Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Clues for God - 1

Here is what I'd like to do. I've been spending probably to much time recently talking with people online about the existence of God; so, I've been presenting them with "clues" to His existence. To double-up, I'm going to talk about some of them on here.

First, I'd like to throw out a caveat that the existence of God will never be proven in the truest sense. I can't lead you to belief because the existence of God is proven logically and empirically by sense experience. 100% proof simply does not exist in the discussion of God's existence. However, for those that want it, and refuse to believe without it, I'd caution. Your thinking is off. How could you empirically prove that no one should believe something without empirical proof? You can't and so you have a belief of your own!

Ok, those stated, here's the first "clue" for God:

The First evidence is this: Timothy Keller in "The Reason for God" calls it "The Mysterious Bang" though I'm sure he didnt' coin the phrase. By the way, read the book; most of my info is from there.

Why is there something from nothing?

Stephen Hawking wrote:
"Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang."

Francis Collins, in the "Language of God" says:
"We have this very solid conclusion that the universe had an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing. I can't imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature."

What made the Big Bang? What else but something outside of nature, a supernatural, noncontingent being that exists from itself. Now I anticipate a lot of "Occam's Razor" type of talk to come of this clue. I'll suffice to say that a theist should be comfortable with his belief in the respect that the beginning has an end. An atheist, however, should find themselves somewhat uncomfortable with the question of why there is something rather than nothing. An outside creating source is the only reasonable explanation.

Sam Harris, a prominent atheist, says,
"In any case, even if we accepted that our universe simply had to be created by an intelligent being, this would not suggest that this being is the God of the Bible."

He is right, we're not there yet...

1 comment:

Ann said...

How does this clue work for agnostics? Just wondering if you could show me that angle too.