Re: Prove to me that God exists.
The Rational Foundations of Belief in the Existence of God and His Transcendent Uniqueness.
Suppose that you survived an air crash at sea and washing upon an island shore you walked along the beach to discover a watch ticking away. Would you conclude that some human being had recently been there and left that watch on the shore, or would you assume that the winds and the waves and the blazing sun had acted in concert and fortuitously to marshal the elements into the marvellous artefact of that ticking watch? Of course, you would conclude the former. Then what about the beach and the one standing on it and the sun and the wind and the waves and the sky, may we conclude that that supreme harmony and awesome beauty was the product of some purposeless haphazard process keeping in mind universe is infinitely more complex and perfect than a ticking watch; indeed, the wing of a fly is more complicated than it, nay a single strand of DNA in the wing of a fly, or any molecule of its protein. Indeed, competent researchers and mathematicians have demonstrated that a strand of DNA is more complex than arrangement of letters in a book like Tolstoy's War and Peace. Think what are the chances that a machine generating random letters might one day type out the text of War and Peace? Mathematicians who are experts in probability insist that even in a billion years a random letter-generator could not type out a page of a beautiful and meaningful book like War and Peace let alone a whole book. In fact Richard Dawkins, an outspoken proponent of neo-Darwinist theory, wrote in his book Climbing Mount Probable (1996) that the nucleus of any cell contains a digitally coded database larger in information content than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica put together. The impossibility of random processes producing extremely complex and interdependent systems has been capably demonstrated by mathematicians like William Demski in his The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (1998) and in his Intelligent Design (1999).
In our example above of the beach and the watch it is essential to bear in mind that although both the beach and the watch are products of deliberate premeditated design the difference between a designer of a watch and the designer of the universe is infinite and absolute because while the first merely manipulated the elements, the second brought the elements into existence in the first place and them formed and empowered everything that manipulates. Our example is a picturesque representation of one of the rational arguments for the existence of God. It can be expressed in more concisely logical terms thus: The world is designed; everything designed requires a designer; therefore, the world has a designer. Or we can phrase the proposition in another way: The world is originated; everything that is originated requires an originator; therefore the world has an originator. Or alternately: The world is caused; everything that is caused requires a cause; therefore the world has a cause.
Keep in mind as I invoke some logical principles that logic is merely the science of how to think correctly, or in other words what conclusions can be deduced from certain types of premises and what constitutes valid premises. Whether or not those premises concern what is of this world or what is beyond it is immaterial; their validity depends on what they propose not on what their subject is. Now the conclusion that the world has a designer or a primal cause that is not part of it is not dogma; it??s cognition. Let us go back and confirm the validity of the basic premises in the above syllogisms (lines of reasoning). The reason we say that we and all created things have come out of nonexistence is that we know intuitively that neither we nor other created things had to exist, for if they had to exist they would not be subject to extinction and change. (We will return to this point presently.) We say that things are originated or caused because we observe that everything in creation is in a state of change and every change is the origination of a new state and the extinction of a previous state.
That beginning is an origination, a production and an effect; it therefore needs one to originate, produce, or cause, its new state and that is the necessary existent which men call God. It is futile to claim that other originated things, in particular the previous states of all things, are the sufficient cause of those effects because they are also effects. Even if we assume a chain of cause and effect going back for billions and billions of years we are stuck with supposing a primal cause (to use Aristotle's term) which is self-sufficient and self-existent and not merely an effect caused by something else, and furthermore, which is outside the entire chain of originated chain of cause and effect since after all causes are merely effects. This intuition overwhelmed me when I was eighteen years old studying physical and biological sciences at university; it suddenly dawned on me that even if we might explain the development of life from inanimate matter by a supposed evolutionary process, it was impossible to explain the emergence of matter from the void of nonexistence except by supposing that necessary and eternal existent which men call God.
