Strong Evidence
For God's Existence
Matthew D. Combs
We used <PRE>Preformatted Text</PRE> for this one, and also cleaned up Combs's graph at the bottom of the first letter, making the columns line up for him. Also, we received identical copies of this e-mail several times and responded to it, but woefully cannot find our initial response. |
From: "Matthew D. Combs"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: STRONG EVIDENCE FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE
Date: Friday, March 12, 1999 2:27 AM
The purpose for sending you this email is to show you that believing in
a God is not a blind faith, but rather a logical faith. A faith in
which all the empirical facts back up the belief that God exists. I
ENCOURAGE YOU TO BE OPEN MINDED WHILE READING THIS AND I'LL BE OPEN
MINDED WITH YOUR ARGUMENTS AS WELL. PLEASE READ THIS GATHERING ANY
QUESTIONS IN YOUR MIND SO THAT YOU CAN RESPOND. I WILL ANSWER EACH OF
THEM RATIONALLY.
This is a three part cumulative argument, starting with the weakest and
ending with the strongest. The first, although it doesn't prove that
God exists, shows how an atheist lives inconsistently with their
belief. The second lays down all the empirical facts and shows that the
best explanation for all of the facts is that God exists. And the
third is the scientific argument which shows that even science points
to a God. Keep in mind that no presumption made can be proved as true
for CERTAIN. I'm simply showing you that the belief in a theistic
universe is the best explaination for the world's existence. The
scientific theories that I will use to back up the argument for the
existence of God have not yet been disproved and are all backed up with
strong evidence such as the Principle of Causality, the Big Bang
Theory, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. IF YOUR PRESUMPTION THAT
"THERE IS NO THEISTIC UNIVERSE" IS BASED ON SCIENTIFIC THEORIES OTHER
THAN THE THEORIES JUST MENTIONED, PLEASE TELL ME AND EXPLAIN, BUT FIRST
READ THROUGH WHY I THINK THEY POINT TO GOD.
I) Psychological Argument For The Existence Of God.
Either God exists or He doesn't. If God doesn't exist then there are
three things that are true.
A) Life holds no ULTIMATE significance. Even if you argued that
there is significance in
your life such as the enjoyment of doing anything you want, it
would not be the Ultimate significance because everyone who has lived
or will live in the future will eventually end up in the grave. Even if
reincarnation exists everyone will still die and become nothing because
the world is slowly deteriorating down to nothing itself.
B) Life has no value. Everthing is permissible. There is no such
thing as right and wrong because there is no all knowing and all
powerful Creator to define what is good and what is bad. It becomes
society who tries to define it. What does that matter though if the
people making laws define right from wrong. They are just as human as
any other person in the world. The only thing that truly exists is
personal preference. What Hitler, Stalin, or any other mass murderer
did was not wrong at all. They simply had a different personal
preference than you do. The point is, you shouldn't tell anyone that
they are wrong or even right because they aren't either of those
things. You can believe that its wrong, but you have no place to
ground it. People can do anything they want to do without getting
punished for their actions if the world lived consistently with the
belief that God doesn't exist.
C) There is no purpose to life. Life has no ultimate goal. There is
no reason for living. Sacrifice for someone else's life would be stupid.
This argument shows that an atheist lives inconsistently with their own
belief. If a murderer who believed murder to be ok, came into your
house to brutally murder you and your family, would you think that HE
is wrong to do that? If you said no, that he isn't doing any thing
wrong, then you would be living consistantly with your beliefs. But if
you said yes, then you would live as if there were objective morals.
But if there is no god to define objective morality then there is only
subjective morality. So by saying it is wrong makes it only your
opinion, but not the murderers opinion. You would be "pushing your
morality on him" which is the opposite of what you believe. You
probably believe that "it is wrong to push your morality on another
person." Even that statement right there is another objective moral
statement. In other words you express your opinions, but don't always
live by them.
II) Probable argument.
Scientist say that if you have a group of facts out there, you should
have a paradigm that best explains these facts. Here are the facts that
everyone who's sane would agree on.
A) Religious experience
What ever culture you go into, people are incurably religious. In
every culture you see three things.
1) Everyone, except the atheist, worships a being higher than
themselves.
2) Everyone has a morality they cannot keep.
3) Everyone is psychologically unsatisfied. People feel an
emptiness in themselves that they want to fill. If the material world
was the only thing that existed and if all your material needs were
met, you should be satesfied right? But how come people who have the
most wealth are usually the most unhappy. They constantly want more and
more.
And how can you explain the millions of people in the world
who say they have felt the closeness of God in their lives? I
personally am included with them. I have felt God's presence in my life
on a consistent basis. Now how can you rationally explain that without
God's existence?
B) Miracles.
There are many people in the world who report seeing miracles. In
other words there are people who say that they saw a situation occur
where there is no naturalistic explanation for it. I personally know
people who have had miraculous situations occur, such as immediate
healings. You might argue that science will someday explain those
things, but right now you can't explain them. The best explaination is
God, because if God created the world then it wouldn't be hard to
believe that he can intervene supernaturally in this world.
C) Morality
How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why
all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that
seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come
people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do
something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to
take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for
forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally
explain all that?
D) Design
First of all, explain the existence of the world. How can you have
something and not nothing? We see a world so complex that it looks like
someone designed it. It has an incredible amount of order to it. If you
walked on a beach and saw the words "I love you" written in the sand,
would you say, "Isn't it funny how the water by random chance formed
those words in the sand." No, you would think that some person wrote
those words themselves. If you took apart a computer and examined the
complex parts, would you say, "Isn't it funny how a building with
mechanical parts exploded and by random chance came together and
created this computer." no, you would think that an intelligent
designer spent his time to put the computer together. But how come you
see a world full of more complexity and order then every man made
structure put together and you assume that no intelligent designer
created it? A single strand of DNA has more information on it then the
whole Encyclopedia Britannica. You can't even explain it without God.
