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So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. (Eph 4:17-19)

My sins blind my heart from seeing You, O God.  Cleanse me, for seeing You is why I was made.

You were made in the image of God so that you might enjoy Him. Why then do so many people not enjoy Him? Last week, we discussed two reasons: we are limited creatures, and we sin.

Human limitations are by design. Sin is not. Human limitations bring no blame. Sin does. Sin is disobedience to what God says. Sin can be as blatant as a woman berating her husband and as subtle as a man failing to speak up when God prompts him to.   If God says, “Do this,” sin does not do it, and if God says, “Do not do this,” sin does it. Sin is a defect in our ability to receive signals from God. We are broken. The more we sin, the greater the deficiency. Sin blinds us. Sin smothers our sense of the Holy. Sin changes how we think of God, for it makes God small and brushes aside His holiness and justice in order to ease our consciences. Sin warps and severely restricts our understanding and experience of love.

All people sin, but some people stand more firmly in their sin than others. Not all defects are equal. People who know God well will be the first to tell you their sins. The more you live in sin, the less you see it. Many who insist on their ways are incapable of understanding the A,B,Cs of God. The difference lies in the heart. Hard hearts cannot see what soft hearts can. God desires it that way. Remember Jesus’ words? “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure” (Lk 10:21). A heart like a child can see God better than a heart like a scholar. When we stand in sin, we make our hearts less childlike.

People who want to know God must see their sin and be hurt by it. Calvin put it this way: “We cannot seriously aspire to (God) before we begin to become displeased with ourselves” (Inst., p. 37). The reason is that we often cannot see God through our sin. Sin is spiritual cataracts. It is why so many see so little of God. If you really want to see God more clearly, then confess your sin and repent. If you believe yourself a decent person, I am afraid you will know little of God.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.  (I Pet 1:5-9)

Lord, like Moses, I can see only a sliver of your glory even when I am holy.  How much less can I see when I sin.

God is constantly communicating knowledge of Himself: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps 19:1). The human race was built to process and respond to this communication. We are made in His image and for His glory. To a modern man, however, God’s communications sometimes seem vague. We were built for God, but somehow many of us do not see God. Why not, if He is what we were made for?

Think about radio for a minute. Right now radio waves inhabit your room, and people are communicating on those waves. But you don’t hear anything. You may be tempted to say that no communication is going on, but you would be wrong. Now if you consider God’s communications as coming over spiritual frequencies, you would have a picture of the communication between God and earth. His communication is always there all around us just as the radio waves are in your room right now. But to pick up the communication, we need a proper receiver in good working condition tuned to the right frequency.

The different capacities for knowledge mentioned in the previous blog partly make up our spiritual radio receiver. We understand what moral goodness is. We can think abstractly. We comprehend beauty. We have a spiritual sense. We have desires for purpose and for relationship. We are created in God’s image, and, thus, have the wiring to pick up many frequencies that God communicates on. If we fail to see God, there must be another reason.

Again, if you think of a radio, you will be on target. Why doesn’t a radio pick up specific radio waves? Of course, the first thing to check is whether we have turned the radio on. Obviously, if you don’t turn the radio on, you can’t expect to discover any communication. It would be a bit silly to say, “I don’t sense any communications from God,” when you aren’t trying. If you are too busy with earth to worry about God, then don’t expect to find Him.

But let’s say you have turned the radio on, and you still receive no sound. Or maybe you receive sound, but it’s garbled. You might check the receiver itself to see if it is in proper working condition. A broken receiver picks up nothing, and we must understand that you and I are broken. We may be created in the image of God, but that image has been marred. Sin has tainted the human race. Lust has warped our moral sense, pride has corrupted our reason, greed has stained our sense of beauty, self-centeredness has spoiled our spiritual antennae, and so on. This means that the apparatus God has equipped us with needs repair. We need to fix our sin problem. Or, to be more precise, we need God to fix our sin problem. Until Christ cleanses our hearts, our discernment of God will be blinded.  Even God’s two clearest examples of communication — the Scriptures and the Incarnation — require men and women with a certain kind of heart. Not everyone who reads the Bible thinks it is of God, and not everyone who encountered Jesus thought Him to be Messiah. In fact, sometimes people witnessed miracles and still did not respond. (Matt 11:20-4) In order to see, you need more than good eyes. You need a right heart.

