2. Does God Exist? Archives | CrossExamined.org - Christian Apologetics Resources

The term omnipresence describes the all-presence of God. Omnipresence is a compound word comprised of the word “omni”, meaning “all,” and “presence” which defines a person or being’s location. Thus, “omnipresence” speaks of God’s all-present nature. This means that spatial locations do not limit God. Existing as a transcendent being, God is present in all places at all times. Let’s take a brief look at how omnipresence impacts our understanding of God.

Divine Omnipresence Implies God Is Not Limited by the Physical Realm

First, God’s omnipresent nature implicates that the physical realm does not limit God’s presence. Contrary to popular opinion, God is not limited by the physical sphere. Thomas Aquinas argues that in addition to God’s omnipresent nature, God is the only Being in all existence that exists as pure act.[1] That means everything else, including the laws of nature, are potentialities. God is pure existence.

We will return to the distinction between God’s presence and the physical realm in a moment. But for now, one should understand as the psalmist extolled in his rhetorical question, inquiring, “Where can I go to escape your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (Psa. 139:7, CSB). David continues by saying, “If I live at the eastern horizon or settle at the western limits, even there your hand will lead me; your right hand will hold on to me” (Psa. 139:10, CSB). David teaches that God’s presence is everywhere, at all times and places. Even though the universe is estimated to be some 250 times bigger than what is observed, God is not limited by even the incomprehensible expanse of the universe.

This even impacts dimensional thinking. Physicists claim that the physical universe contains at least 11 dimensions and could escalate to amazingly 28 dimensional realms. If true, this would mean that God would exist in all dimensions and even one beyond. Omnipresence also indicates omnidimensionality.[2] Hugh Ross explains,

“Whoever caused the universe, then, must possess at least one more time dimension (or some attribute, capacity, super-dimension, or supra-dimension that encompasses all the properties of time). To put it another way, God is able to interact with us in ways we interpret (through our time-bound experience of cause and effect) as the result of timelike capacities in the person or essence of God or the existence of other timelike dimensions or properties through which God operates.”[3]

Divine Omnipresence Implies God Is Not Limited by the Spiritual Realm

Second, divine omnipresence also indicates that God is not limited by the spiritual domain. Romans 8:35 says,

“Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35, 37–39′; CSB).

Notice that the text states that no angelic or spiritual being could separate a believer from God’s love. Neither death nor life could separate a person from God’s incomparable love. But how is this possible? God’s love is inseparable when the tremendous ability of God to transcend the scope of time, space, and the spiritual domains of heaven and hell is understood. Not even the spiritual domain can separate us from the benevolent, loving presence of God Almighty.

Divine Omnipresence Implies The Special Nature of God’s Essence

Third, God’s omnipresent essence does not indicate that everything in nature is God. Thus, omnipresence does not teach a pantheistic notion of God—that is, the idea that all things are in some way divine. Aquinas contends that “God is in all things by His power” by his presence and essence. [4] In other words, all things are held together by the omnipresent power of God. However, Aquinas distinguishes between God’s essence and the essence of the thing itself.[5] Though the creation is held together by God’s presence and power, that does not indicate that the material thing becomes God. God’s presence is distinct from the physical and spiritual domain.

Divine Omnipresence Implies That God Alone Possesses Omnipresence

Fourth, nothing and no one can possess the omnipresent attribute that God possesses. Aquinas asserts, “To be everywhere primarily and absolutely, is proper to God … But a thing is everywhere absolutely when it does not belong to it to be everywhere accidentally … It belongs therefore to a thing to be everywhere absolutely when, on any supposition, it must be everywhere; and this properly belongs to God alone.”[6] Aquinas goes on to eloquently state, “Therefore to be everywhere primarily and absolutely, belongs to God, and is proper to Him: because whatever number of places be supposed to exist, God must be in all of them, not as to a part of Him, but as to His very self.”[7] Therefore, the claim that people can be God is sheer insanity when considering that people are spatially confined to a singular spatial location. Only God could possess the attribute of omnipresence. No angel or demon, and not even Satan himself, could possess the awesome power of omnipresence. God and God alone is the Omnipresent Being.

Divine Omnipresence Implies That God Is The Perfect Judge

God’s benevolent and just judgment serves as a powerful aspect of God’s omnipresent nature. Since God is always present in every place, that indicates that God sees all that happens in every place at every point in time. Just the sheer immensity of such a task overwhelms my feeble mind.

Understand that this is not just mere philosophical conjecture. The statement is found securely in the context of Scripture. For instance, Solomon conveys that the “eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good” (Prov. 15:3, NIV). Because of God’s omnipresent vision, God is able to issue just and fair judgment as God knows all the circumstances of an event while even understanding the internal thought processes of each person involved.

God’s omnipresent judgment should cause a believer to pause before judging their neighbor. Paul asks, “why do you judge your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God” (Rom. 14:10; CSB). James, agreeing with Paul, writes, “There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (James. 4:12, CSB).

Conclusion

God’s omnipresent nature is truly awe-inspiring. God’s omnipresent nature ensures that God can help us at any point in our lives and in any place. It assures that God can be with our friends and families even when we are physically separated from them by hundreds of miles. God’s omnipresent nature also guarantees that nothing can separate us from God’s loving presence, not even death. With a firm grasp of God’s omnipresent nature, we should be led to live our lives with courage and faith rather than fear and doubt. If we have a personal relationship with God, then we are never alone.

Footnotes

[1] Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.q8.a4.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.q8.a3.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Hugh Ross, Beyond the Cosmos: What Recent Discoveries in Astrophysics Reveal about the Glory and Love of God (Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress, 1999), 33–34.

[6] “First, because it was shown above that there is some first being, whom we call God; and that this first being must be pure act, without the admixture of any potentiality, for the reason that, absolutely, potentiality is posterior to act. Now everything which is in any way changed, is in some way in potentiality. Hence it is evident that it is impossible for God to be in any way changeable.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I.q9.a1, in A Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, ed. Peter Kreeft (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 105.

[7] That is, God is not limited by any dimension.

Would It Have Been Better If God Had Not Created Us?

2. Does God Exist?, Atheism, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Al Serrato

There has always been evil and suffering in the world, and how to make sense of it is a principal object of Christian apologetics. Often, the argument is made that God gave us free will, and as a result, people have the liberty to choose to do evil. But this answer does not satisfy the atheist; often, he will challenge God’s goodness, with comments such as the following:

You claim your God is omniscient. When he created the universe, he saw the sufferings which humans would endure as a result of the sin of those original humans. Surely he would have known that it would have been better for those humans to never have been born (in fact, the Bible says this very thing), and surely this all-compassionate deity would have foregone the creation of a universe destined to imperfection in which many of the humans were doomed to eternal suffering…or alternatively only create those humans who will freely choose God, and eliminate the possibility of their suffering.