Tell me, have you ever seen design and never a designer? You might
say that science will explain these questions in the future. Do you
think then that the belief in God's existence is stupid? I'm just being
what any truly rational person should be, looking at the facts and
choosing the best explanation for all those facts. That's how any
scientific hypotheses works. But you still don't want to believe in
God. You are simply not being a rational person with any of the facts
that we have. You just don't want to believe it, not for intellectual
reasons, but because you just don't want do believe it period, with no
evidence on your side.
THESE THINGS ARE OUT THERE AND THEY NEED AN EXPLAINATION FOR HOW THEY
EXIST. NO ONE CAN BE ABSOLUTLY CERTAIN OF HOW THESE THINGS CAME TO BE.
YOU CAN ONLY FIND THE BEST EXPLAINATION, WHICH IS WHY I BELEIVE IN A
THEISTIC UNIVERSE.
III) The Cosmological argument
A) Principle of Causality: Everything that comes to be needs a
cause. All science is built on the principle of causality. If it didn't
exist then we would have to remove the word "because" from our
language. How could we really talk without it?
B) Since something cannot come from nothing, something has to be
eternal. It's either God or the World.
C) In 1929 a man named Edward Hubble discovered that the redness
of the stars showed that the universe was constantly expanding
equilaterally in all directions. He said that the best explanation for
that is that there must have been a point in time, called the Big Bang
theory where the universe was nothing and then came to be.
D) To further the evidence for the universe having a beginning,
there is the scientific law, the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. It says
heat moves from hotter bodies to cooler bodies until there is an
equilibrium. In other words the universe is constantly winding down
until there is a heat death in our universe. That just goes to prove
that if the world was eternal then heat death would have already
occurred, but since it hasn't occured yet, the universe had to have a
beginning. You might say, "Maybe new heat is being put into the
universe. But the 1st law of Thermodynamics goes against it because it
says that there is no new energy being put into the universe. Since
everything that comes to be (the world) needs a cause, the best
explanation for this is God. Because there is only two explanations
that we see exist. 1. God, and 2. the World. God is the best
explanation between the two.
The evidence has finally been laid out for you.
SUPPORTS GOD'S EXISTENCE AGAINST GOD'S EXISTENCE
yes Religious behavior no
yes Miracles no
yes Morality no
yes World's Existence no
yes Universal Design no
I can also show you that a major historical miracle took place by just
examining the facts with you. It's the proof that Jesus Christ rose
from the dead. That he is God in the flesh. That the Bible is
completely logically consistent, and that it is God's Word. That it is
objectively true and every other religious belief is objectively wrong.
I will also rationally answer the question, "Doesn't the existence of
EVIL prove that God doesn't exsist?. Please email me if you want me to
prove these things for you using rational arguments. If you have any
other questions or comments, please email me.
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Matthew D. Combs"
Subject: Re: STRONG EVIDENCE FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE
Date: Friday, March 12, 1999 11:05 AM
I already responded to this one. Please don't send it again!
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
P.O. Box 16811
Portland, OR 97292
http://www.positiveatheism.org/
editor@positiveatheism.org
"Is there an intelligent man or woman now
in the world who believes in the Garden
of Eden story? If you find any man who
believes it, strike his forehead and you
will hear an echo. Something is for rent."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
"A stupid man's report of what
a clever man says is never accurate
because he unconsciously translates
what he hears into something
that he can understand."
-- Bertrand Russell
From: "Matthew D. Combs" To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org> Subject: Re: STRONG EVIDENCE FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE Date: Friday, March 12, 1999 3:23 PM Thank you for you subjective plagerized quotes, where are your objective truths? Your condemning me for believing in a god that I cannot touch or see. Can you see and touch evolution? Every intelligent person has to realize that the argument with the best evidence is most likely true, if not we must discard science. I have given you strong evidence for the existence of God. If you feel that these argument's are weak, then respond by debunking them and I will look at your evidence with an open mind to determine which belief is stronger. Otherwise if all you can give me is opinions without any evidence against a theistic universe, then why should I take your belief seriously. If you respond with, "Your arguments are a waste of my time," that just gives me the impression that you don't have any intellectual arguments for what you belive in, therefore you should reconsider your world view.
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Matthew D. Combs"
Subject: Re: STRONG EVIDENCE FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE
Date: Friday, March 12, 1999 5:13 PM
Thank you for you subjective plagerized quotes, where are your objective truths?
Plagiarized from whom?
Who's writings did I excerpt and claim as my own writing?
Tell me!
Can you see and touch evolution?
Evolution is a concept.
Does it follow, then, that god is a concept?
Ah, but I've been saying that all along!
If you respond with, "Your arguments are a waste of my time," that just gives me the impression that you don't have any intellectual arguments for what you belive in, therefore you should reconsider your world view.
Think what you want. It is not my goal, here, to change your mind. I did not write you, you wrote me.
Nevertheless, there comes a point where one has studied and thought and tested the same notion enough times, without positive results, that it becomes a waste of time to entertain the erroneous notion further.
Have a nice life.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Material by Cliff Walker (including unsigned editorial commentary) is copyright ©1995-2006 by Cliff Walker. Each submission is copyrighted by its writer, who retains control of the work except that by submitting it to Positive Atheism, permission has been granted to use the material or an edited version: (1) on the Positive Atheism web site; (2) in Positive Atheism Magazine; (3) in subsequent works controlled by Cliff Walker or Positive Atheism Magazine (including published or posted compilations). Excerpts not exceeding 500 words are allowed provided the proper copyright notice is affixed. Other use requires permission; Positive Atheism will work to protect the rights of all who submit their writings to us.