But a radio in good working condition and turned on must still tune in to the right frequency. If I tune in to AM 710, but no one is broadcasting there, I will hear static. Consequently, we must learn the frequencies of the Spirit. This takes time and much work, for God’s people must learn to be with Him, to immerse themselves in Scripture and prayer, to know God’s ways and be obedient in what they know, and to tune out earthly static. All of this is part of finding the frequencies of God.

To hear from God, then, we must tune in to Him, let Him rebuild our hearts, and maintain a certain level of spiritual health.

But even then, we are still limited creatures. We can know only so much. We can pick up communications only within the range of our abilities. A radio not equipped for short wave will not detect it. No doubt, God could communicate to us much more about Himself if only we could handle it. In heaven, I suspect, we shall handle quite a bit more, but we are not there yet, so we must make do with the handful of modulations and frequencies we can tune in to. Every one of the abilities that make the human race unique has limits.

Consider reason, queen of our abilities. With reason we can understand only so much. No one can reason his way to God; and conversely, no one can reason his way from God. Both positions require something beyond reason. Jesus said, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:24). Reason can help with the truth part, but the spirit part is beyond reason. Do not misunderstand; I am not saying that theism is irrational. I personally think it more rational than its alternative. But I am saying that theism is suprarational. Reason, by itself, cannot comprehend even something as basic to human experience as love. Love lies beyond the domain of reason. This does not make it irrational. It simply means that if you want to understand love, you must tune in to a different frequency. Love requires something beyond logic. Spock never could quite get it.

All of our other capacities for knowledge are likewise limited. We are finite creatures trying to understand an infinite God. The apparatus God has equipped us with enables us to pick up information in only certain frequencies. When we are balanced and healthy in our approach to God, we understand Him in multiple ways, but we are still humans, not gods. Our humanness is one of the greatest liabilities we have in knowing God. People who tout the infinite capacity of the human race do not understand what they are saying. Holy people are still people, and they are limited.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  (Gen 1;26)

When I look inside myself and when I see the human soul, I marvel at what You have made, O Lord.

A human is an amazing creature. We have written Hamlet, composed the Canon in D, painted the Sistine Chapel, sent men to the moon, invented iphones, worshiped at temples, set up complex governments, discovered calculus, and died for doctrines. We have a moral sense. We have a spiritual sense, an awareness of the holy. We desire real purpose and are not fulfilled with mere earth. We enjoy beauty. We are highly relational. We intuitively understand that a human being has special value. We can think abstractly.

The amount of information we can store and comprehend is mind-boggling, but consider the different types of information. Beauty is not rational, but we understand it. The spiritual is not physical, but we can grasp it. Love is not an idea you reason to, yet we know what it is. Why? Why are we able to process such a wide array of nonphysical and sometimes nonrational information?

The Christian answer is that God created us in His image. Each of these human capacities corresponds to some aspect of God, and He has created us with this incredible software package so that we can enjoy Him. Our ability to reason helps us understand a rational God. Our moral nature gives us a foundation for understanding His righteousness. Our sense of purpose and inability to find ultimate meaning on earth point us beyond earth. Our sense of the holy enables us to feel the transcendent otherness of God. Our relational nature and desire for love prepares us to know a relational God who loves us. Our appreciation of beauty prepares us for the Glorious One, who is lovelier than all the lilies of the valley.

God desires us to experience Him fully and not just in a rational dimension. When any of these areas of knowledge is deficient, our knowledge of God shall also be deficient, for these different aptitudes tell us different types of things about God. A logical intellectual who has squashed any sense of the spiritual will be incapable of understanding God. He may understand doctrine, but God is much bigger than doctrine. A romantic may sense aspects of God’s beauty, but she may also allow her experiences to make her think of God any way she pleases. God becomes whatever she feels. She thinks doctrine is dead. It doesn’t show her God. She has already felt Him. A man bent on indulging his desires may damage his sense of right and wrong so badly that he can no longer recognize righteousness. Many have lived a life of sin so long that they consider it normal. They are ill-prepared to comprehend the Righteous One.

We are to enjoy God, and we cannot fully enjoy God in only one way. We glory in His beauty. We bow before His holiness. We love Him. We approach Him as our Father. Yet we revere Him as a righteous King. We marvel at the intricate works of His hand, works that our minds have discovered. He is our purpose. He is our life. He is our joy.

We relate to God in all of these ways, but the only reason we can do so is grace. God has graciously equipped us with the software to handle a multifaceted God. Consequently, as we grow in Jesus, we develop our sense of beauty, our sense of morality, our reason, our love, and all the rest, for these give us a fuller, more heartfelt knowledge of God.

