by Mike Robinson
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| There is a lot of proof and evidence for God |
Now that I am older I
still cannot help believing in God. I believe in God now because unless I have
Him as the All-Conditioner, life is Chaos (Cornelius Van Til).
A few notable reasons I believe in Jesus Christ:
He is God.
He died for my sins.
He rose from the grave and displayed compelling evidence for His
resurrection.
He revealed potent evidence for His claims including over 300
predictions He fulfilled.
No one ever spoke like Him.
No one in history compares to Him: His love, mercy, grace, and
truth infinitely transcend that of all men combined.
Besides, atheism is impossible.1
Jesus: Unique and Winsome
I am the way, the truth, and the life … (Jesus, John 14:6).
He runs off with all their hearts. This is what Jesus does when He
touches people, and it is both powerful and very moving. Jesus established who
He was as He healed the blind, calmed the sea, and rose from the dead—come on.
Yep. Jesus did things only God could do. Did anyone think Jesus would have all
the proof, position, and power and never use it?
Time and again he did. Boom. Dead Lazarus come forth. And he did.
Later, nailed to the Cross outside of Jerusalem, hands pierced, his body
submerged in wrath and judgment, Jesus dies for the sins of the lost—atonement,
propitiation, and expiation—before rising from the dead as He slammed death,
hell, and the grave. "I came to serve not to be served," Jesus said.
Love had won. "I came to save people from their sins," he exclaimed.
"And to seek and save that which was lost."
It’s still a thrill. And you can’t help but delight in the
goodness of God when you ponder the magnetism of Jesus, you end up loving life
more because your love for Him grows deeper, which is a result of His
immeasurable charm. This allure of Jesus is as striking as it is
lasting—there’s nothing like it—not even close. But still there’s the church,
scripture, forgiveness, and unconditional love. Jesus, the person and the
grace, further evidence that Christ, healer and forgiver, is who He
claimed to be: God come in human flesh.
The assumption is that the true religion will have evidence as
true truth is displayed, and this assumption is brought to you by human nature
made in the image of God—a nature (ontology) that is reasonable, seeks
evidence, and builds upon truth. Like most assumptions, many fallen individuals
disregard it, and many embrace religions (Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, etc.) or
ideology (atheism) that lack evidence, because the falsehoods serve to please
sinful hearts: which are untrustworthy above all things. Press the truth of
Christianity on the unrepentant nonbeliever and they will dig in and hold to
the firmest stage of denial. Yes, evidence and proof help. Yes, share the
reality of the glorious person of Jesus. But the overdue acceptance by
fundamentalist Muslims and rigid atheists remains askew. Hard hearts? The
meaning is clear: stony hearts can only be softened by God’s grace through His
Word and Spirit.
We think of the world as
containing particular things some of which are independent of ourselves; we
think of the world's history as made up of particular episodes in which we may
or may not have a part; and we think of these particular things and events as
included in the topics of our common discourse, as things about which we can
talk to each other. These are remarks about the way we think of the world,
about our conceptual scheme. A more recognizably philosophical, though no
clearer, way of expressing them would be to say that our ontology comprises
objective particulars. It may comprise much else besides (P.F. Strawson).
I know God exists because He saved me through Jesus and He changed
my heart by grace through the Spirit. I believe in God because of beauty,
truth, reason, moral absolutes, and most of all because of Jesus. Jesus stands
as the majestic Logos who is full of grace and truth; so
awesome that all men combined do not compare to Him. He is everything to me and
He alone is enough for me to know God must exist.
Knowing Him is so stupendous, so marvelous, that there is not a
trace of doubt in my heart when I contemplate His person and His work.
Christianity
is Flourishing
Christianity is thriving. Sorry, cynics. Jesus
is received as Lord and Savior in growing numbers across China, Africa, and
South America. It is a broad reality often seen through the keyhole of
Americana. But the reality is stunning: Billions confessing the Lordship of
Jesus Christ across the globe.
All of it sounds inspiring and encouraging
and maybe even faith-deepening, because the earth belongs to Jesus Christ. He
is not a mere doctrine. He never was. He is life itself.
