I offered to scientifically present the case for the existence of God to my favourite heathens who couldn’t recall to me the most basic of scientific facts. But in simple layman’s terms, because otherwise we would be in a haze of long words and bizarre abstract meaningless terms that would land us firmly in New Age territory. It won’t be long-winded or hard to understand. I’ll put the arguments here so anyone can get them.

My issue when “attacking” the beliefs of others is about having a faith that has foundation and credibility, rather than one of whimsical fancy. The Father i know gave us intelligence and the abilities of consciousness so that we use them extensively, and requires us to use them, so we are wise enough to know to put them down.

As fun as it may be to systematically dismantle silly New Agers, the serious point behind it all is that all spirituality requires a leap of faith. But the critical issue is WHEN you take that leap of faith and that is what i mean by “legitimate” and “authentic” spirituality. For example, Stella and i are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I start with what we know to be true, and work towards what is unproven. Stel on the other hand, starts with what is unknown and works her way back to truth. I believe you must do all you can to base your faith on substance. And once that is exhausted, then take the leap of faith. Most religions encourage you to just believe straight away without questioning.

This point of view that belief must be justified with basis is a founding principle of epistemology, and there are, generally speaking, 2 forms of belief – a) a posterior (based on deduction), and b) a priori (based on self-evidence or introspection).

Peter (my coach) explained an interesting observation to me about when he was doing his time in academia. Scientists and mathematicians are often opposed in their spiritual beliefs when you would expect them to be aligned. You would assume that because of the absolute nature of maths that they would be the atheists and that because of their fascination with nature that the scientists would be theists. But the opposite tends to be true – most scientists are atheist as they see the potential for life on other worlds (e.g. our concept of God is man-created and flawed), but the mathematicians do the sums and are mainly theists.

The point here is to argue that A monotheistic God, Supreme Being, Higher Power or Creator exists, NOT a specific God of a specific religion (we’ll deal with later). This is not an article on the Christian God, but just of any God being there at all. Please don’t email me about your problems with the Bible or the Church. This could be Allah, Krishna, Yahweh or the Flying Spaghetti monster. It is NOT an argument for “God-energy”, aliens, the “spirit world” or polytheistic structures of multiple gods. In fact, these theories specifically refute those concepts.

Every single argument made here is through inductive reasoning and has a counter-argument. I am only presenting the case, not objectively analysing it. You should do that for yourself as all these have been debated for millennia, and typified recently in Richard Dawkins’ excellent book “The God Delusion“. There are many arguments against the existence of God, and then counter-arguments again by proponents. It goes on and on. It is your responsibility to look over these and decide for yourself rather than just accept what is written here. Knowledge without wisdom is dangerous, and as the Japanese say, it’s also a bit like stacking books onto a donkey.

Although Einstein rejected the idea of a personal God, but crucially also rejected the idea of a non-created universe. A belief in creation does not mean you reject scientific understanding of evolution - quite the opposite, in fact. His wisdom was as extraordinary as his scientific brilliance:

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

We cannot physically bottle God up in a test tube and experiment on him in a laboratory (neither can we bottle up justice, compassion or jealousy), but what we can do is argue the probability that a God exists. Science is based on our understanding of the universe and nature through the scientific method. A true scientist knows that nothing can be 100% proven, even the simplest theory. The nearest you can get is 99.9% that the results of the experiment were true at the time it was conducted.

When i use the word “probability”, i mean the vernacular of the word, not the literal mathematical study. It is better understood by saying the “likelihood” or “plausibility” of a Creator existing. If a Creator exists, then he/she/it is supernatural, and not subject to the natural laws that science is based on. We can observe His effects and use logic and reason to suggest His existence, but He will exist outside science .By nature he can work inside of creation but also outside it if necessary. If a God exists, He created evolution and natural selection – arguments based on asserting that we mistake God for the process of natural selection are moot. My argument is that this is not special pleading as it is explicitly stated from the outset rather than a response to a counter-argument.

We must be very careful to understand that things happening by chance are not the same as evolution or the process of natural selection. Science does not often assert things happen by chance, but that they can occur through natural selection even despite being highly improbable.

I will make what may seem to an academic as a possibly unstable absolute premise - that:

a) A Creator either exists, or
b) he/she/it does not exist.

That is based on the layman’s argument and everyday understanding rather than mathematics because the debate on a street level is what is meaningful to the ordinary person.

Straight away, we believe that the likelihood of God existing is 50/50, or 50%. Then we must decide on when our % will be high enough for us to believe in God’s existence, and how we increment that percentage with each point made. Yes, yes i know about the flawed probability maths here, so let us keep it simplistic and philosophical.

For atheists, that belief score will need to be 100% (even though they can happily believe in compassion and justice despite the proof factor not being even above 40%). For the ordinary person it will be around 80%, but of course it is entirely subjective. I would suggest that if the likelihood that God exists is higher than 80%, then it makes sense to believe in His existence. We must then decide how much of a % gap there is that faith needs to fill. That is, of course, if you are happy to accept that having a gap for faith doesn’t mean that belief is to do with a “God of the gaps”.

1. The universe could not exist unless it was caused
Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe (and time) began to exist. Therefore, the universe had a cause, and that cause was God. God as an entity is the absolute finite being and was not created by a cause. The scientific establishment accepts the Big Bang theory as its primary hypothesis. This is known as the Cosmological Argument and relates to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.