Let me give you some pictures. Think of a commanding officer with his staff. Each staff officer informs the commander on a different type of information within the unit. It would be a foolish commander indeed who listened only to his operations officer or who ignored his maintenance or intelligence officers because they were not important enough. Yet such is what many people do concerning God. Some proudly claim that they listen only to their reason. Others focus on their desires or their sense of right and wrong and ignore the information that their other senses give them.

Or let’s switch the picture.  Think of chess. Reason is our queen, morality a rook, our senses of purpose and of the Holy are knights and bishops, and so on. Each type of knowledge has a different ability and serves a different purpose. The chess player who leans too heavily on his queen is immature in the game; but the one who can use all the pieces (for they really ought to work together) and see the board holistically will be the tougher player to beat. No piece is a bad piece, though every piece can be moved in a bad way. Each piece contributes something different, yet some can do more than others. And every piece, including the queen, has limitations.

This is a human being, and I want you to think of a human being as a human being and not just a brain.  We are God’s creation, and as we submit our minds, our hearts, our relationships, our desires, to Christ and to Scripture, we see God more holistically, and His glory grows in our eyes.

This is but a little piece of the image of God.

We have finished addressing the questions put to us by internationals at AIF. Today’s blog resumes the discussion from February, but fortunately, the last several blogs have picked up the theme we left off with. To review: We were discussing what it means to be created in the image of God, and we have talked about things like our ability to detect moral right and wrong, our sense of a spiritual reality, and our desire for purpose. So to continue …

 We have a proverb in English:

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

The idea is that different people see beauty in different things. You’ve certainly experienced this. Your friend likes modern art, but you think it is a jumble. One man likes the look of a suit, while another prefers the look of blue jeans. Despite your experience with differing tastes, however, I want to push back a little against the proverb.

On one level, the proverb works, but on another level, it is problematic, for the more I think about beauty, the more I have to confess that it isn’t random. If beauty had no connection to anything outside a person, then we ought to expect much more disagreement about it than we do. Now we do find disagreement about many things, but we also find many phenomena that virtually everyone says are beautiful. I have heard people argue about the attractiveness of a painting or a building or a lady, but we must admit that not all paintings, buildings and ladies engender the same amount of disagreement. Some are more generally acknowledged to be lovely, some more generally acknowledged to be ugly, and some have the populace split. Almost everyone would have to confess that Banff, Alberta is far prettier than Gary, Indiana, including (likely) the mayor of Gary, Indiana. I have yet to hear someone say that the stars are ugly, and people all around the globe believe the Grand Canyon to be fabulous, and almost every human who has ever lived will tell you that a sunset is splendid. Why? If beauty is entirely in the eyes of the beholder, why are the beholders sometimes so overwhelmingly in agreement? It seems as if two things are true. First, not all things have the same intrinsic beauty. Second, we humans are wired to appreciate beauty, and, in some cases, the wiring brings consensus, as if beauty were more like an objective reality than anything else.

So. To summarize. Humans have the ability to sense beauty, and beauty seems to be real. I do not wish to argue whether it is our wiring or the sunset that defines beauty; for regardless of which one you give preeminence to, the other must still be present or we enjoy no beauty. It’s like any other sensor. A light sensor requires internal wiring and light in order to sense light. A movement sensor requires internal wiring and movement in order to sense movement. A camera requires an internal apparatus and a real object in order to take a picture. So it is with beauty. The human race has the software for processing beauty, and it seems as if beauty really does exist.

This ability we humans have is part of the package that comes with being made in the image of God. We have a moral sense. We have a spiritual sense. We have an aesthetic sense. All of these senses are designed to process different types of information. We are more than a body, more than a brain. There’s something else inside us.

This is a continuation of a discussion that addresses a question from one of our internationals.

Q: Proof that God exists?

A: Let’s pretend. Let’s say, you and your roommate wake up in the middle of the night throwing up in the toilet. Let’s also say that you both ate some under-cooked pork at a dinner party earlier that day. You conclude that you both have food poisoning. Is that a fair conclusion?

Now, let’s say a friend stops by in the morning, and you tell him your woes. But he disagrees with your assessment. He says you don’t both have food poisoning. He says that you have contracted a bacterial infection from not washing your hands properly and that your roommate is exhibiting an allergic reaction to the sage, which was in the pork. Let’s say that you don’t recall washing your hands before eating last night, and — it’s true — there was sage in the pork.