No doubt this matter has been the subject of an age-old controversy between theists and materialists, for materialists insist that the world has always existed. The theists claim that there has always existed an unchangeable, independent and self-existent and self-sufficient being who has given all other beings that are or ever were their origin, while materialists claim that there has been an infinite succession of changeable and dependent beings produced from one another in an endless progression without any original cause at all. It is either one or the other because a third proposition has never been proposed nor can it be conceived. Now if we consider the claim of the materialists we see that what they in fact propose is an infinite progression of cause and effect that is in fact an endless series of phenomena dependent one on another. Since the series that they conceive includes all dependent and changeable things that are or ever have been, it is clear that the whole series cannot have any physical cause from without, for the series comprises all physical phenomena; nor can the series have any cause from within itself for we have already supposed that the existence of nothing in this series is necessary, that is, nothing in the series is self-existent but dependent on what preceded it. At the same time while no part in this series exists of itself independently and necessarily, neither does the whole exist independently and necessarily since self-sufficient or necessary existence is an eternal, essential, intrinsic attribute, not an acquired, originated, extrinsic, relative, or accidental one. Necessary existence, or what theologians and philosophers call necessity for short, is eternal and immutable, not something that might be acquired, for what is produced or acquired is clearly caused or originated not eternal. The opposite of necessary existence is contingent existence. The first term implies that type of existence that we intuit cannot not be, while the second type implies the type of existence that we intuit may be just as it may not be. The first is independent, eternal and immutable, while the second (contingent existence) is dependent, originated (that is, qualified by a beginning) and in a constant state of change. Keeping this in mind, we can appreciate that the supposed infinite succession of dependent beings that the materialists (of whatever stripe they be) propose is a series that neither has any original cause, nor can it be the self-sufficient cause of its own existence for nothing in it is necessary or self-existent. It is a clear contradiction: something caused, yet without any cause, or to state it concisely: an effect without an efficient (that is, what effects it in the language of the philosophers). Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) pointed out that the materialists supposition of an infinite succession of changeable and dependent beings [that is, phenomena] produced from one another in an endless progression without any original cause at all is only a driving back from one step to another and, as it were, removing out of sight the question concerning the ground or reason of the existence of things, for as he observed whether we maintain that there is one being which is neither necessary nor self-existent, or whether we maintain an infinite series of dependent beings, neither has any original cause although both are dependent by definition and that is absurd. However, the absurdity of proposition of one dependent effect without any cause is more apparent in the minds of most than the proposition of a series of dependent beings without any original cause. The English philosopher-theologian William Wollaston (1659-1724) illustrated the absurdity of this proposition with a fine example: Suppose a chain hung down from the heavens from an unknown height so that what it was hung upon was not visible. It remained there fixed in its location without descending. Now suppose one were to ask what supported this chain. Would it be sufficient to answer that the lowest link was held by the one above it and the one above it by the one above it ad infinitum? Of course not, for one would need to now what supports the whole. Claiming that the chain is infinite does not resolve the fact that it needs a support, for how absurd to claim that a finite chain needs a support but an infinite one does not. You should understand that the proposition of an infinite succession is the essential argument of all materialists. The mechanism they propose for the relation between the individual phenomena in the series is not relevant, for we have shown that the whole series of relationships whatever they suppose them to be is absurd and impossible. Thus, however they suppose that inanimate matter became organic molecules like protein and RNA and DNA and so on, and then that became animate unicellular organisms which in turn supposedly became multicellular organisms which became primitive invertebrates and so on is irrelevant.
