​Arguments for God

I read in natural theology, the branch of philosophy based on reason and ordinary experiences of nature. It gives empirical evidences for God apart from revealed theology, scripture, and/or religious experience. Rather than providing proof, per se, the scientist-theologians like John Polkinghorne, Ian Barbour, and Arthur Peacocke suggest a worldview in which faith could at least have an intelligible place.

 

In struggling to answer G.W. Leibniz’s great question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” I was drawn to the writings of Anthony Flew. In There is a God: How The World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, Flew stated that he believed in a divine mind behind the universe. At one time, he believed in the secular theory of a pre-existing and eternal universe—one in which hydrogen molecules are constantly created out of nothing. In part because of the Big Bang theory, he was forced to acknowledge that the universe had an absolute beginning that required a supernatural creator.

 

Flew questioned how a universe of mindless matter could produce beings with the goal-directed behaviors of self-preservation and reproduction. He believed that the genetic code discovered in DNA reflects an intelligent language—the one used by God to communicate. He was also swayed by the fine-tuning arguments of the anthropic principle. This belief contends that the narrowly defined cosmological conditions necessary for life could not have resulted from mere chance.

Exceedingly small gravitational changes in either direction would have prevented the formation of planets. Oxford physicist Roger Penrose calculated that the odds of life in the universe having arisen by sheer chance is about one part in 1010. Though Flew never believed in the personal God of the Bible, he took considerable steps away from atheism.

John Polkinghorne, a theoretical math physicist shocked his colleagues at the University of Cambridge when he became an Anglican priest. His beliefs resembled those of Michael Polyani, a chemist and philosopher of science. Both rejected the idea that the scientific community is more objective than the faith community. Each commits itself to what it believes it to be true, knowing that it could in fact be false. All knowledge is personal, and observers cannot separate themselves from their background and experience.

Polkinghorne and other physicists knew of the existence of quarks, particles smaller than protons and neutrons, even though they couldn’t observe them. He reasoned from this that certain truths worth signing onto may never have the benefit of precise scientific proof. Certain intuitive truths can be known a through a flash of insight and not through precise formulas on paper. The discoveries in the field of quantum physics suggested the paradoxical nature of observation. The thing being measured or observed may be absolute, in and of itself, but incapable of being measured as such.

Knowing that the secrets of the natural world can be penetrated by abstract mathematics, Polkinghorne believed that the divine mind is the ground of our mental processes as well as the physical world. Earlier, C.S. Lewis took this argument in a different direction when he noted that thought must be more than random chemicals operating in the brain. The secular or naturalistic argument becomes self-defeating if our doubts can be deconstructed this way.

Robert Jastrow, an internationally known astronomer, wrote that “the big bang theory is the crux of the story of Genesis. According to Dr. Jastrow, scientists did not expect to find evidence for an abrupt beginning.

Francis Collins, the American physician-geneticist, noted for his leadership of the Human Genome Project, founded the BioLogos Foundation to promote understanding about the compatibility of science and religion. In The Language of God, Collins discusses his Christian faith, making arguments based on cosmology, biology, and human psychology.

Collins accepts that human beings descended from a common ancestor, and that God orchestrated evolution in a general rather than a specific way. He contends that we criticize the process of evolution because we don’t trust “chance.” Yet, from God’s point of view, chance and determinism constitute two sides of the same coin. In other words, what, to us, seems unintentional based on chance reflects God’s overall plan from the beginning.

According to Collins, the problem lies, not with evolution, per se, but with the deconstructive and materialist philosophies associated with it. Because we are complex animals formed in the image of God, our loftiest goals and noblest values do not derive from random chemicals in the brain. Collins criticizes the Intelligent Design movement’s belief that biological complexity in natural selection proves God’s supernatural action. He says that the gaps found in natural selection will one day have scientific explanations. He notes that the fine-tuning arguments in cosmology are less vulnerable to dismissal by new discoveries.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis states that humans have an innate moral sense apart from subjective opinion, culture, or practicality. Though customs differ, every society believes that torturing a child to death for the sake of pleasure is wrong. If this moral sense is merely a biological-socio scheme to help us live harmoniously in the larger society, why do we feel we should want to be good, regardless of how it benefits us culturally?