We now have competing theories for why you and your roommate are sick. Both theories are plausible and both accurately fit the known facts. Whose theory do you favor and why?

Most people will say that, given what we know, the food poisoning theory is the better theory. The reason is not that the other theory can’t work. It’s just that the food poisoning theory is simpler. It explains the same phenomena that your friend’s theory explains without as many contingencies. All other things being equal, we prefer simple explanations over complex ones. This idea is not a piece of evidence per se. Instead it is a principle for evaluating theories, and this principle has a name — Ockham’s Razor.

William of Ockham was a medieval priest and philosopher who often spoke of the necessity of economy in a theory. His principle is this: “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” In other words, when we have competing theories, we should select the one with fewer assumptions, unless we have reason to select a different one. Most people do this naturally. We call it common sense.

I am bringing up Ockham’s Razor in a discussion about the existence of God because atheists generally do. People like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have used Ockham’s Razor as a principle to favor atheism. Their argument goes something like this.

1. Science can explain life through purely material explanations.
2. Christians do not generally deny science (except perhaps for evolution). Instead they posit a God behind the science. For example, science offers explanations for how rain works or how galaxies formed. Christians, however, believe that God brings the rain and that God formed the galaxies, but in believing this, they frequently accept much of the science. In other words, the Christian theory suggests an extra step or an assumption that we don’t need to explain these phenomena.
3. Therefore, using Ockham’s Razor, we should prefer the atheist explanation of life.

If you read atheist arguments long enough, sooner or later you will hear some form of Ockham’s Razor.

So then. How can we address this line of thinking?

A.  First, we need to see Ockham’s Razor for what it is. It is not evidence but a principle for evaluating evidence. Consequently, it doesn’t prove anything one way or the other. It may be that you didn’t wash your hands, and your roommate is allergic to sage. Sometimes life is complex.

B.  Ockham’s Razor says that we should not posit entities without necessity. Ockham understood that simple isn’t always best. When you suggest an extra entity, you should have a reason for it.

C.  Christians would strongly disagree with #1 above, that science can explain life through purely material explanations. We do not believe that materialistic science can adequately provide a foundation for moral absolutes, purpose, human value, reason, the beginning of the universe, design, beauty, this inward sense of something beyond us, and more. We see atheistic explanations as utterly inadequate. Therefore, when we posit God to explain these things, we are not doing so without necessity. Atheism just doesn’t work.

D.  Life seems to be more than just biology. To reduce it to biology seems rather narrow-minded. When we include things like moral absolutes, purpose, etc. in our description of life, all of a sudden, God seems to best fit Ockham’s Razor.

Let’s think this through.

Let’s take moral absolutes. Moral absolutes either exist or they don’t. If they don’t, then slavery is not wrong, Stalin was not wrong, and the person who cheated you out of a thousand dollars was not wrong. There is no wrong. If moral absolutes do exist, then they need a moral foundation. Materialism cannot give us a moral foundation. Thus, to be consistent, an atheist has one of two choices: he can say moral absolutes do not exist, or he can say that moral absolutes do exist and that they just are. Why is it right to be kind? It helps the species survive. Why is it right to help the species survive? It just is. If you ask long enough, you get to “It just is.” Some things are right because — well — they just are. Fair enough.

Let’s take human value. What makes humans more valuable then parrots? Well, we are more intelligent or have a sense of beauty or whatever. And what makes intelligence more valuable than a lack of intelligence? Well, intelligence allows creatures to accomplish more sophisticated things. And why is it more valuable to accomplish more sophisticated things? At some point, you end up with “It just is.”

Let’s take the beginning of the universe. If there is no God, then where did the universe come from? Some may say that the universe just is. Others posit some other cause, maybe a multiverse. And where did that cause come from? At some point you end up with “It just is.”

Let’s take purpose. Life has a purpose beyond mere survival or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then the atheist should be consistent and stop criticizing people who say it does. If life has no purpose, then neither does their criticism. If life has no purpose, then the atheist and the Christian are equally floating in the sea of meaninglessness. If, however, life does have a purpose, where did it come from? At some point, you end up with “It just is.”

We could continue this game, but the fact of the matter is that at the end of the day, the Christian has one thing that just is. God explains all these phenomena by Himself. The materialist, however, must have multiple realities that just are. Unless, of course, he wishes to deny those realities altogether. Kindness is just right or kindness doesn’t exist. We have no purpose or our purpose is whatever they say, and at some point, it just is. Humans have value. They just do. At some point something caused the universe to exist, and it just is.

