Does God Exist:  Faith and Reason  By Dr. Stephen Meyers,

For the truth about God is known to them instinctively; God has put this knowledge in their hearts. Since earliest times men have seen the earth and sky and all God made, and have known of his existence and great eternal power. So they will have no excuse when they stand before God at Judgment Day. Romans 1:19-20. 

Does God exist?

Who is God?

Is the bible reliable? 

Looking at it from evidence, logic and reason there are some key concepts. 

Faith is not a leap of blindness but it is rather a step into what you know to be so it’s an action behind what you already know. 

Worldview questions are about: 

What is the nature of ultimate reality?

What is the nature of the human nature?

What is the nature of the world around us? 

The most important question the worldview asks is what is the prime reality or what is the thing from which everything comes from?  Is there a God? 

Jews, Christians and Islamic faiths come from a Theistic point of view. 

 Some people believe that matter is what we come from.  These people are classified as materialists.  They believe that matter and energy are the thing from which everything else came. 

This is a Materialist/Naturalism point of view. 

According to the materialists the thing from which everything else comes is matter. 

Materialists/Naturalism believes that matter combined with energy combined, evolved, and more complex life arose and that finally produced us. 

According to Theists—they think the thing from which everything else came is a personal God an eternal self-existent being: omnipotent, omnipresent but the idea is tht God is a person and mind who is conscious, who has intentions and that God brought the universe into existence. 

Classical Theists think that God created the world that God upholds the world and that God also sometimes enters the universe and acts as an agent in the universe that He otherwise sustains and upholds acting as an agent is another word for a miraculous event such as parting the red sea. 

Deism is a kind of modified version of Theism.  Deism is a belief that God only creates the world and then does nothing beyond that. 

A more Eastern worldview is Pantheism and that idea is that thee is a God but that God is not personal.  God is more like the force in “Star Wars”.  God is kind of an impersonal oneness that binds everything together but is not in any way conscious or aware or intelligent or rational, or anything like that.  It is a mystical oneness.  So a pantheistic worldview in the east they say Atman is Brahman which means,  “The soul of the world is the soul of the one, the soul of God.”  So God is connected to all parts of the physical world and all the physical word is a part of God.  So there is a God in the desk and in the table,  in you, and me, in the computer, the flowers, and  the trees.

 These are the “Big Worldviews”. 

1. Materialism/naturalism: matter is the prime reality
2. Theism: A personal God is the prime reality.
3. Deism:  A personal but remote God is the prime reality.
4. Pantheism: An impersonal god is the prime reality and a plant has god in them as well as everything else in the universe.

Which of these ideas is the right one?  The one from which everything else came from?  The big question is what is the prime reality?  Or does God exist.

 Reason the clues around you.  There is a reason for faith—a belief system or worldview. 

Reason takes several forms: 

Deduction:  general rule to a particular case to get a certain outcome.

Induction – generalizations from observation a form of reason scientists often use and it’s the idea that you make observations of the same kind of phenomenon over and over again so you draw

Abduction- effects back to causes—Darwin used this form of reason.

Inference—to the best explanation. 

When multiple competing hypotheses are not 100% proof either. 

But notice the source of uncertainty with the abduction form of reasoning was that you had more than one possible cause that could explain the same event. 

So if you can eliminate that source of uncertainty so that there is only one cause that can explain all the evidence that you’re looking at you are in a much stronger position. 

In a court of law they sometimes will talk about beyond reasonable doubt.

There is a point where all the evidence piles up and there is only one cause that will explain that evidence and then you are in a position where you can infer it beyond reasonable doubt but its still not mathematically certain proof like you get in geometry. 

And that is the way we reason in ordinary life.  Nobody gets absolute proof of anything.

 And in a sense the God question, the question of prime reality and ultimate reality are no different.  You don’t get absolute certainty but you might have a lot of reasons to believe one viewpoint or worldview of ultimate reality over another.  Well-supported lots of good evidence might even provide the best explanation.

With the exception of geometry we can prove almost nothing absolutely. 

You can use inference, or best reason, to the best explanation.  

What makes an explanation best?  Scientists and philosophers think that the best explanation is one that provides the most adequate causal explanation.  

What is the thing from which everything else came?  This is a question about cause, about causality. 

So, this is the method we are going to use to investigate that question.  

You can apply these common forms of reason which are used by science, law and philosophy.  We can evaluate different worldviews by referring to this method of reasoning. 

“Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, Isaiah 1:18. 

Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Boyle knew about nature that was intelligent.