This challenge has much intuitive appeal. We all rail against the suffering that each of us must face, to varying degrees, as our lives progress. We realize the fragility of our human condition, and how inhospitable this creation seems to be to flesh and blood mortals. It is frightening, indeed, to think of all the ways that our lives can be tragically altered, or ended. But does the harshness of this reality “prove” that God is not “good”?

What do you mean by “Good”?

The first step in responding to this challenge is to get a better idea of what is meant by “good.” Generally speaking, “good” is a measure of quality; how a thing or an idea measures up to a standard of performance. A “good” knife is one that appropriately performs its function, or its intended use. A “good” person is one that lives up to a standard of behavior. But how can one determine what that standard should be? For example, any time two opposing things are in conflict, whether they are teams, or armies or ideas, the quality of the outcome will necessarily be decided from the unique perspective of each of the involved parties. For instance, the American victory in World War II was a “good” outcome for Western democracy, but a decidedly “bad” outcome for those who staked their future fortunes on the Nazis. A good outcome for my favorite baseball team is when the other side loses. In short, and at the risk of sounding flippant, when it comes to conflicting worldviews or ideas, a “win” is the outcome which is good for the winner and bad for the loser.

With this basic distinction in mind, it would seem that, at least preliminarily, answering whether it was “better” to have “foregone the creation of a universe destined to imperfection in which many of the humans were doomed to eternal suffering” would depend on the person being asked. For those spending eternity in heaven with a God of infinite power, who intends to allow us to live eternally and joyfully in his presence, He certainly did the right thing in creating us and in giving us this opportunity. Infinite and eternal joy and fulfillment versus, well, oblivion – that’s not a difficult choice. By contrast, for the person suffering torment in hell, realizing that he will spend eternity aware of, but separated from, this awesome being, it will probably seem “better” that man was never created.

Who decides what’s “better?”

But let’s take it to a deeper level. How does one decide which of two sides is right in claiming that a successful conclusion according to their desires is an objectively “good” outcome. For example, the Nazis deemed victory in Europe a good outcome. Would their victory actually have made Nazi domination of Europe a “good” result? The Nazis would argue that in the period of a few short years they transformed Germany from a beleaguered nation experiencing great suffering because of the Versailles Peace Treaty to an economic powerhouse, a state marked by efficiency and great industry. They sought to expand that “efficiency” to the rest of Europe, what they would claim to be a good result. The Allies countered that their victory was not good simply because their side won. As the victors, they did not simply assert that they were right and then impose punishment on the vanquished. Instead, they tried the Nazi leaders in what is known to history as the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, the purpose of which was to establish that crimes against humanity had been committed. The underlying premise was that the “good” accomplished by the Allies was not a subjective good, i.e. we’re glad we won and you lost, but an objective good, i.e. Nazi officials were guilty of conduct that was objectively evil, and therefore justly punished. The premise of the trials was that such objective knowledge of good was available to us, and not that the might of the victor makes right. But how can this objective assessment be made, if each side can claim that “good” is what suits them? This, of course, is a frequent argument of the theist. While an atheist can be moral, he cannot ground his morality, because only the existence of a transcendent being provides the basis for judging objectively the “good” or “evil” of any conduct under consideration.

“While an atheist can be moral, he cannot ground his morality.”

Without such an objective and transcendent judge, the atheist’s conclusions are mere opinions, mere statements of likes or dislikes. By that standard, the challenger here is left saying that having people end up in hell displeases him. To conclude that allowing anyone to suffer in hell is worse than not creating at all, the atheist must appeal to a standard of good and evil, a standard of goodness. But what is that standard?

Christians can at least make sense of this standard: it is for the Creator to decide. As applied to my World War Two example, which side had objective good on its side is not difficult to determine. Granted, this does not mean that the Allies did no wrong, or where completely free of evil action. No, the law and rules applied to them as much as to the Axis powers and history shows that there were indeed transgressions by the western powers. But only an Allied victory could be deemed an objectively good outcome, one consistent with God’s desires. Contrary to Nazi philosophy, all human beings are made in God’s image and are therefore endowed with God-given rights that no government can justly take from them.

It’s for God to Decide

Returning to the question raised by the challenger, the answer is the same: it is for the Creator to decide. Given his perfect knowledge, He is in a better position to judge which is a better outcome. Indeed, challenging God in this fashion seems rather presumptuous. The Creator of this universe is obviously immensely intelligent and powerful. That we should decide what He should do in creating – how He should go about assigning a value to competing options – makes about as much sense as my dog giving me advice on careers or on moral issues. Without the proper frame of reference, a proper sense of humility should prevent us from telling God how he should have approached His creative work.

In the end, foregoing creation would not have been a “good” solution for the many individuals who responded to God’s gift and are, or will be, experiencing eternity in His presence. When you combine this with the realization that people who are separated from God are separated by their own choice and not simply chosen at random, then it would not be fair to deprive so many of such joy when those who have refused God’s gift have done so of their own volition.

Recommended Resources:

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

Legislating Morality: Is it Wise? Is it Legal? Is it Possible? by Frank Turek (Book, DVD, Mp3, Mp4, PowerPoint download, PowerPoint CD)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Al Serrato earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He began his career as an FBI special agent before becoming a prosecutor in California, where he worked for 33 years. An introduction to CS Lewis’ works sparked his interest in Apologetics, which he has pursued for the past three decades. He got his start writing apologetics with J. Warner Wallace and Pleaseconvinceme.com.

March 6, 2023/by Guest

When Science Becomes a Religion

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

Science, and the technology it breeds, is a dominating force in our culture. Understandably so. Science has extended our lives and made them more comfortable. It promises to do more of the same in the future. But the successes of science also tempt us to place more value in it than it deserves. As a society, we do more than accept the idea that science provides a way to know how to improve the human condition. We’ve actually been led to believe that science gives us the only way to know anything. This way of thinking about science is called scientism. And scientism is more than a misplaced belief system. When science becomes a religion it also becomes a dangerous ideology. Sadly, all of us have accepted this idea to some extent. But it pays to be clear in our thinking about science.

What Is Scientism?

Philosopher of Science Tom Sorell defines scientism as:

“… the belief that science, especially natural science, is … the most valuable part of human learning … because it is the most authoritative, or serious, or beneficial … or that it is always good for subjects that do not belong to science to be placed on a scientific footing.”