Now let me ask you a question. Which of these ideas — theism or atheism — best fits Ockham’s Razor?

This blog is a continuation in a series dealing with questions internationals have asked at AIF. If you scroll down far enough to the blog titled “You Want Purpose,” you will find another discussion of this topic.

Q: Proof that God Exists?

A: I have been addressing this question for several blogs, and we have discussed topics like the beginning of the universe, the apparent design in the universe, morality, human rights, the existence of a religious desire in human nature, and the legitimacy of reason itself. Today, we will add another topic to that list: your desire for purpose.

Keep in mind that nothing I have said or will say is a proof in the strict sense. Neither theists nor atheists can prove their case, but everything I have said is more like a clue that seems to point us in a certain direction. Life itself smells as if there is a God. Today is no different.

You want purpose. You do. You do not want to live a meaningless life just so you can die. And if you are perceptive, you see that the quest for money and stuff is a meaningless life. You also see that the survival of the species cannot be a real purpose, for if materialism is true and if in the end our species survives, who cares? What is the purpose of our species? Just to survive?   That’s not a purpose, and you know it. There has to be some other purpose.

But just because you desire a deeper purpose doesn’t mean that earth has one. Maybe we are all atoms. Maybe our desire for meaning is an illusion. Maybe people invent purpose because they want it.

Maybe. But doesn’t it seem strange that atoms would care about meaning? If materialism is true, then you and I are nothing more than some carbon, some hydrogen, oxygen, a little magnesium, and so on. Why would such chemicals desire meaning? But if God exists, we have a purpose. And if we have a purpose, it makes sense that we should desire one.

The atheist may say that we invent purpose because we want it, but he has a harder time explaining why we want it.

Of course, when we deal with purpose, we must talk about events that seem senseless — the suffering of children, the death of a loved one, the rise to power of evil men. Why? If there is a purpose, why do these things happen?

I don’t know. I’m not God. But I should point out that if you believe there is a purpose, you can find comfort in the midst of these events.   You may not understand why, but you know there is a why. If, however, there is no purpose, then there is nothing particularly wrong with these events. If there is no purpose, then you have no purpose, the suffering child has no purpose, being good has no purpose, and being evil has no purpose. Purpose doesn’t exist. Everything is just an event. Torturing a child is just an event. Hitler simply was. The problem with this way of thinking is that even the atheist recognizes that we should not torture children. But if there is no purpose, he can’t explain why, except to say, “It’s just wrong. It just is.”

But why is it wrong? How is kindness different from torture in a meaningless world?   In the end, a consistent atheism has no ground to stand on to protest torture, evil, or other “meaningless” events. And in the end, atheism offers no comfort in the face of suffering.

Doesn’t it seem as if your desire for purpose points you to — well — purpose?

We are still addressing questions that AIF internationals have asked. 

Q:  Proof that God exists.

A:  Everywhere you go, you find religion. You find it in the remotest reaches of Tibet and the busy streets of Manhattan. You find it in ghettos and mansions; you find it in blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, Inuits, Filipinos, Polynesians, you name it. You find it in scholars and simple fishermen, in men and women, in elderly and youth. You can’t escape religion. In fact, many atheists complain of the fact that they can’t escape religion. It’s everywhere they turn, and it frustrates them.

So let’s ask a question. Why is religion everywhere?

Every religion is an attempt to connect with ultimate reality, and different religions say different things about that reality. But every religion has one thing in common. It assumes that ultimate reality lies beyond the physical world. The human race possesses a sense that there is something else out there. This sense lies behind Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Shinto, spirit religions, cults and virtually all nonmaterialistic philosophies, and this sense exists strongly in countries that are officially atheistic. The Soviet Union, in the height of its power, could not squash out religion. Communist China cannot convince masses of its own people that this world is the end game, and the fact that North Korea uses such force to fight against religion suggests that religion’s appeal is strong in its own people. If religion had no appeal, North Korea wouldn’t have to do anything. Why then do most people possess this sense that there is a reality beyond atoms? And why do they so strongly desire to connect with that reality?

I’ll let C.S. Lewis explain: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, “Hope”)

Religious desire suggests that the human race was made for something beyond earth. This is not a proof that God exists. Nor does it necessarily delineate between the God of Christianity and the beliefs of other religions. Religious desire is merely a clue that seems to point broadly away from materialism and toward the existence of a different type of reality.

