I was scrolling through Instagram a few weeks ago and I came across this meme in a post. I recreated it for copyright reasons.
I had seen it a few times before and it always made me laugh. But, I believe people take the point the meme is trying to make seriously. The point being if we can use an ancient text written by humans as evidence that a supernatural God exists; then it follows that we can use a different text written by humans as evidence that other supernatural things or people exist. The problem with this is that it’s the wrong question. The Bible doesn’t answer the question “Does God exist?” The Bible already assumes that God exists. The Bible answers the question “Who is the God that God exists?” That God being Yahweh.
So if we can’t use the Bible as evidence for God. What are we supposed to turn to for evidence? Well scholars and philosophers who are smarter than me have found solid evidence and arguments for the existence of God. Here I’ll talk about three of them “The Cosmological Argument, The Teleological Argument, and the Moral Argument.” Each one has a lot of details and would require its own blog. So this will be a broad overview of them.
The Cosmological Argument
Most scientists agree that the universe had a beginning around 13 billion years ago. It all started with The Big Bang. All of time, energy, and matter came into existence at the same time. Thomas Aquinas (and others before him) in his “Summa Theologicia” argues that everything has a beginning has a cause and that it’s not logical to have an infinite regress of causes. There has to be a “first cause.” So what was the first cause that led to The Big Bang? Well, there’s two options. Either nothing did. So nothing created everything out of nothing. Which honestly makes no sense to me because popular atheists can’t explain it. The second option is a being that some have called the “unmoved mover” or “the uncaused cause.” A being powerful enough to cause the Big Bang and that sits outside of space and time! So who created the being? Nothing did… because that being would have to be eternal with no beginning or end. “But then why can’t the universe be eternal?” The Big Bang is evidence the universe is not eternal because it had a beginning. So this points to the second option.
The Teleological Argument
This is the argument of the fine-tuning of the universe. You know a watch points to a watchmaker. It says that everything in the universe is designed so that life could exist. It’s too well designed; to the point where the odds of all components that are necessary for life would fit together perfectly by accident are next to impossible. It’s so improbable it might as well be impossible. A simple Google search can show different facts about how designed the universe is. Here are just a few
1. The distance from Earth to the sun is just right. So that we don’t burn to a crisp or freeze to death.
2. We have the right amount of gasses in the atmosphere that support life.
3. During the Big Bang, the universe expanded at just the right speed for life to eventually be created. That’s from Stephen Hawkings.
There are a lot more. But Dr. Frank Turek sums this up in his book “I Don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”
“Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has calculated the probability that these and other constants—122 in all—would exist today for any planet in the universe by chance (i.e., without divine design). Assuming there are 10^22 planets in the universe (a very large number: 1 with 22 zeros following it), his answer is shocking: one chance in 10^138—that’s one chance in one with 138 zeros after it! There are only 10^70 atoms in the entire universe. In effect, there is zero chance that any planet in the universe would have the life-supporting conditions we have, unless there is an intelligent Designer behind it all.”
I don’t have enough faith to be an Atheist. Pg 106
The Moral Argument
So some info about me. I’m a purple belt in a martial art called Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. When I say that to people, they always ask me “Is that good?” As a joke, I just reply “It depends on who you ask.” This is basically what morality boils down to without God. Is something right or wrong? It depends on who you ask. You can see how this can become problematic quickly. Is stealing right or wrong? It depends on who you ask. Is murder right or wrong? It depends on who you ask. I mean, why should it matter? Without God “ there’s nothing special about human beings. They’re just accidental byproducts of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet Earth…(Reasonable Faith pg.173)” Now if you’re reading this and getting uncomfortable. That’s the moral argument! That there are things that are objectively right and wrong. Independent of what people think. That human beings are more than what Bender from Futurama calls us. “Meatbags.” We see so many things happening in the world that make us think “That’s evil.” Where does that sense of right and wrong come from? Some say “Because I’m a good human being.” Good according to whom? Some say “because we live in a society that defines right and wrong.” Ok, which society? It doesn’t matter how you cut it. If there’s no God there is no real good or real evil. It all boils down to “it depends on who you ask.” For something to be objectively good or bad, there has to be what some call “a moral law giver” above humans to define what is good or bad. Sounds a lot like God.
These three are the ones that I like to bring up. If you’re asking the question “Well how does that point to the Christian God?” Well, it doesn’t. These are simply arguments for the existence of a God. How we get to Jesus is through a series of different questions. These simply point to a God that’s there!
Hope this helps!
Here are some more resources if you’d like to dive further:
Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig
“I don’t have enough faith to be an Athiest” by Dr. Frank Turek
Apologetic Marketplace 
the cosmological argument never gets to your god, and a force works just as well as a first cause.
There is no evidence for fine tuning. And if you wish to claim yuor god designed anything, you need to explain whether it was simply stupid or malcious when it supposed “chose” constants that cause our sun to give us cancer, to make DNA that fails often and horribly, and to make the human body so thousands of people choke to death every year.
if you try to claim that the “fall” caused those problems, then your claims of seeing evidence for fine tuning fail since what you see isn’t what was intended.
The moral argument fails since 1. Chrsitians can’t agree on what morals their god wants, and 2. Christian morals are entirely subjective, dependent on who or what something is. You must exclude your god from your morality since it does things that, if it were human, you would be horrified.
no evidence for your god or jesus, nor any of the events supposedly caused by them. and it is disingenous to try to claim that you aren’t meaning your god when you try to use these arguments.
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Hi! Not sure how far we’ll on these comments. But I have a few questions for you.
1. Which force is the first cause?
2. If things aren’t as they should be. Is that God’s fault or human’s fault for abusing the design?
3. If there is no God, where does morality come from?
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1. Laws of physics. And still no evidence for any gods. We know that the laws at least exist.
2. You an’t show how they “should be” and if humans are stronger than your god, you have a problem. You also have no mechanism how humans supposedly “abused” anything, or how human actions caused the sun to give humans cancer, etc.
3. Morality comes from humans. It is subjective and thus it can change. This means we can toss the ignorant nonsenes form the bible. We can see thta humans invent morals since christians do taht just like everyone else.
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