Does God Exist? Answering a Few Common Objections

A blessed and Merry Christmas to one and all!

I apologize for my latest period of absence, and for the string of absences which have necessitated apologies. Life keeps happening: in our latest episode, mold was discovered in our apartment, forcing us to find a new place and move, just before Christmas. It was a tad hectic, to say the least. But life is starting to calm down a bit, Deo gratias.

Recently I received an invitation to dialogue from a reader named Gil:

Since you appear to be quite perspicacious, I would like to engage you in dialogue in the hope that a fertile brain such as yours could be rescued from the tyranny of religious dogma (I stole that idea from Thomas Paine); "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

Thanks for the compliment, and I'm happy to oblige. Let's address that quote from ol' Tommy Pain if you don't mind (that was purposely misspelled--it would make a good name for a pro wrestler from the 80s, no? "Here comes Tommy Pain, with his manager Jimmy "Mouth of the South" Hart....") What is enslaving or terrifying or tyrannical about religious dogma? Please do expand upon that so I can address it properly.

Gil has commented on several of my posts, so I'll provide a little context for his comments quoted here. In reference to my post "Is believing in God Like Believing in Zeus or Thor?" in which I said that many of the pagan gods were more like super-powered humans than anything that could properly be called "god" or "God," Gil wrote:

How about Allah or the Hindu and Buddhist Gods? Or the Native American God? Or the Gods of many South American traditions? They are more in the category of your Judeo-Christian God, so if you do not believe in Allah, then you are an atheist in that regard. Or is your God better than their Gods?

Gil wants me to expand my search parameters because he thinks some of these will provide a stronger challenge to my contention that non-Abrahamic concepts of God do not fit the bill. Let's look at these. Allah is simply the Arabic name for God, the same God that Jews and Christians worship. Christian liturgies in Arabic or Aramaic refer to Allah. You might as well say, "Ah, you believe in God, but what about Dios, or Dieux, or Theos, or Deus?" We may believe some different things about Him, but all parties agree that they worship the God who called Abraham to the Promised Land. The "gods of many South American traditions" and the Hindu gods, rather than challenging the categories I set up, fit neatly into them--none of them could be described as omnipotent, immutable, or immortal, and their very multiplicity means none of them fulfill the criterion of unity. Most forms of Buddhism are disinterested in the question of God, and the Buddhist cosmologies that include super-powered beings definitely do not describe anything that could fit the definition of God I laid out.

When Gil starts to imply the "we're only atheists about one more god than you are" argument, or when he uses the "is your God better than their Gods" rhetorical question, he shows again that he has missed the point: to call both the God of Abraham and the gods of these other religions by the same name, "god," is an equivocation, forced on us by limits in our language. They are categorically different. I laid out my definition for what would qualify an entity to be called "God"; what's your definition, Gil?

Here Gil references the statement he's responding to:

Now this is a pretty grandiose statement (even for a theologian), "I've never heard of anyone in the last 3,000 years being healed of a deadly disease thanks to their supplications to Apollo." So presumably, you have roamed the entire earth for "the last 3,000 years" and observed all the billions of intercessory supplications and their results. Er, did you say your name was . . . Yahweh?

Passing over the crack on theologians (honored as I am by being gifted that title by Gil), let me briefly say that I did not claim to have observed every intercession and result for the last 3,000 years; my statement was clearly limited to my own observation. If you know of some datum that would apply to this case, please introduce it into evidence, and we can discuss it.

Here again Gil is kind enough to quote me before responding:

"But to believe in the Triune God as described above is eminently reasonable," you say, Nick. Well tell me how reasonable it is that a Father sent His Son to be killed, but the Son turned out to be God who while He was dying (if a God of this unimaginable potency can die) spoke to His Father as if He was being abandoned and apparently the Father ignored Him, because He did die (although God could have saved Him, or saved Himself) and now the Son is God who also created the Earth 4,000 years before He died. No fair using the water, ice, fog analogy.

It appears Gil is having difficulty seeing the reasonability... reasonableness... reasonabilitude... it appears Gil thinks the relation between the Father and the Son within the Trinity is not reasonable, that it is fraught with contradictions and confusions. Certainly, the Trinity is the greatest mystery of the Christian faith, something we could not arrive at only by rational speculation and which, even when revealed, we cannot understand fully; but at the same time, it is not irrational or inconsistent in itself. Actually, the way that Gil describes the relation between the Father and the Son, and his reference to a "water, ice, fog analogy" with which I am unfamiliar, sounds like the heresy of modalism, and not the traditional Christian understanding of the Trinity.

