Maryam Wasef Draft

Topic: The existence of God

Intro: 

I am certain you have either heard, believed, or been told to believe that faith in God is just that – pure, undiluted, blind faith. And I am certain that, in the same breath, you’ve been told that science is the antithesis to such an unreasonable and illogical assignment of faith to this idea of a supernatural creator. But, it is in fact the case that ultimate trust in the natural, and ultimate distrust in the supernatural, is the antithesis to reason and logic. In fact, I believe that, in light of the evidence that I will now discuss, that indeed, even most of the scientific community would come to be of the opinion that belief in science alone requires more faith than would the belief in a supernatural creator.

Premise 1: Everything that has a beginning must have a cause. The Universe has a beginning, therefore, it has a cause.

Supporting Evidence: 

I must preface all further discussion with the following truths. Few things in life are proven, and a significant amount of our lives is based on evidence, not proof. To prove something means to show definitively that it cannot be any other way. None of us can prove that our parents won’t poison our food this coming Thanksgiving. But I would hope we all have quite a lot of evidence over the years that our parents love us and would never seek to poison us, lest they might’ve done it already. And none of us can prove to the other that our eyes are telling us the whole truth about reality. Irrespective of this, we still rely on the evidence that our eyes have reliably judged distance for us in the past so that we avoid constantly bumping into each other.

For the aforementioned reasons, we mustn’t be held up on what can be proven. If it is possible to obtain proof for any given matter, then that would be ideal. But in the absence of proof, we must look to what is most reasonable to believe in light of the current evidence we have. And since we don’t have time machines to unequivocally prove that the Universe had a beginning, we must now turn to the evidence. The Big Bang Theory has yet to be disproven. The preponderance of the evidence points to the fact that the theory is reliable. Until this evidence can be convincingly disproved, which is highly unlikely, we must assume that the current scientific evidence which suggests that the Universe began is reliable and therefore, something or someone must have lit the spark. 

This someone or something must have certain characteristics that can be deduced from the characteristics of the Universe. When the Universe came into existence, time, space, and matter all came into existence simultaneously. Because without space, where do you put the matter? And without time, when do you put the matter? And without matter, what use is space or time if nothing exists ever? So all 3 came into existence when they had not previously existed. This means that the creator that must have existed prior to the creation of the Universe must be:

1. Spaceless;
2. Timeless; and 
3. Immaterial. 

That certainly sounds like God to me.

Premise 2: Behind intricate design which is inexplicable by random chance, there is an intelligent designer. The  human body has intricate design. Such design is inexplicable by random chance and therefore, there must be an intelligent designer.

Supporting Evidence: 

If I were to point to a car on the street and tell you “Isn’t it fascinating how this car was made, the way the tornado just flew into that scrapyard and fused all the metal together and made a car was just amazing”, I would hope that you would immediately refer me to a psychiatrist. Nearly everything in our lives that has intricate design is created by an intelligent designer. Our clothes, designed and sewed. Our computers, designed and programmed. Our cars, designed and built. How much more intricate is the design of the human eye than a car? Consequently, I would ask, if the statement about the tornado in a scrapyard leading to the formation of a car is outright preposterous, how much more unreasonable is it to believe that behind the intricacy of the human eye there is, rather than the workings of an intelligent mind, the workings of a tornado in a field of dust? Therefore, based on human experience alone, it is highly unreasonable to suggest that although everything else in our lives that has intricate design was created by an intelligent designer, our very intricate bodies were created by random chance.

Beyond the unreasonableness of such an assertion based on the human experience alone, it is also scientifically highly unlikely. You will recall, in my premise, I made sure to include the qualifying phrase “inexplicable by random chance.” I was careful to add this so that I might quell any doubt. If one of us might observe an uprooted tree planted in the ground on its head in a state in Tornado Alley, one could possibly say that this was by the design of an intelligent mind, but such an observation could truly be explained by the chance process of a tornado uprooting a tree and forcefully planting it on its head. In such a case, the event is not “inexplicable by random chance.” To the contrary, in such a case, chance processes could very well take precedence in the realm of reasonableness. However, the case is not the same for the origin of human life. The emergence of the animate from the inanimate, by chance, has not been shown to be even remotely possible in the realm of science. The chances that the inanimate dust of a barren Earth 4.6 billion years ago can evolve into the highly complex human biology we see today are slim to none. But, in any case, if such scientific arguments are unconvincing, the next (and last) argument is the most powerful of them all and by its very nature, is unavoidable.

Premise 3: In the absence of God, morality is ultimately defined by humans. 

Supporting Evidence: 

So per my premise, humans define “good” and “evil.” Here’s the tricky part. Which human correctly defines “good” and “evil”? Or which group of humans (i.e. which society) might be correct? What does it even mean to be “correct”? What does anything mean at all? The answers to all these questions is that, there are no right answers, at least, not without God there aren’t.

