Reasons For Belief

My Belief...

Hi everyone, thanks for giving us at CCM a chance to share some of the reasons we believe. The following material has been put together by Ivan Wong from various sources, but the basic idea is the same. Our intention is to sincerely share the many facts and reasons for believing, in the hope that you may be guided and encouraged in the choice of your eternal destiny. Well, having so much said, now on to the big questions...

IS THERE A GOD?

divinity (n.)-The science of divine things; the science that deals with God, His laws and moral government, and the way of salvation: theology.-Webster’s Third International Dictionary

divinity (n.)-The science of divine things; the science which unfolds the character of God, His laws and moral government, the duties of man the way of salvation: Theology as the study of divinity: A system of divinity.-Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, First Edition.

There is in human existence no more profound question demanding an answer. Mortimer Adler, in his monumental Great Ideas Syntopicon, an essay on God, says: “With the exception of certain mathematicians and physicists, all the authors of the ‘Great Books’ are represented in this chapter. In sheer quantity of references, as well as in variety, it is the largest chapter. I feel that the reason is obvious. More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.”

God in a Test Tube?

We must be clear from the outset that it is not possible to put God in a test tube or prove Him by the usual scientific methodology. The reason lies in the nature of history itself, and in the limitations of the scientific method. In order for something to be proved by the scientific method, it must be repeatable. One cannot announce a new finding to the world on the basis of a single experiment. But history in its very nature is nonrepeatable. No one can rerun the beginning of the universe or any live sports event or the crucifixion of Jesus. But the fact that these events can’t be proved by repetition does not disprove their reality as events. There are many real things outside the scope of verification by the scientific method. The scientific method is useful only with measurable things. No one has ever seen three feet of love or two pounds of justice, but one would be foolish indeed to deny their reality. To insist that God be proved by the scientific method is like trying to measure radioactivity with a telephone. What evidence is there for God? It is very significant that anthropological research has indicated that among the farthest and most remote primitive peoples today, there is a universal belief in God. And in the earliest histories and legends of peoples all around the world, the original concept was of one God , who was the Creator. This research, in the last fifty years, has challenged the evolutionary concept of the development of religion, which had suggested that monotheism-the concept of one God-was the apex of a gradual development that began with polytheistic concepts. It is increasingly clear that the oldest traditions everywhere were of one supreme God. The writer of Ecclesiates referred to God as having “set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecc. 3:11). This was described by Blaise Pascal, the great seventeenth-century mathematician, as “the God-shaped vacuum” in every man. Thus the vast majority of humanity has, at all times and in all places, has believed in some kind of god or gods. Though this fact is not conclusive proof, by any means, we should keep it in mind as we attempt to answer the big question.

LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

There is the law of cause and effect to consider. No effect can be produced without a cause(See Newton's Laws). Just in the same way, we as human beings, and the universe itself, are effects which must have had a cause. We come eventually to an uncaused cause, who is God. Being eternal, God is not an effect-RC Sproul. Bertrand Russell makes an astounding statement in his ‘Why I An Not A Christian.’ He says that when he was a child, “God” was given him as the answer to the many questions he raised about existence. In desperation he asked, “Well, who created God?” When no answer was forthcoming, he says, “My entire faith collapsed!” But how foolish that was. God by definition is eternal and uncreated. Were God a created being, He would not and could not be God. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen.1:1 ) Thus we see that He did it by fiat(decision or decree), without any preexisting material; His resolve that things should exist (“Let there be...”) called them into being and formed them in order with an existence that depended on His will yet was distinct from His own. Father, Son and Holy Spirit were involved together(Gen. 1:2; Ps. 33:6,9; 148:5; Jn.1:1-3; Col. 1:15-16; Heb. 1:2; 11:3).
Some further points of interest...
1) The act of creation is mystery to us; there is more in it than we can understand. We cannot create by fiat, and we do not know how God could. To say that He created “out of nothing” is to confess the mystery, not to explain it.
2) Space and time are dimensions of the created order; God is not “in” either; nor is he bound by either as we are.
3) As the world order is not self-created, so it is not self- sustaining, as God is. The stability of the universe depends on constant divine upholding; this is a specific ministry of the divine Son (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3), and without it every creature of every kind, ourselves included, would cease to be. As Paul told the Athenians, “He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else...In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:25,28).
4) The possibility of creative intrusions by God is as old as the cosmos itself.
Knowing that God created the world around us, and ourselves as part of it, is basic to true religion. God is to be praised as Creator, by reason of the marvelous order, variety, and beauty of His works. (Taken from Concise Theology by J.I. Packer)

