The Clues For God

(Chapter 8 in Tim Keller's book, The Reason for God) The person who says there is a need for an absolute, airtight, irrefutable proof for God sets himself up for failure because of his absolute assumption—a great weakness of over rationalization. But if you are willing to examine clues, reasonable explanations, then the move of faith gains stability within the mind. Keller offers several clues to the questioning mind. The Mysterious Bang. Most scientists talk about a Big Bang beginning to the universe. They cite evidence of outward expansion from a single point. Working backwards, they arrive at a single point about 15 billion years ago when something happened to begin what we know now. An obvious question is, what happened prior to the Big Bang? What caused it? Was it a who? Or Who? Could it have been God? The Cosmic Welcome Mat I call this the “life has happened” argument. It is based on the reality we experience. Life in a multitude of forms. The challenge is that there are so many physical constants that must be just so, for life to happen—things like gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, etc. Some have said that there are at least 15 such constants and any variation in one of them by as much as 1 in a 1,000,000 would unbalance the whole. Alvin Plantinga offers another way of looking at it. Suppose you and three friends were playing poker. You deal, and as you deal you get four aces. Eyebrows are raised, laughter erupts. And then you deal again, and again get four aces. Maybe you do this twenty times in a row. Your friends now think you are a cheater. You claim, “There might be an infinite number of universes and maybe we just so happen to be in the one where every time I deal, I get four aces.” Now such a statement cannot be proved either way. Your friends however, if you lived in the old west, would have their six shooters out! The Regularity of Nature This one’s easy for most of us. Stuff happens on a regular basis, like the sun coming up. The regularity of scientific events is what enables people to learn by observation. Pretty soon we learn, that in the same circumstances, water always boils at 212 degrees. Philosophers however, push beyond such common sense, and say that just because it has happened in the past, it doesn’t mean it will happen in the future. That’s pure assumption on a philosophical basis. Of course they still count on boiling water to brew their tea! The Clue of Beauty Just about everyone, at some time or another, is struck by beauty. It could be music, or nature, or literature, or art, but there is some kind of innate desire or longing that only something beautiful touches. Of course that touch is imperfect in itself, there is the longing for that ‘more thing’ which the experience of beauty hints at. And it is this hint of beauty that gives another clue to God being out there. Is it proof? Some say yes, others say no. Let’s continue to call it a clue. The Clue-Killer... Those who are opposed to seeing God in anything and who demand some kind of airtight proof are often influenced and often influence others by a promotion of evolutionary science. They say everything is really just a result of random interactions of chemicals and atoms and electrons. ...killed When they say this they suppose that talk and thought of religion and God are knocked asunder. What they usually forget is that the same premise that would push away talk of God (“It’s just an evolutionary result that enabled some people to survive better, it doesn’t correspond to any reality, it’s just chemicals and such…”, what they usually forget is that that same premise cuts the feet out from under their own idea. For ultimately, it too, is only the result of some random chemical, biological, physical interaction. (And if that is the case, then so too, any musing about anything. Meaning and knowledge have no substance, only appearance.) The reality though is that no one can live that way. Everyone believes some things, discusses some things, even if it would be only biomechanical evolution. A result of these clues (and there are many, many others) is “provocative and potent.” There will be those who say, “So at best you are only offering probabilities. No one can really know if there’s a God or not.” Keller says “Not exactly.” But that is the next chapter!