I feel compelled to start off this post with a bit of a disclaimer. It seems that people reading my series here seem to do it with the idea in their minds as they read that I am trying to prove that God exists. This is despite the fact that I have said numerous times in both my posts and comments that I do not believe it is possible to prove that God exists for a myriad of reasons. The best for which we can hope is to find evidence that suggests or points to God’s existence. That is my goal. To show the pieces of evidence that I feel are personally significant to my belief in the existence of God. It is not enough for me to just believe God exists because the Bible says that God created it all and existed before it all, for if God does not exist, then the Bible is just a nice story. God has to exist outside of the Bible in order for me to even begin to believe that the Bible may be part of his revelation to humanity.
I also want to again state that the evidence which I am presenting in this series also does in no way point to the God of Christianity. Arriving at that point is an entirely different set of arguments which I do plan to present down the road. At best, the evidence that I am discussing points to a stance of theism as opposed to atheism. Yes, I am a Christian and have reasons for that (which I will get to down the road as stated above), but this series of posts is not in any way an attempt to convert or evangelize anyone towards belief in the Christian view of God. I am simply putting forth my journey and how I got here. If it helps or challenges someone along the way, that is enough.
And finally (this is a long disclaimer), if there are any athesits reading this series, I am not attempting to convert you either. I fully realize that all of these pieces of evidence can rationally be read in another light, and I value your reading and appreciate the difference of opinion that you bring to the table. I welcome the healthy debate that may arise and hope that we can, in the end, learn a bit more truth from each other.
Now for the heart of the post….( It may be that my friend John (titfortat) might possibly find this post especially interesting as I believe it may be in line with his “format” ideas).
I will open this section with a quote from Einstein (what an amazing thing to be known to all of mankind essentially by only your last name). I am currently reading a book by Antony Flew, There Is A God, in which he lays out how he came to a place of theism from staunch atheism. On page 102 he quotes Einstein, “Every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” Flew takes this quote from a work by Max Jammer called Einstein and Religion. Jammer was a personal friend of Einstein and believes and puts forth rather convincingly in this work that while Einstein did not believe in a personal god, he did believe in a “superior mind.” That belief was significantly impacted by the regularity of nature.
Antony Flew explains his view very eloquently, through many quotes from giants such as Paul Davies, Freeman Dyson, John Polkinghorne, Charles Darwin, and Richard Swinburne among others. Science has, through rigorous process, been at the work of uncracking the laws that govern the universe. Well from where did those laws themselves come? Atheists claim that these laws and universe are ultimately absurd, that their existence is reasonless. Ultimately, I find that explanation lacking. Oder exists everywhere and science cannot prove why it is there. And I like what Paul Davies has said, “There must be an unchanging rational ground in which the logical, orderly nature of the universe is rooted” (as quoted from Davies’ work God For The 21st Century by Flew on page 111 of There Is A God).
Tim Keller in The Reason For God adds a bit to this argument. His focus is more on the philosphical side. He emphasizes the observations that secular philosophers such as David Hume and Betrand Russell have made. The philosphers were, “…troubled by the fact that we haven’t got the slighest idea of why nature-regularity is happening now, and moreover, we haven’t the slighest rational justification for assuming it will continue tomorrow. If someone would say, ‘Well the future has always been like the past in the past,’ Hume and Russel reply that you are assuming the very thing you are trying to establish. To put it another way, science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith” (Page 132 of The Reason For God).
I will close with a quote from Paul Davies as documented by Flew on page 107 of the above referenced work: “In his Templeton address, Paul Davies makes the point that ’science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.’ Nobody asks where the laws of physics come from, but ‘even the most atheistic scientist accpets as an act of faith the existence of a lawlike order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us.’”
I think that sums up my take on this evidence pretty well.
