Does God exist? Part 6: How Reason, Mathematics, Science Points to the existence of God.

My life is immersed in technology. I got an iPhone, which is like my own Mr. Spock Tricorder. I get from place to place in my own car. I even play an electric guitar. In fact, most of my daily routines include the use of some sort of technology such as cooking, cleaning, drying, lighting, air conditioning, etc. Multitudes of people share the same immersion in technology.

All this technology is possible because we are intelligent people capable of doing logic, mathematics, and science (e.g. biology; chemistry; physics) to discover how things work this universe. Not only that, but with the knowledge acquired, we are able to create technologies that harness the power of the universe and use it to our advantage. Logic, mathematics and science are necessary conditions but not sufficient conditions for creating technology. An ordered universe is also needed. We could never expect to do logic, mathematics, and science in a chaotic universe wherein all the natural processes were intermittent, arbitrarily, and inconsistent. An ordered universe allows us to explore and discover how things work in the universe, and with our knowledge how things work in the universe, we can make generally reliable predictions and technological innovations.

An ordered universe, intelligent minds, and the disciplines of logic, mathematics and science that bring about technological innovation is best explained by the existence of an intelligent designer, i.e. God. The following will explain.

Electricity is a great example of how life in this ordered universe allows us to learn the way it works and then apply that knowledge to harness the power of electricity with innovative technologies that work for us. Physics is actually the arena of science concerned with the study of electricity. We have for centuries observed and experimented with electrical activity in nature. Electrical activity in nature includes: lightning during storms, static from rubbing materials together, and chemical reactions with metals and acidic solutions, a good example being the building of a battery with zinc, copper and lemon juice. We have learned which materials possess a low resistance to electrical current (e.g. copper, gold or silver), make good electrical conductors. Our knowledge of electricity allows us to build basic electric circuits. Electric circuits are the basic building blocks for all electronic devices such as lamps, radios, televisions, motors, refrigerators, heaters, pumps, computers, smartphones, tablets, virtual assistants (Alexa, SIRI, Google, etc.) and so forth. We can even apply mathematics to express how electricity works in the universe, as in the case of Ohms Law.

If we lived in a disordered universe where electricity operated in random unpredictable chaos, then we could have never produced a single electronic gizmo or gadget. Because we lived in an ordered universe where electricity operates in according to physical laws, then it becomes possible to create and construct gizmos and gadgets that allow us to harness the universe’s incredible power of electricity to work for us. This is what we can expect if the universe was created by an intelligent designer.

The idea that a divine intelligence made an ordered universe, and filled it with people with intelligence who could use logic, mathematics and science to discover how their universe works is what Melissa Cain Travis, calls the Maker Thesis. She writes:

Two astonishing facts make scientific activity possible: the fundamental rationality of nature, and the existence of inquisitive creatures with intellects fit to discern that rationality. Why are things this way? Atheistic materialism — the view that nothing exists beyond the material world — must treat this uncanny resonance as nothing more than inexplicable happenstance. Yet the fact that we inhabit an orderly universe structured in such a way that the human mind can grasp it to a remarkable degree is exactly what we should expect if there is a Maker of all things in whose image we are made and whose mind is made manifest in the rest of creation.

I call this the Maker Thesis.¹

The fundamental rationality of nature along with the existence of inquisitive creatures are the best explained by the intelligent rational mind a Maker —a non-contingent first cause of all causes. It is uncanny that the natural processes of the universe are so well ordered that intelligent people can even apply abstract mathematical calculations to describe and predict the way a particular process within the universe works! I mentioned Ohm’s Law above but there is so much more. More on this point can be read about in the articles “A Grand Cosmic Resonance: How the Structure and Comprehensibility of the Universe Reveal a Mindful Maker” by Melissa Cain Travis and “God and the ‘Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics’” by William Lane Craig.

We are rational people and the best explanation for the origin of rational people is they were created by a rational mind or intelligent designer. James N. Anderson puts it this way:

The ultimate reality is a rational reality. God is the supreme intellect. Since God is both perfect and personal, He knows and understands all truths; more than that, God knows and understand how every truth relates to every other truth. What this means is that our universe has its source in a rational mind. While there are aspects of it that seem to defy our rational understanding, the universe as such isn’t intrinsically irrational or unintelligible.

Furthermore, Christianity teaches not only that we were created by God but specifically that we were created in God’s image. One aspect of that…is our capacity to make moral judgments. Another aspect is our capacity to reason. Just as human morality finds its source and explanation in God’s absolute goodness, so human rationality finds its source and explanation in God’s absolute intelligence.²

God is a rational God who creates rational people. Take God out of the picture, and we lose any good reason to explain the existence of an ordered universe and humans with intelligent minds capable of doing logic, mathematics and science.

Secular humanists want to say that there were no gods, demigods, or God at play in the emergence of life in this universe. Nature is all that exist and all of nature can be explained by science. Another name for this is philosophical naturalism. Darwinian Evolution is then casted as the origin myth for the atheist. Darwinian Evolution is the idea that only unguided random processes were at work in both the emergence of life and the evolutionary development of life from simple to complex forms. All life came from non-living chemicals, mutations brought about changes in lifeforms which resulted in organisms transforming from one species to another, and natural selection (i.e. the survival of the fittest) determined whether a species continue to thrived or went extinct.

Philosophical naturalism actually leaves atheists without any good explanation for having a rational mind capable of doing science or critical thinking in general. Anderson explains the problem:

Naturalism is committed to the idea that reason came from non-reason. The physical universe as such doesn’t have a mind. It doesn’t have an intellect or any rational faculties. At the beginning of time, the universe was just a highly compressed lump of matter — and lumps of matter have no thoughts at all, never mind rational thoughts. So the Naturalist has to believe that rational beings arose out of entirely non-rational materials and processes. That’s no easier to swallow than the idea that moral beings arouse out of entirely non-moral materials and processes.³

Many atheists excel in doing logic, mathematics, and science. They can even use their acquired knowledge of the workings of the universe and innovate technologies that harness the power of the universe to work for us. Although intelligence, logic, mathematics, science and an ordered universe are proofs of God’s existence, it is an oddity that the atheist maintains disbelief.

If the biblical propositions about God creating the universe and the creation testifying to the glory of the Maker are true (Gen. 1-2; Psa. 19:1-6), then one can expect to find order and design within the universe. We live in an ordered universe. We have been endowed with intelligent minds capable of doing logic, mathematics and sciences. We can explore and discover how the universe works. The more we learn about the universe the more we learn about the wisdom and power of the Maker of all things.

“For [God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom.1:20, ESV).

— WGN

---

1. Melissa Cain Travis, Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2018),13
2. James N. Anderson, Why Should I Believe Christianity? (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 2016), 115-116.
3. Anderson, 117. Elsewhere Anderson contends existence, values, morality, reason, mind, and science can only be explained on a theistic basis. See “The Inescapability of God”