The fact that some people claim to have no religious desire is no argument against the desire. Some people are asexual, some are heterosexual, some homosexual. But sexual desire is real and nearly universal in the human race. So it is with religious desire.

The fact that religious desire is broad is no argument against the desire. Nor does it mean that all religions are equal. Again, the sexual desire is broad. It produces, adulterers, pedophiles, homosexuals, premarital sex, masturbation, bestiality, pornography, and more. It also produces legitimate marital sex between a man and woman. Sexual desire points to the existence of sex, not to the legitimacy of every act. Religious desire points to the existence of a spiritual reality, not to the legitimacy of every religion.

Now what I wish to argue is that the existence of God is a better explanation of religion than materialism is. If God exists, then religious desire makes perfect sense, but if materialism is true, we have a rather sticky phenomenon. The overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived have a sense that materialism is not true. So if materialism is true, we must have a materialistic explanation for a powerful sense that materialism is not true.   In other words, materialism must explain why most people don’t believe it. Again, this is not a proof that materialism is false; it is merely a steeper hill that materialism must climb.

And almost universally, atheists do propose an explanation. Evolution. They claim that religious desires, feelings and beliefs are the result of evolutionary forces, and that at some point in the past, religion helped the species survive. Consequently, religious desires became hardwired inside us, and today, they are merely leftovers from the past. There are, of course, variations on this theme, but within the materialistic worldview, evolution is the great explainer of this religious sense. Religious desires and beliefs exist not because they have any connection to reality but because they helped the species survive.

On the surface, this thinking seems quite plausible. It offers a naturalistic explanation of religion. But philosophers for years have pointed out the self-defeating strategy of appealing to evolution to explain such phenomena. If it is true that people develop desires and beliefs because those desires and beliefs are useful and not because they reflect reality, then evolution produces usefulness and not necessarily truth.

But this argument cuts both ways.  If religious beliefs are just the result of evolution, then aren’t materialist beliefs the same?  Does Sam Harris believe atheism because it is true?  Or because it is useful to him?  If materialism is true, then Sam Harris’ beliefs are the result of materialism, but materialism doesn’t necessarily produce truth.

It gets stickier.  Atheists claim that the human ability to reason has evolved. Fair enough. I would then ask them to be consistent in their philosophy. If evolution produces usefulness and not necessarily truth, and if our reason is a product of evolution, then our reason may be useful, but it also may have no connection to truth at all. So then. If evolution has produced reason, why should I trust my reason?

The irony of this is that the atheist constantly says he is the rational one. Reason is the bridge he is standing on. But when he says that the foundation for reason involves nonrational forces and random mutations, he blows up his bridge.

It should be quite obvious that the notion of God offers a simple, straightforward foundation for both religion and reason. With God, we can trust our reason because it actually has a rational foundation. And with God, we see quite clearly why people the world over have this sense that there is something like a God. We were made in His image to know Him. It should not surprise us then, if we find people wanting something beyond earth.

Religion and reason do not prove the existence of God, but I believe that God offers the simplest and most common sense explanation of these phenomena.

This is a continuation of a question asked by an international at AIF.

 Q: Proof that God exists.

 A: I was communicating with a scholar interested in human rights. He was not a Christian, but he knew that humans have rights beyond those of animals. Here is some of our conversation:

You focus on human rights, and that focus is good. But can human rights be its own moral foundation?   In other words, if there is no God, why care about human rights? If there is no God, what makes humans more valuable than monkeys? If there is no God, then we are all atoms just as dogs are all atoms. Why is our arrangement of atoms more special than a cow’s arrangement? Atheist writers have been unable to answer this question. They say that they can be atheists and simultaneously care about human rights, and they are correct. But they have no explanation for the moral foundation that makes human rights right. I believe that the idea of human rights assumes God. This assumption is in the American Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights.” Therefore, I believe that your focus points you to God, even if you do not recognize God in your motives. What do you think?

Those words prompted a conversation. So let me ask you what I asked my friend. Consider. You will kill and eat a chicken, but you will not kill and eat a man. Why?  You assume that humans are valuable, but I want you to think about why.  Where does our value come from?

If God does not exist, then nature is our creator, but an impersonal nature can have no moral authority or ability to give us special value. We are the random products of evolutionary forces just as mosquitoes are. It makes no sense to talk about human worth or rights. If, however, human beings are created in the image of God, then human rights make sense. God is the common sense foundation for them.

