Have you ever had a conversation with someone who doubts, or maybe even flat out denies, the existence of God? Those types of encounters can be difficult and even frustrating for many who are devoutly faithful. Yet it is that very issue – God’s existence – that is the ultimate foundation of faith.

Although it is true that believers cannot “prove” God’s existence in any definitive way, they can provide lines of evidence that point people in the direction of God’s reality. This article will briefly examine a few of those lines of evidence for God. Hopefully this will be a good refresher for the believer and (even more hopefully) an interesting read for the open-minded skeptic. (The hardcore atheist who started reading this article has probably abandoned it by now, but if that’s you please prove me wrong!)

Although this article does not provide a completely thorough list of considerations for God’s existence, the information contained herein should give everyone enough to chew on for a while. Sometimes it just takes one new thought to make a world of difference.

A Universe with a Beginning

The evidence from cause-and-effect teaches that the universe (“cosmos”) must have had a cause, since nothing in the universe is self-caused (including the entirety of the universe itself). Science clearly demonstrates that the universe had a beginning. The main point of cause-and-effect is that everything which has a beginning must have a cause, and the cause always transcends the effect. Therefore, since the universe had a beginning it had a cause, and that cause transcends the universe itself. We must ask ourselves, “What could possibly transcend the universe?” Many are inclined to agree with the late R.C. Sproul: “The world that we perceive with our senses must therefore have a necessary first cause, otherwise known as the Creator God.”[1]

The Fine-Tuning of the Universe

The physical parameters that govern the universe are exactly what are required for intelligent life here on Earth. Let us consider a few of these physical parameters. The electromagnetic coupling constant is what binds electrons to protons. If this very precise value was just slightly smaller, fewer electrons could be held in place, and if it was just slightly larger electrons would be held too tightly in place, not allowing for bonding with other atoms. The ratio of the mass of an electron to the mass of a proton is incredibly precise, 1:1,836. If this ratio was just slightly smaller or larger, molecules could not form.

Our sun is the right mass: If it was even slightly larger, its brightness and radiation levels would be much too high to support life on Earth, and conversely if it was even slightly smaller it would be too cold and would lack the appropriate radiation levels to support life on Earth. Photosynthesis cannot take place unless the sun is the precise size that it is. The distance between Earth and our sun is critical for a stable water cycle. If the sun is too far away water would freeze, and if the sun were too close water would boil. It turns out that the sun is the exact distance from Earth that it should be to support life. Additionally, Earth’s gravity, axial tilt, rotational period, magnetic field strength, crust thickness, oxygen-to-nitrogen ratio, and levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and water vapor are exactly where they should be to support life. We truly live in a “Goldilocks universe” where everything is just right.

The First Law of Thermodynamics

Also referred to as the law of the conservation of mass and energy, this law states that both matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed naturally, although one may be converted into the other as demonstrated by Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. Isaac Asimov declared that the First Law of Thermodynamics “is considered the most powerful and most fundamental generalization about the universe that scientists have ever been able to make.”[2]

Since matter and energy may not be created naturally, yet obviously exists, it therefore had to originate somehow. It is logical to maintain, therefore, that matter and energy was created supernaturally, “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1). No new matter and energy have been created, which agrees with the words of Scripture: “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work” (Genesis 2:1-2). This is a very illuminating correlation between science and Scripture.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that the amount of usable energy in the universe is decreasing over time. Although the first law tells us that matter and energy cannot be created naturally, the second law tells us that matter and energy degrade over time. In short, the universe is wearing down. Therefore, it is impossible for the universe to be eternal or “forever existing,” as it could not have been forever winding down. If the universe is not eternal, then it has to have a beginning (this is in line with the evidence from cause-and-effect). A universe with a beginning requires a Beginner: The only other option is that the universe “sprang into existence” from nothingness, and for no reason, which is ludicrous. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is accurately described in Scripture (Psalm 102:25-26; Isaiah 34:4; 51:6), once again confirming the positive relationship between science and the Bible.

Complexity of the Cell

When Charles Darwin published his most famous work in 1859, cells were believed to be nothing more than just simple globs of protoplasm. Today, however, we know that the cell is an extremely complex “factory” that defies a naturalistic origin. Biological systems are too complex to have originated apart from intelligent design. The deeper scientists dig into the microscopic structure of the cell, the more complex and interconnected the cellular parts prove to be. The information contained in the DNA of just one cell is mind-boggling. But we should ask ourselves this question: Where does “information” come from in the first place? The answer: A thinking mind. DNA, the “software” of the cell, renders powerful evidence for the God of Creation. God is that “thinking mind” behind the universe.