Scriptures

“Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Ps. 90:2
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” Rev. 4:8

AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER

No one could think a computer could come into being without an intelligent designer. Say I left all these building materials lying about. Could these building materials have miraculously come together to form K-Block, obviously there has to be an intelligent mind behind the design. How much more incredible is it to believe that the universe, in its infinite complexity, could have happened by chance? The human body, for instance, is an admittedly astounding and complex organism, a continual marvel of organisation, design, and efficiency. So impressed was Albert Einstein with this that he said: “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illuminant superior Spirit who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”
There are approximately 11 million species of life on earth, including humans. Did all of these, including the universe itself, begin by chance or by purpose and design? For the Christian and non-Christian alike there are basically two choices. When we speak of design as opposed to chance, we are asking who or what gave the original specifications and information that put it all together. Scientists have long relied on infinite time plus chance to explain the origin of the universe. They projected that given an ideally prepared primordial soup, jolted by frequent electrical charges and an unlimited period of time, some life form would evolve. However, the difficulties this theory presents are so enormous that today those same scientists are pointing out its weaknesses. The distinguished astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle explains how difficult it would be for the accidental formation of only one of the many chains of amino acids in a living cell. And in every human cell, there are about 200,000 such amino acids. Now, the time required to get all 200,00 amino acids for one human cell to come together by accident would be about 293.5 times the estimated age of the earth (set at the standard 4.6 billion years). The odds against this happening would be infinitesimally small, as to be impossible. Another analogy Hoyle proposes bolsters his argument. He calls this the “junkyard mentality” and asks, “What are the chances that a tornado might blow through a junkyard containing all the parts of a 747, accidentally assemble them into a plane, and leave it ready for take-off?” Hoyle answers, “The possibilities are so small as to be negligible even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole universe!”
In his impressive book The Intelligent Universe, Hoyle concludes, “As biochemists discover more and more about the awesome complexity of life, it is apparent that its chances of originating by accident are so minute that they can be completely ruled out. Life cannot have arisen by chance.”

ORDER AND DESIGN IN THE UNIVERSE
(THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT)

The earth itself is evidence of design. “If it were much smaller an atmosphere would be impossible (as on Mercury and the moon); if much larger the atmosphere would contain free hydrogen (as on Jupiter and Saturn). Our moon ,probably responsible for the continents and ocean basins, is unique in our solar system and seems to have originated in a way quite different from the other relatively much smaller moons. The tile of the [earth’s] axis insures the seasons, and so on.” Further, consider the design of the human eye. The English theologian William Paley pointed to the “fitting together efficiently and cooperatively of the lens, retina, and brain; enabling humans to have vision; as conclusive evidence of the design of an all-wise Creator. Thus the functional design of organisms and their features are taken as evidence of the existence of the designer. Even Darwin himself in a chapter titled “Difficulties With the Theory” from his Origins of Species states, “To suppose that the eye, with so many parts all working together... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” Harvard’s Richard Lewontin, an evolutionist, states that organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed and calls the perfection of organisms the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer.”


              How many are your works, O Lord!
                In wisdom you made them all;
            the earth is full of your creatures.
                        Psalms 104:24

THE UNIVERSE HAD A BEGINNING

In addition to design in the universe, there is the implication that the universe had in some sense a beginning- a moment in time that brought the world into being. The bible describes it this way: “In the beginning You[Lord] laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands” (Ps. 102:25).
Scientists avoided the idea that time had a beginning or and end since it suggested divine intervention. Through the years a number of alternative theories were developed. Three such models were the “continuous creation/steady-state” model of the universe, the “oscillating model” and the “Big Bang” theory. Dr. William L. Craig observes that “both the steady state and oscillating models of the universe fail to fit the facts of observational cosmology. Therefore we can conclude once more that the universe began to exist.”-that is, has a beginning. As concerning the “Big Bang Theory”, supporting evidence came in 1965 when two physicists discovered that the earth was entirely bathed in a faint glow of radiation. Its waves followed the exact pattern of wavelength expected in a giant explosion. Scientists declared there could be no other obvious explanation than the waves were the aftermath of the Big Bang. Dr. Robert Jastrow, who states that he is an agnostic in religious matters, comments on the theory of the Big bang:”Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same. The chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.” Dr. Jastrow continues:”Scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science; every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause. Now science has proven that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, ‘What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the universe? And science cannot answer these questions.’
“This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible. In the beginning God created heaven and earth. To which St. Augustine added, ’Who can understand this mystery or explain it to others?”
Dr. Jastrow concludes with this monumental statement: ”For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
One of those theologians, David, said knowingly, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Ps. 19:1). And the Apostle Paul wrote, “God has made it plain...For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-His eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Rom. 1:19- 20).

