Question: "Does God exist? Is there evidence for the existence of God?"
Answer: The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved. The Bible says that we must accept by faith the fact that God exists: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). If God so desired, He could simply appear and prove to the whole world that He exists. But if He did that, there would be no need for faith. “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’” (John 20:29).
That does not mean, however, that there is no evidence of God’s existence. The Bible states, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world” (Psalm 19:1-4). Looking at the stars, understanding the vastness of the universe, observing the wonders of nature, seeing the beauty of a sunset—all of these things point to a Creator God. If these were not enough, there is also evidence of God in our own hearts. Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us, “…He has also set eternity in the hearts of men.” Deep within us is the recognition that there is something beyond this life and someone beyond this world. We can deny this knowledge intellectually, but God’s presence in us and all around us is still obvious. Despite this, the Bible warns that some will still deny God’s existence: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). Since the vast majority of people throughout history, in all cultures, in all civilizations, and on all continents believe in the existence of some kind of God, there must be something (or someone) causing this belief.
In addition to the biblical arguments for God’s existence, there are logical arguments. First, there is the ontological argument. The most popular form of the ontological argument uses the concept of God to prove God’s existence. It begins with the definition of God as “a being than which no greater can be conceived.” It is then argued that to exist is greater than to not exist, and therefore the greatest conceivable being must exist. If God did not exist, then God would not be the greatest conceivable being, and that would contradict the very definition of God.
A second argument is the teleological argument. The teleological argument states that since the universe displays such an amazing design, there must have been a divine Designer. For example, if the Earth were significantly closer or farther away from the sun, it would not be capable of supporting much of the life it currently does. If the elements in our atmosphere were even a few percentage points different, nearly every living thing on earth would die. The odds of a single protein molecule forming by chance is 1 in 10243 (that is a 1 followed by 243 zeros). A single cell is comprised of millions of protein molecules.
A third logical argument for God’s existence is called the cosmological argument. Every effect must have a cause. This universe and everything in it is an effect. There must be something that caused everything to come into existence. Ultimately, there must be something “un-caused” in order to cause everything else to come into existence. That “un-caused” cause is God.
A fourth argument is known as the moral argument. Every culture throughout history has had some form of law. Everyone has a sense of right and wrong. Murder, lying, stealing, and immorality are almost universally rejected. Where did this sense of right and wrong come from if not from a holy God?
Despite all of this, the Bible tells us that people will reject the clear and undeniable knowledge of God and believe a lie instead. Romans 1:25 declares, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” The Bible also proclaims that people are without excuse for not believing in God: “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).
People claim to reject God’s existence because it is “not scientific” or “because there is no proof.” The true reason is that once they admit that there is a God, they also must realize that they are responsible to God and in need of forgiveness from Him (Romans 3:23, 6:23). If God exists, then we are accountable to Him for our actions. If God does not exist, then we can do whatever we want without having to worry about God judging us. That is why many of those who deny the existence of God cling strongly to the theory of naturalistic evolution—it gives them an alternative to believing in a Creator God. God exists and ultimately everyone knows that He exists. The very fact that some attempt so aggressively to disprove His existence is in fact an argument for His existence.
How do we know God exists? As Christians, we know God exists because we speak to Him every day. We do not audibly hear Him speaking to us, but we sense His presence, we feel His leading, we know His love, we desire His grace. Things have occurred in our lives that have no possible explanation other than God. God has so miraculously saved us and changed our lives that we cannot help but acknowledge and praise His existence. None of these arguments can persuade anyone who refuses to acknowledge what is already obvious. In the end, God’s existence must be accepted by faith (Hebrews 11:6). Faith in God is not a blind leap into the dark; it is safe step into a well-lit room where the vast majority of people are already standing.
Recommended Resource: I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek.
http://www.gotquestions.org/Does-God-exist.html
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Question: "What is the Cosmological argument for the existence of God?"
Answer: The cosmological argument derives its title from observing the world around us (the cosmos). It begins with what is most obvious in reality: things exist. It is then argued that the cause of those things’ existence had to be a "God-type" thing. These types of arguments go all the way back to Plato and have been used by notable philosophers and theologians ever since. Besides being philosophically evident, science finally caught up with theologians in the 20th century when it was confirmed that the universe had to have had a beginning. So, today, the arguments are even powerful for non-philosophers. There are two basic forms of these arguments, and the easiest way to think of them might be what are called the "vertical" and the "horizontal" forms. These titles indicate the direction from which the causes come. In the vertical form, it is argued that every created thing is being caused right now (imagine a timeline with an arrow pointing up from the universe to God). The horizontal version shows that creation had to have a cause in the beginning (imagine that same timeline only with an arrow pointing backward to a beginning point in time).
The horizontal is a little easier to understand because it does not require much in the way of philosophy to grasp. The basic argument is that all things that have beginnings had to have causes. The universe had a beginning; therefore, the universe had a cause. That cause, being outside the whole universe, is God. Someone might say that some things are caused by other things, but this does not solve the problem. This is because those other things had to have causes, too, and this cannot go on forever. Why not? Let's take a simple example: trees. All trees began to exist at some point (for they have not always existed). Each tree had its beginning in a seed (the "cause" of the tree). But every seed had its beginning ("cause") in another tree. See where this is going? You can't have an infinite series of tree-seed-tree-seed because no series is infinite—it cannot go on forever. All series are finite (limited) by definition. There is no such thing as an infinite number because even the number series is limited (although you can always add one more, you are always at a finite number). If there is an end, it is not infinite. All series have two endings actually—at the end and at the beginning (if you don't see why this is true, try to imagine a one ended stick!). But if there were no first cause, the chain of causes never would have started. Therefore, there is, at the beginning at least, a first cause—one that had no beginning. This first cause is God.
The vertical form is a bit more difficult to understand, but it is more powerful because not only does it show that God had to cause the "chain of causes" in the beginning, He must still be causing things to exist right now. Once again, we begin by noting that things exist. Second, while we often tend to think of existence as a property that things sort of "own"—that once something is created, existence is just part of what it is—this is not the case. Consider a simple example of the triangle. We can define the nature of a triangle as "the plane figure formed by connecting three points not in a straight line by straight line segments." Notice what is not part of this definition: existence.
This definition would hold true even if no triangles existed at all. Therefore, a triangle's nature—what it is—does not guarantee that one exists (like unicorns—we know what they are, but that does not make them exist). Because it is not part of a triangle's nature to exist, triangles must be made to exist by something else that already exists (such as I drawing one on a piece of paper). But it also does not exist simply because of what I am. So, I have to be given existence as well. This cannot go on forever (no infinite series, remember?). Therefore, something that does not need to be given existence must exist to give everything else existence. Now apply this example to everything in the universe. Does any of it exist on its own? No. So, not only did the universe have to have a first cause to get started; it needs something to give it existence right now. The only thing that would not have to be given existence is a thing that exists as its very nature. It is existence. This thing would always exist, have no cause, have no beginning, have no limit, be outside of time, be infinite . . . sound familiar? It should! It is God!
http://www.gotquestions.org/cosmological-argument.html
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Question: "Is there an argument for the existence of God?"
Answer: The question of whether there is a conclusive argument for the existence of God has been debated throughout history, with exceedingly intelligent people taking both sides of the dispute. In recent times, arguments against the possibility of God’s existence have taken on a militant spirit that accuses anyone daring to believe in God as being delusional and irrational. Karl Marx asserted that anyone believing in God must have a mental disorder that caused invalid thinking. The psychiatrist Sigmund Freud wrote that a person who believed in a Creator God was delusional and only held those beliefs due to a “wish-fulfillment” factor that produced what Freud considered to be an unjustifiable position. The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche bluntly said that faith equates to not wanting to know what is true. The voices of these three figures from history (along with others) are simply now parroted by a new generation of atheists who claim that a belief in God is intellectually unwarranted.
