05 Jan Why Believe in God? If you reject God, you’ve only done half the job.
Introduction
Today, we begin a new blog series: Why Believe in God?
I’ve subtitled it, “If you reject God, you’ve only done half the job.”
The other half of the job is that you have to explain reality without God which, in my estimation, is impossible. But earlier in my Christian walk, I didn’t understand that, and as a result, did not have the confidence in my faith and in God that I might have had.
I became a Christian during a time of intense personal crisis. And like a man drowning at sea, I grabbed at the first thing I thought would hold me up: Christianity. I had gone to church as a child and was predisposed to a Christian worldview. So, during that time of crisis, in the heat of the moment, I grabbed onto Christianity.
A few years later, I began to wonder if I had made the right decision. I wondered if Christianity were actually true, or if it were the only thing that was true. I was particularly troubled by the doctrine of hell. I reasoned that if I were God, and if I knew that by creating, even one person would go to hell, I would be willing to not create.
So, I went looking for a worldview that didn’t have hell. And you can find one. There are different religions (including liberal Christianity) that do not embrace a belief in hell. And then, of course, you have the great escape hatch, atheism.
The problem is, however, that while these options get rid of hell, they release an avalanche of other problems that are intellectually harder to reconcile to reality than the doctrine of hell.
So, I eventually returned to my commitment to historic Christianity, but developed an intense desire for reassurance that it was all true.
To this end, I developed a keen appreciation for “apologetics”, which is the discipline of applying facts and logic to defend the Christian faith. While apologetic arguments are often instrumental in leading unbelievers to faith, what apologetics did for me was to give me a deep and abiding reassurance that the faith I had already embraced was actually true. It gave me peace in the face of the difficulties of life, as well as peace in the face of death.
If you are a Christian, I hope this blog series will do the same for you, and if you are not yet a Christian, I hope it will lead you to become one.
So, here we go!
Cause/effect reasoning
“Why believe in God?”
Because God is the best explanation for what is.
Cause/effect reasoning is an essential part of life. If it’s possible to know anything, we must use laws of reasoning, and one law of reasoning is that every effect must have an adequate cause.
Back in the 1970s, we had energy problems in our nation, and it was not uncommon for large cities to suddenly lose their power and go black.
I read the story of a young boy who was playing baseball with his friends. As it began to get dark the floodlights came on to light the field, and the game continued. But then the boy struck out, and in frustration walked over and hit one of the telephone poles with his bat. As luck would have it, that was the precise moment that a blackout hit the city, and the lights went out everywhere. The boy was stricken because he thought he had caused the blackout by hitting the pole.
If he had had an adequate understanding of cause-and-effect consequences, he would have known that that wasn’t possible. He would have known that the effect – a citywide electrical blackout – was far too great to be caused by a young boy hitting a light pole with his baseball bat.
What caused the universe?
So, here we have the universe, the world, people, events and history, and we have to understand what caused it. How do you explain the existence of what “is”?
Well, the Bible says that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Then it says that God created humanity, and blessed humanity and said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). And for a long time, that was the accepted explanation.
Now however most scientists reject that explanation. They believe that the universe and all that is, is explained by natural consequences alone. They do not allow for God.
So who is right?
No one has proof. Proof of God and his creation of the universe is not possible. It lies outside the capacity of the scientific method to explore. Therefore, we have to move from the laboratory to the courtroom, looking, not for proof, but for evidence.
Scientists have no answers for the big questions of existence
In the process, atheist scientists use intellectual and scientific sleight of hand to try to prop up the notion that everything that “is” can be explained by purely natural causes.
They have no proof. And they have no convincing evidence. All they have is in agreement with one another to not allow God into the equation. As long as most scientists agree with this, and don’t break ranks, they can perpetuate the illusion.
But the illusion can be brought down if we are simply willing to go wherever the evidence and the truth lead us. It’s a problem only if we refuse to believe. Unbelief never has enough evidence.
A powerful beginning point for bringing down the illusion was articulated sometime back by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, in a TED talk when he said, “Modern science is based on the principle: ‘Give us one free miracle and will explain the rest.’ The one free miracle is the appearance of all the mass and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern it in a single instant from nothing.”
A nervous ripple of laughter spread throughout the audience when he said that, because it seemed transparently true to the audience, though they knew they were not supposed to believe it.
But in reality, it is far worse than that. They are not asking for one free miracle. They are asking for five.
Five miracles fundamental to existence that scientists are powerless to explain
- How something came from nothing.
- How order came from chaos.
- How life came from non-life.
- How consciousness came from non-consciousness.
- How transcendence came from consciousness.
Conclusion
In this new Why Believe in God? blog series, we will investigate each of these five miracles that science asks us to give them, will clarify why they cannot be explained by natural causes, and rest in the wonderful assurance that it is all best explained by God. I hope that by the end, you will have increased confidence in your faith, and are strengthened in your readiness to trust Him and obey Him from the heart.
Next week we’ll tackle the first miracle of existence, How something can come from nothing. I look forward to seeing you then!
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