Proclaiming
the truth of Jesus is a powerful endeavor. Displaying the proof regarding the
revelation of Christ is a delightful undertaking. Since the cross is a mighty
instrument of truth, nobody knows how many cranky atheists have been stopped
cold by the power of the cross and the evidence for Jesus Christ. So why not
run up the score? Design! Information! Miracles! Archaeology! Messianic
prophecy! There’s no surer way to make an impact than to be precise and
comprehensive. (Basically you need to talk like a Jeopardy winner.) Bellicosity
is for suckers. It’s what the New Atheists employ in place of rational
argumentation.2 Hold back? No way.
Think
about it. There’s design in the cosmos, there’s information in the DNA code of
every living thing, and Jesus had hundreds of prophecies predicting His arrival
to confirm His claims. Would you have paid much attention to somebody who told
you that, well, uh, believe me because I say so, well hey, they have a nice
holy book, and um, they have a lot of followers and they, um, have palatial
sacred buildings, would you have believed in that religion?
Not
me. But that’s what most religions have. So they, like atheists, rest upon
blind irrational faith. Hooray!
We
will rest on truth and revelation.3 Please throw away sightless
unfounded faith. We’re going to be in eternity much longer than on earth,
therefore we must rest on truth.
Worldview Reasons for
Christianity
All worldviews are open to charge on particular claims as well as
individual assessments of specific evidence (disagreement
over interpretation of particular evidence is often the
case among interlocutors—while both are susceptible to confirmation bias). Apologists
for specific worldviews have answers pre-formulated for particular issues. This
means trading brute evidence (or swapping uninterpreted facts) is not the chief
method of finding truth apropos worldview analysis.
There is colossal evidence and impressive proof for the
existence of God. Nonetheless, I maintain one must go deeper and broader than
mere evidence. One should ask: What are the required a priori conditions
necessary to ground immutable universals (including geometrical truths, laws of
logic, moral absolutes, identity, attributes, distinctions, mathematical
invariants, etc.)? Answer: God. He provides the universal operational aspects
of rationality.
Christian theism furnishes these universal functioning features;
atheism, in principle, fails. Non-Christian worldviews are deficient when it
comes to accounting for immutable universals. These actualities are required to
even begin an inquiry concerning the truth of worldviews. To examine, analyze,
and discern proper particulars, one needs a worldview that has the necessary
rational architecture that supplies immutable universals.
Materialistic atheism believes that only the cosmos exists—the
matter and motion within the universe are everything. Does the cosmos
have the capacity to ground immutable universals? No. The material
cosmos comes up infinitely short since it is a particular mutable
(changing) thing; it lacks universal reach (it is not omnipresent) and it is
always in a shifting and variable flux. Thus, the material cosmos fails to
ground the immutable operational features of human experience. Since immutable
universals exist, strict materialistic atheism cannot be true.
Christian theism posits things, Forms, entities, norms, concepts,
and laws that are immutable, universal, and non-physical, but the atheistic
materialist denies this at his own peril and
self-stultification. Christian theism brings with it the ability for
coherence, moral law, inductive truths, and all the a prior rational
requirements for intelligibility.
The Laws of Truth and Logic
The laws of truth are not psychologistic, but are
necessities of logic; they are objectively true and in force. These laws are
not bound to the fleeting subjective opinions or thoughts of men. They are
necessarily utilized by all men, but a particular man or set of men (and their
particular brains) lack the ontic capacity to ground these laws. I
draw from this that only an immutable and universal power-source can
ground the laws of truth—this is God.
The always-in-flux cosmos lacks an unchanging nature to ground the
laws of logic. Nonetheless, many modern atheists assert that these laws are not
laws; they are not fixed and universal. Yet, these laws are surely fixed and
universal. The laws of logic are not material laws that may change forasmuch as
truth must utilize these principles. Posit them as mere brain accessories or
cerebral tools and that will place them in the subjective psychologistic realm.