Now apart from the fact that even if the chain of phenomena were infinite it would still be dependent and originated, there is another glaring problem with the proposition of an infinite succession, for while infinity may exist in our imaginations it does not exist in actuality. No doubt my claim may jolt you as it did me when I first heard it, but it is clearly the case. You can start from today and for the rest of your life write bigger and bigger numbers but by the time you die you will still have a finite number. Set up a computer to continuously raise a number to its own power so that it soon generates astronomically big numbers, but by the time it wears down or by the time technological civilization extinguishes itself it will only have generated an infinite number. We intuit that quite naturally because we know that what is composed of finite parts can only be finite. That has traditionally been illustrated in real theology by considering two progressions of phenomena: one from this moment back forever, and another from the moment of, say, your birth forever. Now take these two progressions and imagine that they are put side by side. You can imagine that ever phenomena is numbered and counted. Will not the sequence which goes back forever from the present forever exceed the sequence which goes back forever from the moment of your birth by the finite extent of your age? No doubt it will since the number of phenomena that have accompanied your existence from birth till present is clearly finite. Since the difference between the two progressions is finite, the two progressions must themselves be finite.
Be that as it may, I remind you that even if we concede that the sequence is infinite it does not avail the materialists because our supposition is that the chain is composed of an infinite number of contingent, originated and dependent phenomena; therefore, no matter how long the sequence might be every unit of it, that is every individual phenomena is dependent on what might cause it, originate it, and endow it with its particular qualities instead of other qualities. I have already stated as much; I have only restated it to remind you and to emphasize it.
A lucid example has been given by Muslim theologians to illustrate the point that the length of the sequence does not matter. If you instruct your computer to write out rows of zeroes, will not its significance remain zero even if you programmed the computer to produce zeroes forever? (However, it will only be able to do it, until it breaks down or as long as you pay the hydro bill.) But if you put a single integer between one and nine, even just a one, at the left of those zeroes, will not that change the matter dramatically? Of course it will because now you will have quantity whereas before you had nothing. No matter how many zeroes we might write we would never get quantity until we put a real number at their left. In the same a lie does not become truth even if we add to it more lies or innumerable lies. And in the same way how will originated phenomena (that is, phenomena each one of which is preceded by nonexistence) become necessary (that is, nonexistence is impossible for it) just because their number became large or let us for the sake of argument say infinite? It is impossible; therefore, we must suppose an independent, self-existent, self-sufficient, immutable, transcendent and necessary being in existence before the sequence of dependent phenomena, and in short a being who was not preceded by nonexistence. The English call that being God. The cognition of God is not a projection of the mind; rather it is a logical necessity, an objective truth that the mind is capable of intuiting definitively, not an inconclusive metaphysical speculation, nor a subjective phenomenon that the mind invents. In the same way that we can comprehend intuitively and logically what is necessary for the divine being, we can intuit what attributes He must have. In general, He is described by every attribute of perfection, for if He had any imperfection it would be inconceivable that He could have brought this universe out of nonexistence. In particular, we intuit that he is powerful, knowing, and willing because were He not both powerful and knowledgeable, He would not have been able to create the universe and then maintain it through every moment, and were He not willing He could not choose its existence instead of its nonexistence at every moment, nor could He choose to endow every existent thing with the attributes with which they are endowed rather than other conceivably possible attributes. Furthermore, we maintain that He is living, for were He not living his power, knowledge and willing would not have any meaning. We also maintain that He is seeing, hearing, and speaking. These attributes are considered perfections in human beings whom God created; it is therefore inconceivable that He who endowed them with these attributes should Himself be deprived of such perfection. Nonetheless, His attributes are utterly different from our attributes that bear the same names because His attributes are necessary, eternal, and transcendent. He has known and willed and empowered since all eternity, yet his knowledge, His will and His empowerment are one and do not change, and they are perfect beyond any need to become perfected. He knew before there existed anything to be known, and He knows all that might have been were He to have willed it. His knowledge did not become more complete when the things that He knew came into existence. While human knowledge is dependent on the existence of the things to be known and unfolds gradually and is subject to disappearance and change, the knowledge of God does not have any such imperfection. He knows what stirs inside cells and in the farthest stars, the movement of every atom and molecule of existence; He knows the whispering in the depth of our souls, every secret agony, our ennui, our bliss, all has been know to Him through all eternity. How could it be otherwise when every contingent thing is continually in need of Him to sustain its existence and to create its forthcoming states?
