God is Dead??? (Is it reasonable to believe in God) by Brian A. Moon
Story – It was my first year at Palm Beach Atlantic College when a person I latter became good friends with ask me questions that I had never thought of growing up in the church. They ripped my faith apart with their arguments and questions, and left me saying can I really believe in God? It took me down a long and sometimes painful road, and tonight I would like to share some of my travels with you.
From the time man has left written records of their existence, there has been two questions that have been asked in every generation in every time period.
These questions have been dealt with and answered in various ways, but they are: Why am I here, and is their something outside of our world, like a god?
These philosophical questions have been the main topics of discussion since the time of Aristotle and Plato, through the middle ages and up to present day philosophers. Even the many debates in our world today, like is evolution true, all come back to one basic question… Is it reasonable to believe in God? The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche answered this question with the statement, “God is dead.” Tonight we will take up this question though and hopefully come to some kind of answer for ourselves. Then if we do come up with the conclusion that it is reasonable, is Christianity the best picture of that belief? This is no easy task and I will not even pretend to have all of the answers tonight, And it is impossible to cover all of this issue in a mere message, but my hope is that we all can become more educated in our faith and able to make a defense of why we believe what we believe. I would love to spend time sharing with you why this is of importance for us, why we need to even be concerned with why we believe what we believe, but this verse in 1 Peter says it best.
1 Peter 3:15 “Always be ready to make a defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you…” NRSV
1. So is it reasonable to believe in God?
When we try to decide is anything is reasonable we take the evidence for it, and we take the evidence against it, and compare them logically. If there is more evidence for it to be true, then we say it is reasonable to say that this is the case.
If there is more evidence against this being the case we say it is not reasonable to believe in that. For a long time people believed that the world was flat, but we know today that it is round. Today we would say that based on the evidence it is not reasonable to believe in a flat earth. This is our task tonight, and it is lengthy so lets begin.
The Arguments For God’s Existence
There are four main arguments for the existence of God in the way that we understand him, that is: Only one God who is the creator of the universe, and who is all powerful, all perfect, and all loving. The first one is from the Christian theologian Anselm who lived from 1033 – 1109.
It is commonly called the Ontological Argument for God’s Existence
We can come up with an idea of a being that there is none greater,
By that I mean one that is the greatest in everything you can think of, he is all powerful, all perfect, and so on.
This being that none greater can be thought of cannot by definition exist only in the mind though.
Suppose it only existed in our minds, then it would not be the greatest being you could think of because,
A being that existed outside of your mind would be greater than the one that only existed in your mind, because it is greater to exist, than not to exist.
Greatest Being Greatest Being
(only in the mind) (in the mind and in reality)
Which is greater
Therefore, this being which none greater can be thought of must exists in reality and in the mind, or God exists.
This argument is an argument in the mind, it is a logical argument, but to this date it has been the one that has been the least challenged.
However, this is a sometimes-hard argument to wrap our arms around, so to speak, Because we live in world that says, “Show me with something I can see or touch and then I will believe it.”
So, the following argument was developed by St. Thomas Aquinas, it is commonly known as the Cosmological Argument for God’s Existence.
It has had different versions develop over the years, but the basic idea is as follows. When we look at the world around us we can see that the following are true:
1. From trees to humans we all depend on something else to survive, or the world is full of contingent beings, beings that depend on something other for survival.
2. There is also motion in the world, things are moving from our very world to a ball rolling down a hill.
3. Finally we also can see that our universe began. Even an evolutionist agrees that at some point our world did not exist and then it did exist.
We can all see these three things, but what is the cause or explanation for beings being dependant on other beings, and what was the cause for motion, and why did our world come into existence?
Take the world being full of beings that need other beings for survival,
This being has to have a cause for its existence; the cause has to be outside of itself because it depends on others for survival.
If that being has to have a cause outside of itself for its existence, it cannot come ultimately from other beings that have a cause for their existence.
At some point their had to be a being that did not have a cause and is not dependant on other beings, or things.
That being is God.
The second thing we see is that there is motion in the world.
Again if an object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by something else, and an object remains in rest unless acted upon by something outside of itself,
Then all of the motion in the universe had to be caused by something,
That something is God.
Finally, we see that our world was brought into existence at some point.
Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence.
The universe began to exist,
Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence, and that existence is God.
Remember when you were a kid, or maybe even now, you would take the dominos out of the box and set them up in complex rows and shapes, Then you would push the first one and the rest would fall down. The point is that if you were to trace the cause for the last on to fall, and the one before that, and the one before that, you do not go on forever, But you come to a first cause. In this case it was you, but in our universe it was God.
The next argument is similar to this in that it draws from the world we can touch and see.
It is called the Teleological Argument for God’s Existence
One day you are walking in the woods and you find a watch. You pick it up and examine the outside and the beauty of the case and the artwork that is engraved into it. Then you open up the watch and see the hands moving and the regularity and complexity, in which they move. Then you open up the back of the watch and examine the gears and springs and how precise a machine this is. Even if you do know that this is a watch you think automatically that it was created by something with intelligence, it had a creator other than nature. Now look at the world around us and how precise and even more complex it is over a watch and it leaves you with the conclusion that it must have an intelligent creator out. This is probably the most common argument for God’s existence and when you compare it to what we experience when we see the beauty of the mountains or the complexity of a child’s birth it does make us think that this must have been created.
The final argument known as The Moral Argument for God’s Existence is ever evolving one that started back with Aquinas, was further developed by Kant and finally by the popular author, C.S. Lewis.