There is a lot of history that has led us to think this way but I want to focus on how scientism affects the world we live in today.

A Reflection Of Our Scientism

Recently, a university near my home launched a citywide marketing campaign. Its purpose was to highlight the unparalleled success of the university hospital’s medical research and treatment programs. No doubt, they are phenomenal. But the slogan we see in local TV, radio, and billboard ads around our city says this:

“In Science Lives Hope.”

I don’t want to make to much of a local city advertising campaign, but do you see the reflection of scientism in this billboard? It’s not just that science is a valuable pursuit. We live in a culture that thinks science is the pathway to hope.

This is the ultimate promise of scientism. And the first thing you should notice is that it’s not a scientific claim. You can’t do a science experiment to prove that “in science lives hope.” And you can’t use science to show that science is the only way to know things. That’s because those kinds of claims aren’t scientific. At best, they are philosophical. And in the end, they’re really religious.

Here’s why I say that.

What Is Science?

The dictionary defines science as, “a branch study … that gives systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” It comes from the Latin word scientia, which means “knowledge.” And that may be where the corruption of our thought about it began.

The problem with scientism is that it tells us that science is our only source of knowledge. But it’s not. Science is just one way to understand the world in which we live. And it’s not even the most reliable one.

Things You Know Without Using Science

There are plenty of things you know about the world that you didn’t discover by doing science. For instance, you know that:

Statements about the world cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same way. This is just one of several laws of logic that you use all the time without even thinking about it.
You don’t need to conduct a science experiment to know mathematical truths (like 2+2=4). These are things that are necessarily true. They couldn’t be any other way.
You know more about what is going on in your own mental life than any other person (or scientist) ever could. In fact, the only way someone else could know what you’re thinking or feeling is if you tell them.
You have moral knowledge about the world and that it has no basis in science. There is no science project could convince you that torturing little babies for fun is a good thing to do.

The Prerequisites Of Science

Don’t miss the significance of these things. Each of them is a form of knowledge that you have without ever doing science. In fact, you have to use each of them before you can do science at all.

Science depends on using logical thinking to determine how to conduct an experiment or evaluate the data you get from one.

Mathematics is the language of science. You have to use math to describe the methodology and findings of any scientific experiment.

Every scientist has to be aware of his/her own mental states to determine how to plan and conduct their scientific research.

In order to rely on the conclusions of scientists, you have to trust that the scientists themselves are telling you the truth.

Science Doesn’t Say Anything

The important thing to understand about science is that it is nothing but a tool we use to understand the way our world works. Science doesn’t really tell us anything on its own. Or, as the infamous Frank Turek puts it:

“Science doesn’t say anything; scientists do.”

And therein lies the problem with scientism. What it teaches us depends on the philosophy of scientists who practice it. What they believe about the world can’t help but be reflected in the conclusions they draw. It’s human nature.

When we accept the notion that science is our only source of knowledge about the world, we fall prey to the presuppositions of scientists. That’s why I say scientism is a religion. It’s a belief system. It’s a way of thinking about the ultimate questions in life.

Where Science Can Lead

The sciences of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology brought us direct knowledge that the universe had a beginning. Some scientists view that as evidence for a Creator. Others deny that it infers any such thing.

From the biological sciences, we have learned incredible facts about the inner workings of the cell. Some scientists see a Designer in their microscopes. Others see the complex outcome of an undirected, natural process.

Nuclear physics created radiation oncology to kill cancer. But it also created the atom bomb.

Science and technology showed us ultrasound images that confirmed the reality of human life in the womb. And it is science that allows some parents to destroy that life if it doesn’t measure up to the genetic test results they expected.

It was scientists who developed vaccines, and who continue to find ways to cure genetically-based diseases. But it was also scientists who pursued eugenics, practiced forced sterilization, and conducted experiments on living human beings in the Nazi Death Camps.

Science has the potential to increase human flourishing. But it is no less likely to bring on an inconceivable level of human suffering. It all depends on the purpose you think it promises.

The Danger Of Scientism

Recently, I was “listening in” on a Facebook discussion about the nature and value of human life. I cut-and-pasted the following exchange from the comment thread:

Q: Do you believe that you have an intrinsic right to life, liberty, etc?

A: No, I do not. But I would believe in them if you could produce these intrinsic rights such that I could put them on my workbench and run reliability tests on them.

This is what you get in a culture convinced that anything worth knowing comes from science. It is the fruit of scientism — a person who believes that life, and love, and justice are illusions unless you can test them on a workbench.

Make no mistake, scientism is a religion. But it is not a religion that offers hope. It may be able to cure your disease, or extend your life, or make that life more comfortable. These are all good things. But they are temporal.

Real hope is eternal. And you’ll never find it in a test tube or a telescope.

Can A Perfect Being Create the Imperfect?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Al Serrato

A common challenge raised by atheists is to point out the brokenness of the world and to use it as evidence that there cannot be a God. Your God is perfect, they reason, so why did he create such an imperfect place as this? They point to the natural suffering in the world, the harm that hurricanes and earthquakes can wreak on mortal and fragile human beings. They highlight too the evil that people, driven by their basest emotions, inflict upon their fellow human beings, from theft to murder and everything in between. How could a perfect God have ended up with this as his creation?

This is how one skeptic framed the argument:

“If something is perfect, nothing imperfect can come from it. Someone once said that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, and yet this “perfect” God created a “perfect” universe which was rendered imperfect by the “perfect” humans. The ultimate source of imperfection is God. What is perfect cannot become imperfect, so humans must have been created imperfect. What is perfect cannot create anything imperfect, so God must be imperfect to have created these imperfect humans. A perfect God who creates imperfect humans is impossible.”

The logic being employed by this challenger appears valid. If something that is perfect can only create perfection, then the Christian God is disqualified, as we believe God to embody complete perfection but concede that this world, and its human inhabitants, are clearly not perfect. But the problem with this argument is not the logic; it is instead the assumptions that underly the stated premises. The challenger’s first sentence – that nothing imperfect can come from a perfect creator – is not proven. It is simply an assertion. For the argument to actually hold, there must be some support for the premise that a perfect being is “limited” in what it can do, namely, that such a being can only create perfection. But the very articulation of this notion betrays the problem embedded in the assertion: it purports to limit the power of a perfect being. In other words, immediately after acknowledging God’s infinite power – his perfection – the skeptic, himself an imperfect being, attempts to limit the types of things God can do.

