5 “I am the LORD, and there is no other;
Besides Me there is no God.
I will gird you, though you have not known Me;
6 That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun
That there is no one besides Me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other,
7 The One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing well-being and creating calamity;
I am the LORD who does all these. (Isaiah 45: 5-8 NASB)
On many occasions, the MarketFaith Ministries website has alerted our readers and listeners to the fact that, for the past 10 years or so, we have seen the growth of a new wave of aggressive atheism. Some prominent speakers and writers have publically professed their non-belief in God. It has not stopped there, however, for many of them also feel compelled to convince others to join them in their skepticism.
Books like God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever by the late Christopher Hitchens, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and The God Virus: How religion Infects Our Lives and Culture by Darrel W. Ray have become bestsellers. There are even atheism books now for children such as Great Without Religion by Lance Gregorchuk. They also have websites to help inoculate children from belief in God such as Atheist Parents.org.
Most of these hard-core atheists contend that there is no real empirical evidence for a god. So they ask, “Just, why should I believe in God?” That is a good question if asked honestly. The sad fact is that most atheists’ minds are made up. In many cases they actually don’t want to believe because they don’t want to be accountable to Him for their behavior.
Despite the protestations of the atheist promoters, there are actually a number of good reasons why we can and should believe in God. Understand, I’m talking about the God of Bible. That is the One and Only Almighty Creator God who is personal, infinite and eternal. God Himself says in Isaiah 45:5, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God.”
Dr. William Lane Craig and other Christian philosophers have successfully debated atheists by presenting solid reasons why belief in God is reasonable. In this article we will examine six reasons why the answer to question, “Should you believe in God?” must be “Yes!”
Reason 1 – You should believe in God because He is the best reason for anything to exist.
Ever wonder why anything exists? You could simply say as do some, “It just is! They just are.” Well, things do exist, but to answer so simply really is no answer. Especially in light of discoveries that universe had a beginning there must be some explanation as to why it exists. Something or Someone had to bring it to existence. Only the existence of an infinite and transcendent God makes sense as to why anything else exists at all. This naturally leads to a second reason.
Reason 2 – You should believe in God because He is the best reason for the origin of the universe.
In Isaiah 45:12b, 18, God says, “I stretched out the heavens with My hands. And I ordained all their host… For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), ‘I am the LORD, and there is none else.'” (NASB)
The universe is made up of four essential elements: Time, space, matter, and energy. What’s more, all four elements had a beginning from nothing. Science has demonstrated that the whole immensity of the universe, including the billions of stars and galaxies, came into existence all at once in a point smaller than a particle in a single atom. From that point it exploded and expanded into the vast universe where we now live.
Logic demands that anything that came to begin had to have a Beginner. In otherwise, everything that came to exist had have had a cause. The atheist has no reasonable explanation how everything could come from nothing. Yet he must acknowledge that it did. Some atheists have tried to devise theories as to how it could happen mainly because they do not like the implications of what it means metaphysically. The truth remains that God is the only reasonable explanation for why the universe began.
Reason 3 – You should believe in God because He is the best reason for why mathematics is able to work.
When you were in first grade you were probably taught that 2 + 2 = 4. Did you ever stop to think what that means and why we maintain it is true? Actually the written equation 2 + 2 = 4 is only a few blotches of ink on a piece of paper or digitally generated symbols on a screen. We understand, however, that these are universally accepted mathematical symbols that represent a universally accepted truth about the real world. For instance, it symbolizes the fact that if you take two apples and add to them two more apples you always will get four apples. Never five, never sixteen, never a thousand- always just four.
So why is that so? Why can’t 2 + 2 = 5? Or 16? Or 1,000? The simple answer is because that it is how the real world works. Mathematics must always obey the laws of logic and Nature. But that begs the questions: “Why is that always true?,” and, “Who wrote those laws?” You can argue that they just exist, but that really does not answer why they always are as they are, and why we can discern them in symbolic mathematical terms.
