Evidence Part 1: Random Nothingness or a Creator?

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Evidence Part 1: Random Nothingness or a Creator?

Most people who don’t believe in God, or a greater power of some sort, do so based on philosophical arguments, not evidence. For example, there must not be a god because:

• “Why would God allow so much suffering in this world.”
• “There is so much evil in this world that a good God, if he or she existed, would not allow this.”

Ironically, as I’ll discuss next, these arguments actually support evidence for a higher power of some kind.

If we’re talking about proving the existing of a higher power or God, I believe you could use both historical and scientific evidence. However, for me personally, I always prefer the strongest form of evidence. In my area of practice, virtually all the work I do is in the form of a trial directly before a judge with no jury. Evidence is presented to the judge and the judge rules on that evidence and renders a verdict based on the evidence and arguments by both sides. Although sometimes I take the approach of “the more the better,” and try to overwhelm the judge with a tidal wave of evidence, often I recognize that the judge’s time is valuable and he or she is, frankly, going to get bored with too much evidence. In those cases, I narrow it down and present the strongest arguments and evidence possible, excluding the less persuasive evidence available.

When it comes to the existence of God, you could interview witnesses, take statements from people who have supposedly seen God and try to present that evidence at trial. However, I would not find that evidence particularly persuasive. Why not? Well, as a Christian, most of the people who have seen God, or the glory of God, like Moses, are dead. The ones who are still living and claim to have seen him recently tend to not be extremely credible. So, in this case, I believe the scientific evidence should be the initial focus for the existence of God.

It is a dramatic understatement to say that there is a lot of scientific evidence for God. There are volumes of scientific literature written by people much smarter than I am. I could present a tidal wave of evidence that would overwhelm and probably bore you to death. However, among some of the literature, there are several common and extremely strong arguments supporting the evidence for the existence and involvement of God in this world. I do not believe you need to go through every argument out there. For me, these were some of the stronger arguments and sufficient scientific evidence for me to be satisfied that God exists and that He created this world. I will present these arguments to you and attempt to do so as concisely and clearly as possible. If you find these arguments less than satisfactory, or if you are one blessed with a scientific mind and a good attention span, feel free to check out the actual books referenced herein.

Teleological Argument
This is sometimes coined the “design argument,” as it is essentially an argument for intelligent design. In other words, it was not just happenstance that the earth was created and is supportive of life. There are characteristics of the earth and the environment which, if altered even slightly, would render the planet entirely uninhabitable. Thus, the argument is that someone or something must have organized the planet into such a perfect position and according to a perfect design in order for life to exist.

There are over a hundred criteria, any one of which, if altered, would make life impossible on this planet. We could go through all of them, but such would be overwhelming and not the purpose of the book. However, to give you a resource for further research and to introduce you to this argument, some of the evidences are as follows:

1. Sun/Earth Distance and Mass: If the sun was at all larger or more massive than it is, then it would burn too erratically in order to support life on the earth. Further, if the earth were even slightly closer to the sun, then life could not be supported; the gravitational pull would be affected, affecting the rotation of the earth, causing portions of the earth to essentially burn up and others to remain too cold to support life.
2. Jupiter’s Interference: If Jupiter did not exist and was not as massive as it is, the earth would be pummeled up to a thousand times more than it is by asteroids and comets. This would prevent life from being able to thrive on the earth, with the surface and the atmosphere being destroyed entirely. Further, Jupiter is the perfect distance from the earth. Not only does its distance from the earth provide for the right interference from space debris, but if it were any closer to the earth, it would pull the earth out of its stable orbit and cause an erratic atmosphere and significant other problems to prevent life on earth.
3. Moon/Axis: The earth has a perfect moon that is the perfect distance from the earth. Not only does the moon prevent the earth from rotating too quickly, but it helps keep the earth’s axis at the perfect tilt to support life on the planet and to support the seasons, avoiding extreme temperatures on the earth. If the moon was larger or the distance was greater, again, life would not be viable on the earth.

These are just three of the teleological arguments for an intelligent design, and thus, an intelligent designer. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross identified 122 constants that were needed in order for life to exist on any planet. Remember, I just gave you three. Using this number, he determined that that the odds of these constants all being present on any given planet by chance would come to a staggering 10 to the 138 power (10138). (Hugh Ross, Why I Believe in Divine Creation, 138-141.) In other words, there is basically no chance that this earth just “happened” out of chaos. I would not go to Vegas with those odds, yet that is exactly what atheists attempt to do.