Modalism says that there is really only one God, but this God appears or acts in different modes (aren't italicized letters so much fun?)--He appears to the Israelites in "Father Mode" and incarnates in "Son Mode" and energizes the Church in "Spirit Mode." Basically, Modalism thinks of God like Peter Sellers or Eddie Murphy playing several roles in the same film. When Jesus addresses the Father in prayer, Modalism would say that we'd need some split-screen camera work to get them in the same scene, since it's really just one person. Gil finds this ridiculous. And I agree. But that's not the Christian concept of God.

The Holy Trinity is one God in three persons, one act of existence shared by three hypostases, in which the three persons are distinct in relation to each other, but they are one in their existence. "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God; yet there are not three gods, but one God," to quote the Creed of St. Athanasius. I would encourage Gil to dive into this subject and understand it on its own terms. It's a fascinating field of theology, though difficult. But, to anticipate an objection, just because something is difficult to understand doesn't make it "convoluted" or "nonsense," any more than particle physics or organic chemistry is nonsense by virtue of being difficult.

Gil, I look forward to your responses.

Does God Exist? The Argument from Wonder and Gratitude

Before we get back to logical or rational arguments for the existence of God, let's take a brief detour into an argument that is not so much an argument as an attempt to put a name to an intuition, an innate feeling or experience that we all seem to have and that occurs in us as naturally as a breath or a heartbeat.

There are certain moments in life that leave us speechless and breathless, our mouths gaped open but unable either to take in the profound experience before us nor to find the proper expression to mark the occasion. A pastel sunset over green fields and blue seas. The Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah. The birth of your child. The sight of a sparkling, swirling galaxy, coupled with the knowledge that it's thousands of light-years across and millions of light-years away. Such moments stir up in us a sense of awe and wonder--"I didn't know life could be this good."

And when we're given something good, it's our natural inclination to say, "Thank you."

And when we say "Thank you," to whom are we speaking?

We are grateful when we are given something by someone who has chosen to bestow the gift upon us. Persons give gifts. Persons are thanked. Not forces or aggregates, but persons, who have willed our good and acted to achieve it.

We all know this, intuitively, instinctively, deep down in our bones. But some don't know to what or whom it should be attributed. I suggest it is the only one capable of giving sunsets and symphonies and everything in between. It's God.

Does God Exist? It All Must Start Somewhere

We said last time that we could know that God exists if we were able to identify some effects the cause of which could only be God. We use this sort of reasoning all the time. If I see smoke, I conclude there is fire. If I see a maple leaf, I conclude there is somewhere a maple tree. Only a maple tree can cause a maple leaf.

This is an important point, because it's double-edged: I know that in order for there to be a maple leaf, there needs to be something which can bring about the maple leaf and adequately explain its existence--that is, something to cause the maple leaf; likewise, I know that a maple leaf cannot be the cause of itself, that maple leaves "just happen," any more than people or planets or platypuses do. Each needs a cause sufficient to explain its existence. I know that everything needs a cause, and I know that nothing is the cause of itself.

So, what's the cause of the maple leaf? A maple tree. But what's the cause of the maple tree? Another maple tree, I suppose; and sunlight, and water, and nutrients from the soil, and so forth. But what is the cause of the sunlight and water and nutrients and soil? Well, they're all made from elementary particles, if that's what you're asking. But what is the cause of those particles? If we keep going backward with these questions and addressing them in a scientific way, drilling down into increasingly smaller components of matter, we will eventually hit a question that is not scientific, but philosophical: why do they exist at all?

This is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one because it deals not with empirical observation but with logical necessity--we float along in the boat of our empirical observations until we come upon the hard ground of logical questions, and the boat can't carry us anymore. Logically, there is nothing about the nature of anything we observe in reality that says the existence of that thing is necessary. The maple leaf does not necessarily need to exist, evidenced by the fact that at one time it didn't exist. If its existence were logically necessary, it would always have existed. What we find in reality, then, is a series of beings the existence of which is not necessary, might-not-have-been, always lingering on the brink of nothingness; such beings are called contingent beings.

When we try to explain the existence of one contingent being by the causal power of another contingent being--that is, when we say one thing exists because of another thing's bringing it about--we find that we still must explain the existence of that other contingent being by the existence of yet another contingent being that brought it about, and so on, and so forth... until we realize that trying to explain the existence of the universe by contingent beings traps us on a train going backward infinitely, forever, with no stopping... and, in this case, no beginning. No starting point. No source. No explanation.

What is required, then, to stop this infinite regress, this never-ending recession from one insufficient cause to another, is a being that is not contingent, but is necessary. What is needed is a being that absolutely must exist, by its nature, and therefore always has existed. A being whose essence is to exist. Only such a being would be able to bring anything else into being out of nothing, to start from scratch, to make the first link in the chain. An eternal, necessary being that brings everything else into existence--what does that sound like? Who does that sound like?

