Clues to God's Existence
As it turns out, God has left us compelling evidence of his existence. Life is seasoned with clues.
[Note: The following material is comprised of quotes summarizing five articles by Peter Kreeft. Please pray for the development of the web site that Dr. Kreeft and I are working on, which contains the full text of these and other terrific writings of his.]
A. Clues From Design
If you were on a deserted island and discovered a hut with windows, doors and a fireplace you would not think that a hurricane had piled the stones by chance. That's because where you find design, you find a designer.
Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable argument for the explanation of the universe? Clearly because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. (At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe.)
...If our brain computer has no cosmic intelligence behind the heredity and environment that program it, why should we trust it when it tells us about anything—even about the brain?... How could the design that obviously exists now in man and in the human brain come from something with less or no design? It violates the principle of causality, which states that you can't get more in the effect than you had in the cause. If there is intelligence in the effect (man), there must be intelligence in the cause. But a universe ruled by blind chance has no intelligence. Therefore there must be a cause for human intelligence that transcends the universe: a Mind behind the physical universe. (Most great scientists have believed in such a Mind, by the way, even those who did not believe any revealed religion.)
...There are relatively few atheists among neurologists and brain surgeons or among astrophysicists, but many among psychologists, sociologists and historians. The reason seems obvious: the first study divine design, the second study human undesign.
Read Peter Kreeft's complete essay
The
Argument from Design.
B. Clues From a First Cause
The argument is basically simply, natural, intuitive, and commonsensical. We have to become complex and clever in order to doubt or dispute it. It is based on an instinct of mind that we all share: the instinct that says everything needs an explanation...Everything that is has some adequate or sufficient reason why it is. Philosophers call this the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
...If there is no First Cause, then the universe is like a railroad train moving without an engine. Each car's motion is explained, approximately, by the motion of the car in front of it: The caboose moves because the boxcar pulls it: the boxcar moves because the cattle car pulls it: etc. But there's no engine to pull the first car, and thus the whole train. That would be impossible, of course. But that's what the universe is like if there is no First Cause.
...Dependent beings cannot cause themselves. They are dependent
on their causes. If there's no Independent Being, then the whole chain of
dependent beings is dependent on nothing and could not exist. But they do
exist. Therefore there is an Independent Being.
Here's another way to look at it.
If everything had a possibility of not being, of ceasing to be, then eventually this possibility of ceasing to be would be realized for everything. In other words, if everything could die, then given infinite time, everything would eventually die... Yet this universal death has not happened and things do exist. Therefore there must be a necessary Being which cannot not-be and cannot possibly cease to be.
Read Peter Kreeft's complete essay
The
Argument from First Cause.
C. Clues From Conscience
Here we have inside information, so to speak: the very will of God speaking, however obscurely and whisperingly, however poorly heard, admitted, and heeded, in the depths of our souls. The arguments from nature begin with data that are like an author's books; the argument from conscience begins with data that are more like talking with the author directly, live.
...In this age of rebellion against and doubt about nearly every authority, in this age in which the very word "authority" has changed from a word of respect to a word of scorn, one authority remains: an individual's conscience. Almost no one will say that one ought to sin against one's conscience, disobey one's conscience. People usually admit, though not in these words, the absolute moral authority and binding obligation of conscience.
...The only possible source of absolute authority is an absolutely perfect will, a divine being.
...How would someone disagree..? By finding an alternative basis for conscience besides God. There are four such possibilities: (1) something abstract and impersonal, like an idea; (2) something concrete but less than human, on the level of animal instinct; (3) something on the human level but not the divine; and (4) something higher than the human level but not yet divine.
In short, the responses are:
(1) How can something "more" be subject to something "less"? (2) There is no instinct which should always be obeyed. Instincts are like the notes on a piano (the illustration comes from C.S. Lewis); the moral law is like sheet music. Different notes are right at different times." Your conscience acts as an arbiter between conflicting instincts, so it cannot be the instincts themselves. (3) Should a German have obeyed “society” in the Nazi era?... To say society is the source of conscience is to say when one prisoner becomes a thousand prisoners than they become judge... stones can think if you have enough of them. (4) What could that be other than God? If the being was not perfect why should we always subject ourselves to it?
Only a perfectly good, righteous divine will has this authority and a right to absolute, exceptionless obedience.
Read Peter Kreeft's complete essay
The
Argument from Conscience.
Since we don't always hear the voice right, we are given greater revelation...
D. Clues From History
The clues from history are the strongest psychologically with most people, but it is not the logically strongest argument. They are like footprints in the sands of time, footprints made by someone great enough to be God.
1. If atheism is true, there are no adventures, nothing has intrinsic significance, life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". Yet life is not like that. Life is a story... and a story points to a storyteller.