Moral Argument
This argument is neither scientific or historical, but I suppose would fall into an additional category of philosophical evidence or logical evidence. I have asked some friends who abandoned all faith in a higher power on how they planned to raise their children. One response is fairly common: they intend to raise their children to be “moral people,” but to not have any focus upon “a god.” One of my friends has pointed out that morality has shifted with each generation, pointing out that the Romans of the day had a very different view of morality than we do today. Unfortunately, my friends who have adopted this theory have failed to recognize that this very acknowledgment addresses the problem with morality. If there is no external source of morality, then there is no such thing as morality: only shifting desires that could change any minute.

For example, if I held up my friend at gunpoint and took his money and property, he would surely claim that such was wrong. However, using this philosophy, their judgment has no basis; there is no wrong, only actions and personal preferences. It was my preference that I wanted his money. I could argue that a lion takes down and consumes its prey for its own good. Why is it any more wrong that I rob him of his livelihood in order to sustain mine?

Thus, even though many deny a true standard of right and wrong, deep down, they still know it is there and when it affects them personally, they are more likely to recognize their own trap. Because there is a true standard, that standard has to come from somewhere outside of ourselves, from someone outside of our environment.

One of the earliest apologists I would consider is C.S. Lewis, and he emphasized this point in his book Mere Christianity:

Everyone has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: ‘How’d you like it if anyone did the same thing to you?’—’That’s my seat, I was there first’—’Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm’—’Why should you shove in first?’—’Give me a hit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine’— ‘Come on, you promised.’ People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

 

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Again, despite some slight shifting in acceptable or unacceptable behavior in some minimal respects, there is within us an inherent knowledge of what is good and what is evil. We know what we are supposed to be doing, even when we do not do it. Although people, and even civilizations, can convince themselves that their circumstance is different or that “times have changed,” when it affects them personally, they usually insist on an outside standard that everyone deep-down acknowledges.

In their book, “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,” (a book that I highly recommend for further evidence and which has been a great resource for me) Normal Geisler and Frank Turek presented an example that I believe best sums up this moralistic argument:

A professor at a major university in Indiana … who was teaching a class in ethics, assigned a term paper to his students. He told the students to write on any ethical topic of their choice, requiring each student only to properly back up his or her thesis with reasons and documentation. One student, an atheist, wrote eloquently on the topic of moral relativism. He argued, “All morals are relative; there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness; it’s all a matter of opinion; you like chocolate, I like vanilla,” and so on. His paper provided both his reasons and his documentation. It was the right length, on time, and stylishly presented in a handsome blue folder. After the professor read the entire paper, he wrote on the front cover, “F, I don’t like blue folders!”

 

When the student got the paper back he was enraged. He stormed into the professor’s office and protested, “‘F! I don’t like blue folders!’ That’s not fair! That’s not right! That’s not just! You didn’t grade the paper on its merits!” Raising his hand to quiet the bombastic student, the professor calmly retorted, “Wait a minute. Hold on. I read a lot of papers. Let me see… Wasn’t your paper the one that said there is no such thing as fairness, rightness, and justice?”

 

“Yes,” the student answered.

 

“Then what’s this you say about me not being fair, right, and just?” The professor asked. “Didn’t your paper argue that it’s all a matter of taste? You like chocolate, I like vanilla?” The student replied, “yes, that’s my view.” “Fine, then,” the professor responded. “I don’t like blue. You get an F!” Suddenly the light bulb went on in the student’s head. He realized that he really did believe in moral absolutes. He at least believed in injustice. After all, he was charging his professor with injustice for giving him an F simply because of the color of the folder. That simple fact defeated his entire case for relativism. (Norman L. Geisler, and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Crossway Books, 2004, pp. 173-174.)

Put simply, because there is an external standard of right and wrong, there must be an external source for that standard, i.e. God. If the standard is merely internal, then it is of no consequence and can change with the weather or your own attitude.

Again, this isn’t meant to be a big diatribe, but is meant to show that the evidence for a higher power is strong, and, in my opinion, stronger than any other argument out there. I’ll get to Jesus later, but for this essay, this will suffice.