Scripture, and rarely argued for. Typically we use either deductive, inductive, and abductive approaches including an inference to the best explanation model. The following arguments are well-known and have been argued as the classical apologetic case—also known as a cumulative case.
1. God is the best explanation for why there is something rather than nothing. Nothing doesn’t give you something, nothing gives you nothing. To put it another way, absolutely nothing, plus absolutely nothing, gives you absolutely nothing. The absence of anything at all plus the absence of anything at all—gives you absolutely nothing at all.
And nothing doesn’t give you something—nothing, give you nothing. God is the best explanation for why anything at all exists. Effects have causes. To put it another way: You have a transcendent cause of the known effect.
2. God is the best explanation for the fine tuning of the universe. The World appears to be calibrated for maximum habitability. We appear to be situated just so in our galaxy for maximum discoverability. Fine tuning has to do with the cosmological constants e.g. gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, velocity of light, the charge and mass of an electron etc. these constants cannot be “jiggered” with, or else you would not have a life-permitting universe at all.
Guillermo Gonzalez, Physicist and author of The Privileged Planet stated,
“There's no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don't think this is merely coincidental. It cries out for another explanation, an explanation that... points to purpose and intelligent design in the cosmos.”
God’s existence is exactly what the universe as we encounter it would predict—an unfathomable mind which has produced the effect in question. What is the effect in question? It is a universe whose properties have been tuned to infinitesimal quantities and values—such that to jigger with any one of those values would give you universe other than the one in which we find ourselves.
3. God is the best explanation for objective moral values and duties. If objective moral values and duties exist, God must exist. Objective moral values and duties do in fact exist—therefore, God exists. What is meant by “objective”: it means that moral valuees exist independently of our desire, experience or knowledge of them. And moral duties constitute our obligations to God and others issued as divine decrees to human beings.
What about “non-universals”—moral values not held by all cultures?
What about “unown” duties? Paul told the Romans that “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had said, ‘Do not covet’” (Rom 7:7). Since the moral law of God has been written on the hearts of Gentiles (Rom 2:15) and given to Jews in the Torah (Rom 2:17–20), then all men will be held culpable before God, either perishing with Moses’ law or without it, “For all who sin without the law will also perish without the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law” (Rom 2:12).
4. God is the best explanation for the existence of objective good. If objective good exists then God must exist. Objective good and evil both exist, therefore God exists.
CS Lewis reflected on his own protests to God’s existence because of the apparent evil that existed in the world:
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call something crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”
God is the best explanation for the existence of moral good, and he is also, ironically the best explanation (not the cause) for the existence of true, objective evil. Illus. Cold is not the presence of something. Cold is merely the absence of heat. And evil is the absence of moral good, beauty, benevolence, and beneficence. Cold can only be judge as such if you knew what warm felt like in the first place.
5. God is the best explanation for the existence of objective truths. If there are objective truths and propositional facts, then God must exist. There are objective truths and propositional facts, therefore God does exist.
If it is true that our sense of what is true has evolved over eons of time as the Neo-Darwinist imagines, the we should not trust the deliverances or the faculties of a mind so produced.
The proof of this is that there really are things that are objectively false. It isn’t true that the earth is flat—no matter how much a person wants to believe that. If you believe that you can foolishly defy the truth of gravity then you will experience both the truth and consequences of defying it.
Paul Little said,
“Truth, by its very nature, must be intolerant of error.”
Illus. The recent debacle of climbers who have ascended Everest in order to get to the summit. Amateur climbers have died this year, even some experienced climbers. Because the conditions at the top of the world are truly harsh—and not just a figment of your imagination. The lack of oxygen is real and elevation sickness can kill you.
Some things really are true, and some things really are false—and God’s existence as the ultimate source of truth, is the best explanation for the existence of truth.
6. God is the best explanation for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Some, such as Dr. Gary Habermaas, would say that the resurrection of Jesus is in fact the best evidence for the existence of God.
Here is an acronym I’ve developed to help you remember this material—it’s a variation of others you may have encountered.
RISEN
Reticence of the Jews to accept a crucified messiah
Initial eye-witness testimony of an empty tomb and risen Jesus
Successful rise and flourishing of the early church against all odds
Early creedal foundation of the Church (1 Cor. 15)
No good competing explanations
o mass hallucinations
o a stolen body
o a mistaken tomb
o legendary development (if so, then why women as earliest witnesses?)
o an intentional deception
So, as an evidence for God’s existence, the resurrection of Jesus could only be explained if God exists. And if God has raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, then God must exist.
OBJECTIONS TO GOD’S EXISTENCE
1. If a loving God exists how can there be evil and suffering in the world?
Answer: If God doesn’t exist, then how could objective evil actually exist—and how could we possibly discern evil from the good unless we have some notion of moral perfection?
2. Doesn’t Darwinism provide an intellectually satisfying alternative to the existence of God?
Answer: While neo-Darwinism may claim to explain the survival of the fittest, it can’t possibly explain the survival of the first appearance of life on earth. Morever, as Alvin Plantinga has maintained, if we are the products (including our mental faculties and instincts) of a purely natural, undirected process geared for mere survival—then how could we possibly trust the judgment of a mind created that way? How could we claim to be in a position to affirm any objective reality if we are just matter in motion lurching toward surviva?
3. Isn’t every believer in God an atheist with respect to some other belief systems they don’t affirm?
Answer: Not if we accept the Stanford Encyclopedia’s standard definition of God according to Monotheistic religions: God is the singular and maximally greatest being in the universe. So there can’t be two. That’s not atheism because by definition, the pantheon or Hindu deities are no gods at all. So no, we are not atheists at all, and we would maintain that pagan beliefs are actually functional atheism. But how would that be so? Because pagan idolatry merely assigned to created things attributes that belong exclusively to God alone. Assigning God’s unique attributes to a pantheon of lesser deities just is practical atheism by definition.
4. Who created God?
Answer: This question suffers from incoherence. It’s like asking, “Who round is that square?” God is by definition the uncaused cause of all things. That is to say, this is an objection from the perspective and limitations of the earth-bound observer who themselves has the limits of finiteness.
5. Don’t all cultures across the earth have differing moral values. Wouldn’t this suggest that there are no objective moral values?
Answer: Of course cultures today and over the years have vastly different values at the surface, and remarkably similar or the same values across societies. It is always, for example, morally represensible to abuse and rape children—and even in cultures where sex-trafficking is legal and tolerating—the victims will awlays know that this behavior is wrong. As the human race, we apprehend a realm of moral values and duties that appear to be ubiquitous at base.
6. The universe is messy, and not fine-tuned. Why would God allow processes like entropy, extinction, evolution, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
Answer: But how could we be in a position to gainsay God’s judgments on such matters. First, anyone who thinks that the universe is a “sloppily made machine” just isn’t facing facts. The Universe, and in particular the earth’s life-permitting attributes—require unimaginable intricacy as these systems integrate and operate with clockwork perfection.