Why We Believe in God
Why We Believe in God Can we prove the existence of God? Not to a man who does not want to see nor to one who is incapable of seeing, but can we demonstrate to the fully developed, studious man standing in the light of this age arguments which will lead him to believe in the existence of God?
1. We believe in God because Atheism, the only other alternative, cannot be proved.
Every atheist occupies a forced position. Over him will always hang the possibility that there is a God. He alone claims to believe he has no maker, no creator. Before one can proclaim "There is no God" he ought to have made extensive explorations in heaven and earth, in the material world and the spiritual world, in time and eternity. Before a man can know there is no God he would himself have to become one--he would have to be omniscient or the one thing he did not know might be that God exists.
2. We believe in God because it is reasonable to believe that the eternal existence is God--not matter. A skeptic recently told me not to be guided by the Bible when seeking to learn of the eternal existence but to be guided by reason. It did not occur to him that the Bible might be reasonable or that perfect reason cannot be manifested by man who has always demonstrated his imperfection. Nevertheless, let us take his advice and see what reason teaches us.
Something is, therefore something always was. Had there ever been a time when nothing existed then nothing could have existed at any time for something cannot come from nothing. Had nothing existed, there could have been no event for there would have been no cause. These statements are axiomatic. Something has existed from all eternity.
There are but two things in existence--mind and matter. (Force is not an entity but the energy manifested by one or the other.) As to the eternal existence but three things can be supposed: Dualism, which says both mind and matter are eternal; Materialism, which says that matter is eternal and mind is a result of certain combinations and properties of matter; and Theism, which affirms that mind is eternal and that matter is a creation of mind.
Dualism is unscientific. To suppose two eternal existences would solve no difficulty and would give us all the difficulties of Atheism and Theism. The great majority of thinkers have discarded Dualism and divided themselves into two groups. One group supposes that matter is eternal and has created mind, intellect and life; the other group supposes that mind--Almighty God--has existed from all eternity and has created the material universe. Which position is the more reasonable?
It is reasonable to believe that this eternal force was mind, not matter.
(1) Mind is superior to matter. Mind knows but matter is the object known. Mind moves and modifies matter. Matter is the servant of mind. The chemist is greater than the chemicals which he handles and the mind is greater than the body which it guides and perhaps destroys.
(2) That which existed from all eternity has spontaneity and force. Without spontaneity it would have remained dormant, without force it would have caused no event. Mind possesses these qualities. It can move bodies and cause events. Matter is destitute of these qualities. Matter remains in the condition in which it is, whether of rest or motion, until something from without changes it. Matter could have produced no change in its eternal state of rest or motion. If we are free to entertain a theory as to the eternal existence why entertain the one least likely to be the truth
(3) The one original existence must have had of her attributes which mind possesses but which matter does not possess. There must have been in this original being all that is developed and manifested in the universe. It possessed the power to think, plan and feel. It had the capacity to love and to hate, to make moral distinctions, to choose between right and wrong. It cannot be proved that matter possesses these attributes in any degree. These powers do inhere in mind. Mind, therefore, was eternal and not matter. (The principal objection to this line of reasoning has been the childish suggestion that we do not know the difference between mind and matter. Certainly we do not know all about either but we do know something about both. They have some attributes in common as do all things which exist. The fact of existence is one point in common. Matter is known by its qualities, mind by its activities; consciousness reveals the one, the senses the other; one is dead, the other alive; one is senseless, the other full of thought and feeling; one is passive, the other active; one is amenable to physical law, the other to intellectual and moral law. It is as reasonable to question the existence of matter as to question the existence of mind. Indeed, some philosophers have insisted that matter exists only as phenomena revealed in the mind.) 3. We believe in God because be universe exhibits marks of intelligent causation.
