Why Do You Believe? – A Top Five List for the Big Man Upstairs
By Jordan MongeEarlier this month, I attended a class on apologetics. At one point, the teacher asked us to list the top five reasons we believe in God, the Bible, and Jesus. Although we all struggled to come up with a full 15 reasons (especially because we were only given five minutes), we had a fruitful discussion afterward. The purpose of the lesson was to help us “always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks [us] for a reason for the hope that is in [us]” (1 Peter 3:15).
This is a great small group exercise to prepare Christians for evangelism. When you’re sharing your faith with someone in the airport or someone on the bus, they ask, “Why do you believe in God?” or “Why would you believe the Bible?” Preparing these sorts of answers enables you to say confidently, “Let me tell you my top five reasons…”
So without further ado, I’d like to share my reasons for believing in God:
1. I do not think that matter can spontaneously come into existence. Although I believe in the Big Bang, nothing suggests to me that it could be self-caused. Interestingly enough, the Big Bang was actually once thought to prove God’s role in creation and was anathema to atheists who had previously believed in an eternal universe.
Although I believe in evolution, I don't buy abiogenesis. That is, I don't think life could have formed purely randomly in a steaming pond of primordial soup.
2. There are some things that evolution alone cannot explain, like how life came from non-life or what makes man different from the other animals. Even atheist evolutionary biologists recognize that they take some things on faith, I simply chose to put my faith into an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving Creator instead of in completely unguided naturalistic processes.
3. This is very philosophical, but I see no reason that reality should exist as it does. Science can only tells us how the universe works, not why it works that way. Why should the laws of physics be constant? Why should matter continue existing? Science has no answer, but Christianity does, in Colossians 1:16-17:
“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
4. Another very philosophical reason is a variation on Aquinas’ cosmological argument, something along the lines of what Joseph Porter wrote a couple years ago.
I also believe in inherent cuteness. The miracle of babies definitely contributed to my conversion. Seriously. How ridiculously adorable is this baby? (These are my maternal instincts kicking in.)
5. I believe in Love and Beauty and Goodness. In the atheist’s worldview, these are simply ideas that man has found evolutionary advantageous and are purely chemical processes in the brain. A total atheist worldview can only feature such ideals as shadows of what they truly are. But I believe there is something more inherent, more real to these qualities; when I say “I love you,” I mean a whole lot more than just “there are these hormones running through my body which signify physical attraction.”
So those are the primary reasons why I believe. What are some of your top five reasons? Share!
Comments (10)
[...] WHY DO YOU BELIEVE? [...]
5. Kalam Cosmological Argument. I recently attended a banquet in which William Lane Craig was the honorary speaker. (See facebook pic!) We had an amazing discussion afterwards.
4. Ontological argument. I think this is the most sound argument out there. Alvin Plantinga’s has done a lot of work here, but hasn’t done so lately. Robert E. Maydole has the torch now. (See his contribution to the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology)
3. Moral argument. No God, no objective morality. Morality is grounded in God.
2. Person of Jesus reveals God. (Resurrection key)
1. Religious experience/properly basic belief, that kind of thing. Plantinga calls this a properly basic belief. This was the conversation I had with Dr. Craig. I asked him about a concern I had about it, and he gave a very pastoral answer. I guess he saw it was more of an emotional question. He thanked me for being “transparent”. It was an amazing discussion.
I do want to express a small concern though on your second reason. It seems very “god-of-the-gaps”ish. Because evolution cannot explain something, therefore God did it? Seems like a non sequitur me. Or perhaps you’re refering to ID as a better explanation for the origins of life. Well, even then, I have some severe reservations about ID. I find most biological variations of ID to be unconvincing. I attended a panel discussion with Stepehen C. Meyer and two of his critics. It was for the release of his new book “Signature In The Cell”. And I still think the natural explanation wins this one.
One of Meyers biggest points was that we see causes in effect today, and we apply them to the past. So when we ask what causes digital code today, we say minds, programmers, ect. And phrased that way, it does seem plausible. But I think that’s quickly shot down when you phrase it, “What could be the cause of this unknown phenomenon? Natural or supernatural causes?” We must say that it is more likely that it is something natural. This same tactic was used against Meyer, and I don’t think he answered it at all. He responded instead with a kind of a zinger, “Well, that implies that ID is currently the best explanation.” The whole audience laughed, and that was that.
So if you could perhaps clarify what you mean on your second point since it first seems like a non sequitur, then maybe begging the question, then ID. So yeah…
Agree with Adrian. For me, natural and supernatural explanations must exist in parallel to each other – I think it’s quite plausible that someone will find a material explanation for life arising out of non-life. At that point then one would only look foolish, much as the people who rejected the heliocentric universe look now. I do support God as the first cause though – and science as the tool in which man discovers more about how God went about creation.
I understand where you guys are coming from; this was simply the briefest explanation, and that’s why I linked to my other post on the subject. I am an evolutionist – I do believe in evolution. But to me, it seems like there is a categorical difference between life and non-life (for example, the ability to reproduce) and it seems that the difference is too great to be bridged by purely naturalistic methods. That is, it’s one thing to say that an existing species can change into another species, but it’s an entirely different thing to say that a pool of atoms can transform into a living being. So my complaint is with abiogenesis not with evolution (but most people use the latter term to refer to the former as well).
Although I’ve heard of some of the experiments that they’ve done to demonstrate abiogenesis, they have not come close to regenerating life. Even top leading evolutionary biologists acknowledge that this is something they take on faith. If they are taking abiogenesis on faith, I see no problem with taking God on faith. I realize this is a sort of God of the gaps argument, but the opposite choice is still a science of the gaps.
