How Do We Even Know There’s a God?

This week, Pastor J.D. continues our Ask Me Anything series based on his new book, Essential Christianity. The second question is, "How do we even know there's a God?"

Show Notes:

This new book, Exploring Christianity, looks at 10 key words in the book of Romans to help us explore the truth behind Christianity. In Romans 1:19-20, Paul makes it clear that God has made himself and his existence undeniable. He says, “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.”

Now (like a lot of the book of Romans), there’s a lot of meat there, but Paul’s basic claim is that God has made the basic truths about himself known to every person who’s ever lived. He’s left his fingerprints in various places, if we have eyes to see them.

Philosophers helpfully grouped these fingerprints into four primary categories, and then unhelpfully gave them complicated names. I’m going to use those complicated names, but don’t let them trip you up. The concepts are pretty simple. I figure if we can memorize the name of our $14, 16-ingredient drink at Starbucks, we can learn these. And, if you happen to find yourself in a philosophical discussion about the nature of God at the Waffle House late one afternoon and drop in one of these multisyllabic masterpieces, it’s sure to increase your standing in the debate.

These are four ways that the apostle says God reveals himself in creation:

* The Cosmological Fingerprint

This one goes back all the way to Aristotle. It’s the question of why there is something rather than nothing, and where did the original something come from? 

If the world began 14 billion years ago with a Big Bang, where did the materials that caused the Big Bang come from? 

You can’t keep going back in infinite regress into nothingness. 

Eventually something has to come from somewhere. “Nothingness” can’t just explode. 

In his book God Delusion, Richard Dawkins admits this is a problem. He says, “Darwin’s theory works for biology, but not for cosmology (or, ultimate origins).”  And, “Cosmology is waiting on its Darwin.” 

In other words, he thinks that while they have explained how life took shape on the earth, he admits they still have no idea where life itself, or the materials that produced life, came from.

We need a theory, he says, as to why anything exists, because it is self-evident that nothing x nobody can’t equal everything. 

But don’t worry,” he says in the book, one day we’ll find it. (Which is a textbook example of a blind, hopeful leap of faith.)

* The Teleological Fingerprint

Not only do we have the question of why there is something rather than nothing, but our creation appears to be very finely tuned.

The more we learn about this, the more amazing it becomes. 

Scientists say that life on earth depends on multiple factors that are so precise that if they were off by even a hair, life could not exist. They call it the Goldilocks principle: things are “just right” for human life. 

The makeup of the atmosphere is very exact, yet it’s the difference between life and death. If some of those levels were even slightly off—for example, if the level of oxygen dropped by 6% we would all suffocate; if it rose by 4%, our planet would erupt into a giant fireball. And we’d all die.

Or, if the CO2 were just a little higher or a just  little bit lower (say...