All the works of man are examples of causation. We see a house and we know it has a builder. "Every house is builded by some man," and though we never find the builder, yet we will know he exists. I look at my watch. It had an intelligent maker. He possessed power. These things are self-evident. Though I never see that watchmaker, yet I know he existed and I know something about him from the product he made. In the same way, we may know that God exists and we may know something about Him by seeing the things which He has made. Did the electric system of your city and of the nation have a maker? Then what of man’s brain and spinal cord with nerves running to every part of the body? Did the telescope "just happen," did it "just make itself’? If not, how could the human eye make itself? Is there an intelligent cause for the water system running to all parts of the city? Then what of the system of veins and arteries throughout the body?
Look into the sky. In the day there is the proud monarch of the sky who shakes off the sleep of night and makes his journey through space. He operates with mathematical precision. At night with the naked eye one may see as many as six thousand stars. With the telescope one may see millions of stars and suns flaming like archangels on the frontiers of stellar space. They do not run into one another. They do not go by chance. Men may judge planetary movement of the future by that of the past. Our closest neighbor among the starry host is twenty-five trillion miles away. The light which left this star (Alpha) five years ago is just now reaching the earth having been travelling all this time at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. Pollux, the brighter star of the twins, is thirty-two light years from the earth, a distance of 192,000,000,000,000 miles! Astronomers by present methods of calculation are able to measure a distance of 15,000 light years or 100,000,000,000,000,000 miles out into space. An astronomy teacher once said, "This shows that there is not a great God watching over one little planet called the earth." To which I replied, "On the contrary, it shows how great God is to create and direct so many more things than men formerly supposed." David said, "When I consider thy heavens, the works of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man that thou visitest him?" (Psalms 8).
It is said that Benjamin Franklin, while in Paris, made a model planetary system showing the earth and the planets nearest it. Many astronomers copied it to use in their studies. One day an atheist friend saw it and asked, "Who made it?" "No one made it," answered Franklin. "It made itself, it just happened." "What," cried the man, "you’re joking." "And so is the man who says the universe just happened," replied Franklin.
Two friends slept in their tent on the desert. One put his head out the following morning and said, "Some camels passed here last night." "How do you know, did you see them?" his friend asked. "Oh no, but I see their tracks," he replied. If we do not see God we see His handiwork and we know He has been here. An atheist once said, "Show me your God. Let me see, hear, feel, smell or taste him and I will believe." To which a Christian replied, "Show me your brains--let me see, hear, feel, smell or taste them and I will believe." We cannot see life. A man waves his hand and we see the effect of life. We do not hear life. As we speak we hear only the effect of life. We do not feel life. We may feel the pulse of man but that is only the effect of life. Life cannot be demonstrated to the senses. Yet we know men live by the way they behave--and perhaps misbehave. There is life back of the action and though it cannot be demonstrated to the senses yet we believe it exists. In the same way, we know God exists because of the way the universe behaves. There is power back of the orderly arrangement, the evident design and precise operation of the universe.
If the universe exhibits design, there must be a great Designer; if it shows thought, there must be a great Thinker; if it is run by the laws of nature, there must be a great Lawgiver; if it operates with mathematical precision, there must be a great Mathematician; if the universe gives us important chemical combinations, there must be a great Chemist. Thomas A. Edison said that the universe is such an engineering feat, "There must be a Great Engineer" From these conclusions time is no escape. God exists.