THE MORAL ARGUMENT

Yet another evidence for the existence of God is what C.S. Lewis calls “right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe.” There is an influence or a command inside each of us trying to get us to behave in a certain way. Lewis explains that universally we find that people appeal to some sense of right and wrong.
People argue with one another: “That’s my seat. I had it first! Suppose I did the same to you! How would you like it? Come on, you promised...” People say things like this every day, educated as well as uneducated, children as well as grown-ups; all of us say these things. In these arguments there is an appeal to some behavioral standard that the other person is assumed to accept. He had a good reason to do it; it was OK to do it. The appeal is to some law or rule of fair play that’s built in them both. Rarely does the other person say, “Who cares about your standard?” It is there between them. They don’t question it. As Lewis puts it, “Quarreling 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...”
This law has to do with what ought to take place. Somehow we know it inside of us. It is not just a set of cultural norms or cultural standards. Also we can see there is a surprising consensus from civilization to civilization about what is moral decency. And we all do agree that some moralities are better than others. “if no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality.”
“I seems, then, that we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong, but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table...These, then , are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. The know the law of Nature: they break it.” (from Mere Christianity, Book 1 Chapter 1) Thus Lewis says that the moral law cannot be merely a social convention. It is more like a mathematical table, he tells us. We would never say the math table is a social convention made up to help us and which we could have made differently if we wanted to. Two plus two will always equal four irrespective of its culture. Yes, there is Somebody behind the universe. He has put a moral law within us and He is intensely interested in right conduct-in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, and truthfulness.

GOD-A CELESTIAL KILLJOY?

It is important to observe here that though there are many indications of God in nature, we could never know conclusively from nature that He is or what He is like. The question was asked centuries ago, “Can you fathom the mysteries of God?” (Job 11:7) The answer is no! Unless God reveals Himself, we are doomed to confusion and conjecture. It is obvious that among those who believe in God there are many ideas abroad today as to what God is like. Some, for instance, believe God to be a celestial killjoy. They view Him as peering over the balcony of heaven looking for anyone who seems to be enjoying life. On finding such a person, He shouts down, “Cut it out!” Others think of God as a sentimental grandfather of the sky, rocking benignly and stroking His beard as He says, “Boys will be boys!” That everything will work out in the end, no matter what you have done, is conceded to be His general attitude. Others think of Him as a big ball of fire and of us as little sparks who will eventually come back to the big ball. Still others, like Einstein, think of God as an impersonal force or mind. Herbert Spencer, one of the popularizes of agnosticism a century ago, observed accurately that a bird has never been known to fly out of space. Therefore he concluded buy analogy that it is impossible for the finite to penetrate the infinite. His observation was correct, but his conclusion was wrong. He missed one other possibility: that the infinite could penetrate the finite. This, of course, is what God did.

GOD HAS PENETRATED THE FINITE
(or GOD HAS COME DOWN INTO THE CREATED UNIVERSE)

As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe” (Heb. 1:1-2) God has taken the initiative, throughout history, to communicate to man. His fullest revelation has been His invasion into human history in the person of Jesus Christ. Here, in terms of human personality that we can understand, He has lived among us. If you wanted to communicate your love to a colony of ants, how could most effectively do it? Clearly, it would be best to become an ant. Only in this way could your existence and what you were like be communicated fully and effectively. This is what God did with us. We are, as J.B. Phillips aptly put it, “the visited planet.” The best and clearest answer to how we know there is a God is that He has visited us. The other indications are merely clues or hints. What confirms them conclusively is the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The things He says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say, “This is the truth about the Universe. This is the way you ought to go”, but He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” (Jn. 14:6) He says that no man can reach absolute reality, except through Him. Try to retain my own life and I will be inevitably ruined. Give myself away and I will be saved. He says to me that if I am ashamed of Him, if, when I hear this call, I turn the other way, He also will look the other way when He comes again as God without disguise.