Is this truly the case? Is belief in God a rationally unacceptable position to hold? Is there a logical and reasonable argument for the existence of God? Outside of referencing the Bible, can a case for the existence of God be made that refutes the positions of both the old and new atheists and gives sufficient warrant for believing in a Creator? The answer is yes it can. Moreover, in demonstrating the validity of an argument for the existence of God, the case for atheism is shown to be intellectually weak.
To make an argument for the existence of God, we must start by asking the right questions. We begin with the most basic metaphysical question: “Why do we have something rather than nothing at all?” This is the basic question of existence—why are we here; why is the earth here; why is the universe here rather than nothing? Commenting on this point, one theologian has said, “In one sense man does not ask the question about God, his very existence raises the question about God.”
In considering this question, there are four possible answers to why we have something rather than nothing at all:
1. Reality is an illusion.
2. Reality is/was self-created.
3. Reality is self-existent (eternal).
4. Reality was created by something that is self-existent.
So, which is the most plausible solution? Let’s begin with reality being simply an illusion, which is what a number of Eastern religions believe. This option was ruled out centuries ago by the philosopher Rene Descartes who is famous for the statement, “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes, a mathematician, argued that if he is thinking then he must “be.” In other words, “I think, therefore I am not an illusion.” Illusions require something experiencing the illusion, and moreover, you cannot doubt the existence of yourself without proving your existence; it is a self-defeating argument. So the possibility of reality being an illusion is eliminated.
Next is the option of reality being self-created. When we study philosophy, we learn of “analytically false” statements, which means they are false by definition. The possibility of reality being self-created is one of those types of statements for the simple reason that something cannot be prior to itself. If you created yourself, then you must have existed prior to you creating yourself, but that simply cannot be. In evolution this is sometimes referred to as “spontaneous generation” —something coming from nothing—a position that few, if any, reasonable people hold to anymore simply because you cannot get something from nothing. Even the atheist David Hume said, “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.” This being the case, the alternative of reality being self-created is ruled out.
Now we are left with only two choices—an eternal reality or reality being created by something that is eternal: an eternal universe or an eternal Creator. The 18th century theologian Jonathan Edwards summed up this crossroads:
• Something exists.
• Nothing cannot create something.
• Therefore, a necessary and eternal “something” exists.
Notice that we must go back to an eternal “something.” The atheist who derides the believer in God for believing in an eternal Creator must turn around and embrace an eternal universe; it is the only other door he can choose. But the question now is, where does the evidence lead? Does the evidence point to matter before mind or mind before matter?
To date, all key scientific and philosophical evidence points away from an eternal universe and toward an eternal Creator. From a scientific standpoint, honest scientists admit the universe had a beginning, and whatever has a beginning is not eternal. In other words, whatever has a beginning has a cause, and if the universe had a beginning, it had a cause. The fact that the universe had a beginning is underscored by evidence such as the second law of thermodynamics, the radiation echo of the big bang discovered in the early 1900s, the fact that the universe is expanding and can be traced back to a singular beginning, and Einstein’s theory of relativity. All prove the universe is not eternal.
Further, the laws that surround causation speak against the universe being the ultimate cause of all we know for this simple fact: an effect must resemble its cause. This being true, no atheist can explain how an impersonal, purposeless, meaningless, and amoral universe accidentally created beings (us) who are full of personality and obsessed with purpose, meaning, and morals. Such a thing, from a causation standpoint, completely refutes the idea of a natural universe birthing everything that exists. So in the end, the concept of an eternal universe is eliminated.
Philosopher J. S. Mill (not a Christian) summed up where we have now come to: “It is self-evident that only Mind can create mind.” The only rational and reasonable conclusion is that an eternal Creator is the one who is responsible for reality as we know it. Or to put it in a logical set of statements:
• Something exists.
• You do not get something from nothing.
• Therefore a necessary and eternal “something” exists.
• The only two options are an eternal universe and an eternal Creator.
• Science and philosophy have disproven the concept of an eternal universe.
• Therefore, an eternal Creator exists.
Former atheist Lee Strobel, who arrived at this end result many years ago, has commented, “Essentially, I realized that to stay an atheist, I would have to believe that nothing produces everything; non-life produces life; randomness produces fine-tuning; chaos produces information; unconsciousness produces consciousness; and non-reason produces reason. Those leaps of faith were simply too big for me to take, especially in light of the affirmative case for God's existence … In other words, in my assessment the Christian worldview accounted for the totality of the evidence much better than the atheistic worldview.”
But the next question we must tackle is this: if an eternal Creator exists (and we have shown that He does), what kind of Creator is He? Can we infer things about Him from what He created? In other words, can we understand the cause by its effects? The answer to this is yes, we can, with the following characteristics being surmised:
• He must be supernatural in nature (as He created time and space).
• He must be powerful (incredibly).
• He must be eternal (self-existent).v • He must be omnipresent (He created space and is not limited by it).
• He must be timeless and changeless (He created time).
• He must be immaterial because He transcends space/physical.
• He must be personal (the impersonal cannot create personality).
• He must be infinite and singular as you cannot have two infinites.
• He must be diverse yet have unity as unity and diversity exist in nature.
• He must be intelligent (supremely). Only cognitive being can produce cognitive being.
• He must be purposeful as He deliberately created everything.
• He must be moral (no moral law can be had without a giver).
• He must be caring (or no moral laws would have been given).
These things being true, we now ask if any religion in the world describes such a Creator. The answer to this is yes: the God of the Bible fits this profile perfectly. He is supernatural (Genesis 1:1), powerful (Jeremiah 32:17), eternal (Psalm 90:2), omnipresent (Psalm 139:7), timeless/changeless (Malachi 3:6), immaterial (John 5:24), personal (Genesis 3:9), necessary (Colossians 1:17), infinite/singular (Jeremiah 23:24, Deuteronomy 6:4), diverse yet with unity (Matthew 28:19), intelligent (Psalm 147:4-5), purposeful (Jeremiah 29:11), moral (Daniel 9:14), and caring (1 Peter 5:6-7).
One last subject to address on the matter of God’s existence is the matter of how justifiable the atheist’s position actually is. Since the atheist asserts the believer’s position is unsound, it is only reasonable to turn the question around and aim it squarely back at him. The first thing to understand is that the claim the atheist makes—“no god,” which is what “atheist” means—is an untenable position to hold from a philosophical standpoint. As legal scholar and philosopher Mortimer Adler says, “An affirmative existential proposition can be proved, but a negative existential proposition—one that denies the existence of something—cannot be proved.” For example, someone may claim that a red eagle exists and someone else may assert that red eagles do not exist. The former only needs to find a single red eagle to prove his assertion. But the latter must comb the entire universe and literally be in every place at once to ensure he has not missed a red eagle somewhere and at some time, which is impossible to do. This is why intellectually honest atheists will admit they cannot prove God does not exist.
Next, it is important to understand the issue that surrounds the seriousness of truth claims that are made and the amount of evidence required to warrant certain conclusions. For example, if someone puts two containers of lemonade in front of you and says that one may be more tart than the other, since the consequences of getting the more tart drink would not be serious, you would not require a large amount of evidence in order to make your choice. However, if to one cup the host added sweetener but to the other he introduced rat poison, then you would want to have quite a bit of evidence before you made your choice.