2. The beauty and complexity of the universe implies it was designed
The universe is too complex, orderly, adaptive, fine-tuned, apparently purposeful, or beautiful to have occurred randomly or accidentally. Therefore, the universe must have been created by a sentient, intelligent, wise, or purposeful being. God is that sentient, intelligent, wise, or purposeful being. What constitutes poor design in our scientific opinion is part of the design itself. Complexity indicates intelligence and order, which implies mastery of design. This is known as the Teleological Argument or Watchmaker argument.

3. If we can conceive of God, then he must exist
God is, by definition, a being greater than anything that can be imagined. Existence in both reality and imagination is greater than existence solely in one’s imagination. Therefore, God must exist in reality; if God did not, then God would not be a being greater than anything that can be imagined. You can’t touch love, but you know it exists. This is known as the Ontological Argument.

4. The capacity of our environment to produce life is too coincidental
The science of our planet is precisely what you need to be capable of producing life. Existence defies entropy because life on this planet is more and more ordered, so violating the 2nd Law of thermodynamics (entropy). This is known as the Anthropic Principle.

5. Right/wrong and good/evil are universal
Well-functioning human beings are typically intuitively aware of actions as being right and wrong. Moral facts exist. Moral facts are transcendental in nature. The best explanation of there being transcendental moral facts is provided by the existence of a Higher Power. If evil exists, then so must God. This is known as the Moral Argument.

6. The things we experience are pointless without a belief in God
Logic, science, ethics (and generally every fact of human experience and knowledge) are not meaningful apart from a preconditioning belief in the existence of God. God is the only thing that makes sense of everything and no other substantial theory for existence has the same weight or plausability. This is known as the Transcendental Argument and is a negative proof assertion.

7. Our separateness from other animals implies creation
Our consciousness, fear of death, spirituality (evidenced by burial) and the separation of mind and body (Plato’s mind/body dichotomy problem) show us to be a somewhat “unnaturally” large step from our evolutionary cousins, despite sharing 95% of our genetics with them. These are highly unusual but meaningful characteristics/by-products derived from the process of natural selection.

8. Divine revelation impossibly illustrates today’s science
Of all the “holy books” the Bible is the only book that correctly describes the order of creation as revealed through science. It would have been impossible to know this information and record it on carbon-dated scripture thousands of years ago without divine insight from the Creator himself. Thousands of correct descriptions of advanced scientific principles.recorded thousands of years ago are found all throughout the bible.

9. The world’s greatest scientists, thinkers and natural geniuses have supported belief in God
Nicholas Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, William Thomson Kelvin, Max Planck, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther King, Blaise Pascal, Louis Pasteur and more. It’s safe to assume they had thought it through.

10. Personal testimony and experience.
Human beings have been relating their personal experiences of a God for thousands of years since we began to inhabit the planet. The longevity of our belief in a God, the fact it appears to be a natural impulse and the sheer number of people who believe the same implies the existence of God has substance. We know man is a spiritual creature (and always has been) as the earliest evidence suggests we buried our dead in the Neanderthal age. Religious behaviour is found in almost all human populations on earth.

“The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion on an intelligent and powerful Being.”

Issac Newton, “Principia”

And of course, rebuttals to traditional objections and arguments against the existence of God, or the general principles of apologetics (theodicies):

• Who created God?
  No-one, nothing. God is the answer to infinite regression because as the “uncaused cause” he is the absolute finite entity and is not subject to natural scientific laws or time itself.
• Man created God
  Man has created Gods, but they all follow the same pattern of being permissive and non-judgemental. Monotheism asserts an image of God that is unusually challenging and different to humanity.
• If there is a God, he should not permit, and/or should prevent evil
  Without evil, there is no such thing as free choice or free will because we do not have the ability to choose between one or the other. With the exception of natural disaster, evil is mostly a consequence of another human being’s choice.
• Natural selection explains creation
  The creator designed and created natural selection itself as the mechanism for the process of life.
• If God existed, he’d have done a better job of gathering believers
  Persuasion or intervention would violate the principle of true freedom of choice. Faith requires the basis of free will.
• God and/or theistic principles are illogical, paradoxical or fallacious
  We cannot hope to understand or reason the nature of God with our primitive consciousness and/or intellectual abilities. We work within the limits and reference of our own limited scientific understanding. God is supernatural and can defy our norms and structures.
• Some natural design is poor
  In our humble opinion. God is an artist as well as an engineer, and biological design cannot be judged alone on efficiency and neatness. Chaos exists in limited circumstances and is part of the design.
• Personal testimony and crowd wisdom is unreliable
  Just people lots of people believe it does not mean it is true, however the consistency of accounts en masse (via the scientific method) and reflected benevolence in the lives of those with religious beliefs suggest substance for the existence of God.

I believe in God, and always have. I don’t say that flippantly, and i’m not intimidated by the debate. My faith is built upon evidence, reasoning and understanding that gives me the platform i need to take the leap of faith to believe in God and reach out to know more. People ask me to prove God exists and I tell them that i see Him everywhere – photosynthesis, DNA, the Golden Ratio, stellar constellations, the feminine heart, the diversity of colour, and shape in nature, courage/compassion, the genius of evolution, the imagination of children and so many other places. I am lucky enough to have direct personal experience of the God i call my Father which in my own mind is entirely conclusive and unquestionable. As such, i have a bias.

I know the arguments presented here have many deviations, counter-claims and are not debated in full objectively. But that is not the point of the article. I’m more than willing to get into the spiralling minutiae elsewhere if necessary. All that matter is we think, rather than just neglect to be bothered and ignore our spirituality because it is the only thing that means anything in this life and transcends our personal lives to become part of our relationships, communities, cultures and history.

“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord”

Isaiah 1:18