But how could the skeptic possibly know what God can or cannot do? On what basis can he conclude that a limitless, all-powerful being is constrained in the options available to him? Certainly, the possibility that a perfect being could create something less than himself is not contradictory. The opposite, of course, would be true; an imperfect being would be unable to impart perfection to his creation, something that he himself does not possess. So, it would be contradictory to claim that an imperfect being could create God. But why would a greater being be unable create something that is lesser than himself?

But there is an even greater flaw embedded in the challenge. That is, the skeptic assumes that God set out to create a “perfect” universe and somehow failed. Let’s take a moment to examine this conclusion? What evidence does the skeptic rely upon relating to God’s purpose or to conclude that God failed to achieve this purpose? To arrive at such a conclusion, one would first have to know the intent of the creator. Is not “perfection,” or at the very least success, dependent upon what the actor had as his goal? After all, perfection denotes a quality or performance or attribute that cannot be surpassed. For example, perfect vision would mean vision that cannot be improved upon. But to know what perfect vision is, one would first have to know what is to be accomplished with vision. Is it simply seeing in daylight, or also in complete darkness or underwater? A perfect robot would be one that completed its assigned tasks flawlessly, on time and without any failures or breakdowns. But to measure such performance, the reviewer would first need to know what tasks have been assigned, what the time limit is and what constitutes a breakdown or failure. It is only when one first has in mind a clear understanding of the designer’s purpose that one can decide whether the creation in question has achieved the ends or purposes set for it.

To this, the challenger would no doubt respond that this universe is imperfect under any definition. But by this he would simply mean that things break, that health suffers, that people do evil, or other things of this nature. But of course this only follows if one first assumes that God set out to create “perfectly” functioning humans in a flawless universe. Was this God’s goal? Could it have been, to the contrary, that God had in mind a much different purpose, specifically, to allow for the development of beings who possess free will and who can experience true love, freely given? In other words, did he instead set out to create conscious, intelligent and self-aware beings who were actually capable of exercising free will, and by so doing, necessarily capable of rejecting him and doing evil? Could the struggles we face in this broken world be part of a process by which we are developed, and refined?

This is certainly possible. If free will is to have any meaning, then people must of course be free to do wrong and to harm others. They must be free to reject love and embrace hate. They must be free to reject the God who created them.

Christians believe that God is, ultimately, love, which we understand to be the commitment of the will directed toward the good of the other. Love must be freely given if it is to have meaning. A spouse who remains in a marriage out of fear, or desire for material benefit, does not love the other spouse. We all desire to be the object of another’s true love, and by that we certainly do not mean someone who “cares” because they are afraid to be caught not caring or whose “love” is purchased. There is no reason to believe that God views love any differently. Despite our imperfections and limitations, we remain free to seek God and to ask him to do the refining work in us that is necessary to make us ready, and able, to reunite with him. In other words, as we make our way through this broken and imperfect world, we have the ability, and the freedom, to learn to love and begin to reciprocate the love of the God who gave us life, and intelligence and self-awareness. And, by contrast, we also remain free to reject him.

With sufficiently clear vision, it is possible to see that creating a universe filled with robots and other perfectly functioning things would not have accomplished God’s actual purpose. Yes, life on Earth is messy and often filled with great pain and suffering, much of which we struggle in vain to understand. As we make our way through this vale of tears, we may not understand God’s purpose; indeed, it may seem to us limited beings that such suffering has no purpose. Understanding that God’s plan requires imperfection in the here and now, and the suffering that may come from that, may not bring us comfort in the short run. But contemplating what God has in store for us, what reuniting with a perfect being will entail, may help us begin to make sense of our lives…and better plan our future. For what God has in mind is so much more ambitious – and wonderful – than creating something that fits our definition of perfection.

The Case for an Eternal Cosmic Observer

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Brian Chilton

Modern understanding of quantum mechanics suggests that an eternal Cosmic Observer may in fact exist. If true, this holds numerous positive ramifications for arguments concerning the existence of God. Before we investigate the data, we must first ask what is meant by an eternal Cosmic Observer. A conscious observer is a living being that observes another entity. For instance, I am currently staring at the words being typed onto my computer screen. I am a living, conscious being that is observing the documentation of this piece. Spectators watching a sporting event are conscious observers of the events taking place in the stadium.

Physicists have observed that conscious beings can have an impact on physical objects and events simply by observing them. This impact precedes the dawning of conscious human beings, and really the existence of anything. Thus, this new body of research argues that all of reality is based upon the prior existence of an eternal cosmic observer. That Cosmic Observer must be God. While this article pushes a conclusion in a direction that is not necessarily implied by the biocentric physicists, it certainly appears that this would be the logical direction that the research leads.

So, what exactly does the data from the quantum world reveal about the Cosmic Observer? This article will note a few areas of considerable interest—biocentrism, consciousness, and time.

Biocentrism and the Case for an Eternal Cosmic Observer

Robert Lanza, MD, and Matej Pavsic, PhD spoke of biocentrism in their book The Grand Biocentric Design. Biocentrism holds that nothing can exist unless a conscious observer observes it. Lanza and Pavsic lay out seven key principles for biocentrism:

“What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness … Space and time are not independent realities but rather tools of the … mind.”[i]
“Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined.”[ii]
“The behavior of subatomic particles—indeed, all particles and objects—is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer.”[iii]
“Without consciousness, ‘matter’ dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.”[iv]
“The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism because the universe is fine-tuned for life—which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around.”[v]
“Time does not have a real existence outside of animal sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.”[vi]
“Space, like time, is not an object or a thing … Thus, there is no self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.”[vii]

While Lanza and Pavsic make connections to conscious human observers, the reality is that the universe existed prior to our conscious observations. If reality depends on life, then it stands to reason that a Conscious Observer must have lived before the creation of the universe. If the findings of biocentrism hold, then we could then say that reality depends on the existence of an eternal living Being. That Being we know as God.[viii]

Consciousness and the Case for an Eternal Cosmic Observer

According to experimentation, photons and electrons could appear, disappear, and rematerialize. The question was, what caused the wave function to “collapse and give birth to the object as an actual enduring entity.”[ix] According to the double-slit experiment, it was observations by conscious entities that made the difference. This finding is not something that is only made by Lanza and Pavsic. Max Planck, John Bell, and Niels Bohr also confirm the change evoked by consciousness.

But what exactly is consciousness? That is the million-dollar question. However, the best understanding of consciousness is that it is an awareness accompanied by volition, emotion, thought, and mind. Some claim that consciousness emerges from the brain.[x] Yet how could it be that the human consciousness is dependent on the brain when reality is dependent on the conscious mind? Rather than consciousness stemming from the physical world, it must be independent of the body while certainly connected to it.