The following does not do justice to the argument, but generically it is as follows:
We have moral values in the world
For these values to have any kind of meaning there must exist some basis for them, or they must have been based on something.
That something is God since he is the perfect moral being.
So that is the case for the existence of God.
As we said in the opening though, we now have to weigh the evidence for God not existing against this to see if it is reasonable to believe in him.
2. The Biggest Case Against Gods Existence
The biggest and strongest case against God’s existence is the problem of evil.
This is the way the typical argument shapes up:
If God is all loving then he would want to put an end to evil
If God was all good he would
If God was all powerful then he could
Evil does exists
Therefore God does not
For many people this is the stumbling block for belief in God, how could God allow the Holocaust or what happened on September 11 happen? While the problem of evil is a tough problem to overcome it does not prove that God does not exists. While many people have given varied ways around the problem of evil by denying one of God’s characteristics, like all powerful, The fact is that the argument just given against God’s existence does not disprove God at all, it lacks in showing any reason why it is improbable to believe in God. The only thing the argument does is bring up the question of why does God allow evil to exist, which is best left for another time.
So when you look at the evidence for God’s existence, and then the evidence against it, we can say with probable certainty that, YES it is more probable that God does exist than not exist. Which answers our first question of yes it is reasonable to believe in God! Now that we can say that, we are still left with several choices of which expression of that belief is true. Obviously, I am a Christian and the reason I am a Christian and not a Muslim is because I find Christianity to be the true expression of God with man. But it would be careless to simply believe this and not examine why I do, it would be a terrible waste of a life to find out at the end that I had lived a lie all of those years. If I owned a boat and I had been told that it might have some problems with it that could make it sink, but still rented it out for people to use, it would be morally wrong especially when I receive the insurance money for the boats sinking.
We as Christians share our faith with others and if it has some problems with it that might make it sink, then it would be wrong to share with other people.
So lets look quickly to see if it is the best picture of our belief in God.
3. Is Christianity the Best Picture of Belief in God?
Reality supports those things that are a reflection of itself, and does not support those things that are not a reflection of itself (i.e. gravity) So when we look at the different expression of belief in God the one most supported is the real picture of God. To simply start this look with Christianity is hard because we borrow our past from Judaism. So we begin with what is known as a Judeo-Christian worldview and then we will narrow our investigation. The first thing is the concept of history. The idea (that even Darwin used for the theory of evolution) of history, or time being linear, or always progressing from a point, Comes from the Judeo-Christian understanding of history and time. Continuing this we see that the Judeo-Christian worldview was the first to understand history as “World” history. For the Jews it was God working in world history, and for the Christian salvation gave world history its meaning. Secondly, we see the idea of human freedom. All of the human freedom movement ideas have come from the Exodus account and Messianic parts of the Bible. Christianity was the force behind the end to slavery. In fact it carried a powerful message of freedom to those slaves. Think about it, Christianity was the religion of the white man, so why did they adopt and embrace the Christian message? Next we look at the social welfare system. The idea of helping those less fortunate than you did not arise in communism or socialism, But they came out of the Jewish tradition and more specifically the message of Jesus Christ. Finally, we look at science. We think today that science is the enemy of Christianity, but in all reality it was founded out of a Judeo-Christian worldview. The idea that one can explain the world is based on the concept that it was created and sustained by God, not some ever changing force. The rest of the world has to tell us why it was that science was birthed out of a Christian worldview, what was it that was able to give birth to science that others did not offer? So, from these 4 things we can see that in some part reality supports the Judeo-Christian worldview. These are not an extensive list, but these could be said are of more importance than any others and therefore prove that the Judeo-Christian worldview is the best picture of God.
But, now how do we get to Christianity being the best? The first thing is that the New Testament is a reliable source for historical documentation about Jesus. When you take the time to examine the evidence we find that the New Testament exceeds the accuracy of any other document from the past.
And we have historical accounts of much of the life of Jesus through historians of the day like a man named Josephus.
But still this does nothing to prove that Jesus was the Son of God, it just proves he existed. However, when we look at those historical accounts and the events that surrounded his life we find it the most probable that he was who he said to be, the Son of God. The possible outcomes for Jesus can be said by the 4 “L” ’s
Legend – there never was a Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God. This option is not possible because of the historical data.
Lunatic – he really thought he was the Son of God, but was wrong. This is not possible when we look at his character and his miracles.
Liar – he deliberately deceived people as a tool of, say the devil. This option is not possible because of his miracles, the outcome of his life, and the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy.
Lord – he was who he said, the Son of God.
Since the entire New Testament and the Christian church rest on these facts, it is reasonable to say that Christianity is the best picture of God.
Some of you may be asking yourself right now, wow that was 30 minutes of garbage. Why do I need to know these things? If you will remember the Great Commandment it says this:
Matthew 22:37 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” NRSV (italics mine)
Most Christians love God with their heart and soul, but when it comes to worshiping God we check our brains at the door. God wants all of us, he wants us to worship him with our minds as much as the other parts of our being. This message tonight is worshiping God with our mind. We are using the gifts of intelligence he has given us to reach back to him and say how awesome he truly is.
Prayer Time -----------------
God we thank you for the minds you have given us. We thank you that you are a God that is reasonable to believe in, you fashioned our world in a way that we can see you in all of creation, and know your existence in the depths of our minds.
Help us to use this knowledge that you give us to advance your kingdom and spread truth to a dying world. Amen.