The Law of Biogenesis

The Law of Biogenesis states that life comes only from life. Since life obviously exists, and life cannot come from non-living material, the first life forms had to be created “according to their kind” (Genesis 1:11-12, 20-21, 24-27). The idea of spontaneous generation (life spontaneously popping into existence from non-life) was initially challenged by Francesco Redi in the seventeenth century and later put to rest by Louis Pasteur at essentially the same time that Darwin released On the Origin of Species in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, naturalists who hold to an atheistic worldview must still rely upon this idea in some form to remain consistent in their thinking.

The Coherence of Science & Scripture

Consider the coherence between the facts of science and what is revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. The following examples should pique the interest of both believers and skeptics alike. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). All ancient Near Eastern cultures, excepting the Hebrews, believed the universe to be eternal or without a beginning. Only in the first half of the twentieth century did scientists finally begin to recognize that time, space, matter, and energy came into existence at a particular point. The Hebrew word for “created” is bara, which means “creation from nothing.” Bara signifies that something has been brought into existence when there formerly was nothing at all.

“He stretches out the heavens like a tent” (Psalm 104:2). The universe is expanding, as demonstrated by astrophysicists in the early twentieth century and into today. Ancient cultures, once again excepting the Hebrews, did not consider the concept of an expanding universe (an eternal universe would not expand, anyway). Other verses discuss the expanding universe as well (Isaiah 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; Jeremiah 10:12; 51:15; Job 9:8; Zechariah 12:1). It is amazing to see how the biblical authors, writing under the inspiration of God’s Spirit, could note such amazing facts of nature in their own time, millennia before modern science confirmed these discoveries. Yet so many today believe that the universe is nothing more than a “cosmic accident.”

“He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). Earth was believed to be flat in many cultures of the ancient world, a belief that continued for quite some time in history. However, the Bible has always described a spherical Earth. (The biblical phrase, “the four corners of the earth” is merely a term that means “in every direction” and does not imply a flat earth.) Modern science did not catch up to the fact of a spherical Earth until the time of Copernicus, in the early sixteenth century.[3]

“He suspends the earth over nothing” (Job 26:7). Earth is suspended by gravity in space, a fact not accurately described by science until relatively modern times. Some of the ancient origin stories had Atlas holding the world on his shoulders (Greece), or Earth resting on the backs of giant elephants, themselves standing on the back of a giant turtle (India). The law of gravity exerting itself between solar bodies is indirectly revealed in Job 26:7 (although not described using precise scientific terminology, of course) and once again science finally caught up to this fact at the time of Copernicus.[4]

Ancient people believed that the stars were countable, mostly because they had a very limited view of the heavens and could only see a very, very small fraction of the number of stars just in our galaxy alone. Shortly after the time that the Apostle John wrote the final book of the Bible, Ptolemy was busy cataloguing the stars, which he had numbered to approximately 1,100 in his time. Today we know that if we were to count the stars at the rate of ten per second, it would take 100 trillion years to count them all – clearly an impossibility. However, Jeremiah wrote six centuries before Christ that the stars are uncountable: “I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars in the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore” (Jeremiah 33:22). Despite decades and even centuries of religious skeptics claiming that science and the Bible are at odds with each other, we now can see that nothing could be further from the truth when the Bible is read in proper context.

Conclusion

There are many more lines of evidence for God’s existence that could be discussed, but space limits doing that very thing. We could have looked at near-death, deathbed, and shared-death experiences, miraculous events and answers to prayer, the “God-shaped vacuum” in the heart of every man and woman (Ecclesiastes 3:11) which perfectly dovetails with the near-universal belief in God and the supernatural realm throughout time and cultures, fulfilled prophecy between the Old and New Testaments, and the greatest evidence of all: The resurrection of Jesus. But that last one is a whole other article itself, and takes us from a more general belief in God to the one true God who is revealed in the Bible.

It is my hope that this article provides encouragement (and knowledge refreshing) for the believer as well as food for thought for the unbeliever. The most important topics of life demand our attention, and there is no topic greater than God’s reality as it is a springboard to the “Case for Christ.”

Randy Hroziencik,
Pastor, First Baptist Church-Kewanee

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[1] R.C. Sproul, Defending Your Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 88.
[2] Fred Heeren, Show Me God: What the Message from Space is Telling Us about God (Wheeling, IL: Day Star Publications, 2000), 128-129.
[3] Ralph Muncaster, Examine the Evidence (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2004), 163.
[4] Ibid.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The Kewanee Voice.