This is where a person sits when deciding between atheism and belief in God. Since belief in atheism could possibly result in irreparable and eternal consequences, it would seem that the atheist should be mandated to produce weighty and overriding evidence to support his position, but he cannot. Atheism simply cannot meet the test for evidence for the seriousness of the charge it makes. Instead, the atheist and those whom he convinces of his position slide into eternity with their fingers crossed and hope they do not find the unpleasant truth that eternity does indeed exist and that such a place is an awfully long time to be wrong. As Mortimer Adler says, “More consequences for life and action follow from the affirmation or denial of God than from any other basic question.”
So does belief in God have intellectual warrant? Is there a rational, logical, and reasonable argument for the existence of God? Absolutely. While atheists such as Freud claim that those believing in God have a wish-fulfillment desire, perhaps it is Freud and his followers who actually suffer from wish-fulfillment: the hope and wish that there is no God, no accountability, and therefore no judgment. But refuting Freud is the God of the Bible who affirms His existence and the fact that a judgment is indeed coming for those who know within themselves the truth that He exists but suppress that truth (Romans 1:20). But for those who respond to the evidence that a Creator does indeed exist, He offers the way of salvation that has been accomplished through His Son, Jesus Christ: "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13 NAS).
http://www.gotquestions.org/argument-existence-God.html
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Question: "What is the transcendental argument for the existence of God?"
Answer: The transcendental argument for the existence of God is the argument which attempts to prove God’s existence by arguing that logic, morals, and science ultimately presuppose the Christian worldview and that God’s transcendent character is the source of logic and morals. The transcendental argument for the existence of God argues that without the existence of God it is impossible to prove anything because, in the atheistic world, you cannot justify or account for universal laws.
Deductive reason presupposes the laws of logic. But why do the laws of logic hold? For the Christian, there is a transcendent standard for reasoning. As the laws of logic are reduced to being materialistic entities, they cease to possess their law-like character. But the laws of logic are not comprised of matter; they apply universally and at all times. The laws of logic are contingent upon God’s unchanging nature and are necessary for deductive reasoning. The invariability, sovereignty, transcendence, and immateriality of God are the foundation for the laws of logic. Thus, rational reasoning would be impossible without the biblical God.
The atheist might respond “Well, I can use the laws of logic and I am an atheist.” But this argument is illogical. Logical reasoning requires the existence of a transcendent and immaterial God, not a profession of belief in Him. The atheist can reason, but within his own worldview his reasoning cannot rationally be accounted for.
If the laws of logic are merely man-made contentions, then different cultures could adopt different laws of logic. In that case, the laws of logic would not be universal laws. Rational debate would be impossible if the laws of logic were conventional, because the two parties could simply adopt different laws of logic. Each would be correct according to his own arbitrary standard.
If the atheist argues that the laws of logic are simply the product of electro-chemical impulses in the brain, then the laws of logic cannot be regarded as universal. What happens inside your brain cannot be regarded as a law for it does not necessarily correspond to what happens in another person’s brain. In other words, we could not argue that logical contradictions cannot occur in a distant galaxy, distinct from conscious observers.
One common response is “We can use the laws of logic because they have been observed to work.” However, this is to miss the point. All are agreed that the laws of logic work, but they work because they are true. The real issue is, how can the atheist account for absolute standards of reasoning like the laws of logic? Why does the material universe feel compelled to obey immaterial laws? Moreover, the appeal to the past to make such deductions concerning the way matter will behave in the future—from the materialistic point of view—is circular. Indeed, in the past, matter has conformed to uniformity. But how can one know that uniformity will persist in the future unless one has already assumed that the future reflects the past (i.e. uniformity)? To use one’s past experience as a premise upon which to build one’s expectations for the future is to presuppose uniformity and logic. Thus, when the atheist claims to believe that there will be uniformity in the future since there has been uniformity in the past, he is trying to simply justify uniformity by presupposing uniformity, which is to argue in a circle.
To conclude, the transcendental argument for the existence of God argues that atheism is self-refuting because the atheist must presuppose the opposite of what he is attempting to prove in order to prove anything. It argues that rationality and logic make sense only within a Christian theistic framework. Atheists have access to the laws of logic, but they have no foundation upon which to base their deductive reason within their own paradigm.
http://www.gotquestions.org/transcendental-argument.html
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Question: "What is the Ontological argument for the existence of God?"
Answer: The ontological argument is an argument based not on observation of the world (like the cosmological and teleological arguments) but rather from reason alone. Specifically, the ontological argument reasons from the study of being (ontology). The first and most popular form goes back to St. Anselm in the 11th century A.D. He begins with stating that the concept of God is "a being than which no greater can be conceived." Since existence is possible, and to exist is greater than to not exist, then God must exist (if God did not exist, then a greater being could be conceived, but that is self defeating—you can't have something greater than that which no greater can be conceived!). Therefore, God must exist. Descartes did much the same thing only starting from the idea of a perfect being.
Atheist extraordinaire Bertrand Russell said that it is much easier to say that the ontological argument is no good than it is to say exactly what is wrong with it! However, ontological arguments are not terribly popular in most Christian circles these days. First, they seem to beg the question as to what God is like. Second, subjective appeal is low for non-believers as these arguments tend to lack hard objective support. Third, it is difficult to simply state that something must exist by definition. Without good philosophical support for why a thing must exist, simply defining something into existence is not good philosophy (like stating that unicorns are magical, single-horned horses that exist). These problems notwithstanding, several prominent philosophers today continue to work on this more unusual form of theological argument.
http://www.gotquestions.org/ontological-argument.html
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Question: "What is the Teleological argument for the existence of God?"
Answer: The word teleology comes from telos which means "purpose" or "goal." The idea is that it takes a "purposer" to have purpose, and so where we see things obviously intended for a purpose, something had to have caused it for a reason. In other words, design implies a designer. We instinctively do this all the time. The difference between the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore is obvious—one is designed, one is not. The Grand Canyon was clearly formed by non-rational, natural processes, whereas Mount Rushmore was clearly created by an intelligent being—a designer. When we are walking down the beach and see a watch we do not assume that time and random chance produced it from blowing sand. Why? Because it has the clear marks of design—it has a purpose, it conveys information, it is specifically complex, etc. In no scientific field is design considered to be spontaneous; it always implies a designer, and the greater the design, the greater the designer. Thus, taking the assumptions of science, the universe would require a designer beyond itself (i.e. supernatural).
The teleological argument applies this criteria to the whole universe. If designs imply a designer, and the universe shows marks of design, then the universe was created. Clearly, every life form in earth's history has been highly complex. A single strand of DNA equates to one volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The human brain is approximately 10 billion gigabytes in capacity. Besides living things here on earth, the whole universe seems designed for life. Literally hundreds of conditions are required for life on earth—everything from the mass density of the universe down to earthquake activity must be fine-tuned in order for life to survive. The random chance of all these things occurring is literally beyond imagination. The odds are many orders of magnitude higher than the number of atomic particles in the whole universe! With this much design, it is difficult to believe that we just got lucky. In fact, top atheist philosopher Antony Flew's recent conversion to theism was based largely on this argument.
In addition to being used to demonstrate God's existence, the teleological argument also exposes shortcomings in the theory of evolution. The Intelligent Design movement in science applies information theory to life systems and shows that chance cannot even begin to explain its complexity. In fact, even single-celled bacteria are so complex that without all of their parts working together at the same time they would have no survival potential. That means those parts could not have developed by chance. Darwin recognized that this might be a problem someday just by looking at the human eye. Little did he know that even single-celled creatures have too much complexity to explain without a creator!
http://www.gotquestions.org/teleological-argument.html
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Question: "What is the Moral argument for the existence of God?"