This is a much less eloquent and less pithy version of the argument from contingency that St. Thomas Aquinas makes in question 2, article three of the first part of the Summa when he asks the question, "Does God exist?" (You can find it here about 5 paragraphs down, the one that starts with "The third way....") It is one of five ways that St. Thomas proposes to prove the existence of God, and all of them more or less cover this same sort of ground: we see motion, motion is caused by another, so for any motion to start, there must be an mover who is himself unmoved; we see causes, every cause is the effect of another cause, so for any cause-and-effect relation to start, there must be an uncaused cause; and so forth. And each proof ends with, "this we call God."

Notice there is no reference to or reliance on Scripture, or any special revelation, or any article of faith, or anything special or particular to a Christian or a person of faith. You can argue with the arguments if you like, but they present themselves on the bases of empirical observation and logical analysis--that is, on science and reason. These are arguments accessible to any person, no matter what their background.

Notice, too, that these arguments only get you so far. Such arguments will tell you that there is an eternal creator of the universe, and they'll tell you one other important thing about this creator, the rebuttal to a mistake commonly made by those who profess not to believe in God: God is not the biggest being in a universe of other beings more or less like him, different only in degree rather than in kind; no, God is the very ground of being itself. God is the cause of nature, and thus beyond nature. The usual objection to these sorts of arguments is, "If everything needs a cause, what caused God?" But surely you can see within the argument itself that this objection has missed the point. Every contingent, that is, non-necessary thing, needs a cause for its existence. But the point of the exercise is precisely that there must be something that exists that exists necessarily, that is the source of existence for everything else. God is not a thing among other things; rather, God is the root of all things, their source, their foundation. God is not the biggest object in the painting of reality, or even the whole painting itself; God is the artist, painting the picture.

But this won't tell you much else about God, that He's loving or wise or kind or has created you in His image and likeness with the intention that you should live forever with Him in perfect happiness and glory. But this sort of argument does at least have the potential to open up the possibility to the mind of the atheist or agnostic or skeptic that the existence of God as Christians understand Him is not irrational or silly or a fairy-tale, but rather, that it's quite reasonable to assent to the proposition that God exists. There are other arguments, though. On these, more next time.

Does God Exist? Two Important Prequel Questions

For the next several posts, I will roughly be following the lead of a rather clever fellow who's covered this ground before. He was Italian, of considerable physical stature, and had absolute chicken scratch for handwriting, but we'll let that pass. It's often a good idea to walk in the footsteps of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest minds of the history of thinking things, and this case is no exception.

First a brief explanation of St. Thomas' style. Academic texts from his time took the shape of the public debates, the disputatio, that the students and teachers would have on various topics. A question would be posed, objections to the position would be raised, and the master (teacher) would give his own view of the question and answer the objections. The questions were arranged within the texts in a logical, systematic scheme of organization, with general questions and sub-articles within each question. Now, you might expect the first question addressed in St. Thomas' Summa Theologica (Summary of Theology) to be "Does God exist?" But you'd be, as the French say, le wrong. The first question St. Thomas asks is on the nature of sacred doctrine--whether it's knowable, rational, etc. Only after establishing that theology is truly a science, an object of human knowing, does St. Thomas come to the most fundamental issue for theology: the existence of God.

And yet, the question "Does God exist?" is not even the first question asked here! It is preceded by two other questions, and once you've read through Question 1, articles 1 and 2 of Question 2 shouldn't surprise you: "Is the proposition 'God exists' self-evident?" and "Is it demonstrable?"

So, first, is it self-evident that God exists? Is it so obviously true that it is impossible to deny? This is a relevant question; if the answer is "yes," then we need not ask "Does God exist?" for the question would be as trivial as "Are circles round?" "A circle is round" is a self-evident proposition, because the predicate is contained in the subject; that is, it's part of the definition of a circle to be round, and if you know what a circle is, then you know it has to be round, and anyone who would say a circle isn't round clearly doesn't know either what a circle or roundness is (or maybe both).

If "God exists" were a self-evident proposition--that is, if it were obviously true--then the predicate would have to be contained in the subject--in this case, existence would have to be part of the definition of God, and anyone who would deny it either wouldn't know what existence is or wouldn't know what God is, that is, God's essence.

Now, we would say that in fact it is God's essence to exist, that existence is part of what it means to be God, just as roundness is part of what it means to be a circle. But it wouldn't be obvious to you that a circle is round if you don't know what a circle is. Likewise, it wouldn't be obvious to you that God exists if you don't know who or what God is. It's possible to deny that God exists if you don't know God's essence; and, as St. Thomas says, we do not know God's essence directly, as we do the essences of circles and trees and squirrels and such, and thus we must come to know God by things that are more known to us. (We'll cover such ways of knowing in later posts.)

