If you don’t believe that God exists, you best pray he doesn’t…
From time to time I come across folks that feel the need for me to somehow prove that God exists. I tend to go to the place where I find it necessary to challenge the intellectual point of where it all began.
Where did we come from? What actually was in the beginning? Something always existed eternally going backward, right? Was it God, or did something smaller than a speck of dust always exist?
Was it a single-cell micro-organism, far smaller than a speck of dust, where it all began? Where did it come from? How long did it exists before it was sparked to advance and evolve? What was the catalyst to spark its evolution?
Where did God come from, if he exists at all? What and who is God? How long did God exist before he was sparked to create? What does God look like? What was within the existence of God before he created something to himself (herself, themselves?) exist in?
Which is easier, and perhaps more logical and rational to accept? Did God always exist? Or, did something smaller than a speck of dust always exist? If your answer is that something microscopically minute—infinitesimal, containing within it all of the matter and DNA with the potential for all of the complexities of life and the universe, always existed, how would you explain so it makes sense? Which is actually easier to wrap your mind around?
What I am saying is that if folks are relying on the chemistry, physics, and biology of evolutionary process without the sovereign presence and influence of a supreme being (that I will call God), then the burden of proof is on them. Science is exclusive, depending on evidentiary truth shaping and becoming reality. The math has to work!
But don’t I have to prove the existence of God to believe that he (or they, if you accept the reality of a triune God) created the universe and the life within it; that it was God that was the catalyst to spark evolutionary process that likely occurred in stages (six perhaps?) over billions, if not, trillions of years?
You know what? I’m just foolish enough to believe what I believe about God. What I believe about God may or may not carry the kind of evidence that is acceptable to science as proof. It doesn’t matter. What I have experienced in relationship with God throughout my life is evidence enough; proof enough. It is indeed sufficient. I am at peace; set free from uncertainty by the truth alive and at work through relationship with a gracious, compassionate, merciful, generous God who is wildly in love with his family.
“For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice.” —St. Thomas Aquinas
Having seen the movie “God’s Not Dead” led me to discussions and debates that center on the science of the origins of anything and everything versus the spiritual realities of where we came from and where we are going. Instead of going to You Tube to search these out, I brought them together.
I will begin with a discussion from Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss who explain in “scientific” terms how something came from nothing. They feel the need to mythicize (I just made up a word) God and Christianity, suggesting it is a lazy, irresponsible attempt to fill in the gaps of solving the something from nothing problem.
I suggest that it is far less burdensome to accept that a triune God has existed for eternity backwards then that something smaller than a speck of dust (containing all of the DNA for all that is and ever was and ever will be) existed for eternity backwards and then at some point was provoked by nothing to begin the evolutionary process, starting with the big bang explanation.
When all is said and done as you consider the following debates, there is this question I pose for the atheists fighting so hard to justify their argument: Why is there so much animus against Christians? Why so much enmity towards Christians? If God does not exist, how is it that Christianity poses such a threat? Why not simply laugh at us as fools for believing what we believe?
14 If Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. 15 And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave. But that can’t be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. 16 And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. 18 In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! 19 And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. 1 Corinthians 15:14-19 (NLT)
As you pick through these cases for atheism and Christianity ponder this: Christians are motivated by transformative experience and compelled by love to evangelize to the world what is to be gained in believing in God and everything that comes with Him. What is the motivation for the atheist who has nothing to gain and everything to lose? The atheist is compelled by what to share this reality with the world? What drives the atheist to argue so vigorously for something that ultimately has no point… no payoff… live until you finally get sick, old and die? Is it gratification from some irrational sense of intellectual superiority, because, well, that’s as good as it gets? Why celebrate that?
SOMETHING FROM NOTHING? Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss
God’s Not Dead: How Science Proves God Exists! – Mike Ladra, D. Min.
Richard Dawkins vs Cardinal George Pell
Christopher Hitchens vs Peter Hitchens
Dr. Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell
Richard Dawkins vs Howard Condor
Christopher Hitchens vs Alister McGrath – Is Religion a Poison or a Cure?
Latest Scientific Evidence for God’s Existence – Hugh Ross, PhD
The Existence of Nothing – Neil deGrasse, Tyson Lawrence Krauss
Atheism Demolished – Dr. Tim Keller
Lee Strobel – Why Does Creation Make Sense?
