That's A Very Good Question!

1. Hey Dan…  What convinces you that there is a God?

Answer…

I find several arguments for the existence of God to be very persuasive.  I will mention two of those arguments here, but first, in response to your question, I should say this, I don’t believe in God primarily because of logical arguments.  I am glad that there are logical arguments for the existence of God and those arguments strengthen my faith.  But arguments for the existence of God are not the main reason that I believe in God.  The main reason that I believe in God is because I want to.

I want to believe in the existence of God.  I want the existence of God to be true.  (By the way, I realize that this is a “bias”, but I don’t view this bias as a weakness.  Everyone is biased in regard to these types of beliefs.  People who say that they accept or reject a belief in God solely based on logical arguments and sound, rational thinking about the subject are not telling the truth… In fact, it’s very likely that they’re not telling the truth to themselves.)

There was a time in my life when I was intellectually struggling with the idea of God and I was trying to understand what I really believed.  During this time, I “gave myself permission” to abandon the idea of God if that was what I really believed to be the truth.  I found that I couldn’t do it.  I could not give up my faith and belief in God.  Again, part of how I understand that, now, is that I truly want to believe in the existence of God.  I want to believe that God is real and true.

So, I have admitted that I have a bias: I want to believe in God.  (I have a strong bias regarding pizza, as well, but that hasn’t seemed to result in a theological or philosophical problem for anyone.)

However, having said that, there are two arguments for the existence of God that are particularly persuasive for me.  The first one is known as the Cosmological Argument.  The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God could be stated in several different ways, but I’ll put it like this: Anything that began to exist must have a cause for its existence.  Science tells us that the universe began to exist.  The universe is not infinite there is a point at which it started.  So, the universe must have a cause.

This raises the obvious question:  What could possibly be the cause of the universe?

Consider this:  Since time and matter came into existence when the universe began, whatever it is that caused the universe must transcend time and matter.  In other words, this “cause” must be timeless and immaterial.  In addition to this, it goes without saying that whatever created the universe must be powerful in a way that is almost incomprehensible to us.  This argument can go on and get even more complex, but I’m already starting to glaze over and I’m the one writing this stuff.

So, let’s pause here to recap:  Since the universe began to exist, it must have a cause.  That cause must be timeless, immaterial and incomprehensibly powerful.  Frankly, that sounds an awful lot like God to me.  Again, I’m biased, but still…

Francis Schaeffer put the gist of this argument in a way that was simple (which I like) and, yet, very compelling for me.  According to Schaeffer, you can boil the arguments for the existence of the universe down to two basic options: either everything that exists is a result of random chance plus time or everything that exists is the result of some type of creator.

That’s it.  Those are the two options.  They can be stated in much more complicated and impressive ways but at the end of the day, those are the two options.  It’s hard for me to accept that time and random chance produced the universe.  This would have to mean that something, literally, came from nothing.  That’s hard to accept.  The time plus random chance option would have to mean that non-consciousness was somehow able to produce consciousness.  Again, I find that hard to accept.

On the other hand, the notion that some type of powerful agent caused everything just seems more plausible to me.

So, I find the Cosmological Argument to be very persuasive.

The second argument for God that I find to be persuasive is called the Design Argument and it’s based upon what is known as the Anthropic Principle.  The Anthropic Principle notes that our universe in general, and planet Earth more specifically, has the appearance of being precisely “fine-tuned” for the existence of human life.

There are a number of physical constants in our world and in our universe that need to be set exactly where they are set in order for life to exist.  And we find that these constants are, in fact, set exactly where they need to be.

Here’s how philosopher, William Lane Craig puts it:

“The existence of intelligent life depends on a conspiracy of initial conditions that must be fine-tuned to a degree that is literally incomprehensible and incalculable.  There are around 50 quantities and constants (universe conditions, gravitational force, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, etc.) present in the big bang that must be fine-tuned (to a very precise degree) if the universe is to permit life.  And it’s not just each quantity that must be finely tuned; their ratios to one another must be also finely tuned.”
[ W.L. Craig, Why I Am A Christian, pg. 68]

In his book, “God, the Evidence,” Patrick Glynn writes, “All the seemingly arbitrary constants in physics have one strange thing in common—these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life….The universe we inhabit appear[s] to be expressly designed for the emergence of human beings.”

Even atheists find the design of the universe to be something “almost” resembling a miracle.  Biologist Francis Crick, who discovered DNA, wrote, “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 that would have had to get satisfied to get it along.”

Hmm…“Almost a miracle,” huh, Francis?  From where I’m sitting, it feels like you’re “almost” willing to see something obvious.

Antony Flew, the atheist philosopher, became a theist and wrote a book about his startling change of mind, with the sub-title:  “How The World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.”  Flew credits recent scientific advances—including information that would be categorized under the Design Argument—as a significant factor in his changed opinion regarding the existence of God.  

This is pretty remarkable.  After all, here’s a headline you don’t see too often:  Scientific Advances Result in Belief in God for Well-Known Atheist Philosopher.

The fact that everything about our physical existence, from the smallest biological level to the grandest universal level, seems to be perfectly designed for human life is extraordinary to me.  And it seems like it would have to be much more than just a coincidence.  I once read that the universe looks like it was “rigged” by someone.  That’s what it looks like to me, too.