If you are an atheist, an agnostic or simply a sceptic, you are not the enemy here. Many of the best questions about God come from people who refuse to accept easy answers, and we respect that. This article gives a few reasons why we think the evidence points to a Creator, and then to Jesus Christ. We invite you to test every one of them.
What we share
We share a love of truth, a respect for science and a conviction that beliefs should be tested by evidence and reason. Modern science grew in large part from Christians who thought that a rational Creator would make a world that could be understood. We are not afraid of your questions.
1. DNA is a code, and codes come from minds
DNA is not merely a chemical. It stores information in a four-letter alphabet (A, C, G and T). Cells read that information in three-letter "words" and translate it, using a precise system of molecular machines, into the proteins that build and run every living thing. That is the language of codes, instructions and translation.
In every case where we know the origin of a code, whether a written language, a computer program or Morse code, it comes from an intelligent mind. We never observe a code, with its alphabet, grammar and translation system, writing itself. So when we find the genetic code, with a "codebook" and translation machinery that themselves have to be coded, the reasonable inference is that it too came from a mind. Several scientists and philosophers have made this case, including Stephen Meyer in Signature in the Cell.
2. The laws of logic and mathematics point to a rational mind
You use logic every time you reason, including when you argue against God. The laws of logic, such as the law of non-contradiction (something cannot be both true and false in the same way at the same time), have remarkable features:
They are universal: they hold everywhere and at every time. They are unchanging: they never vary from place to place or age to age. They are immaterial: you cannot weigh, measure or see them, because they are not made of matter. And they are necessary: you cannot even deny them without using them.
These features are hard to explain if the world is only matter and energy produced by blind, mindless processes. Matter does not produce immaterial, universal, unchanging laws, and a process that changes over time cannot produce something that never changes. Nor can the laws of logic have "evolved", because any claim that they evolved already relies on them being true and fixed. Mathematics works in the same way. It is abstract and immaterial, and yet it describes physical reality with astonishing precision. The physicist Eugene Wigner called this "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences" (1960). Why should abstract mathematics fit the real world so exactly?
The Christian answer is that the universe was made by a rational God, whose own consistent and unchanging nature is the source of the logic we use and the order we observe. "In the beginning was the Word [Logos]" (John 1:1, ESV). This line of reasoning is sometimes called the transcendental argument: the very possibility of reasoning requires a foundation that only the biblical God supplies.
Where to learn more: Dr Jason Lisle, an astrophysicist, develops these arguments clearly in his book The Ultimate Proof of Creation and in a number of talks that can be found on YouTube by searching for his name. We recommend you watch them with an open mind.
3. The universe had a beginning, and whatever begins has a cause
This is the Kalam cosmological argument, developed by medieval thinkers such as al-Ghazali and defended today by philosophers such as William Lane Craig. It runs like this:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore the universe has a cause.
The first step is the most basic principle of all science and everyday life: things do not pop into existence from nothing, uncaused. The second step is supported by the best evidence we have. The expansion of the universe and the Big Bang point to a beginning of space, time and matter. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (2003) shows that any universe that has been expanding on average cannot extend back forever. And an infinite past of real events cannot be completed, any more than you could finish counting down from infinity.
If the universe had a beginning, its cause must be outside space and time, immaterial, and enormously powerful. It must also be personal: only a mind can choose to create when nothing existed before. That is a strikingly close description of the God of the Bible. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1, ESV).
Replies, and why we find them wanting
Thoughtful sceptics do reply to these arguments, and we want to describe their replies fairly. Some say that research may one day explain the origin of life and the genetic code. Some say that logic and mathematics are human conventions. Some say that the universe could have come from "nothing" through quantum processes.
We do not find these replies convincing, and here is why. The claim that the universe, with all its order and information, came from nothing, by nothing, for no reason, asks us to believe something far harder than the Christian claim. What physicists call "nothing" (a quantum vacuum with energy, laws and fields) is already something. A hope that science will one day explain the origin of life is a promise, not an explanation. Even Francis Crick, a Nobel laureate and no friend of religion, wrote in Life Itself (1981) that the origin of life "appears at the moment to be almost a miracle". And to say that logic and mathematics are mere conventions undermines the reasoning used to say it.
It also helps to separate what we observe from what we infer. Science can observe variation within kinds, natural selection and mutation. The origin of life, and the claim that all living things descend from a single common ancestor, are inferences about a past that nobody witnessed. They should be presented as theory, with the evidence and the difficulties set out openly, and not as settled fact. For a short summary of the scientific case that questions the theory of evolution, see "The Scientific Case Against Evolution" by Dr Henry M. Morris of the Institute for Creation Research. It comes from a Christian creationist perspective, and we encourage you to read it alongside other views and to weigh the evidence for yourself.
Suffering, morality and the resurrection
Other questions matter just as much. Why is there suffering? Why do we feel that some things are truly right or wrong? The Bible does not offer a glib answer to suffering. It tells us that God entered it himself in the person of Jesus. And if there is a real moral law, it points beyond us to a moral Lawgiver. Finally, the central claim of Christianity is historical: that Jesus rose from the dead. Paul says, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile" (1 Corinthians 15:17, ESV), and he invites us to check the witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). We will say more on each of these in future articles.
What Jesus says
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, ESV). Jesus did not ask people to stop thinking. He asked them to follow the evidence to its source: "If you abide in my word... you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:31-32, ESV).
An invitation
If you are an atheist or sceptic reading this, we invite you to read the Gospel of John from start to finish, and then ask yourself the question the apostle Thomas finally answered. If you are a Christian reading this, speak with those who doubt "with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15, ESV).