If reality is dependent on consciousness and consciousness is dependent on physical reality, one eventually reaches an impasse. Because if one goes back far enough into the past, then one reaches Ground Zero, a time before physical entities existed. If reality is dependent on consciousness and there is a time when consciousness did not exist, then reality could not have come about. Thus, if reality is dependent on consciousness, then an eternal consciousness must exist independently of the space-time continuum that is our creation. As such, there must be an eternal Cosmic Observer. That Being we know as God.

Time and the Case for an Eternal Cosmic Observer

Lanza and Pavsic later contend that time also depends on a cosmic observer. They aver that “space and time are relative to the individual observer—we carry them around as turtles do their shells.”[xi] This led Lanza to believe that death is merely an illusion for conscious, living beings. While Lanza does not necessarily take a Christian perspective on the passage of death, he does note the everlasting aspect of living consciousness. With the volumes of objective evidence for near-death experiences (NDEs), we have a strong case to believe that death does not bring an end to the conscious, everlasting soul.

Conclusion: What Can We Deduce about the Eternal Cosmic Observer

Biocentrism is a fascinating field of study in quantum mechanics. Though it is relatively new, its findings have tremendous value in how we view the universe. According to the data presented in biocentrism—and if its deductions hold true—all material reality is dependent on consciousness. This is a revolutionary concept! Like NDEs, biocentrism completely shakes the concept of materialism—the idea that all reality is materialistic with no spiritual entities—to the core. Not only does biocentrism show that materialism is dependent on consciousness, but it also logically implies that a form of consciousness existed prior to the creation of the universe.

Furthermore, consciousness created reality. Or, one might say that reality is contingent upon the continued observance of the ultimate Cosmic Observer. These implications align perfectly with what one finds in the pages of Genesis and throughout the biblical text. For it was God who brought creation into existence (Gen. 1:1) and sustains it by his power. For God is “before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).

Footnotes:

[i] Robert Lanza and Matel Pavsic, The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality (Dallas, TX: BenBella, 2020), 19.

[ii] Ibid., 20.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid., 21.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] For a scholarly scientific article describing the impact of an observer on reality, see Dmitriy Podolskiy, Andrei O. Barvinsky, and Robert Lanza, “Parisi-Sourlas-like dimensional reduction of quantum gravity in the presence of observers,” Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (2021).

[ix] Lanza and Pavsic, The Grand Biocentric Design, 76.

[x] Such is the case implied by Boris Kotchoubey, “Human Consciousness: What It Is and Where It Is From,” Psychology 23, 9 (April 2018), https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00567/full

[xi] Lanza and Pavsic, The Grand Biometric Design, 150.

Who Made God?

2. Does God Exist?, Atheism, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bobby Conway

Have you ever found yourself in a conversation with a skeptic only to be asked in gotcha fashion, “Well, who made God?” Asking the question, “Who made God?” is like asking, “How did Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata taste?” It just doesn’t fit. The question is a classic category mistake. God wasn’t made and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata can’t be tasted. Adding to this blunder, the famed atheist Bertrand Russell notoriously said, “If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.” Yet, it’s not true that everything must have a cause. Only that which begins to exist must have a cause. And herein God is perched up in a category all His own.

God is the uncreated Creator.

He is the beginning-less Beginner.

He is the uncaused Cause of all that began to exist.

Think about it. Everything that had a beginning had a cause. And every beginning had a Beginner. And every product has a Producer. And every initiative must have an Initiator. If there is an origin, there must be an Originator. And since there is a genesis, there is a Generator.

That generator my friend is, well, you guessed it.

God.

The Scriptures exclaim from the very first verse, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Far from being made, God is the maker of all things made.

Again, note the distinction. The difference between God and everything else that exists is everything else began to exist whereas God just exists. Do you remember what God said to Moses when He appeared to him in the burning bush? Moses said,

“If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:13-14).

What was God saying to Moses? He was revealing Himself to Moses as the self-existent one. As the one who wasn’t made. God was saying, “Moses, go tell them that the One who never began to exist sent you. The unmade One.”

Unlike us, God is what philosophers refers to as a necessary being, an independent being. And each of us, unlike God, are contingent beings and, therefore, dependent. The universe is also contingent because God spoke it into existence. This means that all things that began to exist are dependent on God for existence.

It turns out there is a problem with the question, “Who made God?” The word made can’t be said of God. For God is the unmade Maker. As expected, he’s in a league of his own.

Is a Perfect Being Possible?

1. Does Truth Exist?, 2. Does God Exist?, Atheism

By Al Serrato

Many atheists claim that the God described in the Bible is not possible. They raise philosophical challenges meant to show that inherent in the very nature of God are contradictions which make belief in him foolish. One such challenge I encountered went like this:

“If God was all that existed back then, what disturbed the eternal equilibrium and compelled him to create? Was he bored? Was he lonely? God is supposed to be perfect. If something is perfect, it is complete–it needs nothing else. If God is perfect, there can be no disequilibrium. There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires, and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist. Therefore, a perfect being that creates is impossible.”

Challenges like these can be daunting, especially for someone not interested in philosophy. On its face, the challenge appears to have validity, reasoning to a conclusion about God. But in fact what is at play here is the “straw man” fallacy. The challenger sets up a God whose attributes are not those of the true God, as described in the Bible, and then argues from this mistaken depiction that the God we worship could not exist.

Notice what is implicit in the challenge: the skeptic seems to be acknowledging God as an eternal being, but his questions assume that God has no power to control time. Time becomes a force over God, and not one that God created and controls. Consider: the challenger asks “what compelled God to create?” as if God is sitting around for eons wondering what to do. He uses words like “bored,” “lonely,” “needs,” and “desires.” Each of these concepts is temporally based: “boredom” means an awareness that one’s present circumstances lack sufficient stimulation and an anticipation of changing this condition by engaging in some future activity; “lonely” means an awareness of the lack of others to help bring meaning, activity or joy into one’s life; “desires” means an awareness of something lacking and the formation of a plan to acquire that thing in the future. Each of these concepts necessarily implies a limited being, a being who lacks something necessary for fulfillment and who is seeking to remedy this lack.