Attempts to answer this question without resorting to God always assume a moral standard. Sometimes that standard says that intelligent beings are more valuable than less intelligent ones. Sometimes it says that a species cannot survive if it treats its own members poorly. But if the universe is neither personal nor rational, who cares whether the human race survives? And who cares whether an organism is intelligent or dumb? If the universe is neither personal nor rational, then it has no purpose, and if it has no purpose, then the survival of the species can achieve no purpose. You see, even these explanations assume some standard, some purpose beyond us. And that takes us back to God.

The existence of human rights is not itself a proof of God’s existence, but, like the phenomena we discussed the past two weeks, it does point us in the direction of God. If you assume that humans have intrinsic rights, then God is the best inference from the data.

Interestingly, the scholar I had the discussion with saw this too.

This blog is a continuation of last week’s blog, in which I am addressing a question posed by an international at AIF.

Q:  Proof that God exists.

A:  Many Chinese today are morally outraged at the atrocities committed at Nanjing. Indonesians are outraged at the bloodshed of Suharto. Koreans rage against Kim Jong Un. Americans were angry when Muslims flew planes into the World Trade Centers.   People have been outraged against the bloodshed of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Amin, and Pol Pot. They have raged against the slavery in America, the apartheid in South Africa, and the corruption of politicians virtually everywhere. The world gives us plenty opportunity to show moral anger, but those opportunities are not just reserved for high-level international events. You are angry when a colleague falsely accuses you of cheating or when a driver hits your car and then blames you for the accident. Such behavior is wrong, and you know it.

You believe in moral absolutes, and you can’t escape the belief. You are human.   If you wish to say, “No, no. Moral absolutes don’t exist,” I shall have to reply that you don’t believe your own words. You say “morality is not absolute,” but then you turn around and complain when someone does wrong to you.   If morality is relative, then you have no complaint, no argument. You can’t say that your co-worker was wrong to steal your work if wrong does not exist.

So let’s get past this nonsense you sometimes hear about morality being relative. No one believes that. Including the people who say it.

It, thus, seems as if there is an absolute moral standard that both you and I claim to understand (though imperfectly) and that we assume other people also understand. We do not believe this standard is based on our culture, for when an American military jet flies into Chinese air space, the Chinese government accuses the American government of violating a moral rule involving air space. This moral rule is not something they appeal to on the basis of their culture. Instead they assume that this rule is universal and that all cultures understand it. The atheist Chinese government is, thus, appealing to a universal, moral absolute.

You believe in a moral absolute. So do I. So do Muslims. So do Hindus. So do atheists. Even big, bold Nietzsche, who wrote so strongly against morality, still believed in moral absolutes. Everyone knows that helping your neighbor is right and murdering him is wrong. It’s a human thing.

What does all this then tell us about the question of God? The fact of the matter is that God is the best explanation for the existence of moral absolutes. If God exists, moral right and wrong makes perfect sense. Morality has a foundation that is easy to see. If, however, God does not exist, then moral absolutes have no foundation, and we lose the ability to say that corporate greed is wrong.

Let’s think through this for a moment. At the West Mall at the University of Texas, I listened to an atheist student accuse Cliff Knechtle of supporting a God who ordered the slaughter of the Canaanite people. The student was morally outraged, and his moral outrage was evidence to him that God did not exist. Now what was the source of his outrage? He obviously had a powerful moral sense, and he was appealing to a moral standard that he understood, and that he expected the ancient Hebrews and Cliff Knechtle to also understand. He was an atheist, yet he appealed to a moral argument against God.

His appeal was ironic, for a moral argument against God assumes a moral absolute. If there is no moral absolute, then the student’s argument falls apart. But the moment you admit a moral absolute, you are back to God, for where did your moral absolute come from?

The strongest arguments against God are the moral ones, largely because of their emotional appeal. But the problem with them is that the atheist has to steal from God in order to argue against Him. This is the downfall of the famous problem of evil. If there is no evil, then what’s the problem? If there is evil, then there must be a moral standard that defines good and evil. Where did that standard come from?

Atheism so far has failed to provide a plausible, internally consistent answer to that question. Atheists want to get rid of the idea of absolutes but still cling to them when we talk about Hitler or the guy who punched them in the face. They want it both ways, but they can’t have it both ways. Theism, however, makes perfect sense of moral absolutes. Moral absolutes are not proof that God exists, but they are evidence that points toward God and away from atheism. God simply makes better sense of this phenomenon.

I am addressing questions posed by members of Austin International Fellowship. Today will be only a partial answer to the question.

