I have indirectly addressed this topic in other articles, but I am now compelled to address it directly. What scientific evidence is there for the existence of God? In the history of human thought, God’s existence has never been definitively answered. If it had, we would no longer be discussing it. Just as we no longer discuss whether the earth is in fact actually flat. In what follows I do not fool myself to believe I am going to “prove” God’s existence, but simply show that modern science “points” to it. By modern science, I mean specifically evolution. Evolution is a fact that has completely refashioned humanity’s understanding about the world, and so it is only natural that we use it to determine God’s existence. Despite popular belief, science has never been in conflict with God. Many of the world’s greatest and most revolutionary minds were in fact scientists who believed in God: Michelangelo, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Teilhard de Chardin, to name just a few.
In what follows we will not have time to touch on Christian topics such as “Jesus Christ,” the “Trinity,” “Scriptures,” or the issue of “institutionalized religion.” We will not be able to look at the problem of “sin, death and suffering,” and if there is a good God why these things are possible. I am not side-stepping these questions, because they are all perfectly answerable. Time does not permit us to answer them right now. For now, we will concentrate solely on the scientific basis for believing in the personal God.
When wondering if God exists, one of the first questions that come to mind is the “Infinite Regression” question. It goes like this: “If God made the universe, then who/what made God?” And then the next question is: “If somebody/something made God, then who/what made the thing that made God?” And of course the question goes on and on, backwards, towards infinity. Infinite Regression. We have all heard this question. It is essentially a Cause and Effect question. The universe is the Effect, what was the Cause? In the history of human thought, there has only ever been one satisfactory answer to the “Infinite Regression” riddle: there had to be something that “had no beginning;” something that “always was;” something “eternal.” Yes, the only way to avoid the absurdity of asking the Infinite Regression question over and over again is to presuppose that there was something that did not need to be created. From Plato and Aristotle onwards, this concept of eternity has been held by both believers and unbelievers. This is because eternity satisfactorily explains how the universe came into being. For the world to exist at all, there must have always been some sort of existence. Now of course this does not mean that eternity is a personal God. That is a different story. Many people imagine eternity simply as an endless ocean of impersonal energy.
So what evidence is there for a personal God? The evidence is found in the discovery of evolution. Although many people use evolution as proof against God’s existence, it will not be long before the world as a whole realizes that evolution actually points to his existence. How so? Because evolution has a direction: towards the spiritual and the personal: two attributes of God.
It is actually very easy to see: from stardust, to plant life, to animal life, to human life, evolution undoubtedly moves in the direction of the spiritual and the personal. (See Diagram A.) Starting at the bottom, stars are impersonal and spirit/consciousness is undetectable. But as the universe evolves to plant life, spirit/consciousness becomes perceptible. However, “personhood” is still not evident. Then, as the universe evolves to and through animal life (through natural selection), we begin to see high levels of spirit/consciousness and glimpses of the personal. The earth is filled with highly conscious creatures, many of which border on having personalities. We often remark that our pet dogs are like persons. Almost, but not quite. It is not until the universe evolves into human beings that we undoubtedly have the most conscious and personal animal ever. Humans are self-conscious persons, the pinnacle of evolution…for now.
Stopping for a moment, who can fail to see this direction of evolution? There is 300 million years’ worth of evidence that evolution has constantly moved in the direction of higher spirituality and personality. Many unbelievers will refuse to follow this logic of evolution. They will say that the evolution of life does not head in any one direction; it scatters and diverges in all sorts of directions. Now while it is true that the branches on the tree of life diverge in various directions, everyone can see that the trunk of the tree of life grows in the direction of smarter, more personal animals. Do not the concepts of “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Fittest” imply that only the more intelligent and sophisticated life forms will advance? Of course it does. The universe is built to evolve toward higher spiritual and ultimately more personal life forms.
What is very interesting about this “directed-evolution” is that many unbelievers in fact sub-consciously believe in it… even though they do not realize it! This can be seen by the fact that many of them believe in extra-terrestrial intelligent life: and extra-terrestrial intelligent life can only appear on other planets through this same “directed-evolution!” Surely we are not blind to this?
But we should not assume evolution has stopped here on earth. When we project evolution along its trajectory, we are justified in assuming that the universe will eventually evolve to an even higher degree of spirituality and personality than human beings: something “super-spiritual” and “super-personal.” And it is here we see evolution point to something like the concept of God, who is defined as the supreme spiritual personal being. God is not the sky-fairy, or the person in the clouds. He is the end of evolution, the top of the spiritual ladder, the super-spiritual and super-personal Being.
Evolution re-introduces an easy-to-see hierarchal structure of life: it is like a ladder reaching up to God. Stars are at the bottom, the wide range of life in the middle, and humans at the top rising upwards toward heaven. The universe moves “inwardly” towards spirituality and personality, not so much outwardly into outer space.
Even though I have not “proved” God’s existence, I have at least shown how evolution “points” to it. Faith in God can, and should, come about from a scientific look at the universe. Great thinkers of the past used science to come to an understanding of God, and today is no different.
In conclusion it is worth noting that the above is a scientific approach to God, and as a purely “intellectual” approach it is rather dry. There is a more fruitful way by which God can be shown to exist, and that is by lifting your will to him (the Great Unknown) to see if you experience a communication that takes place in any person-to-person relationship. “Test” God in prayer, and see if it bears results. However, one must be willing to invest a certain amount of time to see results, for one night of earnest effort would hardly be enough to learn to play the piano, much less talk with God.