With each question, the skeptic betrays that he has not grasped the attributes of the God we worship. The God of the Bible describes himself as the “I am.” In the beginning, he created “the heavens and the Earth.” Interestingly, modern science has confirmed that in the distant past there was a singularity, a point at which both matter and, more importantly for this discussion, time came into existence from absolute nothingness. Though we cannot, in our limited present circumstances, ever fully grasp all this entails, it is apparent that God, as an eternal being who created time as we experience it, is not himself limited by time. All times, as we perceive them, are in an eternal “present” to him. He was never “alone.” Composed of three persons in one being, God is in an eternal loving relationship and has no needs, fulfills all desires and lacks no stimulation. In fact, these concepts are nonsensical to such a being, examples of a category error, because each of these concepts makes sense only if viewed from the perspective of a being that is limited or controlled or defined by time.

So, to specifically answer the questions: Nothing “disturbed” the eternal equilibrium. Time was not flowing “against” God and no force can disturb him. Nothing “compelled” him to create, because a compulsion would require a source greater than God and there is no such force. God created the universe and this timeline because he chose to for reasons of love. The love he exercised was in the agape sense, love for the sake of love and with the goal of seeking the good of the one loved. He was not seeking gain, nor was he motivated by desiring something in return. God was not bored or lonely and is and always was complete. There was no disequilibrium. How that plays out in God’s perception is something, again, we could not expect to fully grasp, just as the whale, if conscious, could not know what living on land would be like, even if he understood that it involved breathing air, living in houses, and walking. In other words, our lack of detailed and specific knowledge does not prevent us from drawing conclusions from what we do know.

The challenger might respond by saying that God somehow added to his distinctiveness when he created us. He went from a “before” to an “after.” In so doing, he “changed,” and because he changed, he cannot be “perfect.” But this challenge again fails to recognize that God is not trapped by time, but instead was the creator of time. There was no “before” and “after,” as those concepts apply only to temporal beings living within the flow of time. To an eternal being, all is eternally in the present. While we, as mortal and limited beings, cannot truly understand what an eternal present would be like, we can conclude that a being not bound by the movement of time would experience all events without having to resort to memory or wait for the future to arrive. Moreover, the challenge fails to fully consider what “infinity” involves. As an infinite being, God added nothing to himself by creating, for it is not possible to “add” to infinity. This concept was fleshed out by a mathematician named David Hilbert, who asked the reader to imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, all of which are filled. An infinite number of new guests arrive seeking lodging. What does the innkeeper do? Is he not “full up?” No, actually, at least not when infinity is involved. The innkeeper simply moves everyone from the room he or she is in to the room whose number is two times the original room number. By so doing, the innkeeper opens up an infinite number of new rooms – all odd numbered – for his new guests. The point is that when you are dealing with infinity, limitations simply do not exist.

In the end, though, I would submit that the challenger’s most glaring error is the claim “A God who is perfect does nothing except exist.” This would seem to reduce God to nothing more than a jellyfish – alive, perhaps, but showing few signs of it and simply existing. This seeks to reduce God’s infinite perfection to a limitation, when it is quite literally the opposite of any limitation. This attribute of infinite perfection does not constrain God, and to suggest that it leaves him essentially powerless – he simply “exists” – is, in my view, to get things precisely backwards.

I have seen this challenge in various permutations, but they almost always stem from a misunderstanding – intentional or otherwise – of the actual attributes of the God worshipped by Christians. Next time you confront something similar, it’s worth taking a moment to tease out the unspoken assumptions that are leading the skeptic astray.

The Big Bang and Friends of the World

2. Does God Exist?, Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Luke Nix

Introduction

“Don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”- James 4:4 NIV

James 4:4 warns Christians to not become a “friend of the world” because the world is God’s enemy. What does that mean, though? The other day someone told me that I was in violation of that verse because I believed the “atheistic theory” of the big bang and used it as evidence that God exists. Did James mean to communicate that Christians cannot recognize when an unbeliever or group of unbelievers have a correct view of some aspect of reality? Or did he intend to communicate something else? Before I get to the specific accusation, let’s examine what actually concerns James in his letter.

Being The World’s Friends and Enemies of God

When we read all of James’ letter, we see the answer. Consider James 1:14-15:

“…each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”- (NIV)

James is talking about having the same evil desires as the world- not necessarily believing the same way about some feature of reality. James is emphasizing that we must be committed to truth not feelings or desires. If an unbeliever believes something that is true about reality that we also believe is true about reality, James does not condemn our agreement. In fact, agreement about reality may be used as a springboard for evangelism (1 Peter 3:15) and bringing the unbeliever to Christ. Enemies of God do not intentionally point others to Christ. Enemies of God do not condemn evil desires. Condemning evil desires and pointing others to Christ are necessary steps in presenting the Gospel. Enemies of God have no such interest.

It is not that having agreement with unbelievers regarding true beliefs about reality that makes us “friends of the world” in the sense that James is speaking. It is having agreement with them regarding sinful desires that makes us “friends of the world” and thus enemies of God. We certainly could allow our sinful desires to manipulate the truth into justifying sin (which will always be logically fallacious, by the way), but is that what has happened with Christians who have accepted big bang cosmology?

The Big Bang Is Hardly An Atheistic Theory

Contrary to popular Christian thinking, the big bang theory is about the furthest from a naturalistic theory as they come. It has so many strong theistic implications that naturalists have tried for over a century to undermine it and have only in recent decades finally come to accept it as a community. But that acceptance is reluctant and is often accompanied by failed attempts to weasel out of the absolute beginning and exquisite fine-tuning implied by this rapid expansion event. The big bang necessarily requires a cause that is outside of space and time, is mind-blowingly intelligent and powerful, and caused the creation of this universe out of literally no thing (creatio ex nihilo) for His purposes. The big bang creation event simultaneously provides powerful evidence for Christian theism and against naturalism.

It is not the science of big bang cosmology that made big bang cosmology so reprehensible to naturalists; it was the theistic and thus moral implications. The world does hate all Christians, whether those Christians believe that the big bang was the creation event described in Genesis 1:1 or if they do not. The world hates us not because we followed the evidence where it leads, but the world hates us because of where (or more accurately, to Whom) the evidence leads. There is no way that big bang cosmology allows someone to justify their evil desires; in fact, it does the exact opposite, and that is why it was so vehemently opposed by atheists for so long.

The fact that the naturalistic enemies of big bang cosmology have been compelled by the continually increasing evidence for the big bang to accept that it describes how our universe came into existence provides powerful evidence of its truth. It does so just as Jesus’ empty tomb is strongly evidenced by the fact that Jesus’ enemies (the scribes and Pharisees) were compelled by the evidence to accept that His tomb was empty. If “enemy attestation” provides powerful evidence that Jesus’ tomb was empty, then it also provides powerful evidence that the big bang occurred (see Evidence for the Empty Tomb of Jesus and Big Bang Cosmology).