Answer: The moral argument begins with the fact that all people recognize some moral code (that some things are right, and some things are wrong). Every time we argue over right and wrong, we appeal to a higher law that we assume everyone is aware of, holds to, and is not free to arbitrarily change. Right and wrong imply a higher standard or law, and law requires a lawgiver. Because the Moral Law transcends humanity, this universal law requires a universal lawgiver. This, it is argued, is God.
In support of the moral argument, we see that even the most remote tribes who have been cut off from the rest of civilization observe a moral code similar to everyone else's. Although differences certainly exist in civil matters, virtues like bravery and loyalty and vices like greed and cowardice are universal. If man were responsible for that code, it would differ as much as every other thing that man has invented. Further, it is not simply a record of what mankind does—rarely do people ever live up to their own moral code. Where, then, do we get these ideas of what should be done? Romans 2:14-15 says that the moral law (or conscience) comes from an ultimate lawgiver above man. If this is true, then we would expect to find exactly what we have observed. This lawgiver is God.
To put it negatively, atheism provides no basis for morality, no hope, and no meaning for life. While this does not disprove atheism by itself, if the logical outworking of a belief system fails to account for what we instinctively know to be true, it ought to be discarded. Without God there would be no objective basis for morality, no life, and no reason to live it. Yet all these things do exist, and so does God. Thus, the moral argument for the existence of God.
http://www.gotquestions.org/moral-argument.html
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Question: "Is God imaginary?"
Answer: Godisimaginary.com is not the first to claim that God is imaginary. In an article entitled “Theology and Falsification” written many years ago, Anthony Flew, one of the twentieth century’s most outspoken atheists wrote,
Two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees, “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. . . . Yet still the believer is not convinced. “But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, who comes secretly to look after the garden he loves.” At last the Skeptic despairs. “But what remains of the original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”
Following Flew’s thoughts from decades ago, the web site godisimaginary.com provides what it believes are 50 “proofs” that God does not exist – that He is nothing more than an imaginary gardener, a superstition, a myth. The site claims, “Let's agree that there is no empirical evidence showing that God exists. If you think about it as a rational person, this lack of evidence is startling. There is not one bit of empirical evidence indicating that today's 'God,' nor any other contemporary god, nor any god of the past, exists.”
Actually, when a person thinks as a rational person and tosses away any preconceived bias and baggage that’s held, one must disagree with the site’s assertions and instead reach the conclusion that God does indeed exist.
Addressing each of the 50 points is unnecessary as it doesn’t matter if the site had 50,000 “proof” points against God; all one needs to do is use a logical, rational, and reasonable argument to show that God does indeed exist and every point becomes irrelevant. It is telling and interesting that godisimaginary.com focuses so much of its time on red herrings of issues with prayer and why God won’t do tricks upon request, and ignores the primary question of philosophy and religion: “Why do we have something rather than nothing at all?” In other words, like Flew, the site concentrates on issues with a gardener they believe to be imaginary and ignores the question of why a garden exists in the first place.
The only place on the site where a possible answer to this question is offered is “proof” point 47. Complexity, says the site, could only arise from either Nature itself or a Creator. “Proof” point 47 then states, “The advantage of the first option is that it is self-contained. The complexity arose spontaneously. No other explanation is required.”
This assertion and conclusion is flawed as they have proposed two explanations and then bundle a third option into the solution they like – spontaneous generation with an eternal universe. An eternal universe is, initially, a logical option but not spontaneous generation, which is a scientific term for something coming from nothing or self-creation, which is an analytically false statement – that is, a statement that shows itself to be false by definition. A fundamental law of science is ex nihilo nihil fit – out of nothing, nothing comes. And as Aristotle said, “Nothing is what rocks dream about.” The web site derides Christians for believing in magic, yet it embraces greater magic than anything found in the Bible – life just appearing out of nothing from non-life with no cause.
Next, their argument ignores the basic laws of causality – an effect must resemble its cause. How can an impersonal, meaningless, purposeless, amoral universe accidentally create beings who are full of personality and obsessed with meaning, purpose, and morality? It can’t. Further, intelligence doesn’t arise from non-intelligence, which is why even Richard Dawkins (noted atheist) and Francis Crick (co-discoverer of DNA) admit that intelligence had to engineer DNA and life on earth – they just say it was a superior alien race who seeded the earth, which of course, begs the question of who engineered that superior alien race. Godisimaginary.com claims, “No intelligence is required to encode DNA,” but refuting this statement is the very co-discoverer of DNA himself – Francis Crick – who admits there is no way for DNA to have arisen apart from intelligence.
But what of evolution? Doesn’t evolution explain life and intelligence? Not at all. Evolution is a biological process that attempts to describe change in already existing life forms – it has no way to answer the question of existence. This one piece of evidence alone began to turn Anthony Flew away from atheism.
These facts being evident, it then becomes quite easy to offer a simple, reasonable, logical proof for God in the following way:
1. Something exists
2. You don’t get something from nothing
3. Therefore, something necessary and eternal exists
4. The only two options are an eternal universe or an eternal Creator
5. Science has disproved the concept of an eternal universe
6. Therefore, an eternal Creator exists
The only premise that can be attacked is premise five, but the fact is every drop of evidence in the possession of science points to the fact that the universe is not eternal and had a beginning. And everything that has a beginning has a cause; therefore, the universe had a cause and is not eternal. Any fanciful assertions of collapsing universes, imaginary time, and the like are just that – fanciful – and require more faith to than to believe in God. The two choices are simple – matter before mind or mind before matter – and it is interesting that this web site claims it is their intelligence that causes them to choose the former over the latter.
“But who created God?” the site asks. Why not ask, “Where is the bachelor’s wife?” or “What does the color blue taste like?” It’s a category mistake – you don’t make the unmade. Further, why sit back comfortably and believe in an unmade universe and yet angrily bristle at the notion of an unmade Creator? Could it be because mindless matter cannot call human beings into moral account whereas a personal God can? Finally, is it more reasonable to embrace a cause that contains none of the characteristics of its effect (personality, love, meaning, purpose, etc.) or a cause that embodies them all (a personal God)? The site claims, “In other words, by applying logic, we can prove that God is imaginary,” but in reality, logic, reason, and evidence disprove their position and point in the absolute other direction.
The conclusion is that a personal Creator exists. Moreover, this Being who created everything mirrors the God described in the Bible quite well as evidenced by what one can infer just from the fact of creation alone:
• He must be supernatural in nature (as He created time and space).
• He must be powerful (incredibly).
• He must be eternal (self-existent, because there is no infinite regress of causes).
• He must be omnipresent (He created space and is not limited by it).
• He must be timeless and changeless (He created time).
• He must be immaterial because He transcends space/physical.
• He must be personal (the impersonal can’t create personality).
• He must be necessary as everything else depends on Him.
• He must be infinite and singular as you cannot have two infinites.
• He must be diverse yet have unity as unity and diversity exist in nature.
• He must be intelligent (supremely). Only cognitive being can produce cognitive being.
• He must be purposeful as He deliberately created everything.
• He must be moral (no moral law can be had without a giver).
• He must be caring (or no moral laws would have been given).
The Judeo-Christian God perfectly fits this profile. At this point, all 50 “proofs” on the web site become irrelevant – God exists; therefore, all points offered on the site are incorrect in the final conclusion that they collectively try to reach. Wondering why God won’t cure all the cancer in the world because a group of Christians prayed for it, pointing out the divorce rate among Christians, scoffing because God doesn’t create money for churches out of thin air, wondering why Jesus never moved a physical mountain, asserting a false dichotomy that says a person must be a person of facts or of faith (many brilliant scientists believe in God), making unprovable claims that Jesus never did a concrete miracle, and erroneously stating that the Bible “advocates” senseless murder, slavery, and oppression of women - all end up being impotent in light of the conclusion that a creator God exists.
