Introduction

Many people think there is no evidence for God, this page is to show that's not true. We'll mostly give positive evidence for God's existence, objections are handled here: God - Apologetics, Objections - Apologetics

We will tackle 6 main areas of life that show evidence of God's Existence and Character: Morality, Science, Reason, Mind, Prophecy, Experience.

Morality

Morality Exists

Everyone believes there are things that they "should" or "shouldn't" do.

You likely believe the following:

• People should keep their promises
• People should be unselfish
• People should be fair - The first in line should be the first served (no cutting!)

Here's some proof that you agree to this standard, whenever someone has tried to tell you that you violated one of these rules, which did you do:

give an excuse / claim this was an "exception" or Claim that the rule was nonexistent

If you did the latter, then you implicitly agree with the fact that there was some standard you were being help up to

Morality Matters (Is Not Preference)

Most of us would safely agree that criminals deserve a punishment, maybe not necessarily the one they were given, but certainly *something* should be done. We believe wrong should be punished.

This comes about in two ways:

• 1 Wrong deserves punishment
• 2 Retribution

Punitive Justice is that wrongdoers need to have a punishment. Someone who brutally tortures and kills a family for no reason needs to have something done to them. Some think jail, some think death, but surely we all agree *something* needs to be done.

Restorative or Retributive justice is that you deserve to be restored for how you were wronged. If someone stole $1000 from you, surely you'd want at least $1000 back. If someone damaged your car, you'll at least want the damage repaired.

Not only should something be done to the wrong doer, done for the victim, but something must be done by others.

When people (government, society, etc.) do not bring one of the 2 forms of Justice mentioned earlier, that act itself is considered unjust

Morality is Objective (Some things always Wrong)

Morality is objective / transcends just our physical reality or societal structures, here are some examples:

Beyond societal structures: Some things are always wrong

Take the following list:

Whoa what happened?

I'm sure many us read the first line and went, "hmm I don't know, I feel like I know of a time that I feel like ___ is okay." But when reading the second line, none of them were.

Morality Is Transcendent

Beyond physical:

If someone steals from you, don't you think something should happen? Even if they stole something and gave it back, isn't it still wrong?

Morality is more than a physical desire, it's a conviction I have about physical desires.

• Hunger does not justify stealing or murder.
• Sexual desire does not justify adultery, prostitution, or rape.

Morality Is Discovered, Not Invented

Being taught morality does not mean morality is invented, just as being taught mathematics does not mean mathematics was created.

Morality Cannot Be Reduced to Desire or Environment

Moral convictions are different from other natural desires. Rather than a desire to do a specific activity (eat-hunger, sleep-tired), it judges when and how to do them.

Earlier examples show that, just because I'm hungry, doesn't mean I'm allowed to steal to eat. Why? Because my morals tell me otherwise.

This makes morality fundamentally different from instincts or social conditioning. It functions as a standard by which our impulses are evaluated, restrained, or condemned. Rather than being one desire among many, morality governs them.

Whatever explains morality must therefore explain not only why we have desires, but why we experience an authoritative "ought" that stands over them — even when obeying it costs us comfort, safety, or advantage.

Morality Implies Lawgiver

Laws Come From Authorities

Rules and laws exist at many levels — household, local, national, international — and all come from an authority.

• Friend "laws" - friends
• Home laws - parents
• City laws - city legislature
• State laws - state legislature
• National laws - United States government
• International laws - UN regulations
• Universal moral laws - God ?

If there are moral laws that transcend individuals, cultures, and governments, then they must come from an authority that transcends individuals, cultures, and governments.

Conclusion: Why Morality Points to God

Morality is a real obligation we all feel that calls us to judge our desires and actions as "right" or "wrong". There are even some actions that we universally can agree are wrong. Since law's come from authorities, a logical conclusion of a universal law that judges our physical desires is the existence of a transcendent moral law giver

Science

Biology

Biology shows evidence of God's existence because of 3 things.

First, "Intelligent Design". This the ability to examine some object or system, and determine that it is the result of an intelligent source rather than unguided chance.

Second,"Highly Specified Information". DNA and proteins contain complex information that represents code and language, which stronglly strengthens the case for intelligent design.

Third, "Irreducible Complexity". A system is irreducibly complex when its overall function depennds on multiple interacting parts, such that removing even one part causes the entire system to stop functioning.

Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design becomes more clear and likely the more that the following are true about a system:

• It has patterns we recognize from outside the system
• It has highly specified information
• The system and / or its information accomplish a specific goal or function
• The system is irreducibly complex

Recognizable Patterns

Another indicator of intelligent design is the presence of patterns that originate outside the system itself.

When we encounter a pattern that we already recognize from another domain — such as language, engineering and coding systems, or symbolic representation — we naturally infer that the pattern was placed there by an intelligent agent that already understood that pattern.

For example, if you discovered English sentences carved into a rock on Mars, you would immediately conclude that an intelligent mind placed them there. The reason is simple: English is a language system that exists outside the rock. The rock itself does not generate language.

