Episode 48: How Do We Know God Exists?

Do you believe in God? I guess you probably do, since you are following this podcast. Now, let’s ask ourselves another question. Why do we believe in God?

This is a question that our children will likely ask, especially given the seemingly rising scepticism among our young towards faith today. Locally, anecdotal experience suggests that many of our young people leave the Church not long after receiving the sacrament of Confirmation. And they continue to struggle with this issue of God’s existence or relevance thereafter.

The problem with why many of our young are not inclined to believe in the existence of God is because many are looking for Him in the wrong places, using the wrong methods.

We think that science will help us find answers to everything, including the existence of God, in our material world. But science was not designed to do that. It was designed to help us study and discover the truths about the physical world that we live in. But God, the source of all that exists, is not part of the material world. He transcends it. As popular author Brandon Vogt would suggest, to use scientific methods to look for God is akin to using a metal detector to look for a wooden cup.

While using scientific methods to look for God would not be too helpful, it does not mean we cannot find proof for His existence. The catechism tells us that we can know God exists “by the natural light of human reason”. (CCC, #47)

How so? There are many ways, including St Thomas Aquinas’ famous five ways.

I would propose to use just two arguments for the purpose of discussing this topic with our children. These are intelligent design, and the so-called Kalam argument. I know these may not be the favourite arguments of some hard-core philosophers. But I am a parent, not a philosopher. To prove God’s existence with our children, I think these two would suffice for a start. We have shared some other resources for you below if you wish to find out more about the other arguments for God’s existence.

Intelligent Design

Look at the world around us. Look at ourselves. Our own bodies. The way our bodies work, down to the minutest strands of DNA that determine how our physical bodies function in every intricate detail. Why do DNA strands work the way they do in our cells without us consciously driving them?

Why do cells in certain parts of our body come together to form tissues and organs that function in a certain way? Why does the brain respond to changes in various components in our blood in such a way as to regulate, for example, our breathing, our heart rate, and the production of different hormones to ensure the proper functioning of the entire human body?

Look around us in nature. As an example, have we ever thought about why plants know how to produce flowers, why these flowers then produce pollen, why after pollination, pollen tubes form which carry the male gametes down the style to the ovaries where they fertilise the female gametes, and fruits then come about? There certainly seems to be an unseen external force, a transcendent force, that causes all these to happen in such an organised and predictable way, and directs them to a proper end.

Such order in the world, and indeed the universe, has mesmerised many. Even Albert Einstein once said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”

There is no way in which we can have such order in our bodies or in the universe if laws that govern their proper functioning are not there. There has got to be something, or someone, a most intelligent designer, who must have put these laws there in the first place. Who else but God?

The other reason why I like this argument, as a parent, is because it is easy to teach our kids from the time they are young: “Look at the beauty of the flowers.  Smell them. See how God made them so pretty and fragrant.” “Wow! Look at the stars in the sky. Aren’t they just so dazzling? Isn’t it amazing how God has created these flowers for us to smell and the stars for us to enjoy looking at?”

As they grow older, our comments can become “Wow! See how God made these cells organise themselves into these tissues and organs in our bodies.” Or “Have you ever wondered how the moon revolves around the earth and planets revolve around the sun? What force causes that to happen?” Or “Why do these chemicals interact with those in such a predictable way to form new compounds that we expect them to?” “Have you wondered who caused these laws to come into being?”

If we explore these questions with our children, it will be apparent that the only reasonable answer is the presence of an omnipotent being who causes all these to be.

The Kalam Argument

Basically, the premise of this argument is that “everything that begins to exist has a cause. The Universe began to exist. Therefore, it has a cause.” This argument has gained prominence since the acceptance of the Big Bang Theory, which shows that the Universe began existence about 13.7 billion years ago.

A simple, or some might say simplistic way of explaining it is that the Big Bang was the moment when the Universe began as a tiny, dense, fireball that “exploded”. Since then, the Universe has been expanding. Even up until today, the universe continues to expand. Since the Universe began to exist at a certain time and did not, or in fact could not have existed from all eternity, it must have had a cause.

And the cause of the birth of the Universe, the creation of the Universe, must presuppose a creator. A creator who created, out of nothing, what was needed for that initial “fireball”, so to speak, or that point of immense density and gravity, and caused it to give rise to the universe in the first place.

A creator who created something out of nothing. One who created the initial “fireball”, or that point of immense density and gravity, and caused it to give rise to the universe.

Knowing God

What we have discussed so far is only a small fraction of the many arguments for the existence of God. But I think this serves as a useful starter. As our children mature further, we might then engage them with the other proofs of God’s existence, such as the unmoved mover, uncaused cause, contingency, and so on. As mentioned, we have shared more resources below for those who would want to explore this further. We hope this has helped somewhat in conversations with your children as to whether God exists.

Reason can show us quite easily that God does exist. But who is God? For that, we will need faith to inform us, since faith complements and perfects right reason without ever contradicting it. And it is our faith in Jesus, the perfect revelation of the Father, that will provide us with the answer to the question.