Evidence for God question

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ejp123

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Materialist friends have asked me, “Where is the evidence for Gods existence?” I find myself unable to answer in terms of providing material evidence other than pointing to Jesus. But this also requires faith to believe that Jesus is God and easily gets shot down. any suggestions? thx
 
ejp123 said:
sorry i didn’t see the ban until after i posted this.
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I don’t think this falls in the realm of the ban. The ban is on discussions on atheism. But you are not asking about atheism, you are asking for information to convince others of the existence of the Christian God. I’m fairly confident your thread topic is fine. If it’s not the moderators will lock the thread.
 
ejp123 said:
Materialist friends have asked me, “Where is the evidence for Gods existence?” I find myself unable to answer in terms of providing material evidence other than pointing to Jesus. But this also requires faith to believe that Jesus is God and easily gets shot down. any suggestions? thx
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There are numerous arguments for God which are able to defeat any atheist’s argument. My favorite among them, however, is the Cosmological Argument which uses the Law of Causation.

The Law of Causation states that every event or effect has a cause. When an event is caused, logically it must have had a beginning, because if it had no beginning then it could not have been caused by anything. Therefore, it is impossible to have an infinite series of caused events, because each of them must have been caused by something, and if this is taken on to infinity the question of what started it all remains unanswered.

Because all things have been caused, and we can trace back in time that everything has been caused by something else, and we can’t find a logical answer for something that can start the whole process, we believe in God. God is the UNCAUSED cause, who caused all things but was not caused Himself. He had no beginning, so always was.

This answers the question. The Cosmological Argument rules out all possibility that the universe could be an infinite series of events.

If you have any other questions, ask away. This was just a summary. :cool:
 
ejp123 said:
Materialist friends have asked me, “Where is the evidence for Gods existence?” I find myself unable to answer in terms of providing material evidence other than pointing to Jesus. But this also requires faith to believe that Jesus is God and easily gets shot down. any suggestions? thx
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Probably the strongest actual “material” evidence exists in the form of the cosmological constants that came to be in the initial stages of the Big Bang event.

These sites are great resources:

magisreasonfaith.org/spitzer_videos.html

reasons.org/explore/topic/astronomy

doesgodexist.tv/
 
There is virtually no evidence for the existence of God that any materialist will accept.

But also there is no evidence that God does not exist.

Materialism has been in retreat since the last 100 years or so. There is no evidence that the universe is infinite and eternal, as the materialist could once argue (even without evidence). What evidence there is now about the universe is that it was created, and that it is finite. This should give pause to consider at the very least the plausibility of a Creator and Designer God. Again, this is not convincing evidence, but it certainly raises possibilities that materialists never used to consider even possible. Now they must resort to the contemplation of other universes to explain the existence of this one (again, no evidence).

If you are a patient reader with any degree of scientific knowledge, you might find *Modern Physics and Ancient Faith * by Stephen Barr a good book to first read and then recommend to your materialist friend.

There is an interesting chapter in it on Materialism.
 
ejp123 said:
Materialist friends have asked me, “Where is the evidence for Gods existence?” I find myself unable to answer in terms of providing material evidence other than pointing to Jesus. But this also requires faith to believe that Jesus is God and easily gets shot down. any suggestions? thx
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For starters you may wish to check out Peter Kreeft’s “Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God” that he has on his website.
peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm
 
Peter_Plato said:
Probably the strongest actual “material” evidence exists in the form of the cosmological constants that came to be in the initial stages of the Big Bang event.
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I agree. I have written an article in which I explore all kinds of naturalistic explanations for this so-called fine-tuning of the laws of nature and in which I argue that they all fail, leaving God as the only reasonable explanation:

home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/cosmological-arguments-god.htm
 
Charlemagne_II said:
If you are a patient reader with any degree of scientific knowledge, you might find *Modern Physics and Ancient Faith * by Stephen Barr a good book to first read and then recommend to your materialist friend.

There is an interesting chapter in it on Materialism.
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Yes, absolutely outstanding book. Apart from the fine-tuning of the laws of nature it also explores the human mind with really powerful arguments that strongly suggest that it cannot be explained on solely materialistic terms.

Here is the amazon link:
amazon.com/Modern-Physics-Ancient-Faith-Stephen/dp/0268021988
 
The two chapters from Barr’s book that I found most outstanding were Can Matter “Understand”? and Is the Human Mind Just a Computer?
 
ejp123 said:
Materialist friends have asked me, “Where is the evidence for Gods existence?” I find myself unable to answer in terms of providing material evidence other than pointing to Jesus. But this also requires faith to believe that Jesus is God and easily gets shot down. any suggestions? thx
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DNA…is information encoded in matter. Things just don’t encode themselves with advanced information systems. Something or someone really smart had to encode them.
 
Pugsly said:
DNA…is information encoded in matter. Things just don’t encode themselves with advanced information systems. Something or someone really smart had to encode them.
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No, things don’t encode themselves. The smart thing that encoded and expanded DNA was cumulative natural selection over billions of years, working on mutations, and on gene.duplications followed by mutations. The latter also allowed for gradual information increase.

The very existence of evolution requires exceedingly special laws of nature, and God designed these special laws, but once allowed for, evolution works and encodes ‘on its own’. It does so because God made it so.
 
Al

**The very existence of evolution requires exceedingly special laws of nature, and God designed these special laws, but once allowed for, evolution works and encodes ‘on its own’. It does so because God made it so. **

In other words, God (Someone very smart) encoded them. 👍
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Al

**The very existence of evolution requires exceedingly special laws of nature, and God designed these special laws, but once allowed for, evolution works and encodes ‘on its own’. It does so because God made it so. **

In other words, God (Someone very smart) encoded them. 👍
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Very indirectly, yes, by His creating of the universe according to His grand but very detailed plan.

Yet there is no evidence that God tinkered with DNA directly, or needed to do so; cumulative natural selection did the encoding. ‘Physical traces’ of God’s work cannot be found in the ‘design’ of DNA, but they can be found in the exceedingly special laws of nature (the fine-tuning of the laws of nature, as discussed above).

In fact, I would say that the laws of nature scream out loudly for a designer. But you know that, having read Stephen Barr’s book.
 
As Stephen Barr says in his article The Miracle of Evolution:

The Argument from Design has been enormously strengthened by discoveries in physics and cosmology, whatever bruises it is supposed to have taken from Darwin.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Al

**The very existence of evolution requires exceedingly special laws of nature, and God designed these special laws, but once allowed for, evolution works and encodes ‘on its own’. It does so because God made it so. **

In other words, God (Someone very smart) encoded them. 👍
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agreed:thumbsup:
 
Al
**
The Argument from Design has been enormously strengthened by discoveries in physics and cosmology, whatever bruises it is supposed to have taken from Darwin.**

Indeed! 👍

The honest materialist has to explain not only mathematics, but higher mathematics. As Barr says, the knowledge of π seems to have nothing to do with natural selection, if by natural selection we mean that nature selects traits for their survival value. Why on earth would the existence of π as an abstract concept matter to ancient men? Where does π come from in the grand design of things if not encoded in us by a Very Smart Person? This Very Smart Person wanted us to begin down a trail of knowledge toward Himself, and wanted us to rise above and beyond ourselves and to reach out to Him, even though He is far more mysterious than the π we have already embraced.

As mathematician Paul Dirac said, “God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”

Notice that everything we know is surrounded by number … even the Ten Commandments.
 
thanx for all the replies and resources. I will definately check them out
 
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