Maybe Einstein’s off the cuff statement is true that “Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe.” The only logical reason that mathematics works is because a Mind designed it and established it. That Mind can only be God.
Reason 4 – You should believe in God because He is the best reason for why intelligent life can live on earth (or anywhere else).
Recently I saw Ridley Scotts Science Fiction movie Prometheus. The story has a team of astronauts who visit a far off planet where they discover that human life on earth came from space aliens who left their DNA here thousands of years ago. One character is the story is a woman who struggles to hold to her faith in God. Another character scoffs when they discover evidence of the alien seeding of earth. “See,” he says. “They made us- not God.” The woman looks at him and asks, “Okay, but who made them?”
Science has determined that the odds of intelligent life existing anywhere in the universe are about 10 to 1038th power (10 followed by 1038 zeroes). That is a number that is far removed from any possibility of being by chance. Even skeptical scientists admit they don’t know how even simple life began on earth. The old theories of a “Primordial Soup” in which biological chemicals were formed naturally have largely been abandoned. That’s one reason some scientists now theorize that life on earth must have originated somewhere else and was planted here.
Now, I do not for a moment believe that life came from Outer Space. That theory, born out of unscientific notions dating back to Erich von Däniken’s discredited book Chariots of The Gods. It has since evolved into a modern mythology. The only sensible explanation for intelligent life: God exists who designed it.
Reason 5 – You should believe in God because He is the best reason we have consciousness of who we are.
I love my dog. She is a precious little Maltese who has brought a lot of joy to my wife and me for the past five years. Nonetheless, we have to honestly admit that despite her sweet personality, she does not even know she exists. Why? Because she simply does not have consciousness of who or what she is. Only humans have the full ability to reflect on their own existence and selfhood. My three-year-old grand-daughter looks in the mirror and says, “That’s me!” When my dog looks in a mirror she just growls at that other dog she sees there. (Note: Some scientists maintain that higher-order apes [gorillas, chimpanzees, etc.] may have some limited sense of self).
Again, the best reason that we are able to experience consciousness is that God made us “IN HIS IMAGE.” That is, we have the unique abilities to reason and reflect on our life and self. Arguments that we are only the product of a high order of brain evolution do not really explain the metaphysical nature of our minds and consciousness.
Reason 6 – You should believe in God because He is the best reason for the existence of objective moral values.
One of the most compelling traditional arguments for the existence of God is what is called the “Moral Argument”. It was instrumental in the conversions of a number of skeptics such as C.S. Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge. The argument says that the only way we can actually frame what is absolutely right and wrong is if an absolute authority decrees it so. the only such absolute authority is the infinite and eternal God who alone can determine what is moral or not.
All other ethical bases, such as human reason, utilitarianism, or intuition, at best, are relative, tenuous and ever changing. This can be illustrated in the recent history of American politics. Some politicians who formerly opposed legalizing same-sex marriage have declared they have “evolved” in their views. If they really had a solid basis for their moral views to start with how could now change them? Without an absolute standard what is considered good now will be seen as bad later, and what is regarded as bad now will be seen as good later.
In my 61 years of life I have witnessed just that sort of ever changing moral values. For example, when I was a youth premarital and extra-marital sexual relations even between adults were generally seen as bad. Now they are almost considered the norm and even encouraged. That is why only God can provide eternal standards of right and wrong, His standards do not change.
Conclusion
As we have seen there are plenty good reasons believe in God. He is only good reason that anything exists. He also is the only explanation for the origin of universe out of nothing. Furthermore, God is the only reason for the mathematical laws of nature. He is also the only reason why intelligent life exists on earth and why we have consciousness of our selves. God is also the only reason and source for objective moral values.
Thus, when we are confronted by the growing amounts of atheist propaganda we can stand forthrightly. We can declare that belief in God is not only reasonable but in many ways necessary to explain the complex issues of the universe and human life. As God Himself declared, “…there is no one besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45: 6b, NASB)
© 2013 Tal Davis