The Bible doesn’t devote a lot space to proving God exists. Rather, starting at book one, chapter one, verse one, it simply and unequivocally declares that he is.
But as we know all too well, not everyone accepts that—and some are very quick and very eager to tell you so. How are we to respond when challenged about our beliefs?
What are your favorite arguments for the existence of God?
Mine comes from theologian R.C. Sproul, and I love it for its beautiful logical simplicity. The shorthand version goes like this:
If anything exists today, then something must have always existed. Something somewhere must have the power of being in and of itself, because if there was ever a time when there was nothing then nothing would exist today.
Granted, the above statement contains no information about God as a personal being, his qualities, or his relationship to his creation, but it’s a great place to start.
Many people struggle with belief and try very hard to believe, but don’t get much sympathy or help from believers. As someone who has had issues believing all of my life, I find evidence for God in science and nature. Complex life systems, A planet that supports diversity in living organisms.
Chordata itself is filled with a huge number of creatures, and even single cell, non vertebrae creatures exist and thrive No other planet in this solar system allows that.
The complexity of human relationships, abilities to compose music and argue politics and save lives with complex medications while only having a 2% difference in DNA with chimpanzees who can’t do any of those things is great evidence for the existence of GodEven the ability to deny science and factual information points to diversity of thought.
One might say the Bible doesn’t devote a lot of space to prove God exists because God uses his creation as exhibit #1. In theology we call that general revelation.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Human arguments throughout history have also been compelling. I remember studying Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God in my Philosophy 101 class. He attempted to use pure logic and conceptual analysis. Tip: when reading, substitute “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” with “God”.
The teleological (design) argument, to which Romans 1:19-20 and Psalm 19 are pointing, seems to me by far the most compelling and likely to convince an unbeliever (as it did famed atheist philosopher Antony Flew). The best work of the Intelligent Design movement has put a serious dent in the atheist/materialist paradigm.
I’ve been digging in some maths and astronomy, I’m curious if this logical argument actually holds water?
The Celestial Mechanics Proof for a Designer
Premise 1: Universal Mathematical Governed Order The movements of celestial bodies are exhaustively described by precise, universal mathematical laws, such as Kepler’s Third Law (T2=G(M+m)4π2a3) and Newton’s inverse-square law (F=Gr2m1m2).
Sub-implication: The physical universe operates according to rigid, invariant, abstract mathematical relationships rather than arbitrary chaos.
Premise 2: Extreme Gravitational and Orbital Fine-Tuning The numerical values governing these celestial equations exist within razor-thin tolerances that defy naturalistic explanation by blind chance (e.g., altering gravitational or electromagnetic constants by 1 part in 1040 prevents stable star formation, and fractional changes to Earth’s orbital eccentricity or axial tilt cause catastrophic planetary ejection or collision).
Sub-implication: The parameters required for long-term dynamical stability are statistically precluded from being accidental products of stochastic processes.
Premise 3: The Law of Entropy vs. Information Density In a purely mechanistic universe, isolated systems default toward maximum entropy, disorder, and thermal decay; yet, celestial mechanics exhibits macroscopic, low-entropy structures with high informational complexity, such as the Laplace resonance of Jupiter’s moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede locked in a 1:2:4 orbital period ratio).
Sub-implication: Blind thermodynamic processes do not spontaneously generate long-term, non-colliding, multi-body computational stability out of primeval chaos.
Premise 4: The Ontological Status of Mathematical Information Mathematical laws are immaterial, abstract, prescriptive truths that pre-exist physical matter, govern its operations, and cannot be reduced to physical substances.
Sub-implication: An immaterial language of mathematics embedded into the fundamental fabric of space, mass, and motion requires an antecedent Author, precisely as source code requires a programmer and a blueprint requires an architect.
Conclusion: Therefore, because the universe contains complex, mathematically precise, and dynamically stable celestial architectures that cannot originate from thermodynamic chaos or account for their own abstract informational laws, the laws of celestial mechanics necessitate the existence of a transcendent, rational Creator.
Premise 4 seems to have a sketchy place on this list. The others all pertain to, and have some effect on concrete objects.
Some have argued historically that the existence of abstract objects/concepts actually argues against God’s existence. They might say that 5+4=9, whether God (or anything else) exists or not. Numbers have no concrete existence. They aren’t caused and have no causal affect on anything. So, where do they come from? How do they exist?
