By JOE SIXPACK
Part I
Although we can’t prove God’s existence with empirical evidence (yet), we can prove His existence through the use of logic and right reason. The main problem with the use of logic and reason, though, is that people don’t use them anymore. Instead, they think with emotion. You’ll just have to overcome that.
So how do we know God exists? Well, the short answer is that the Bible tells us so. But there is also the Argument from Nature (Design), which we’ll explain shortly. Then there is the Argument from Conscience, which I personally think is the best one, which we’ll also explain. Finally there is the one I call the Bad Man/ Mad Man Argument. But we’ll begin with the Argument from Nature.
The so-called “Big Bang” theory is actually a good theory, if you include God in the equation. Unfortunately, adherents to this theory don’t do that.
The “Big Bang” theory, simplified, claims there was this random explosion of unexplained origin that developed into the universe. This violates scientific principle, however. The laws of physics (scientific laws are fact, while theories are not yet proven to be so), which are laws of nature, tell us that for anything to be in motion, to move, there must be a first mover. A hole doesn’t suddenly appear in your yard; it must be dug (motion), presumably by you (first mover).
Likewise, the universe couldn’t just magically appear through an explosion without the action of a first mover. The “Big Bang” theory would work very well for explaining the origin of the universe, provided you were willing to call God the First Mover.
The adaptation of means to ends is evident proof of an intelligent cause. It’s clear that nature affords us thousands of instances of such adaptation. Nature, therefore, is the result of an intelligent cause, God. Our minds can’t help recognizing purpose and finality in nature’s operations. Mere chance, for example, can’t account for the complex arrangement of the countless parts that combine to form the retina of the human eye, or for the marvelous makeup of a bird’s wing.
The food chain teaches us a bit about God’s existence. The tiniest microscopic organism is food for the next largest organism, is food for the next largest organism, is food for the next largest organism. And on it goes until it reaches the top of the food chain — us. We eat the food, digest the food, our bodies evacuate the waste left over from the food, then the process starts all over again with the tiniest organism feeding on the waste. What a logical God!
“Are you crazy, Joe? That stuff is all from evolution! Everybody knows about the fact of evolution. It’s science, man.”
Whoa! I’m not the one who’s crazy. First, evolution isn’t a fact; it’s a theory. Second, it’s a false theory, as it actually violates the very science that people say they love.
Evolution contends that order accidentally came from chaos and became the world in nature as we know it. But the third law of thermodynamics tells us the universe is entropy — that all matter is in a constant state of deterioration from order to chaos. If all matter is in a constant state of deterioration, how in the world could chaos evolve into order? You can’t have it both ways. Either evolution is right (a theory) or thermodynamics is right (a proven fact).
Let’s move on to the Argument from Conscience.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed” (CCC, n. 1778).
Many people will pooh-pooh conscience as a formation of thought from a person’s culture or religious belief system, but that isn’t what conscience is.
Indigenous peoples have been discovered in remote regions of the world who had a proper moral code in place and had never heard of God or Jesus. This morality came naturally to them, just as it does for all of us.
Conscience isn’t of human origin. Each human person has in his heart a law inscribed by God — as Paul attests to in Romans 2:15. The conscience is the most secret inner core of man, and it is part of the soul’s faculty of intellect. We’re not aware of our conscience from the brain, a mere human organ, but from a movement of the soul. No neurologist nor scientist can tell us what part of the brain governs the conscience, because the brain is incapable, as an organ, to judge the difference between good and evil.
So we intuitively know the difference between right and wrong. This is called natural law. It’s something that used to be taught in every law school, but the political left has managed to banish natural law from our “scholarly” institutions. The reason the political left banished it is because they fear it; it doesn’t comport to their agenda. It’s been this way since the Supreme Court rulings in 1973 on the Roe and Bolton cases. Since abortion is the unjust taking of a human life, it doesn’t conform to natural law.
We intuitively know that it’s wrong to unjustly take an innocent human life, wrong to disobey legitimate authority, wrong to treat another person unjustly, wrong to steal, wrong to lie, et cetera. We know all these things intuitively; that’s natural law.
The fact that we have natural law implies a lawgiver. A command always implies a superior who issues the command. Who can this final, absolute, supreme authority be but God, the original source of all morality, the one perfect arbiter of right or wrong? Conscience, then, is merely his voice.
Next week we’ll present the Bad Man/Mad Man Argument so you can fully know what we believe and why we believe it.
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