Philosophical Arguments for God's Existence

Many folk (surprisingly to themselves) ask the big questions of philosophy.  For example, How did everything come into existence?  What is the purpose for everything?  What happens when I die?  Today, I just want to focus on one question I get asked more often than most (especially in the past couple of months) by Christians and non-Christians, alike...

What Proof is there for the Existence of God?

I will outline the three main ones that convict me, being "intelligent design" [especially communication], the "First Cause", and history/archæology.  These are not the only "simple" arguments, but they provide food for thought for discussion.


1.  Intelligent Design

Thought experiment -

Say you go to Mars.  You look in a crater and observe 3 000 000 boulders all perfectly aligned as an equilateral triangle.  Would you assume they were aligned by an intelligent entity?  It is not inconceivable that it is a natural phenomon (albeit, extremely unlikely).

Now, assume the exact same environment and you saw those boulders arranged as an exact letter to you, perfectly formed and grammatically correct in a particular language.  Would you consider that a natural occurence (even allowing for millions and billions of years)?

This is a trivial inanimate example of not only sentience, but intelligence.  

Have you ever considered that DNA is a language consisting of only 4 letters that tells cells in every living biological entity how to make new cells, and then tell the cells how to operate every single function (literally millions of operations).

This is an extreme oversimplification of irreducible complexity, but it conveys a point.


2.  First Cause

Most philosophers agree that anything's existence is not in itself.  All things exist from something prior to itself [despite Hawking's argument regarding a "Brief History of Time"].

3.  History and Archæology

A. The Holy Bible

The final and most compelling argument I believe philosophically, is that no other deity or religion contains an historic narrative that was written down as detailed prophecy (of a Messiah) in one volume hundreds of years earlier [the Old Testament] and fulfilled in detail (about Jesus the Christ) in second volume [the New Testament].

Click here for FULL SIZE

Not only does it pass intense historic and archælogical scrutiny, but it is the world's first historic hypertext document linking in astonishing detail of 63,779 cross references over the ~1500 years it was written (visualised below).

Click here for FULL SIZE

B.  Archæology

Biblical archæology has never been unsubstantiated.  In fact, much historic and archæological research is examined against the Bible, as even atheist and agnostic researchers utilise it's accuracy.

Many discoveries have been made based on the veracity of the Bible (eg. the existence of the Hittites).

C. History

There are more documented historical artefacts (especially records and documents) regarding the Bible than any other subject.

D.  Emmanuel - God with Us

This leads onto the final reason I want to share regarding history, being the direct evidence of Jesus Christ (as an historical figure) acknowledged by Christians and atheists alike.

There is only one concurrent document pertaining to Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon into Rome [by Suetonius], yet it is established as historic fact.  

There are several extra-biblical records that discuss Christ and thousands about Christianity.  This doesn't include the tens of thousands of documents ensuing from theological studies over the millenia.

Biblical References for Life at Conception

I have been recently asked to prove the statement that life begins at conception Biblically, as opposed to the philosophy that life doesn't begin until birth.  That is especially of interest with the forthcoming Sanctity of Life Sunday on May 24th 2020.

I offer up the following references from Scripture [ESV - English Standard Version]. 
(Please note this is not an exhaustive list.)

God knew us BEFORE we were born 


Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother's womb you have been my God.  Psalm 22:9-10

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.  Psalm 51:5

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.  Psalm 139:13-16

Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you: Fear not, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen.  Isaiah 44:2

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,  Isaiah 44:24

cf. Isaiah 49:1,  Isaiah 49:5

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.  Jeremiah 1:5

because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great.  Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?  Jeremiah 20:17-18


Reactions of prenatal children


The foetal twins Jacob and Esau struggling in utero:

The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.”  ...


Jacob was born grasping Esau's heel:

When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb.  The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau. Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.  Genesis 25:22-23, 24-26


The foetus of John the Baptist physically responded to the presence of the foetal Christ, moved by the Holy Spirit:

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit  ...

For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.  Luke 1:41, 44