"I do not have to open the Bible to learn that. (The existence of God.) It is enough that I open my eyes and turn them on that great book of nature, where it is legibly written, clearly revealed on every page. ’God’--that word may be read in the stars and on the face of the sun, it is painted on every flower, traced on every leaf, engraven on every rock; it is whispered by the winds, sounded forth by the billows of oceans, and may he heard by the dullest ear in the long-rolling thunder. I believe in the existence of a God, but not in the existence of an atheist, or that any man is so who can be considered in his sound and sober senses. What should we think of one who attempts to account for any other works of beauty and evident design, as he professes to do for those of God? Here is a classic: temple; here stands a statue, designed with such taste and executed with such skill that one almost expects the marble to leap from its pedestal; here bangs a painting of some dead beloved one, so life-like as to most our tears; here, in ’Iliad’ or ’Aeneid’ or Paradise Lost’, is a noble poem of the grandest thoughts, and clothed in sublimest imagery here is a piece of most delicate, intricate, and ingenious mechanism. Well, let a man tell me gravely that these were the work of chance; tell me, when I ask who made them, that nobody made them; tell me that the arrangement of letters in this poem, and of the colors in that picture, of the features in the statue, was a matter of mere chance; how should I stare at him? and conclude, without a moment’s hesitation, that I had fallen into the company of some drivelling idiot. Turning away from such atheistic ravings about the infinitely more glorious works of God, with what delight does reason echo the closing words of the seraphim’s hymn, The whole earth is full of His glory’!" (Guthrie).
4. We believe in God because the moral government of the world implies a moral governor.
Man is a subject of moral government. His conscience tells him there is a right and a wrong and that he ought to do the right. In his heart man believes justice will be done. Since nature knows nothing of justice, there must be One above who will finally mete out justice to all. All guilty men fear the day of retribution. Martyrs to truth and righteousness in every age have committed their cases to a Higher Court. To destroy the belief that right will triumph, that there is a great Moral Ruler who will see that truth does prevail, is to remove the very foundations of moral and social rectitude. Our faith in God gives promise of victory to those who labor for that which is good; it lets us know that our efforts can never be futile when they are for truth and righteousness; it means that in every storm we can harbor a great tranquility within our souls. Our belief in God means that we will face life optimistically for "this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."
5. We believe in God because the majority of scientific men and philosophers in all ages have believed in God.
Few indeed have been the great thinkers who did not believe in God. Socrates held that the Supreme Being is the immaterial, infinite Governor of all, that the world bears the stamp of His intelligence, that He is the author and vindicator of moral law. Aristotle believed in God, he said, for three reasons: the Ontological, founded on our necessary idea of an eternal existence; the Cosmological, based on the fact that for every effect there must be a cause, back of all harmony there must be intelligence; and the moral argument which has already been given. Copernicus and Galileo believed in God and believed the Bible also. Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the law of gravity; Joseph Priestley (a preacher) who was co-discoverer of oxygen; Michael Faraday and Lord Kelvin, the great British scientists; Jenner, who discovered the principle of vaccination; our own Robert A. Millikan, who isolated the electron, as well as thousands of other outstanding scientists and philosophers of all time have expressed firm faith in God. Darwin said, "The question of whether there is a creator and leader of the universe has been answered in the affirmative by the greatest spirits that ever lived." lie also said he could not conceive of the origin of life unless God had created it. Thomas A. Edison said, "There is a great directing head of things, a Supreme Being, who looks after the destinies of the world." Sir Charles Lyell, a great geologist, said, "In whatever direction we may turn our investigations, everywhere we are met by the clearest proofs of a creating Intelligence." Such testimonies could be multiplied without limit. We do not seek by sheer authority to prove the existence of God but simply to show that the multitude of common people, all Christian scholars, and all others with only an exception here and there have believed in the existence of God. The man who does not believe in God should be able to show that he has made a more profound study of the evidence than have these men, else, how does he expect to impeach their testimony?
6. We believe in God because of the abundance of the evidence.
Most people believe in God for reasons the sufficiency of which they have never had occasion to question. Yet, the questioning mind can find almost an unlimited number of reasons for believing in God. We decide other questions by the preponderance of evidence. Why not this one? Suggestive of the lines of proof which might be developed, a friend of mine writes that he believes in God for these reasons: Intuitional, Ontological, Cosmological, Geological, Astronomical, Physio-Theological, Psychological, Historical, Providential, and Ethical. Yet skeptics claim they cannot find any line of proof to indicate the existence of God! Shall we say they cannot or will not?