The rest on this list comprise what is commonly known as the “Fine Tuning Argument”. I think a good metric of how effective an argument is for the existence of God would be how much energy do atheists/scientists/philosophers spend trying to defeat it.
Some Russian cosmologist was even awarded a Nobel prize (or one of those prizes) for some cockamamie postulate that was briefly credited with disproving the big bang. Oh how they hate the big bang. It was overturned as soon as they brought it out into the light, but he still got his prize.
My experience is that they zero in most often attempting to defeat the Cosmological Argument(s) and the Fine Tuning Argument. Both are slam dunks in my opinion. Cosmological is simpler and more deductive. Fine Tuning, and it’s twin sister the Teleological arguments are more instinctive. Any of us are perfectly justified in arguing from incredulity.
Take a look inside a cell? A butterfly metamorphosis? Birth of your first child? You will say to yourself, “this simply could not have been an accident. No way, not in a trillion years. Some greatest of all Persons designed this.”
I think i had to explain something perhaps, in each premise i am not making one argument. in each premise there are multiple points sequentially flowing to each premise to the point of conclusion. the premise themselves are only for structral order formatting
For me, the best argument is the information argument.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1860ish) - “Cells are simple, homogenous globules without internal structure.” He was known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”.
Today, we know that every living cell is more complex and sophisticated than a cell phone. (See that?) And I’m not joking or exaggerating.
Cells and cell phones each require billions of bits of information, properly ordered, and intelligently managed.
DNA is like a written sequenced code. There’s no remaining controversy about that. Very similar to computer code. So sophisticated that it is often read forward for one purpose, and then read backward for an entirely different purpose. 3 billion base pairs, perfectly ordered, to build a human.
But not directly.
The information in the DNA has to be transcribed onto an RNA, RNA is then read by the ribosome, the ribosome orders the amino acids (which happen to be floating by apparently), hooks them together like legos. Then a protein chaperone (also happens to be floating by), folds them into their proper shape, (after scanning for error correction) and there you have it - one of 25,000 proper types of proteins.
Then the chaperone carries the fresh protein to exactly where it’s needed in the body, and plugs it into its geometrically receptive destination. And they only do all that tens of millions of times per hour.
875 megabytes of information. 100 encyclopedia volumes of information.
Simply could not have happened by accident in trillions of years.
Sure I understand. The one that seems odd man (or person ) out deals with {edit - “ontology of”} numbers, something that Plato advocated in his “theory of forms” as abstract objects.
A chair might be a chair based on its conformity to the form of “chairness” that exists abstractly in Plato’s cave. So the Platonic challenge is meaningful to some, because they can imagine a reality in which the forms exist without material expression, whether God exists or not. To them, God could just be another “form”. Like a number 6, in the absence of counting.
Others (like me) don’t give it a second thought.
EDIT:
Let me expand on this, I don’t mean to be cavalier. I think I understand that this was meant to be a form of syllogism, with 1 or more premises, followed by a conclusion. The deductive force of the argument, if all of the premises are true, is that the conclusion follows necessarily as true.
In my opinion, if your fourth premise addressed the applicability of mathematics to the universe rather than the ontology of mathematical objects, it would be easier to defend.
One that I have used many times with great success is this:
What is a living cell membrane made up of? Phospholipid molecules. Phospholipid molecules that are part of living cell membranes are not found produced in nature outside of a living cell.
Phospholipid molecules are constructed by the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) and the Golgi Apparatus (GA), cellular organelles within your cells.
The ER begins the process and packages its end product and transports it to the GA, where the product is completed, packaged, and transported to the cell membrane where it is needed.
When we understand “packaged” and “transported,” we understand that there is an unseen program at work, because evolutionary theory cannot explain or produce such an unseen program.
Furthermore, both the ER and GA are both constructed out of the very phospholipid molecules that they produce…another so-called chicken and egg scenario that evolutionary theory cannot handle.
best argument for God?
the lives of Christians living for God.
Next best really depends on who one is talking to. I like the Kalam cosmologic argument with the added question, if you find this unreasonable please explain how nothing caused everything?
) out deals with {edit - “ontology of”} numbers, something that Plato advocated in his “theory of forms” as abstract objects.