1) Who says matter spontaneously came into existence? The Big Bang was not “everything exploding from nothing”. The Big Bang was a supermassive singularity that underwent rapid expansion. There is no point at which it was “nothing”. A better description would be that the singularity was, effectively, EVERYTHING; matter, energy, space and time, all compressed together. As for what happened before then, scientists are still working on it. They may not have an answer yet, but they’re looking for one.
2) Evolution isn’t supposed to explain everything, just the diversity of life. As for abiogenesis, even bringing a deity into the question is, in a way, acknowledging the occurrence of SOME form of abiogenesis, in the sense that at one point there was no life, and then at another point there was life. That said, chemical abiogenesis is actually reasonably well-understood, though there are still some holes to fill. In January 2009, as a matter of fact, an experiment simulating early Earth conditions actually resulted in the formation of self-replicating RNA, and came EXTREMELY close to producing life from non-life.
For more info:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20090011195733data_trunc_sys.shtml
3) Why NOT? Reality could have functioned in any of countless possible ways, more than can be imagined. Why should any of them be more likely than any other? Let’s suppose that reality functioning the way it does is a one-in-a-billion shot. That sounds like terrible odds. But if every other possible configuration has one-in-a-billion odds TOO (we have no real way of knowing whether it does or doesn’t, so this question is pretty much purely hypothetical), then every possibility is equally probable (or improbable, as one might phrase it). It’s like if you roll a die. Each face is equally improbable, and the odds are against you predicting the result correctly, BUT while the odds are 1:6 of a specific result, the odds are 1:1 of a result (ANY result) appearing. The die MUST land with one face up, and there is no particularly good reason why any one face should be the one that is up.
4) Okay, let me get these premises straight.
1. Everything has a cause.
2. The universe is a thing.
3. Therefore, the universe had a cause.
Now, this argument is not flawed. I fully agree with this. But what is it that suggests that this cause is somehow intelligent, or that it is uncaused in itself? In fact, the first premise of the argument necessitates that whatever caused the universe MUST have a cause of its own. Stating that everything has a cause and then postulating the existence of some starting UNCAUSED cause is a direct self-contradiction. Furthermore, even if there IS a starting uncaused cause, you need more data to come to the conclusion that this cause is intelligent, possesses a personality, or has any features that you might attribute to it other than being a cause.
5) And this is simply false. Atheists are not bound together by anything other than a non-belief in the existence of deities; there is nothing else that they necessarily believe (or that they necessarily don’t believe). Concepts such as love, beauty, and goodness are not things that come up when discussing biology (okay, the concept of falling in love seems to have SOME biological foundations, but it’s hardly a simple matter, and there’s a major psychological component). If you want to discuss love, beauty, and what it means to be good, talk to a philosopher. A biologist has no answers for you other than his or her own opinion, and that opinion is almost entirely separate from the field of biology. You wouldn’t ask a plumber for a cake recipe. Don’t ask a biologist about philosophy. Evolution holds no answers for these particular questions, and nobody every said it did (though it might be able to weigh in a bit on the matter of how people fall in love, but people are still trying to puzzle that one out fully, as I already mentioned).
Stephen Hawking says that the Big Bang means that gravity can account for spontaneous appearance of the universe:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6811FN20100902
I think as non-scientists, we need to be very careful about making claims about what science can and cannot determine. Only the scientists in the field know what has been explained and what hasn’t. Things which are mysterious to science today, I believe, will cease to be mysterious as time goes on, since many great minds are at work to crack those mysteries, and I think human reason is a very powerful tool which has already revealed a lot of the workings of the universe to us – I see no reason why it should not continue to do so.
However, my instinct is also that Science may be able to answer “How” questions to greater and greater satisfaction, but “Why” questions are never the preserve of scientists. For example, if we have a completely convincing argument that morality arose as a result of evolutionary pressures, it would not explain why we should continue to believe in that particular configuration of morality now that we have reduced it to psychological explanations. Anyone who breaks the moral code today could then say those biological pressures nolonger apply, and anyway he doesn’t want to be limited by a moral code that is irrelevant now we are past that formative evolutionary time.
Judith, I do agree, to an extent that we should be careful in exploring fields of study that we do not specialize in, but I think in this case, Hawking poses no threat. Just by the headlines and the brief quotations I’ve read of this story, I have some questions.
For example, “gravity explains creation ex nihilo”. From my understanding, gravity is a kind of force of attraction between mass. The greater the mass, the greater the force of gravity. No mass, no gravity. So gravity implies mass. And to say that gravity creates mass ex nihilo begs the question.
But more importantly, I think when applied to arguments like the Kalam Cosmological Argument, stuff like big bang cosmology is only a part of the argument. It’s a philosophical argument, not a scientific one, and as a philosophy major, I think I am entitled to say a lot more now, which makes me much more comfortable.
So I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s that big of an issue.
“If someone is asked to “explain” why they believe something (for example, that miracles happen) they could respond with any one of several types of explanation: a causal explanation of a naturalistic kind; a rational explanation, showing the relationships between certain premises and the conclusions they point to; a psychological explanation of the person’s tastes and preferences that predispose him or her to that belief; and/or a personal history explanation of the influences that helped lead to that belief. We do not need to choose between the explanations, because each is working on a different level, or in Wittgenstein’s terms, partaking of a different ‘language game’.”
- Van Leeuwen, A Sword between the sexes
I’m late on this, but I just wanted to say thanks to Stewart Haggin for the brilliant reply. I agree with everything he said (and find it rather telling that no one, including the original author, has replied directly to him).