Allow me first to be honest here: my heart is broken by the events of this month and last. I am quite sobered that I feel the necessity during the Christmas season to draw up a confession of my most basic belief - God exists. Indeed, I would much rather be posting about Philippians 2 or Luke 2 in lieu of this time of the year, but I see first a more basic need.
Allow me to disregard the opening of books and re-listening to debates and to just speak from my mind and heart. Hereafter is my confession of faith that God exists, and the following are the reasons why:
1. There must be a cause for the universe because every visible thing in the universe has a cause.
There is only one "thing" in all of existence - the universe or elsewhere - that has no cause, and that is God. Every visible thing we see comes from somewhere. Mammals and humans are made by reproductive systems. Ash comes from wood and fire. Clouds come from water. It's a seemingly self-containing system. But how was it set in motion? In answering this question, to say that matter has always been would be a logical fallacy because that would imply that the universe has always been. The universe is governed by time, so if the universe has always been, time has always been. And if time dates infinitely to the past, we never would have gotten to this point. It would be impossible. There must have been a beginning, and before that beginning - if you will bear with me in such a foolish statement - there must have been someone or something which transcended the laws of time on which this universe runs.
2. The complexity of creation.
It has been determined that caterpillars have 228 distinct muscles in their heads. Yes, 228. In their heads alone. A DNA strand of a single human being would stretch for miles and miles upon miles if it were unbound. Feel your chest. That beating heart is currently outputting enough pressure to shoot your blood 30 feet. If it's clear, you will have opportunity tonight to look four years into the past because the light from the stars we see is four light-years away. All matter is composed of what scientists call quarks and leptons. These are the tiniest particles known to man. They make up atoms, and they cannot be divided; they can't even be seen under microscope. What's more, there is nothing smaller in the universe, so their essence is themselves. And if their essence is themselves, they are made of nothing, and if they are made of nothing the universe as well is made up of absolutely nothing. Yet it is evident there is still something. Science alone cannot explain this mystery of nothing and everything physical.
3. Morality.
Engraved on the personality of every human being, however weak or strong it may be, is a sense of morality. Humanism utterly fails to explain this because if man is all there is, no one is to say that I could not have kicked in the stomach the pregnant woman I saw in Panera today. If there is no god, each individual is subject to no greater standard of right and wrong - man himself is the standard. And if I am the standard, I will do as I please, thank you very much; there is no such thing as a conscience (we can't see it after all). But we know better because God has given us such knowledge. No gene or strand of DNA can explain where this knowledge came from. Only a moral creator could have set it within us, and thus we are subject to a divine moral law.
4. Personal testimony.
There is not one personal witness in favor of atheism because in order for atheism to be proven to be true, one would have to see everything visible and invisible at all points of time in all of history and in everything before, after, between, and beyond history. However, there have been countless stories and testimonies of supernatural events, people coming back to life, the sick being healed, and dreams leading to the way of God. To be sure, many of these are vain attempts to manipulate the faith of easy-believing people. Yet I myself have experienced God personally and intimately, and I know several people who have done the same. Moreover, none of those people are medically insane - or even irrational - people. So then, based on the witness of personal testimony alone, it would not be irrational to believe in the supernatural.
So then, based on the above reasons, I find it completely rational to believe in a god.
In the following post(s), I will explore the rationality of belief in the God of the Bible.
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