Q: Proof that God exists.

 A: That’s a broad question, and the answer to it depends on what you mean by “proof.” Let me explain. Personally, I believe I have proof that my wife loves me, but if someone doubted my wife’s love, I don’t think I could prove to him that she loves me. The skeptic could always say that my wife’s words, gifts and actions had some other explanation. I would, thus, have sufficient proof for me but not for everyone else. In that sense, the skeptic always has an out.

For this reason, I don’t like the word “proof.” It has more than one meaning, and if you take the strictest meaning, then you can prove practically nothing, including things most people take for granted. For example, most people believe there is good proof that the Holocaust happened, but some people deny this. To them, proof is lacking. Now obviously the Holocaust happened, but I’m not likely going to prove it to the deniers. Therefore, instead of “proof that God exists” let’s talk about reasonable evidence. Is it reasonable to believe that God exists?

Yes. A thousand times yes. Intelligent, rational people have believed in God’s existence for thousands of years, and they will continue to do so for thousands more. Why? Is it because they are deluded? Or is there reasonable evidence that points to God? I believe there is reasonable evidence that points to God. So let me briefly give some of that evidence. Nothing I say will be new, and nothing I say will be a proof in the strictest sense. The skeptic will always have an out, but I don’t believe anyone can say these reasons are unreasonable.  For purposes of space, I will stick to the main arguments and leave alone all the objections and answers to the objections.

The Existence of the Universe

The universe either began or it didn’t. Most scientists today say that the universe began. They date its beginning at about 13.8 billion years ago. Common sense tells us that the universe began, for every other physical thing we see had a beginning.

Once you grant that the universe had a beginning, you need to ask what caused it.  This is crucial, for everything that begins has a cause outside itself. This is also common sense. A thing cannot cause itself to exist, for if it causes itself to exist, it already exists before it causes itself to exist. This is obvious nonsense. Therefore, the beginning of the universe had a cause outside the universe. It is rather silly to say that the universe popped into existence on its own.

What then caused the universe? Since the universe can’t create itself, it follows that something with immense power must have existed outside the universe and prior to the universe. Logic and common sense are now starting to point us in the direction of God. This argument is not a strict proof, mind you, but the explanation of God is an extremely reasonable inference from the data. No one can say you are irrational for believing that God caused the universe to begin. That explanation actually makes sense.

Apparent Design in the Universe

William Paley gave the most famous rendition of the argument from design. He said that if you take a walk and see a watch lying on the ground, you immediately assume a watchmaker. You do not think that all of those working parts just randomly flew together and presto, a watch. He then said that the universe we see is like a watch with many intricate parts, organized and working together. He concluded that the best inference from the data is that the universe has a watchmaker. Paley’s argument still stands today because it has an immense common sense approach to data. It is intuitively persuasive. Even if you disagree with him, you still see the power of the argument.

The idea that the universe looks designed is not at all unreasonable. Richard Dawkins, one of the most outspoken atheists on the planet today, said this:  “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” The Blind Watchmaker, p. 1. In other words, one of the staunchest opponents of the design argument admits that the universe does indeed look designed.

Ok. We say, simply, that if the universe looks designed, maybe it is. Is that unreasonable? The coding in DNA seems to suggest a coder. The intricacies in the neurological system, the complexity of the single cell, the mathematical precision of the movements of the heavens, all these and more seem to point to design. In fact, if the universe looks designed, the most reasonable position is to assume design unless you have strong evidence against it. The nature of the universe, thus, puts the burden of proof squarely on those who deny design.

One of the ironies of arguments against design is that they never eliminate design as an explanation. Arguments against design say that the appearance of design comes not from a designer but from random actions and natural laws and processes. The problem is that these random actions cannot produce anything resembling design without the presence of natural laws and processes, and those laws and processes have the appearance of design.

If you want to get into the science more, I suggest exploring the scientific arguments surrounding the theory of intelligent design. Read both sides. For proponents of intelligent design try Stephen Meyer Signature in the Cell or Darwin’s Doubt, Douglas Axe Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed, Michael Denton Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, or Michael Behe Darwin’s Black Box. For the critics read Michael Shermer Why Darwin Matters, Niall Shanks God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design, or Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker. If you don’t have time to read entire books, try listening to a debate between Stephen Meyer and one of his critics. You’ll get to hear both sides in about an hour. You can access these debates on Youtube or elsewhere online. Just search for them.

I think you will find that the idea of design has some substantial scientific backing.