Does God Exist?

Psalm 14:1a  The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

I’m sure I’ve referred to God’s existence and the reasons for our belief a number of times, but I can’t find a blog post that addresses the topic directly.  Maybe that’s because it can become very involved.  Huge volumes have been written on the subject, but I’ll try to give some of the more basic arguments here to keep it short. 

First there’s the cosmological argument for God’s existence.  Cosmological is one of those big philosophical words, but it simply means everything which began to exist has a cause.  Aristotle looked around at things moving: leaves pushed by the wind, the motion of the planets, people pushing carts, and saw lots of things move.  He also saw that all things that move seem to have a mover, a cause for their motion.  He concluded, then, that there must be an “Unmoved Mover” something which started everything else in motion. 

It’s just a sort of unbroken chain.  I have parents, so they must have had parents who also had parents, etc.  Aristotle knew, though, that logically, you cannot cross an infinite number of events, so the chain needs to have an end, a source.  Thomas Aquinas said that Source was God.  So, the fact that things have a cause, that the universe didn’t just appear out of nowhere by itself is evidence of a Creator, an Unmoved Mover.

A second argument is called the Teleological argument.  It says that complex things with a purpose have a designer.  A fellow named William Paley gave a good explanation of this.  He said if we’re walking across a field and come across a pocket watch and have never seen one before, we instantly recognize someone made this thing.  It moves with the time of day, it contains a complex mechanism; it must have a producer, a designer.  Paley then applied this to creation.  We see man, for instance, who is complex with parts with a purpose.  Our bodies imply a Designer and not chance.

There’s a story about Isaac Newton, a Christian by the way, that is a good example of this.  He was trying to share that God designed all things while his friend told him it was all a result of chance.  Newton built an orrery (I had to look it up), a mechanical model of the solar system which moved the planets in relation to one another.  When his friend saw it, he marveled.  “Did you build this?” his friend said.  “No,” said Newton.  “It just came together from a bunch of parts I had on the table.” 

The point was made.  Things just don’t come together and form purposeful objects.  Even when we walk through the forest and come upon a circle of rocks, we know that simple orderly assembly isn’t an accident.  Someone arranged them, designed the circle.  It’s the same with the universe.  It is very orderly, so orderly in fact that we have discovered laws which rule it, the laws of physics and mathematics.  The more complex an object, the less likely it came to exist by chance.  This order and complexity point to a Designer.

I was in a group on FaceBook talking with other Christians and a guy entered the group introduced a friend.  The first fellow was a known atheist in the group.  The second was a sort of trainee.  The first guy asked if anyone could answer a question the second couldn’t answer.  I asked “Why is there something rather than nothing?  After all, the odds of something existing without a creator are infinitesimal to the point of impossibility.  The very idea of ‘something’ would need to come into the mind of whatever produced it.  So, where did it come from, where and Who is that Mind?”

The second guy struggled and struggled without success.  Finally the first atheist asked, “Does someone have an easier question?”

The possibility of nothing existing is so great that philosophers often call God a “Necessary Being.”  Nothing can exist unless something eternal exists to bring it about.

Why is this important?

Understanding the arguments for the existence of God are important for a couple of reasons.  Because these arguments are convincing, they are useful in easing doubt in the minds of Christians who might doubt God’s existence from time to time.  They are also useful in convincing others who do not believe in God. 

See also, Who Made God? and Faith and Science for additional information.