That cannot be true because these laws are objective and necessary. Thus the
principles of logic are not mere human conventions or limited to subjective
governance. One must be pre-committed to their independence from the human
brain (and the cosmos) and their absolute normative governance—they are
transcendent. John Frame observes: “People may very well interpret the
expression ‘law of thought’ by analogy with the ‘law of nature’ and then have
in their mind features of thinking as mental occurrence. A law of
thought in this sense would be a psychological law … That would be a misunderstanding
regarding the task of logic, for truth has not been given its proper place.”
That is one reason it is proper to refer to these laws as the “laws of truth.”
The Reasons Why I believe in Christianity
• Grace:
Because of God’s grace I have faith in Jesus Christ as
Savior and Lord.
•
The Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit opened my heart to believe in
Christ through the Word of God.
• Bible
– Proof: The Bible has massive archeological proof.
•
The 333 Predictions about Jesus that were fulfilled: Only God could
predict and then arrange all the events that were prophesied concerning Jesus.
•
The Resurrection of Jesus: There is amazing proof for the Resurrection of
Christ.
•
The Cross: The only place of atonement to wash away my sins is found in
Jesus by way of the Cross.
• Justification:
Christianity is the only faith among the 30,000 religions of the world that
provides complete soteriological Justification—it’s the only religion whereby
one is saved by grace
alone.
• Sin:
All people sin just as the Bible maintains. One can clearly see sin in the
lives of people and displayed daily in the news.
• Proof
found in the universe: The universe is designed—design requires a designer.
• DNA:
Language. Language requires a mind. It would take a Divine mind to place the
DNA language in our cells.
• Logic:
Only God (immutable, perfect, everywhere present) can be the source of the laws
of logic (immutable, perfect, everywhere present).
• Jesus:
No one is like Jesus.
For an exhaustive presentation of the evidence for Christianity
see my new book Reality and the Folly of Atheism HERE on Amazon
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1. One would have to be omnipresent to disprove God,
so only God could disprove Himself, which is incoherent and impossible.
Claiming God doesn’t exist anywhere is a universal negative—a specific
universal negative that is impossible to prove. A universal negative is a claim
that asserts something does not exist anywhere. Some scholars claim one cannot
prove a universal negative. The assertion that God doesn’t exist is a universal
negative. The universal assertion that “God doesn’t exist” cannot be proven.
Nonetheless, the actual claim that “one cannot prove a universal negative” is
itself a universal negative. It claims, universally, no universal negative can
be proven anywhere. So under its own standard it fails. Moreover, the claim
that there are no completely black boxes with orange all over is a universal
negative. It maintains, universally, there are no completely black boxes with
orange all over. If a box is wholly painted black, then it cannot be orange all
over. Hence, no completely black boxes with orange all over exist
anywhere. This entails that one can prove a universal
negative. Nonetheless, asserting that God doesn’t exist anywhere is a universal
negative—a particular universal negative that is impossible to demonstrate.
Even the cynic Voltaire observed, “The very impossibility in which I find myself
to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.”
2.
Leaders
of the New Atheists aim to reprogram believers and make them atheists. http://goddoesexistuknowit.blogspot.com/2014/06/atheist-peter-boghossian-wants-to-treat.html
3.
Rational pre-commitments
assist in directing one’s investigation and analysis of the data (as well as
its interpretation and communication). This admission is often difficult to get
from some atheistic inquirers to acknowledge. What worldview can furnish the a
priori necessities and rational tools for science, analysis, research and
proof? Christian theism delivers the epistemic ground for the a priori
immutable universals utilized in rational enquiry and proof; in principle,
materialistic atheism cannot furnish the aforementioned ground. What is
obligatory to account for analysis and proof is a first principle that has the
ontological endowment to not only ground it, but to account for proof and its
preconditions—all the universal operational features of knowledge. The loss of
the immovable point of reference, in principle, leaves the ungodly bereft of a
resource necessary to construct the analytical enterprise required to prove
anything. Without God, one cannot hoist the necessary a priori operation
features of the intellectual examination of evidence and proof. The Christian
worldview supplies the fixed ontic platform as the sufficient truth condition
that can justify induction, immutable universals, attributes, identity, and the
uniformity of the physical world. But materialistic atheism lacks such a fixed
ontic platform. Consequently, it fails to provide the sufficient ground
required to justify enquiry, research, evidence, and proof.
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