In the same way, DNA contains patterns that resemble coding systems and translation processes, which strongly suggest the involvement of intelligence.

Information Levels

Here is an example that shows the levels of information, and how we naturally conclude intelligent design from higher forms of information.

Your dog's name is Daisy. Daisy likes to walk across your keyboard while you're away. When you forget to lock your computer, you come home to something like this:

Sweet, right?

However, one day you come home to the following:

Would you imagine that your dog, Daisy, would've typed them?

For the first couple lines, Maybe.

Either Daisy did it, or something fell on your keyboard, or a key is jammed, something along those lines.

For lines 3 - 5, I doubt any of us would think that our pet (as smart as Daisy might be) would be able to type with such precision, and even 5 consecutive English words!

Once you read the last two lines the situation is clear. You did indeed lock your computer before leaving, but your roomate was able to guess your 'secret_password' and after typing some gibberish (or perhaps letting Daisy have some fun), he invited you to dinner and made a snarky remark about your poor security skills.

How do I know this?

It's OBVIOUS to us that the level of information given in the last two lines, shows that whoever wrote them have information about the english language, vocabulary, punctuation, your name, numbers, the concept of time, the concept of non-military time, your specific time zone, the well-known abbreviation 'P.S.', and even how to make what looks like a person sticking their tongue out with a colon and a capital p (:P).

This is highly specified information, referencing patterns and knowledge from diverse areas of life, and ultimately accomplishes a function / goal (communicating a message).

Clearly this is the act of some intelligent agent / designer.

DNA has this same type of information

Information in DNA

We'll cover some of these in more depth, but here are features of the DNA system found in your cells.

• Highly specified information
• Error Correction
• Language Translation
• Copying
• Replication

Background Info

DNA is made up of building blocks called nucleotides. The nucleotides are as follows: Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Cytosine (C), Guanine (G).

Think of this like a 4 letter alphabet, so DNA sequences will look something like this, "ATTCACGA".

DNA is used to make proteins, which use a 20 character amino acid language.

DNA is 'translated' into proteins by taking some string of nucleotides, and converting each set of 3 nucleotides (called a codon or triplet) into it's corresponding amino acid (aa).

• AAA -> aa 1
• AAT -> aa 2
• ATA -> aa 3
• . . .

This process uses ~20 proteins for transcription and over 100+ proteins for translation. Understand that this means to create a protein from DNA, over a hundred proteins must already exist.

Language + Storing capacity

Computers store information in binary, 1's and 0's like this, "101000111010101".

And in english, with our 26 letter alphabet, we store information like this: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"

Almost all cell's DNA have ~6 billion nucleotides (pairs)

the # of combinations you can achieve with 6 billion nucleotides is 4^{6,000,000,000}

This is approximately 10^{3,850,000,000} -- (hover for calculations) asdfasfasdfasdfasfasdfasdfasfasdfasdfasfasdfasdfasfasdf

show collapsible math

Amount of DNA

There are roughly 30 trillion cells in your body, and most of these (not mature blood cells) have 2 copies of your DNA in them.

The DNA in each cell is ~2 meters (~6ft) in length. This DNA is packed, wrapped, and folded into a nucleus that is ~5-10 micrometers wide (1 millionth of a meter, or 1 thousandth of a millimeter)

Exceptions: Red blood cells - 0 DNA, sperm & egg cells - half the amount of DNA

Irreducible Complexity

repeat definition

show that proteins are very complex and not simple

Complexity of Proteins

Also, proteins are not 'simple machines' or 'blobs' that we might think. Here is a quote from the National Institutes of Health / National Library of Medicine:

Bacterial Flagellum

Advanced molecular machine...

Cosmology

The Universe Began

infinite regress: dominoes example

infinity examples: library, infinite books, infinite pages numbers (infinite counting, 1,2,3,4, minus all evens, infinite = infinite, can't do math with it, etc)

Logos / Logic & Reason

Logic

Laws of logic are: Universal Immaterial Invariant Necessary (they cannot be otherwise) Questions you could raise: Where do abstract, universal, necessary laws exist? Why should physical matter obey non-physical logical laws? You don't need to conclude too aggressively. Just press: Logic appears to be grounded in something beyond space, time, and matter.

Truth

immaterial, where exists?

why truth?

Mathematics

discoverable not invented

unreasonably effective?

Why does math describe the universe so precisely? Why should a physical universe obey abstract mathematical laws? Where do numbers exist?

Reason

If: Thoughts are just chemical reactions Neurons firing is determined by physics Then: Are beliefs caused by truth? Or just by prior physical states?

can i ever be wrong? -> if matter can cause faulty reason why should i believe it?

Mind

Consciousness

first person experiences

if all people in the US acted as a cell in a brain, consciousness would arise and that group would be a new mind

Meaning / Purpose / Value

if all matter and universe + life ends

how is there any real meaning?

where does meaning / value come from? is it invented / a social construction?

if yes -> then we don't really have value, we just pretend we do

Free Will

If we are only matter, -> deterministic

accountability?

Prophecy

About Jesus

About Tyre

Experience

Bible's Teachings work