Similarly, He sees and hears in a transcendent way in preeternity without the need of any organ and without the phenomena of rays of light or waves of sound, and without their being any distance or direction between Him and what He sees and Hears and yet without Him being present there either. He saw and heard all things before the things that might be seen, heard even existed. As with his knowledge, His sight and hearing is one and indivisible. His attribute of seeing and hearing does not acquire anything new upon the creation of new sights and sounds; rather, He as already heard and seen all things since all eternity. Know that this must be so, for were God to undergo any change, or were anything to happen in His being, that would mean that He was originated and contingent and thus not the necessary existent. Like all other attributes, we cannot imagine how God hears and sees in preeternity; however, we know that He must for He is perfect in both being and attribute. Furthermore, we maintain that God speaks because the ability to communicate one's thoughts and will is a perfection among humans while the inability to do so is regarded by them as a defect. Muslim scholars say that the speech of God refers to the speech of the divine self. Having said this I should point out that many of our scholars of the opinion that the last three attributes that I have mentioned are not known by reason directly but through true revelation. Since I have not yet discussed the rational basis of revelation and what distinguishes true revelation from false, I did not want to anticipate myself. For the time being let us assume that can be intuited by reason, and then leave the discussion of revelation for another occasion. To continue, I should say that the speech of God cannot be heard for it is one and preeternal like all His transcendent attributes. Yet God revealed His eternal speech to those He chose as prophets, for He commissioned the Archangel Gabriel to reveal to the prophet words and sounds that indicate that eternal speech communicating to them something of His knowledge and His will. While we also call this revealed speech the word of God, the letters and sounds that indicate that eternal speech are originated. What God revealed to Moses was called the Torah; what He revealed to David was called the Psalms; what He revealed to Jesus was called the Bible; and what He revealed to Muhammad was called the Quran.
The last of God's attributes is creation; it comprehends every type of act including annihilation, anger, love, provision, reward and punishment. God acted in preeternity and while His act is one and indivisible, the manifestation of His eternal act is multiple and it appears in time by His power and according to His will. Furthermore, His act is manifested in other than Himself while the acts with which He empowers His creatures are manifested in themselves. All that happens in this world and the next is the manifestation of God's preeternal act. This is the secret to understanding how God acts and yet does not undergo any change. Let me remind you that while we intuit what is necessary for Him in His being, His attributes and His act, we cannot imagine how He exists, or how He is, or how He acts. How can what is created out of nothing and exists in time and space ever comprehend what creates and exists beyond time and space without having any of the attributes of bodies or other created things? How can what was preceded by nonexistence comprehend that which was not preceded by it?
From the foregoing you should now be able to understand that:
1. God is not a body, nor force, nor energy; rather, He is the creator of force and of time and space and energy and spirit and all that exists in our beings and around us. Our inability to understand the nature of His being does not preclude our certain knowledge of His existence and what is necessary, impossible and possible for Him.
2. We must not assume that God is like us; rather we intuit that logically and necessarily He is absolutely and utterly dissimilar from us, and that is the correct meaning of the term divine transcendence.
3. True faith does not mean making believe, nor is it opposed to reason; rather it is engendered by reason when reason is made pure by the will to know the truth.
4. Materialism is make-believe; it defies the edicts of reason and contradicts the evidence of this contingent and originated universe. Thus, the term faith in the way you and many people in the modern West have used it, applies to reductive materialism not to intuitive belief in the necessary and transcendent God. Validating Materialism is what Darwinism is mainly about.
5. God is not a subjective matter. We intuit His necessary existence objectively and a priority. The tongue of our existence continually declares His reality. Its idiom is the most articulate of idioms for it wells up at the source of our being. Those who, when God is mentioned, ask the question Whose God? betray their delusion that God exists merely as a subjective reality in the minds of men and that men are the creators of God. The truth of the matter is human intelligence declares that there is one transcendent God: my God, your God, the God of all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be.