EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
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An atheist challenged me to give him evidence for the existence of God. I quoted former atheist and astronomer Alan Sandage:
* "As I said before, the world is too complicated in all of its parts to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. . . . The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some kind of organizing principle—an architect."
The atheist retorted that this observation wasn't evidence. Instead, I would have to produce scientific findings and peer-reviewed studies. I had to play according to his rules.
I thought about this and applied it to something else I was sure about - my wife's existence! I didn't need a peer-reviewed study to assure me that she existed. It is enough for me to see her and to see the things she had done for me and for our apartment.
Admittedly, I cannot see God, but I can see what He has done for me and also His work, just like Sandage had seen.
What did Sandage see that had made him reject atheism? He observed that an Architect must have been the Designer of this world. How did he know that blind chance could not have accounted for it? We all have a lot of experience with intelligent causes and non-intelligent causes. We therefore know that non-intelligent causes cannot account for computers, iPads, and even DNA.
Okay, there is a lot we don't know, but based upon what we do know, non-intelligent causes cannot build TVs or telescopes. These require intelligence.
In There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, Antony Flew concluded that DNA required an intelligent cause:
* “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
* “I now believe there is a God…I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.”
Flew did not need a peer-reviewed study to come to his final conclusion. However, science had revealed the "unbelievable complexity" of DNA and unable to provide any natural explanation for it. And Flew knew that there would be none forthcoming.
Besides, peer-reviewed studies never conclude, "God did it," but neither do they conclude, "Natural forces did it." It seems instead that science, by itself, is unable to pass judgment on this question, and I told my atheist friend as much.
OUR WORLDVIEW IS THE LENS THROUGH WHICH WE SEE
Our worldview can either bring reality into sharp focus or it can distort and prevent us from seeing what is right in front of our eyes.
Atheist Nobel Laureate, Francis Crick, also approached the evidence with a
worldview. However, rather than preventing him from seeing the evidence, it caused him to reject it:
* “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to have been satisfied to get it going."
Why then does he reject the miraculous? Because there is no place for it within his atheistic worldview, which demands a natural answer. Meanwhile, when a theist is confronted with the same evidence, he concludes otherwise.
Former atheist, Sir Fred Hoyle, concluded in favor of an Intelligent Designer:
* "Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance of their being formed through random shuffling of simple organic molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is insensibly different from zero." So, there must be "an intelligence, which designed the biochemicals and gave rise to the origin of carbonaceous life." (Norman Geisler is the source of these quotations.)
Why are people unwilling to revise their worldview when confronted with overwhelming evidence against it? Often, they don't want to.
Atheist Aldous Huxley wrote:
* "I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently, assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find reasons for this assumption.... For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom." (Ends and Means, 1937, pp. 270, 273, emp. added).
Not everyone rejects God in favor of sexual freedom. However, Huxley demonstrated, very transparently, that we have reasons for our world-views that might have nothing to do with the evidence.
New York School of the Bible: http://www.nysb.nyc/
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