In Romans 1, the Apostle Paul affirms that unbelievers have access to the same data of nature as Christians do. As a result, unbelievers and Christians will believe some of the same things about the creation. Paul is adamant that nature is so clear in its revelation that unbelievers are, in fact, without excuse in their denial of God. When unbelievers discover and features of creation, no doubt those features will point to their Creator. This is exactly what is going on when believers and unbelievers examine the evidence for the big bang. The world hates Christians because we do not share and we even condemn their evil desires and actions. And the world hates big bang cosmology because they know that they stand condemned, without excuse, by the images they witness through the lenses of their telescopes.

The Foundation for Morality

But despite that strong testimony of creation to God as the Creator, many Christians still insist that big bang cosmology is a naturalistic theory. The concern is that it does away with God as an objective, moral foundation for society, and, from their view, the moral degradation that we see in culture (see my previous articles “Compromising the Kingdom” and “Unrecognized Agreement and Unity“) is a result of a culture that has accepted big bang cosmology and used it as an excuse to do away with God. But because big bang cosmology is no friend of naturalism, it should not be rejected on the false grounds that it is such a friend to the naturalist and a morally debauched society.

As mentioned above, it is true that many naturalists, skeptics, and unbelievers hold to big bang cosmology, but it is the non-theistic philosophies that have opened our culture to the moral decay that we see. God is the foundation for objective morality. God is the source of the Image of God found in all humans. And the Image of God is the foundation of humans’ intrinsic value, free agency, and moral culpability (see my posts “Why Is The Image of God So Important?” and “Do Humans Have Intrinsic Value?“). Not only have Christians who affirm big bang cosmology held tightly to the very Foundation (God) of objective morality and the Image of God, they have hard, scientific evidence of the existence of that Foundation via big bang cosmology (again, Romans 1, in action).

Conclusion

The idea that Christians, who accept the evidence God has provided for how and when He created the world, have somehow become or want to become friends with the world is misguided. Anyone who makes this accusation against a fellow Christian simply does not understand the theistic implications of big bang theory nor do they recognize that atheists saw those implications and resisted because of those implications, yet they were eventually compelled by the evidence that God has provided to us by His fully reliable actions (creation) to accept it. Even if one does not agree that the creation testifies to the big bang creation event, they cannot honestly continue to claim that the big bang is a naturalistic, anti-God theory.

Should Christians Have Blind Faith?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Levi Dade

A few months ago, I sat with a close friend in one of the booths of our university’s coffee shop. My friend, whom I will call Tom, is an atheist. Tom is a genuine truth-seeker, and he would be a Christian if he thought Christianity was “actually true.” During our conversation, we found ourselves discussing the topic of faith. After probing his views of the world and his justifications for them, he said something that surprised me.

“At the end of the day, I guess we all have to have faith in something.”

I wanted clarity on what he meant by that statement, so I responded, “Do you mean blind faith?”

“Yeah, I guess it is blind faith.”

**The Difference Between Faith and Blind Faith**

Notice something in this brief exchange: there is a distinction between faith and blind faith. To be clear, blind faith is believing something without reason to believe it. It can also be defined as an unquestioning belief in something, even when it is unreasonable or wrong.

Tom made the distinction between faith and blind faith. This distinction implies that faith is not always blind. If it were inherently blind faith, there would be no point in making the distinction. However, as you read this, even if you have not noticed, you already know faith is not inherently blind.

For example, as a seven-year-old child, did you doubt your parents or guardians would protect you? Probably not.

Why?

Not simply because they’re your parents, but because for the entirety of your childhood, your parents showed you that they would protect you. From the past experiences of them always giving you this protection, you realized you can always have faith that they would always protect you. Notice what came first: the proof (or reason) that your parents would protect you came first. After the proof came your faith in them.

Suppose you met your parents for the first time on your seventh birthday. Would you have faith that they would protect you? Probably not. They would be strangers! You wouldn’t have that faith in them because they hadn’t shown you that you can trust them to protect.

Consider it this way: A man can propose to his girlfriend only after she has shown him that she would be a good, faithful wife. In showing him this, he can have the faith necessary to ask her to be his wife.[1]

When proof (or evidence) allows someone to have faith in something or someone else, it is called evidential faith (or informed faith). Evidential faith is the opposite of blind faith.

As you can see from the examples, faith is not always blind.

This raises an interesting question: Are Christians supposed to embrace blind faith or evidential faith?

A better way to ask this question is to ask: “With what kind of faith does Scripture teach Christians to live?”

Informed Faith Leads to Life in Jesus

In John 20:30-31, John explains the purpose of his Gospel:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 20:30-31 (emphasis added)

John’s eyewitness statements of Jesus’s miracles were intended to serve as proof that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of God.” The implication of Jesus being the Messiah is that we would put our faith in him and “have life in His name.”

If we are to have blind faith, why would Jesus give us evidence that proves He is the Messiah? After all, blind faith asserts that evidence is not necessary.

In other words, Jesus did not want people to have blind faith, so He provided proof (miracles) to show them who He is. Faith comes after Jesus shows us who He is. Romans 10:17 communicates the same idea: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

Just as children can have confidence in trustworthy parents after their past experiences of protection and care, so too others can have faith in Jesus after He showed them who He is and that He is the Messiah.

Informed Faith Allows us to Share why we have Hope in Jesus

… but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…

1 Peter 3:15-16 (emphasis added)

While faith is not explicitly mentioned in this passage, it is clear that Peter is talking about our faith when he refers to the “hope that is in you.” The content gives us an idea of what kind of faith we should have. It is not only a suggestion to have an informed faith; this verse commands it!

We are to know why we have faith in Jesus so that we can share not only our faith but the reason for our faith as well.

It is as if Peter knew someone being told to “just have faith” was not going to magically answer their questions or doubts, so under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he wrote the command to share the reason behind our faith. This assumes we have a reason. So, not only is it a “good thing” to know why we have faith in Jesus, it is a command to do so (even for practical, evangelistic purposes!).

Informed Faith Allows us to Love God Deeply

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Mark 12:30 (emphasis added)

Again, we are commanded to use our minds as a form of loving God. Loving God doesn’t only come from our heart; it comes from every facet of our lives, including how we think and reason. Knowing God intellectually allows you to know about Him on a deeper level. When you know about someone on a deeper level, you can love them on a deeper level as well.