7. We believe in God because all the objections to believing in God lie with equal force against Atheism.
Atheists have objected to a belief in God because, they say, we seek to rise from the finite to the infinite; that from finite reasoning we seek to draw an infinite conclusion. We do, of course, seek to pass from the finite to the infinite in our reasoning. Just as the limited suggests the unlimited; as finite time suggests infinite time and finite space suggests infinite space, so finite intelligence suggests Infinite Intelligence. But the Atheist, since he claims to know that there is no God, believes that matter is eternal, self-existent and infinite. Something is infinite in eternal existence. The Atheist believes it is matter; the Christian believes it is God
Atheists have said that the conception of an intelligent First Cause proves nothing as the First Cause would then need to be accounted for. We do not need to account for the first cause because it is the first cause and there could be no cause back of it. Since we cannot go back of the first cause it is more reasonable to stop at mind than matter. If this be a difficulty, however, Atheism is likewise beset with it, for if matter is the eternal existence what was before it? Matter gives no evidence of self-existence.
Skeptics have objected that we do not know God perfectly. Indeed, we know nothing perfectly. If we knew God perfectly, we would then be gods ourselves. However, matter in none of its forms is known perfectly. If we must know a thing perfectly before we can know it exists, then we cannot know that matter exists. Probably no one will ever understand a being of greater measure than himself. Some men cannot understand how others can be noble, unselfish and sacrificing. They do not have any standards by which to measure them.
Every Objection which an Atheist can make against the existence of God can be made against his belief in the eternal existence of matter.
8. We believe in God because Atheism has insuperable difficulties of its own The Atheist criticizes the Christian for assuming that God exists. He then assumes the eternal existence of matter, that the forces of this world are self-active, that the laws of the universe are eternal, and that nature continually repeats the same cycle of changes (else it would run its course and have become inactive long ago). Atheism assumes that nature exhibits no thought, no design, no plan. Bold indeed are these assumptions and not one of them can be proved.
Atheism assigns an inadequate cause of the universe. Matter does not possess the qualities of thinking, feeling, and volition which we see in the universe. It is, therefore, an inadequate cause of the universe.
Atheism assumes that life came from dead material without outside stimuli. This would be a greater miracle than the resurrection of the dead.
Atheism maintains the absurd position that all things exist as the result of chance. Theists believe in design. The opposite of design is chance, sheer chance. A watch cannot by chance bring itself into existence, neither can a universe. If the pieces of a watch were placed together in a box and shaken for a million years they would not arrange themselves into a watch. The organs of the human body could not have arranged themselves by chance; the design of nature did not just happen, in fact, nothing runs by chance. We are justified, therefore, in believing in an Eternal Mind and in discarding chance (whatever that may be).
9. Intelligent causation and design is always associated with personality. God must, therefore, be a Personality, a divine Being.
There is nothing in nature, there is no known fact, principle or law which disproves the existence of God. Atheism is without foundation. "No syllogism can be formed that will prove it, no experiment performed that will certify it." All we know of intelligent causation and design is associated with a person. We have no knowledge of abstract intelligence. We are, therefore, justified in concluding that God is a divine Personality, a divine Being and not an abstract idea or fact. There is strong resemblance in the design of nature and the design of man. Man looks at the movable joints of his hand and makes a wrench. He observes the valves of the heart and the pulley of the eye and models his invention after them. He sees the great mountains with broad bases and the low center of gravity, and models his pyramids and tall buildings after them. We conclude that as these things are the result of deliberate planning on man’s part, the universe is a result of deliberate planning on God’s part.
Man must believe in God or in Atheism. These are the two positions challenging our attention. Thomas Jefferson, the one of our Presidents who was inclined to be skeptical, considered the evidence and wrote his friend, John Adams, "An Atheist I can never be." It is more logical to believe in God than not to believe. It is difficult to believe sometimes but far more difficult not to believe. Shall we say, "In the beginning matter created all things" or "In the beginning Eternal Nothing created all things" or shall we say, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"?
(For some of the material in this chapter I am indebted to the works of H. W. Everest, principally his book, The Divine Demonstration.)