CHANGED LIVES

Other evidence for the reality of God’s existence is His clear presence in the lives of men and women today. Where Jesus Christ is believed and trusted a profound change takes place in the individual, and ultimately, the community. Many others today, in less dramatic terms, have experienced this same reality. There is, then, evidence from creation, history and contemporary life that there is a God and that this God can be known in personal experience. “Thus God exists and is the creator of everything. Realising our moment-by-moment dependence on God the Creator for our very existence makes it appropriate to live lives of devotion, commitment, gratitude, and loyalty toward Him, and scandalous not to. Godliness starts here, with God the sovereign Creator as the first focus of our thoughts.” (taken from Concise Theology, by J.I. Packer) Or as Ravi Zacharias has said “When man lives apart from God, chaos is the norm. When man lives with God, as revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, that hungers of the mind and heart find their fulfillment. For in Christ we find coherence and consolation as He reveals to us, in the most verifiable terms of truth and experience, the nature of man, the nature of reality, the nature of history, the nature of our destiny, and the nature of suffering.” Tonight we have gone through evidence that demands a verdict. You be the judge.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1. What about the thousands who have been killed in the name of religion? Why is there not an equal enthusiasm to distribute blame for violence engendered by some of the irreligious? The attackers of religion have forgotten that these large-scale slaughters at the hands of antitheists were the logical outworking of their God- denying philosophy. Contrastingly, the violence spawned by those who killed in the name of Christ would never have been sanctioned by the Christ of the Scriptures. Those who killed in the name of God were clearly self- serving politicizes of religion, an amalgam Christ ever resisted in His life and teaching. Their means and their message were in contradiction to the gospel. Atheism, on the other hand, provides the logical basis for an autonomous, domineering will, expelling morality. Darwin himself predicted this slippery slope of violence if evolutionary theory were translated into a philosophy of life. Antitheism provides every reason to be immoral and is bereft of any objective point of reference with which to condemn any choice. Any antitheist who lives a moral life merely lives better than his or her philosophy warrants. 2. Can I lead a good life without Christianity? The question before each of us is not “Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?” The question is “Can I?” We all know there have been good men who were not Christians; men like Socrates and Confucius who had never heard of it, or men like J.S. Mill who quite honestly couldn’t believe it... But the man who asks me, “Can’t I lead a good life without believing in Christianity?” is clearly not in the same position. If he hadn’t hear of Christianity he would not be asking this question. If, having heard of it, and having seriously considered it, he had decided that it was untrue, then once more he would not be asking the question. The man who asks this question has heard of Christianity and is by not means certain that it may not be true. He is really asking, “Need I bother about it? Mayn’t I just evade the issue, just let sleeping dogs lie, and get on with being ‘good’? Aren’t good intentions enough to keep me safe and blameless without knocking at that dreadful door and making sure whether there is, or isn’t someone inside?” To such a man it might be enough to reply the he is really asking to be allowed to get on with being “good” before he has done his best to discover what good means. But that is not the whole story. We need not inquire whether God will punish him for his cowardice and laziness: they will punish themselves. The man is shirking. He is deliberately trying not to know whether Christianity is true or false, because he foresees endless trouble if it should turn out to be true. He is like the man who deliberately “forgets” to look at the notice board because, if he did, he might find his name down for some unpleasant duty... (Taken from “Man or Rabbit?” in God in the Dock) 3. I am an Atheist, but I am because I lack theistic evidence, and not because I have an assertive denial of the major claims of all varieties of theism; which contradicts belief in God with a positive affirmation of matter as ultimate reality. Therefore, does it take as much faith to become an atheist as to believe in God. If so, what kind of faith? The soft position that there is not sufficient evidence for theism commits three logical blunders. First, to move to atheism by default is hardly and academically credible switch to make when there are myriad other options. Second, to say that there is insufficient evidence for theism and therefore I am an theist implies a logically satisfactory defense of atheism that they do not have. After all, why else would they hold to it if it is logically indefensible, when their very reason for denying theism is that it is logically indefensible? (Theism is supposedly illogical, how can the atheist position be based upon something which is supposedly illogical?!!) Third, it is purely an admission that atheism cannot be defended, even though they have tried, hence the softer version of agnosticism. Let us look at the words themselves. The word atheism comes from the Greek, which has two words conjoined. The alpha is the negative, and theos means “God.” The atheistic position, whether you like it or not, posits the negation of God. Having quickly recognized the inherent contradiction of affirming God’s non-existence, which absolutely would at the same time presuppose infinite knowledge on the part of the one doing the denying, a philosophically convenient switch was made to agnosticism. But agnostic has an even more embarrassing connotation. The alpha means the negative, and ginosko is from the Greek “to know.” An agnostic is one who doesn’t know. It sounds quite congenial and sophisticated at the same time, but the Latin uncomplimentary equivalent is “ignoramus.” That is why the agnostic does not feel lauded in this category either but dresses up the concept, manufacturing a certain aura not inherent in the word while smuggling in atheism for all functional purposes. So I say to you, the charge is not against the apologists; that is to dislocate the problem. The hat pin is in the heart of the atheistic position, which could not live with itself. Let me add that an honest agnostic should be open to the evidence.

CCM