When we do not know much about God, how can we expect to love God much?

In a past article called “Loving God with Your Mind: How God Wants Your Brain Too,” I explain it this way:

In short, loving God with the mind is to allow the mind and heart to work together in a way that produces a deeper knowledge of God. This knowledge in turn leads to a more intimate relationship with God where God is loved both intellectually and emotionally.[2]

Using Our Brains for God’s Glory

Based on these passages alone, we clearly see that an informed faith is biblical. Simply put, biblical faith is believing in something with good reason to believe it’s true.

We serve a logical God (Isaiah 1:18), and He wants us to use our brains as well as our hearts. After all, He created us and our brains, so why not use them for His glory? An evidential (biblical) faith allows you to know why Christianity is true. Knowing the truth of our beliefs is important in a world where so many things try to get you to put your identity in them rather than in Christ.

In his book, Love Your God with all Your Mind, J. P. Moreland articulates the essence of faith’s relationship to reason: “By contrast with the modern misunderstanding, biblically, faith is a power or skill to act in accordance with the nature of the kingdom of God, a trust in what we have reason to believe is true. Understood in this way, we see that faith is built on reason.”[3]

May we all embrace this biblical, informed faith, which will help us stay grounded intellectually and spiritually, keeping our identity in Christ, and our eyes fixed on Him forever.

Amen.

Notes

[1] Adapted from Frank Turek, “belief that” versus “belief in” illustration.

[2] Levi Dade, “Loving God With Your Mind: How God Wants Your Brain Too,” The Rebelution, https://www.therebelution.com/blog/2021/06/loving-god-with-your-mind-how-god-wants-your-brain-too/

[3] J. P. Moreland, Love Your God With all Your Mind (NavPress: Colorado Springs) 2012, 19.

What Would It Take To Prove That God Doesn’t Exist?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Al Serrato

Atheists who feel certain that there is no God are staking out a rather interesting position. As a corollary of their position, they are of course also convinced that those who believe in God are engaging in a form of wishful thinking, that their desire to believe in a “cosmic judge” of good and evil clouds their thinking, preventing them from following where “the science” actually leads, as they believe they have done. Indeed, many believe that religion is no more than the opiate of the masses. But a bit of careful consideration will lead to quite the opposite conclusion. Holding to atheism may have some superficial appeal, as the theist must concede that it is not possible to directly see or experience God. But pretending to know with certainty that there is no God, no supreme and perfect being, is itself an act of wishful thinking. Granted, completely eliminating doubt as to God’s existence is not possible, nor can we know fully or with certainty God’s character or attributes. But being certain he’s not there? That’s a decisive conclusion to draw.

What reasons or evidence do atheists provide in support of their conclusion? Most no doubt rely on their belief in Darwinian evolution as a satisfactory alternative explanation for how life appeared on this planet. Others might point to the existence of evil in the world and contend that an all-powerful and all-loving God would not allow evil to exist. Since evil does exist, God doesn’t. Still, others will attack the claims of theists, arguing for instance what they take to be contradictions in the resurrection accounts and concluding that all religion is just so much wishful thinking. But “knowing” that there is no God requires much more than any of these rationales could provide. In order to be entirely certain that there is no God, that in other words nowhere in the universe can God be found, one would have to have access to, well, the entire universe. Given the size and scope of the visible universe, this is quite a task. Add to that any aspects or dimensions that may elude our senses and the task becomes even more insurmountable.

Here is the odd thing about such a quest. In order to really satisfy oneself that the universe is devoid of God, the searcher must attain complete knowledge of the universe, for any lack of knowledge could relate to the very place that God is present. Moreover, since an all-powerful God would theoretically precede and transcend this universe, one would have to have the capability to examine anything that exists beyond the universe, a task beyond the reach of science. In short, then, one must become omniscient – possess total and complete knowledge of all places and all things – for only then could they know with the certainty atheism connotes that we are not in fact creatures of an intelligent and powerful creator but the products of mindless evolution.

Ironically, of course, at this point, the searcher would possess the very attributes of God. Proving the truth of atheism is, in the end, a futile quest, for one would need to be godlike to prove that God doesn’t exist.

Now to this conclusion some might object, arguing that by this reasoning, no one could be certain that unicorns or tooth fairies do not exist, since there is no way to prove these negatives either. But such a contention would miss the point. First, while there are no good reasons to believe in the existence of such mythical creatures, there are by contrast many logically compelling reasons to conclude that an uncaused first cause is necessary to explain that which we see around us. There are arguments from the design inherent in nature and the fine-tuning seen in the universe, as well as by the existence of evil. Each individual argument is logically sound and combined they are, to most who have considered them, sufficient warrant to believe that a Supreme Being must exist.

Moreover, the stakes involved are completely different. Being wrong about whether a unicorn can be found somewhere does not bring with it the same consequences as the question of whether there is a perfect being out there who created us. The former is simply a matter of intellectual curiosity. But the latter carries with it much weightier questions regarding who we are, why we are here, and most importantly, whether anything is expected of us by the One who brought us into being.

Weighty questions, worthy of our careful consideration.

Divine Omnipresence Implies God Is Not Limited by the Physical Realm

Divine Omnipresence Implies God Is Not Limited by the Spiritual Realm

Divine Omnipresence Implies The Special Nature of God’s Essence

Divine Omnipresence Implies That God Alone Possesses Omnipresence

Divine Omnipresence Implies That God Is The Perfect Judge

Conclusion

Footnotes

Recommended resources related to the topic:

What do you mean by “Good”?

Who decides what’s “better?”

It’s for God to Decide

Recommended Resources:

What Is Scientism?

A Reflection Of Our Scientism

What Is Science?

Things You Know Without Using Science

The Prerequisites Of Science

Science Doesn’t Say Anything

Where Science Can Lead

The Danger Of Scientism

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Biocentrism and the Case for an Eternal Cosmic Observer

Consciousness and the Case for an Eternal Cosmic Observer

Time and the Case for an Eternal Cosmic Observer

Conclusion: What Can We Deduce about the Eternal Cosmic Observer

Footnotes:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Introduction

Being The World’s Friends and Enemies of God

The Big Bang Is Hardly An Atheistic Theory

The Foundation for Morality

Conclusion

Recommended resources related to the topic:

The Difference Between Faith and Blind Faith

Informed Faith Leads to Life in Jesus

Informed Faith Allows us to Share why we have Hope in Jesus

Informed Faith Allows us to Love God Deeply

Using Our Brains for God’s Glory

Notes

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

**The Difference Between Faith and Blind Faith**