Lewis, in his book, Miracles, argues that before one learns from the study of history whether miracles ever occur, one must first settle the philosophical question. Is it logically possible in principle that miracles can occur? In a chapter called “The Naturalist and the Supernaturalist,” Lewis gives technical definitions of the two terms. Naturalists, under his definition, believe that the universe is a vast process in which all events that ever happened find their cause within the system.

Supernaturalists believe that interruptions or interference can take place in the universe from some other system outside it. In principle, a supernatural event would be one that is not traceable to physical causes within our universe. Lewis believed in a supernatural reality with a benevolent creator who intervenes after creation. He argues that miracles are compatible with science and natural laws. While they are interventions, beyond nature, the rules of nature are not changed.
 
Skeptics like Spinoza and Hume argue that because the uniform experience of most people is against miracles, a rare miraculous occurrence can never have enough evidence to support it. Although the odds against a miracle are very great, they should not affect the quality of evidence for them. Equating evidence with probability would mean that a lottery winner could not accept his results because of the many thousands of people who had lost. According to Geisler and Howe, the probability of being dealt a perfect bridge hand is very slight, yet it has actually happened and is not doubted when it does.
 
Some supernaturalists accuse modern historians, scientific thinkers, and secular bible scholars of begging the question against miracles. Those who believe that so-called miracles will someday have scientific explanations seem to have unfairly assumed priori (through a naturalistic leap of faith) that miracles are impossible. This skeptical logic, according to Geisler and Howe, actually flies in the face of the scientific method. If science had convincing knowledge of results based on past probability, they would never go to the trouble of experimenting in the first place.
 
Tim Keller, in The Reason for God, cites Arthur Danto, the art critic for The Nation, who once described a work of art as giving him a sense of “obscure but inescapable meaning … that life is not a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” If there is no God, and everything is the product of an accidental collision of neurons and atoms, then what we call beauty is nothing more than hardwired data and poetry is accidental marks on a page.
 
C.S. Lewis confessed to being a Romantic devotee of the imagination, feeling that the spiritual beauty inherent in good art were messengers from another world. The English Romantic poet William Wordsworth called these glimpses “intimations of immortality.” Lewis longed for otherworldly experiences, signifying what he called “our true home.”
 
Lewis reasoned that creatures were not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists:A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

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Though mine was the slow, prodding quest of a skeptic, I could see that atheism, far from being unintelligent, left too many unanswered questions. Approximately a year into my study, I found my mind in a radically different place. I began doubting my very doubts and became less resistant to the possibility of a supernatural reality and of miracles. Though far from understanding how God’s love mysteriously enabled hope, I reasoned that my intense longing for Him signaled the best evidence for His existence.

Heschel wrote that we should live in radical amazement—looking at the world in such a way that we take nothing for granted. I resonated with his concept of “divine pathos,” the idea that God is emotionally involved with the life of His people.

Buber explored communication by defining two fundamental relationships: “I-It” and “I-Thou.” In I-Thou relationships, one fully engages with the other in real dialogue. Buber experienced the I-Thou relationship in the depth of his encounter with God.

As I began to access intuitive truths alongside the provable “one plus one equals two” variety, my personality shifted to a new center. My heart, mind, and soul coalesced when I began praying to the personal God of the Bible. I had come full circle and could see the difference between a mere theory about Him and a relationship with Him. When I read the Jewish classics again, I had a different and truer understanding of Heschel’s “radical amazement” and Martin Buber’s “I-Thou dialogue.”

Franz Rosensweig wrote that Judaism consists of a personal, existential decision in which a Jew not only connects to God, but to the entire covenantal group of Israel. Through observance, a Jew participates in the great dance that evokes the mystery of Israel’s election. Despite knowing that following the law entails more than dry legalism, I had no desire to immerse myself on this level.