01 / Start with reality
You already believe something about why we’re here.
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Every worldview has to explain the same reality. There is a universe. It operates according to remarkably consistent laws. Human beings are conscious, rational creatures capable of asking questions about truth, goodness, beauty and meaning.
The question is not simply whether you believe in God. The deeper question is what best explains the reality we actually experience.
One possibility is that reality is ultimately impersonal—that everything, including thought, morality, love and consciousness, is ultimately the unintended result of physical processes.
Another possibility is that behind the physical universe is something more fundamental: an eternal, intelligent and personal Mind.
Follow the questions
Five things worth explaining.
Explore five observations that together form a cumulative case for God.
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Explore five observations that together form a cumulative case for God.
01
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Nearly everything we encounter depends upon something else. Trees depend on soil, sunlight and water. Buildings depend on builders. You and I depend upon parents, food, oxygen and a universe that existed before we did.
But if everything ultimately depends upon something else, we eventually encounter a deeper question: what explains the existence of reality itself?
Belief in God proposes that physical reality is not the deepest level of reality. Behind everything dependent is something that is not dependent— an eternal source of existence.
02
Why is the universe understandable?
The universe behaves according to consistent, mathematically describable patterns. Science works because the natural world possesses order that human minds are capable of discovering.
That raises an interesting question. Why should an impersonal universe possess rational structure? And why should human minds be capable of understanding it?
If reality ultimately comes from an intelligent source, the connection between an ordered universe and rational minds is far less surprising.
03
Why does the universe allow life at all?
Complex life depends upon an extraordinary collection of physical conditions. Gravity, chemistry, matter, energy, stars and many other features of the universe must operate within ranges that make life possible.
Different explanations have been suggested. Some appeal to chance. Others propose that many universes may exist and ours simply happens to be capable of producing observers.
Design is another explanation worth considering. When independent conditions come together with extraordinary precision to produce a meaningful result, intelligence is one of the possibilities we naturally investigate.
04
Why are we conscious?
Human beings are physical creatures, but our experience involves something remarkable. We think. We reason. We remember. We imagine. We love. We experience ourselves as conscious persons.
Your brain can be observed from the outside, but your experience of being you is known from the inside. Science can study brain activity associated with thought, but consciousness itself remains a profound philosophical question.
If ultimate reality is completely mindless, consciousness must somehow arise from what is entirely non-conscious. But if ultimate reality includes Mind, the existence of minds within reality is not quite so strange.
05
Why do some things seem truly right or wrong?
Most people do not actually live as though morality is merely personal taste. We do not simply say cruelty, exploitation or abuse are things we happen not to prefer. We normally mean that they are actually wrong.
Evolution and culture may help explain why human beings develop certain moral instincts, but explaining where a belief came from is different from explaining whether that belief is objectively true.
If moral truths really exist above individual preference and social convention, it is reasonable to ask whether morality ultimately points beyond humanity to a moral source.
The bigger picture
No single clue has to carry the entire case.
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Imagine finding several pieces of evidence that independently point in the same direction. Any one clue might have another explanation. But as the clues accumulate, one explanation may begin to account for the total picture better than the alternatives.
Existence. Order. Fine-tuning. Consciousness. Reason. Morality. None automatically proves Christianity—but together they make belief in an intelligent, personal Creator a rational conclusion rather than an irrational leap.
And then there is Scripture
The Bible actually expects us to look at the world.
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Interestingly, the Bible does not present belief in God as something disconnected from observation. It repeatedly points outward—to creation, order and human moral awareness—as evidence that God can be known.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”
“The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”
“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God.”
Reasonable objections
Questions people naturally ask.
Belief in God should be able to face difficult questions rather than avoid them.
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Belief in God should be able to face difficult questions rather than avoid them.
“If everything needs a cause, who caused God?”
The argument is not that everything must have a cause. It is that things which begin, change or depend upon something else require an explanation. God is proposed as the non-dependent foundation of reality—not another physical object inside the universe that also needs to be created.
“Doesn’t science make God unnecessary?”
Science is extraordinarily effective at explaining how processes within the universe operate. But describing how something works is not necessarily the same as explaining why it exists. Mechanism and ultimate explanation are different questions.
“Couldn’t all of this just be chance?”
Chance can certainly be proposed. The question is whether it provides the best explanation of the total picture. Reason does not require us to assume design—but neither does it require us to rule design out before considering it.
“If God is real, why isn’t He more obvious?”
That is a serious question. But hiddenness is not the same as absence. Many realities are known through their effects. Christianity claims not that God has left no evidence, but that evidence of Him is woven throughout creation and ultimately made personal in Jesus.
“What about all the suffering in the world?”
Suffering is perhaps the hardest challenge to belief in God. Christianity does not pretend it is insignificant. But calling something genuinely evil also assumes there is some standard by which the world ought to be different. The problem of evil is difficult for Christianity, but the existence of objective evil is something every worldview must explain.
“Isn’t belief in God just faith?”
Faith does not have to mean believing without evidence. We exercise reasoned trust constantly—in people, historical events and conclusions we cannot directly observe. Christianity ultimately calls for faith, but it does not require someone to abandon reason in order to believe.
An honest conclusion
Reason can take you surprisingly far.
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None of us approaches this question from a completely neutral position. Believers have assumptions. Skeptics have assumptions. Everyone eventually reaches questions that cannot be answered simply by putting something under a microscope.
The existence of God is ultimately a question about the nature of reality itself.
And when we consider the existence of the universe, its rational order, its suitability for life, consciousness, our ability to reason and our awareness of moral truth, belief in a Creator is not intellectually unreasonable.
But reason can only take the question so far.
If there is a God, has He done anything to make Himself known?
Suppose God really is there.
If God exists, the next question is no longer merely academic. Has He spoken? Can He be known? And what does Jesus have to do with any of it?