Answering such objections – if they are genuine and not extended in a way that refuses to believe even if reasoned responses are given – requires only the disciplined study of Scripture alongside the Spirit of God who inspired it. Arguments with those who possess a hardened skeptical spirit are to be avoided as 1 Timothy 6:20 says, “O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called 'knowledge.'” But even still, God is fully capable of using His powerful general revelation (the creation) to witness to those who appear completely lost due to a skeptical and hardened heart.
In stark contrast to the article he'd written many years earlier, in 2007, Anthony Flew wrote a much different kind of book entitled There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. In it, he recounts his atheism and relays how he now, because of evidence and reason, believes that a creator God exists. The one who initially posited an “imaginary gardener” now says, “I think the origins of the laws of nature and of life and the Universe point clearly to an intelligent Source. The burden of proof is on those who argue to the contrary.” This being the case, one thing is certain – the 50 frail attempts on godisimaginary.com to prove that God is imaginary fall far short of even causing a nick on the armor of evidence that opposes them.
http://www.gotquestions.org/is-God-imaginary.html
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Question: "Is God a delusion?"
Answer: Richard Dawkins is the world’s chief apostle for atheism and has been Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University since 1996. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, he labels God and belief in God as delusions. Dawkins is a gifted writer, and his position at the leading university in the English-speaking world gives him great prestige in intellectual, cultural, and political circles. His atheism is fierce. The jacket of The God Delusion calls the God of the Old Testament “a sex-obsessed tyrant” and the deistic god of the 18th century Enlightenment a “more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker.” Belief in God, says Dawkins, subverts science and knowledge, breeds ignorance, foments bigotry, and abuses children. All this happens for the simple reason that God is a delusion. Not only are “fundamentalists” unintelligent for “know[ing] they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book,” but even moderation in faith, says Dawkins, “fosters fanaticism.”
There are plenty of intelligent answers to Dawkins’ contentions about life, history, science, ethics, and God, as well as to his general crusade against all things religious and, particularly, all things Christian. But what does the Bible say about people like Dawkins and the arguments he proposes? The Bible is just as firm as Dawkins in its assertions about God and man. Psalm 14:1-3, for example, says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Fools who deny the existence of God are corrupt and vile, and so are their deeds. Because their understanding is also corrupt, “they do not seek after God.” Note that the Bible and Dawkins are directly opposed to one another. Dawkins says there is no God, and people who believe in Him do terrible things. The Bible says there is a God, and it is rather the people who deny Him who do terrible things. Further, the apostle Paul declares that the reason people who deny God can gain and maintain such large followings, as Dawkins has, is that the human race in general is lost in sin and self-delusion and seek after those whose rhetoric reflects the same. Those who deny God follow eagerly after Dawkins and his ilk because they have hatred for God in common (2 Timothy 4:3).
The Bible sees the denial of God as the true delusion, and this delusion extends to the atheist’s view of humanity as “good,” all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. A sober assessment of human beings recognizes that we lie, cheat, steal, lust, complain, become embittered and resentful, envy, hate, forget, and are careless, ruthless, disrespectful, and loveless. Not only do we do all these things on a daily and hourly basis, but we do them naturally from our birth. This is what God’s Word means when it says, “There is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:3). This does not mean we never do anything positive, like obeying our parents or giving money to a church or charity. It means that we are so obviously sinful that it is silly to call human beings “good.” Nobody teaches children to lie; they do it naturally. Nobody teaches teenage boys to lust; they do it naturally. Nobody teaches the employee to resent his boss or spread malicious gossip about the coworker with whom he is competing for a promotion; he does these things naturally. Nobody teaches the wife to unjustly criticize and complain about her husband, or the husband to neglect and condescend to his wife; both do these things naturally. Yet in the sixth chapter of The God Delusion, entitled “The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good?”, Dawkins explains why human beings are good—based on nothing more than his own opinion—despite the fact that there is no God who defines what is good. Again, Dawkins not only directly opposes the Bible’s teaching but he denies what is obvious to even the most casual observer of human nature and behavior.
At the same time, Dawkins titles his ninth chapter “Childhood, Abuse and the Escape from Religion.” There he reports replying to a question about clergy sexual abuse by saying, “Horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place” (p. 317). Human beings are good, says Dawkins, and even the sexual abuse they perpetrate is better than a religion which tells them they are not good. How he explains the desire for “good” men—priests or otherwise—to abuse children sexually in the first place is a mystery. The Bible, however, does explain it. Men do evil because their hearts are evil (Matthew 12:35), and unless they are made new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), they will continue to do evil because it is their natural inclination.
The apostle Paul explains the function of law (to convict of sin) and the salvation from sin—that has come to the world in Jesus Christ. “But if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world?...There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:5-6, 10-11). The Bible here is saying that it is not the psychological abuse we suffer from religion that makes human beings, including some pastors and priests, do evil things like abuse children. Rather, it is our inherent sin nature that makes us do these things, and it is our insufficient attention to God, to Jesus, to Christian truth, and to the Bible’s teaching that causes this behavior to continue even where religious activity and institutions are present. It is not that the idea of God has caused us psychological damage; it is that we are born psychologically damaged, with a natural inclination toward what is evil, and we ignore and reject God, who is the only source of salvation from our sin and psychological damage. Even though we may intellectually accept the idea of God’s existence, when we ignore Him and reject His Word, we are as good as saying He is a delusion.
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines “delusion” as follows: “Something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated; a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also, the abnormal state marked by such beliefs.” The last clause is significant: intellectual and moral delusion have permanent effects on the mind and heart. Believing lies causes the mind to begin to operate abnormally and to exist in a state that is not healthy and perhaps even dangerous, both for itself and for others. This is what the Bible calls “sin,” and a core element of our sin is our delusion that God does not exist.
It should be stated clearly here, given how often atheism presents and promotes itself under the banner of science, that science is not to blame for atheism or any other symptom of human sinfulness. In fact, many great scientists of the past were Christians, believing Jesus Christ to be the representative of God on earth, the same God who made the heavens and the earth and established the laws by which the natural world operates and which scientists investigate. Most of the "giants" of modern science and most founders of hospitals, orphanages, soup kitchens, and every other kind of charity that has humanized and softened a world made inhumane and hard by human sinfulness, were Christians. They pursued rational understanding of the cosmos because they believed God, who has a mind, had created the cosmos according to the principles of rational and mathematical operation that govern the human mind, which is designed in the image of God’s mind.
Belief in God is thus no delusion. It is inherently and fundamentally rational. It is the source of true wisdom regarding why human beings do evil things so often and so naturally, why we can work so hard to be good and still fail, and why Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ is the spiritual hope for mankind. It also explains why people who believe in Jesus Christ have done so much not only to remedy the effects in this world of human sin, but to scientifically understand this world and to organize and publish the principles of science.
http://www.gotquestions.org/God-delusion.html
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Question: "Is God evil?"
Answer: The web site evilbible.com endeavors to do two things: (1) demonstrate that the Bible is not the Word of God, but instead is only a book written by “evil” men, and (2) disprove the God of Christianity. The arsenal it attempts to use to prove its assertions is one common to many other atheist web sites and publications. Supposed Bible contradictions are put on display, atrocities and immoral practices that are recorded within the pages of the Bible are referenced, and various philosophical and moral arguments are used to assert that the God of the Bible is an impossibility or at best not a God to be worshipped.