The second question St. Thomas asks is: "Is God's existence demonstrable?" That is, can we know through reason that God exists? If we can't, then there's not much point in continuing the intellectual exercise, is there? In answer to this, St. Thomas reminds us that there are two ways of demonstrating: you can either reason from the cause of something to its effect, or from the effect to its cause. If I see a fire, and I know that fires produce heat, I can reason from the presence of a fire that heat will result. Likewise, if I see a handprint in cement, and I know that handprints in cement are caused by hands, I can reason from the presence of the handprint that a hand was the cause of it. So, St. Thomas says, if God's existence is not self-evident to us, we can still reason to God's existence if we see effects for which only God could be the cause. That is, if we can observe effects that could only be caused by God, then we can know that God exists. More on this next time.

Does God Exist? A Prelude

The question "Does God exist?" is answered simply enough. There are three choices: "yes," "no," or "I don't know." Thus, no matter what your answers is, it immediately prompts the question "How could we know that God exists?" If your answer to the first question was "Yes," then of course the questioner will want some sort of proof or reasoning or sign. If your answer was "No," then the questioner may well respond, "What makes you sure?" If your answer was "I don't know," the questioner will ask, "How come?" The first question is never the last on this subject.

My answer, as you might guess, is yes. God does exist. Naturally, you will ask, "How do you know? What makes you say that? Can you prove it?"

Well, yes and no.

The question "Can you prove it?" always has an additional two words implied at the end: "Can you prove it to me?" This is a bit of a different task. Believing or not, assenting to an argument or not, is ultimately not an act of the intellect, but an act of the will: you can have all the evidence before you, you can have the proof laid out systematically in front of you, and you can still choose not to believe. As evidence of this phenomenon, I give you Holocaust deniers, moon landing hoaxers, and people who think Elvis is still alive. If we have some vested interest in maintaining a certain position, we can go to great mental lengths to hold our ground, even if that means keeping ourselves blind to the bleedin' obvious.

You may respond, "You're saying others might not believe in God because, for some reason, they don't want to. Well, couldn't we say the same of you? Maybe you believe in God because it suits you in some way."

Maybe. Maybe not. Let's see. Next time, we'll look at some of the evidence, arguments, and proofs for the existence of God.

Back to Basics

Please excuse my absence from this space over the last several weeks. My new job and my thesis research have taken up the bulk of my time. With my having so little free time, I thought I might have to give up blogging here for the foreseeable future. But I want to at least make an attempt to make the occasional appearance here with a word or two. I enjoy it, you enjoy it, and if I can post irregularly and briefly without enraging the masses, why put a stop to it?

Now, given those constraints and conditions, what should my subject matter be? When your time to speak is short, you get to the point. So, in future posts, expect less content on fine philosophical points or commentary on episcopal appointments, and more on the most basic--and most important--aspects of the Catholic faith: who is God? How do we know about God? What does God want of us? Who is Jesus? Why should we believe in Him? Hardly topics that lend themselves to cursory conversation, true, but if we break them up into small bites, I think we can chew through them without getting theological indigestion.

Of course, I am always happy to field questions from the readership, too. It's always best to write about what your readers want to read about. So please, feel free!

By Him We See Everything Else

I had a birthday recently (the epochal, defining, occasionally dreaded 30th), and in response to my telling my parents I could use some more decoration for my study/office/man-cave, they sent me a framed quotation from C.S. Lewis:

I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun... not because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything else.

As is typical of a product of Lewis' poetic and profound mind, this line is rich with meaning. It's worth digging into a bit.

Light has always been a symbol for God. God's first line in Scripture is, "Let there be light." Opposed to this light is the darkness of chaos and evil and ignorance; light is associated with order and goodness and rationality. With light you can see what you're doing and put things in their place. With light the good is given strength, for the wicked avoid the light to hide their evil deeds (John 3:20).

And with light we see and know the world better, and thus light has long been fittingly used as a symbol for understanding. You can see this in many an ancient writer; you can see it in modern terms like "the Enlightenment." You can see it in the jazz standard "I'm Beginning to See the Light." You can see it in every cartoon where a character has an idea and has a light bulb appear over his head. Since God is the source of this order and goodness and rationality, God is associated with light.

And as God, so Christ. The Gospel of John says that Christ is "the light that gives light to every man coming into the world." Christ is the Logos. He is reason and intelligibility. He is the reason for everything that is. He is the source and the means and the goal of all understanding. All true knowledge leads us eventually to the knowledge and love of God. It is by Him that we understand anything. He is the light by which we see everything else.

Man, that Lewis was economical in his words. It took me three paragraphs to say what he said in one line. He's good. Definitely worth reading.