2. History shows that moral laws are as inescapable as physical laws. Just as you can flout gravity only temporarily before you fall, so you can flout the moral laws of God only temporarily before you fall. Great tyrants like Hitler flourish in a day, like the mayfly, and perish; great saints experience apparent failure and emerge into triumph and joy.
3. Our own individual histories usually have some similar bits of incredible timing. Insightful and unprejudiced examination of these "coincidences" will bring us at least to the suspicion, if not to the conviction, that an unseen divine hand is at work here.
4. Miracles directly and inescapably show the presence of God, for a miracle, in the ordinary sense of the word, is a deed done by supernatural, not natural, power.
5. A fifth argument from history is Christ himself. Here is a man who lived among us and claimed to be God. If Christ was God, then, of course, there is a God. If he was not God, then he was a madman or devil... Which is he—Lord, lunatic or liar? ...His personality is distinctive and compelling to every reader of the Gospels, even unbelievers, even his enemies like Nietzche. And the character revealed there is utterly unlike that of a lunatic or liar.
6. G. K. Chesterton once said that the only unanswerable argument against Christianity was Christians. (He meant bad and sad Christians.) Similarly, the only unanswerable argument for Christianity is Christians—saintly Christians. You can argue against Mother Teresa's theology if you are sceptical of mind, but you cannot argue against Mother Theresa unless you are hopelessly hard of heart... If God didn't do it, who put smiles on the lips of martyrs?
7. How does one explain the success of the Faith in winning the hearts of men? Hard-hearted Romans give up worldly pleasure and ambitions, and often life itself. Worldly men pin their hopes on otherworldly goals and do it en masse, century after century. If Christianity is not true and there are no miracles, then the conversion of the world is an even greater miracle.
8. The eighth and last argument from history is from our own individual history and life's experiences. The Christian faith is verifiable in a laboratory, but it is a subtle and complex laboratory: the laboratory of one's life... I always tell a skeptic to pray the prayer of the sceptic if he really wants to know if God exists... "God I don't know whether you exist or not. Maybe I'm praying to nobody, but maybe I'm praying to you. So if you are really there, please let me know somehow, because I do want to know. I want only the Truth, whatever it is. If you are the Truth, here I am, ready and willing to follow wherever you lead." If our faith is not a pack of lies, then whoever sincerely prays that prayer will find God in his own life, no matter how hard, how long, or how complex the road.
Read Peter Kreeft's complete essay
The
Argument from History.
E. Pascal's Wager
Suppose you hear that your house is on fire and your children are inside. You don't know whether the report is true or false. What's the sensible thing to do—to ignore it or at least phone home in case the report is true? Suppose a winning sweepstakes ticket is worth a million dollars and there are only two tickets left. You know that one of them is a winning ticket, while the other is worth nothing, and you are allowed to buy only one of the two tickets, at random. Would it be a good investment to spend a dollar on a good chance of winning a million?
No reasonable person is ever in doubt in such cases, but deciding whether to believe in God is a case like these, argues Pascal. It is therefore the height of folly not to "bet" on God, even if you have no certainty, no proof, no guarantee that your bet will win.
...This wager appeals not to a high ideal, like faith, hope, or love, or proof, but to a low one: the instinct for self-preservation, the desire to be happy and not unhappy. But on that low natural level, it has tremendous force.
...Suppose Romeo proposes to Juliet and Juliet says "Give me some time to make up my mind." Suppose Romeo keeps coming back day after day, and Juliet keeps saying the same thing day after day: "Perhaps tomorrow." Yet there comes a time when there are no more tomorrows, when "maybe" becomes "no". Romeo will die. Corpses do not marry. Christianity is God's marriage proposal to the soul. Saying "perhaps tomorrow" cannot continue indefinitely because life does not continue indefinitely. The weather will never clear enough for the agnostic navigator to be sure whether the port is true home or false just by looking at it through binoculars from a distance. He has to take a chance, on this port or another, or he will never get home.
Once it is decided that we must wager; once it is decided that there are only two options (theism and atheism), not three (theism, atheism, and agnosticism), then the rest of the argument is simple. Atheism is a terrible bet. It gives no chance of winning the red prize.
...If God does not exist, it does not matter how you wager, for there is nothing to win after death and nothing to lose after death. But if God does exist, your only chance of winning eternal happiness is to believe, and your only chance of losing it is to refuse to believe.
Pascal: "If you are unable to believe, it is because of your passions since reason impels you to believe and yet you cannot do so. Concentrate then not on convincing yourself by multiplying proofs of God's existence, but by diminishing your passions. You want to find faith, and you do not know the road. You want to be cured of your unbelief, and you ask for the remedy: learn from those who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have.... They behaved just as if they did believe."
Read Peter Kreeft's complete essay
The
Argument from Pascal's Wager.
God seasons life with opportunities to get our attention, like a man gently
blowing on the back of a woman's neck.