Traditional Arguments for God

 

The traditional arguments for seeing God in creation have been severely criticized, but ultimately they still raise difficult questions that those who deny the existence of God need to answer. The first question is why something rather then nothing exists and how it came into being without a Creator. Some would see an endless chain of causes stretching back to eternity, none of which is really first or fundamental. But if this is so, the question comes why this chain with no reason to exist exists at all. Or some would trace everything back to matter and energy. But matter and energy are just the stuff the universe is made of; where do we get the pattern, the shape matter and energy are in? It would be an awfully dull universe with just an unformed batch of matter and energy lying around and nothing happening. Besides, science tells us that things are running down, that even the stars and galaxies will one day burn out-- and if they have an end they must have had a beginning. There are those who say everything came into being out of pure chance. (This comes from quantum mechanics, which is a whole story in itself). But how can something come into existence as a result of a coin toss, when there are no time, no space, and no coins?

 Another argument for the existence of God is the design we see in the universe. The common way to get around this is, of course, the theory of evolution. But there are problems with this. The individual cell is a complex organism, a tiny factory. And there is no clear explanation of how it came into being from a random pool of amino acids (supposedly produced by some accident). Further, until there is a large part of the mechanism already in place, the standard (and highly questionable) evolutionary process of selection as a result of genetic mutation cannot work. There are also many complex structures in living organisms that are useless until they are completely evolved. What good is a partially evolved eye or a partly evolved wing? Such things would be a hindrance to the survival of the creature that possessed them.

There is also the question of human beings. Could just the random workings of chance have produced consciousness and thought? And if our thought is the result of random processes, can we know anything? If what we think is based on our heredity and environment rather than what is true, than it is meaningless. And why do we have this stubborn tendency to believe in right and wrong? Even those who reject all conventional morality then turn around and preach forcibly on our duty to help the poor or save the earth.
As I look at God’s creation I am forced to the conclusion that, whether in nature or in human beings, there is evidence for an original Creator (Romans 1:19,20).