While a number of these specific argumnts will be addressed in the sections that follow, certain topics on the evilbible.com web site that have already been thoroughly tackled on Gotquestions.org (e.g., slavery) will not be covered, but anyone wishing more information on those subjects is encouraged to review the material that already exists and which sufficiently answers evilbible.com’s charges in those areas. Instead, the focus of this article will be the three broad problems that cause nearly all (or perhaps all) of evilbible.com’s arguments to fail:
• A misunderstanding of God’s Word
• A misunderstanding of God’s character
• A misunderstanding of God’s creation
Let’s now review each of these issues and cite specific examples from evilbible.com’s web site that illustrate how and why their assertions against the Bible and God are false.
Is God evil? – A Misunderstanding of God’s Word
The first problem area for evilbible.com is a misunderstanding of God’s Word. In its efforts to attack the Bible, the evilbible.com web site makes two key assertions: 1) the Bible is full of horrible atrocities, and 2) the Bible is full of contradictions. As to the first point, evilbible.com is absolutely correct—the Bible is indeed full of atrocities and immoral behavior. From start to finish, the Bible records many terrible things, with the worst being the premeditated murder of the innocent and perfect Son of God. But where evilbible.com’s argument in this area falls flat is that they fail to understand that the Bible does not approve of everything it records. This is absolutely crucial to understand. For example, in Judges chapters 19 and 20, the Bible records the brutal rape and murder of a young woman who was a Levite’s concubine. Moreover, the actions of the Levite are less than honorable, and the crime results in a vicious civil war within the nation of Israel. But a careful reading of the text will show no approval of the actions that took place, and no commendation from God for the Levite’s behavior. So evilbible.com’s argument that atrocities being recorded in Scripture prove that it isn’t God’s Word simply does not hold up.
Another argument in this same vein on the evilbible.com web site focuses on the command of God for Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Obviously, they claim, since God initiated this request, and human sacrifice is abhorrent, surely this proves the Bible is not anything produced by a loving and good God. But where evilbible.com’s argument in this area fails is that the web site’s writers don’t understand that God never intended for Abraham to sacrifice his son to Him; the story is a powerful narrative typology of God Himself sacrificing His own Son Jesus for the sins of mankind. And whereas Abraham was stopped by God from going through with his act, God Himself did not stay His own hand when it came to His Son, and the end result was salvation for all who would believe in Him.
With regard to point number two above, evilbible.com lists a number of supposed contradictions in the Bible they use to assert that the Bible is not inerrant but is instead a fallibly written book. When it comes to assertions of biblical contradictions, it should be noted that a number of good books on this subject address nearly every one (if not all) of evilbible.com’s claims. Second, it should not come as a surprise that non-Christians trip over the issues that evilbible.com brings to the table. The Bible is a spiritual book, and while it exhibits what is called perspicuity (clarity of expression) in regard to its core teachings, there are spiritual significance and lessons for much of what the Bible speaks about, and only those who have been quickened by God’s Spirit will arrive at their true meanings (1 Corinthians 2:14). For example, Leviticus 19:19 says, "Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material." Critics look at this obscure Old Testament passage, laugh, and reach the conclusion that God doesn’t want people to wear wool and polyester blends. However, in this case God was using physical things to act as reminders of spiritual principles. He was telling Israel not to mix their pure religion with the pagan religions that literally surrounded them; they were not to be syncretistic, but instead they were to be devoted to the one true God and not assimilate other pagan teachings.
Spiritual lessons such as the above are found in a number of errors that evilbible.com makes. For example they argue for the following set of contradictions:
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven... earth... [or] water. - Leviticus 26:11
And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them. - Exodus 25:18
First, it should be noted that evilbible.com does not reference the proper book/chapter/verse in the first quote – it is actually Exodus 20:4. That error aside, their argument fails because they quote the verse out of context; if one continues reading the next verse, the true reason for the prohibition is given: “You shall not worship them or serve them.” The command of God to not make images concerned objects of worship, not objects used for decorative or educational purposes as Exodus 25:18 records.
Another example of a supposed contradiction argued by evilbible.com in the New Testament is the following:
For by grace are ye saved through faith... not of works. - Ephesians 2:8-9
Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. - James 2:24
Again, evilbible.com should not really be faulted for not understanding these two verses clearly; they are spiritual two sides to one coin. The Bible makes it clear that Christians are saved by faith alone. But the Bible also makes it clear that faith in the life of a true Christian is always evidenced by good works. Good works are not the means of salvation; they are the evidence and the proof of salvation. So to put them together in one sentence: Christians are saved by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9), but the faith that saves is not alone (James 2:24). True faith will always manifest good works; faith which does not evidence good works is a dead faith which cannot save (James 2:26). This principle is viewed elsewhere in Scripture, for example by Jesus, who referenced the fact that good trees bear good fruit, but bad trees yield bad fruit (Matthew 7:17).
To summarize, we can see that evilbible.com’s claims of atrocities and contradictions in God’s Word simply do not hold water. There have always been critics who claim the Bible is wrong. For example, many used to maintain that the reigns and times of the Israelite kings were recorded in error (e.g., Joram-Jehoram), but then came Dr. Edwin Thiele’s book The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, which proved that they are indeed correct. In the end, the Bible always survives the challenges leveled against it.
Is God evil? – A Misunderstanding of God’s Character
The second problem is that evilbible.com suffers from a misunderstanding of God’s character. The web site routinely speaks of God as a tyrant and an unabashed killer. Evilbible.com takes the position of Socrates who once said that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it, better to be the victim than the perpetrator. Apparently the site’s writers would be more comfortable with God if He were a victim rather than a sovereign. In making such assertions, evilbible.com also follows the lead of atheist Robert Wilson who wrote, “The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer.” In addition, evilbible.com charges that God is the creator of evil and wickedness, and therefore asserts that God cannot be the holy and righteous deity described in the Bible. In theology, this is the problem of theodicy, which is the branch of theology that vindicates God’s divine attributes (particularly holiness and justice) in the face of the existence of physical and moral evil.
With respect to the first assertion—that God is a tyrannical murderer of the innocent—evilbible.com displays a gross misunderstanding of history, which compounds their misunderstanding of God’s character. Referencing Old Testament accounts of God imposing judgment on various cultures and peoples, evilbible.com says:
“The people slaughtered in the Old Testament were almost uniformly blameless (with a few exceptions, of course for instance, the Sodomites violated the conventions of hospitality.)”
It is interesting to note that this absurd statement—that the sin of Sodom was a lack of hospitality, a position straight out the homosexual activists’ handbook—is completely illogical. The statement asserts that God was justified in “slaughtering” the people of Sodom because they were inhospitable. Yet they go on to claim He was not justified in punishing cultures who practiced true wickedness. And when, incidentally, has anyone who displayed a lack of hospitality ever been referred to as a Sodomite? The sin of Sodom was gross immorality and violent homosexuality, as Genesis 19 accurately records.
The claim that those God punished were “uniformly blameless” is completely without merit and historically inaccurate. The Bible records the exact opposite about the peoples whom God acted upon in judgment. A few examples include:
“After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’ No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the LORD your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 9:4-5, emphasis added).
“Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 18:12-13, emphasis added).
"Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants" (Leviticus 18:24-25, emphasis added).