This is the philosophy of nihilism, which, as the famous atheistic philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus rightfully point out, is the logical conclusion of atheism. Although this is the last premise, it is arguably the most powerful. It is so powerful because it contends with our very existence in a way that is unavoidable. Everyday we wake up, we must decide how we want to act as moral agents. I will not venture to say that we all wake up and actually consciously have to make the decision to not murder anybody (I’m not pointing any fingers), but we must contend with other moral issues. We must decide whether we want to conduct ourselves with decency, or with indecency. Whether we want to be forgiving and graceful, or strict and harsh; whether we want to love ourselves, or demean ourselves in hopes that the guilt we make ourselves feel might miraculously inhibit our worst desires; whether we want to be warm to our siblings, or be cold; whether we should seek to please our parents, or be indifferent to their feelings toward us; whether it would really matter if someone slapped your innocent child.

These are all questions that we might ask ourselves, consciously or otherwise. And while some of these questions admittedly could have answers that operate in the gray, the majority of them operate in the black and white. We all know that if someone hurt someone’s innocent child, that isn’t fine. That isn’t possibly okay. It is absolutely wrong. The issue with atheism is this – absolutes simply don’t exist. Everything is relative. Well, but how? I mean, most of us rightfully think that abusing innocent children is absolutely wrong. So how is that a relative matter? Well, obviously, some people hold different values, because it wouldn’t happen at such alarming rates if that weren’t the case. You look through the case law in this country, you have parents that abuse their children to death. Fathers beating their young children so badly that they die from internal hemorrhaging. Besides those horrifying and puzzling cases, you have strangers harming innocent children too. Some of those people might think abusing innocent children is good because it’s fun or necessary for them. These are your psychopaths and your sex offenders. Others might think it’s neither good nor bad, and do it anyway, irrespective of what they actually think on the matter. These might be your sociopaths. Whatever the reason, acts the majority of us would deem to be absolutely morally reprehensible are committed, and people have their reasons.

The Father might say he needed to beat his kid to discipline him. The psychopath might say he did it for kicks, because it was fun. The sex offender might say that his testosterone levels were too high and it’s not his fault that his hormonal makeup made him feel like he had to abuse that child. The sociopath might say he did it because he had no angel on his shoulder telling him otherwise, so he figured, why the hell not. And other people angry at the world might say they just needed to blow off some steam. Whether or not you find these justifications to be absurd doesn’t matter, because what standards do any of us have except for our own standards? And who is anyone to say that their standards are absolutely correct and the standards of others are absolutely wrong? Without God, morality is relative to the mind of the beholder, and defined by the mind that elects itself to answer the question. 

But there is an issue, very clear to all of you, and very clear to me. Abusing innocent children is absolutely wrong. But how could that be? If humans define morality, and clearly, some humans define morality in ways that are adverse and opposite to other humans, then how could it be that anything is absolutely wrong? The answer to this question is very simple. Absolute morals exist because we have a creator, and that creator imbued in us a certain dignity and value that is inherent to our nature, and that cannot be argued away or stripped of us by any human or any man-made philosophy or any governmental body. These human rights, self-evident to all of us, are inalienable.

Premise 4/ Opposing Viewpoint: For this last point, I will assume that God doesn’t exist and attempt to argue the issue of morality (as I find it to be the most compelling argument for the existence of God) from the perspective of an atheist using the most prevalent theory that is often used to justify the existence of absolute morality in the absence of God. This theory is the theory of Utilitarianism.

Supporting Evidence: 

The theory of Utilitarianism can be summed up in one short sentence without oversimplifying it. Utilitarians advocate for actions that foster pleasure and happiness as opposed to actions that foster unpleasantness and social harm. The issue with this theory is immediately apparent. Who defines “pleasure” and “happiness”? And who defines “social harm”? This country was inhabited by people who, 300 years ago, did not think slavery was a social harm. And yet, Dr. King, only a measly 60 years ago, in responding to the racist white clergymen in Birmingham who expressed concern about the tendency of demonstrators to break the law, he quotes St. Augustine and then writes the following:

“Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.”

Conclusion: 

Dr. King was not guided by Utilitarianism. He was not guided by society or the status quo. Had he looked to the status quo for guidance, he would have found nothing more than the suppression of any desire to tear down the status quo. No. Instead, we commend him and people like him for taking the road that is not guided by the hand of government, or society, or the status quo, but guided by something greater than all three. And that something, that someone, is the God that created all human beings with innate value and dignity. Value and dignity that cannot be suppressed by a body of government, or by majority opinion, or by the intellectual elites. Value and dignity that may never be infringed upon, and that is so self-evident, that it might only be by willful blinding that the reality of God be obscured from those created in his image. Thank you for reading.