Evilbible.com overlooks the historical evidences that these nations and cultures practiced the very things that evilbible.com decries as morally reprehensible. As just one example, the Assyrians who inhabited Nineveh during the time of Jonah were an incredibly barbaric and cruel people. When archaeologists uncovered Nineveh, the TV specials produced from their work had to be filtered because the evidence of brutality was so great. The discoveries unearthed facts such as how the Assyrians used to slowly impale their victims by sliding them down sharp poles, and that they also made handbags from their victim’s skins. In a stone pillar found at Nineveh, one Assyrian ruler boasted of “nobles I flayed” and “three thousand captives I burned with fire. I left not one hostage alive. I cut off the hands and feet of some. I cut off the noses, ears and fingers of others. The eyes of numerous soldiers I put out. Maidens I burned as a holocaust.” Such things certainly speak against evilbible.com’s claims that the people who fell under God’s judgment were innocent. Other examples include the inhabitants of Jericho who history has shown practiced child sacrifice, cultic prostitution, and much more.
Evilbible.com also overlooks the patience of God in dealing with such people. God always waited for the nations who ultimately experienced judgment to turn from their despicable ways and always warned them of the judgment that was coming. The book of Jonah describes God’s patience with the Ninevites, who finally did turn from their evil ways and avoided destruction. Other peoples and cultures could have repented of their sins, but they chose not to. As an example, the people of Amalek (described in 1 Samuel) routinely attempted to commit genocide against Israel, but were given 400 years by God to repent. But Amalek continued to commit their atrocities against Israel and so God judged them via Saul and the Israeli army.
Evilbible.com does not stop to consider that if one were to catapult the practices, genocide, and barbarism of these cultures/peoples into the 21st century and broadcast it around the world via CNN, there would most certainly be a global outcry for severe military action and punishment. And if modern, “enlightened” man would call for such severe judgment against such atrocities, why should evilbible.com criticize God for carrying out the same thing?
Lastly, in regard to evilbible.com’s claim that God is creator of evil, they present the following rationale and verse from the King James Version to support their position:
“God Is The Creator Of Evil: Secondly, I want to reinforce the fact that God is indeed the creator of evil. Please read verse Isaiah 45:7. ‘I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the lord do all these things.” The Christian God outright claims that he is indeed the source of evil. So how can he then claim to be sinless?”
In evilbible.com’s defense, the verse from Isaiah 45:7 has been misunderstood by many people, primarily because of a poor translation in the King James Bible (and ASV). Parts of the book of Isaiah are of the poetry genre, and there is a literary technique used at times in Hebrew poetry called antithetical parallelism which sets two thoughts in complete contrast to one another, which is exactly what is happening in Isaiah 45:7. For example, if you were asked what the opposition of “light” is, you would likely respond “darkness,” which is what Isaiah 45:7 says. But if you were asked what the opposite of “peace” is, would you respond “evil”? No, you likely wouldn’t. This is why nearly all other translations of this verse (including the New King James Version) translate the word “calamity” or something similar, as that is what the antithetical structure of the verse mandates. God does not bring moral evil upon anyone, but He does bring about calamity and disaster upon those who oppose Him, but such a thing does not make Him evil; it makes Him a just and righteous God.
So, in the end, the above examples (and others present on the web site) show how a misunderstanding of history and wrong biblical interpretation lead to the wrong conclusion about God’s character.
Is God evil? – A Misunderstanding of God’s Creation
The last broad issue found on the evilbible.com web site is a misunderstanding of God’s creation, which manifests itself most in the problem of evilbible.com borrowing from the Christian moral worldview to carry out its arguments against God and the Bible instead of using its own atheistic foundation. In essence, evilbible.com invokes a Christian framework to deny the Christian God, a technique that is irrational and disingenuous, to say the least. For example, evilbible.com declares:
“It violates my morality to worship a hypocritical, judgmental, self righteous murderer.”
Here’s the problem with making such a statement: without God, evilbible.com has no real foundation for the morality it claims, no moral framework from which to attack God. Why is this the case? Because before a person can call something bad (as evilbible.com does God and the Bible), a person must know what good is. But before a person can call something good, he must have a moral framework to distinguish between good and bad. But before someone can have a moral framework to distinguish good and bad, he must have absolute moral laws to build that framework. But before a person can have absolute moral laws, he must have an absolute moral Lawgiver (laws don’t give themselves). Now the atheists have backed themselves into a corner, because the only absolute moral Lawgiver you can have is God. This is why intellectually honest atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, rightly understands that an atheist can’t ever call anything bad or good —the atheist foundation doesn’t support such a stance. In his book, River out of Eden, he writes, “Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life...life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA . . . life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference” (emphasis added).
Since, being atheists, the writers of evilbible.com cannot be intellectually honest and use the term “evil,” they should rename their web site to something that is not prefaced with the word “evil.” All evilbible.com can assert is what atheist evolutionist William Provine calls “approximate morals,” but they can never have ethics that are globally, eternally, and universally binding upon everyone, and thus cannot call anything evil.
Another misunderstanding of God’s creation is exhibited in evilbible.com’s claim that God Himself is impossible. Evilbible.com puts forth a variety of common arguments against God, but the overall theme is that creation as we know it refutes the existence of the God described in the Bible. Here again the argument of the existence of evil is used to reject God. Evilbible.com wrongly rejects the argument of free will being the catalyst of evil (which it is/was) and mistakenly rejects the fact that, yes, there is evil in this world, but perhaps God has a good reason for permitting it. Jesus dying on the cross appeared on the surface to be the epitome of gratuitous evil, but out of that event, mankind was redeemed from the misery it finds itself in. God’s gift of freedom, and the misuse of that freedom, clearly explains the moral evil we experience. As Augustine said, “Such is the generosity of God’s goodness that He has not refrained from creating even that creature which He foreknew would not only sin, but remain in the will to sin. As a runaway horse is better than a stone which does not run away because it lacks self-movement and sense perception, so the creature is more excellent which sins by free will than that which does not sin only because it has no free will.”
Moreover, evilbible.com posits God is impossible because of supposed contradictions in His nature that do not match the world, yet they are perfectly happy to accept that an impersonal, amoral, meaningless, purposeless universe accidentally created personal beings who are obsessed with morality, meaning, and purpose in life. If, as they argue, a cause must resemble its effect, then what explanation do they give for this contradiction? Mindless matter has no way of producing mind or anything similar.
The fact is, the Being who is the cause of everything in the universe perfectly mirrors the God described in the Bible. This is evidenced by what one can infer just from the fact of creation alone:
• He must be supernatural in nature (as He created time and space).
• He must be powerful (incredibly).
• He must be eternal (self-existent, because there is no infinite regress of causes).
• He must be omnipresent (he created space and is not limited by it).
• He must be timeless and changeless (He created time).
• He must be immaterial because He transcends space/physical.
• He must be personal (the impersonal can’t create personality).
• He must be necessary as everything else depends on Him.
• He must be infinite and singular as you cannot have two infinites.
• He must be diverse yet have unity as unity and diversity exist in nature.
• He must be intelligent (supremely). Only a cognitive being can produce cognitive beings.
• He must be purposeful as He deliberately created everything.
• He must be moral (no moral law can be had without a giver).
• He must be caring (or no moral laws would have been given).
The Judeo-Christian God perfectly fits this profile.
Is God evil? – Conclusion
A misunderstanding of God’s Word, His character, and His creation all result in the argumentation errors found on evilbible.com. A fitting summation of their stance is this statement made on their web site:
“I don’t think I could ever complete a whole list as to what I find objectionable regarding the bible.”
For certain, there are apparent difficulties that arise when one begins studying the Bible. But a person should not assume God doesn’t exist and/or the Bible is in error just because he encounters a problem in the Bible that he can’t immediately understand or explain. The scientist doesn’t throw out science just because he/she sees something in the physical world he can’t immediately explain. Neither should we do the same with theology or the study of Scripture. Misunderstandings like those committed by evilbible.com are the result of not thoroughly investigating matters or dismissing a belief based on a presupposition that is buried deep in a person’s heart or lifestyle (or both). And the danger in both cases is something Pascal warned about many years ago: “People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.” What self-described atheists find attractive about denying God is that they think if they deny Him, they will never have to deal with Him in any way. Sadly, they couldn’t be more wrong.
http://www.gotquestions.org/is-God-evil.html
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Question: "What is Pascal's Wager?"
Answer: Pascal's Wager is named after 17th French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal. One of Pascal’s most famous works was the Pensées (“Thoughts”), which was published posthumously in 1670. It is in this work that we find what is known as Pascal's Wager.
The gist of the wager is that, according to Pascal, one cannot come to the knowledge of God’s existence through reason alone, so the wise thing to do is to live your life as if God does exist because such a life has everything to gain and nothing to lose. If we live as though God exists, and He does indeed exist, we have gained heaven. If He doesn’t exist, we have lost nothing. If, on the other hand, we live as though God does not exist and He really does exist, we have gained hell and punishment and have lost heaven and bliss. If one weighs the options, clearly the rational choice to live as if God exists is the best of the possible choices. Pascal even suggested that some may not, at the time, have the ability to believe in God. In such a case, one should live as if they had faith anyway. Perhaps living as if one had faith may lead one to actually come to faith.
Now there have been criticisms over the years from various camps. For example, there is the argument from inconsistent revelations. This argument critiques Pascal's Wager on the basis that there is no reason to limit the choices to the Christian God. Seeing as there have been many religions throughout human history, there can be many potential gods. Another critique comes from atheist circles. Richard Dawkins postulated the possibility of a god that might reward honest disbelief and punish blind or feigned faith.
Be that as it may, what should concern us is whether or not Pascal's Wager can be squared with Scripture. The Wager fails on a number of counts. First and foremost, it doesn’t take into account the apostle Paul’s argument in Romans 1 that the knowledge of God is evident to all so that we are without excuse (Romans 1:19-20). Reason alone can bring us to the knowledge of God’s existence. It will be an incomplete knowledge of God, but it is the knowledge of God nonetheless. Furthermore, the knowledge of God is enough to render us all without excuse before God’s judgment. We are all under God’s wrath for suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness.
Secondly, there is no mention of the cost involved in following Jesus. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus twice warns us to count the costs of becoming His disciple (Luke 9:57-62; 14:25-33). There is a cost to following Jesus, and it is not an easy price to pay. Jesus told His disciples that they would have to lose their lives in order to save them (Matthew 10:39). Following Jesus brings with it the hatred of the world (John 15:19). Pascal's Wager makes no mention of any of this. As such, it reduces faith in Christ to mere credulity.
Thirdly, it completely misrepresents the depravity of human nature. The natural man—one who has not been born again by the Holy Spirit (John 3:3)—cannot be persuaded to a saving faith in Jesus Christ by a cost-benefit analysis such as Pascal's Wager. Faith is a result of being born again and that is a divine work of the Holy Spirit. This is not to say that one cannot assent to the facts of the gospel or even be outwardly obedient to the law of God. One of the points from Jesus’ parable of the soils (Matthew 13) is that false conversions are going to be a fact of life until the time Christ returns. However, the sign of true saving faith is the fruit it produces (Matthew 7:16-20). Paul makes the argument that the natural man cannot understand the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:14). Why? Because they are spiritually discerned. Pascal's Wager makes no mention of the necessary preliminary work of the Spirit to come to the knowledge of saving faith.
Fourth and finally, as an apologetic/evangelistic tool (which is what the Wager was intended to be), it seems focused on a risk/reward outlook, which is not consistent to a true saving faith relationship in Christ. Jesus placed obedience to His commands as an evidence of love for Christ (John 14:23). According to Pascal's Wager, one is choosing to believe and obey God on the basis of receiving heaven as a reward. This is not to diminish the fact that heaven is a reward and that it is something we should hope for and desire. But if our obedience is solely, or primarily, motivated by wanting to get into heaven and avoid hell, then faith and obedience become a means of achieving what we want rather than the result of a heart that has been reborn in Christ and expresses faith and obedience out of love of Christ.
In conclusion, Pascal's Wager, while an interesting piece of philosophical thought, should have no place in a Christian’s evangelistic and apologetic repertoire. Christians are to share and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone is the “power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).
http://www.gotquestions.org/Pascals-wager.html
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Questions about God
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Does God exist?
Who is God?
Is there an argument for the existence of God?
Is God real?
Is God dead?
What are the attributes of God? What is God like?
What does the Bible teach about the Trinity?
Can monotheism be proven?
What is Theology Proper / Paterology?
Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?
Did God create evil?
Why does God allow the innocent to suffer?
Does God love everyone or just Christians?
Is God sovereign, or do we have a free will?
What are the different names of God, and what do they mean?
Where was God on September 11th?
Why doesn't God still perform miracles like He did in the Bible?
Does God hear / answer the prayers of a sinner / unbeliever?
Why does God love us?
Why was God so evident in the Bible and seems so hidden today?
Does God punish us when we sin?
Why is God a jealous God?
Who created God? Where did God come from?
How do I get the image of God as imposing and angry out of my mind?
Does God change His mind?
Has anyone ever seen God?
What does it mean to fear God?
Is it wrong to question God?
Is there anything God can't do?
Does God have a sense of humor?
Why is God so different in the Old Testament than He is in the New Testament?
Is God / the Bible sexist?
Why does God demand, seek, or request that we worship Him?
Is God fair?
Why did God command the extermination of the Canaanites?
Is God male or female?
What is YHWH? What is the tetragrammaton?
Does God make mistakes?
What does God look like?
Why does God allow sickness?
What does it mean that God is love?
Why does God create people when He knows they are going to go to hell?
Why does God allow evil men like Hitler and Saddam to come into power?
Does God tempt us to sin? What about Abraham in Genesis chapter 22?
What is deism? What do deists believe?
Does God still speak to us today?
Why does God allow natural disasters, i.e. earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis?
What was God doing before He created the universe?
What is God's will?
What is the immutability of God?
Could God create a rock so heavy He could not lift it?
Why does God refer to Himself in the plural in Genesis 1:26 and 3:22?
Why does God require faith?
Does God help those who help themselves?
Why does God allow birth defects?
Why does Scripture emphasize the right hand of God?
Does God have a physical body?
Can God sin? If God cannot sin, is He truly omnipotent?
What does it mean that God is infinite?
Why does God allow evil?
Where is God now? Where is God when it hurts?
Is it sometimes God's will for believers to be sick?
What is the key to truly knowing God?
How is belief in God any different from belief in a Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Why won't God heal amputees?
Is God cruel?
Is God imaginary?
Why did God allow the Holocaust?
What does it mean to find God?
What is the glory of God?
What is the Godhead?
Does God hate? If God is love, how can He hate?
If God knew that Satan would rebel and Adam and Eve would sin, why did He create them?
Is God evil?
What do LORD, GOD, Lord, God, etc., stand for in the Bible? Why are they used in place of God's name?
Why does God allow good things to happen to bad people?
Is it wrong to be angry with God?
Is it wrong to feel disappointment with God?
Is it wrong to be frustrated with God?
Why is seeking God important?
How should I understand the concept of the Father God?
What does it mean that God is a God of justice?
What does it mean that God is Almighty?
What does it mean that God is the Ancient of Days?
What is God's relationship to time?
What does it mean that God is eternal?
Is God's love conditional or unconditional?
What is the biblical understanding of the wrath of God?
What does it mean that God is omniscient?
What does it mean that God is omnipresent?
What does it mean that God is omnipotent?
What does it mean that God is transcendent?
Does God love Satan?
http://www.gotquestions.org/questions_God.html
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