Does God Exist, And Is He A Person?

“Here! In less than 1000 words I, Ben Sommer, shall prove that God is literally a dude!“

Please withhold your eye-roll.

I know that I am not going to catalog every objection to God’s existence here in my ‘lil blog. And I’m not pretending that there isn’t robust debate among philosophers, scientist and theologians on this topic, and around these arguments. For like, the last 1000 years…

But I also know that most people reading this blog don’t spend much of their precious energy on this heady stuff. So it’s them to whom I am addressing this. You, dear reader, will most likely be shocked and bewildered – in a good way – that a sound argument can be put forth for the existence of a personal God.

So here we go…

Worldview Lens

There are really only a few general worldviews available to a human. James Sire’s handy book – “The Worldview Next Door” catalogs them:

As offensive as it might feel to hear this – most people’s view of ultimate reality really do slot into one of these four categories. Not that people don’t put their own ever individual spin on things – they do. Its just that the long study of comparative religion over the past few centuries, since Ibn Hazm founded the discipline in Muslim Spain, has discovered a distinct pattern of religious tendency in humanity, and the lines of demarcation typically form like this.

The last two worldviews in the list — Deism and Theism – involve belief in a personal god – that is, an actual personal force, with a will, a mind, and other critical attributes that we as human beings (except for the Naturalists) believe are core to a personality in the broadest sense.

Deism was very popular in the 17th-19th centuries enlightenment – think John Locke, Thomas Jefferson or Mark Twain – but is not very popular now. But regardless, Deism shares a belief in God as an actual person apart from the universe. My point here is to prove that God is not the universe, as Pantheism believes. So the arguments below will serve to disprove both Naturalism, and then Pantheism.

Cosmological Argument

The Cosmological Argument is an ancient – but still alive, active & debated – argument for the existence of a supernatural super-agent – a “God” as we usually conceive of Him.

Although this argument is typically meant to only logically prove the existence of such a nondescript God, below I put my own twist on it to get past just “a God”, and instead arrive all the way at the Personal God of Theism & Deism:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning.

This point appeals to basic common sense, but also serves to “bring into the argument” even the skeptical naturalist (one who believes only the natural world exists), since the basis of scientific inquiry is that effects have causes. Makes sense, eh? Nevermind that many treatises have been written for or against this premise’s truth. To normal, non-neurotic, non-philosophical folks (e.g. people not like me) – this proposition is still pretty self-evident.

The universe began to exist.

This was a controversial assertion up to the 1960s. Einstein’s 1915 relativity equations included an arbitrary “fudge factor” (the famed “Cosmological Constant”) that he inserted to avoid the prediction that the universe was expanding – since this implied a beginning. The belief in and hope for a “Steady state” universe that was eternal was very strong in science up until the 20th century – because with an eternal universe, there was no reason to believe in an ultimate cause, which would imply something like a God. But when Edwin Hubble observed galaxies rapidly moving away from the earth (and from our own galaxy) in 1919, and then the later 1964 discovery of the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation (the leftover “heat signature” of the Big Bang), then even the Naturalistic scientific community of unbelievers was forced to accept that the universe had a beginning. Since then physicists have been grasping for a way around the Big Bang beginning of the universe – a theory originated by Catholic Priest & Physicist George Lemaître – with far fetched and evidentially unsupported ideas like the Multiverse, Bubble Universes, String Cosmology, etc. But these theories – even if true (and their truth status is tenuous at best) would still be logically & philosophically incoherent as arguments against an ultimate beginning. And it is opposition to this beginning – and what it implies – which is the animus and motivation behind the atheistic scientists who are championing these theories.

Therefore, the universe has a cause of its beginning.

Voila! Our first (sub) conclusion.

Before the universe began – space, time & matter did not exist

This is obvious, if we define the universe as the totality of space, time & energy. Before the Big Bang:  

Space and matter didn’t exist, since an infinitely small and dense singularity is all there was, and since something infinite doesn’t qualify as “space”. An infinite anything is impossible in this universe. Its only a curious concept that mathematicians study.

Time hadn’t begun since time is measured in the action of physical “laws” like motion, gravitation, etc. There was no motion to measure before the Big Bang, therefore no sequence of events. No events at all. Even saying of the singularity that “it was” is nonsensical. If there was no time – and if the singularity was infinite in its mass – it didn’t really even exist, strictly speaking.

Therefore whatever caused the universe to begin was space-less, matter-less, & time-less

Therefore the cause of the universe cannot also be the universe, since it stood apart at the creation event, and caused it

This effectively knocks out pantheism (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism) in its literal sense – i.e. that an ultimate cause is embedded in its own creation – all the space, matter and energy around us. There is poetic merit to the ancient eastern pantheistic faiths, and as I discuss here there may actually be new scientific hints that suggest even more-than-poetic merit to these faiths. But logically speaking, these faiths and their core theology do not cohere, and are contradicted by good evidence.

Only conscious, personal agents make choices.

Only beings with minds make conscious choices. As far as humans are aware, it is only our species on earth which makes such choices, although science is starting to hint that maybe other mammal species do as well. But regardless, its true that only a person in the general sense (a conscious agent with a mind) could choose to do anything.

The agent which created the universe chose to create it.

Therefore, God is a conscious person.

A person is not identical to the thing that he creates.

Therefore, God is the ultimate creator of the universe, and stands apart from it

There we have it – God is a single, omnipotent, omniscient, space-less, matter-less, time-less, conscious person who chose to create the universe. This leaves us only with Deism and Theism as viable belief systems. Too neat & clean? Maybe…

Now – I don’t mean to suggest that this argument isn’t still debated and discussed – even now, millennia after its initial formulation. Gazzilions of pages have been written about each step in this argument, both for and against. And anyway – the last bit is my own extension of the classic argument, meant to reach God’s personhood. So that part especially definitely is wide open to debate.

But…it has power and consistency. And refuting its conclusion requires attacking the validity of one or more of the various premises. For anyone unsatisfied with my rehash – and wants to know more and test the boundaries – then be my guest. I’ve created this YouTube Playlist on the Cosmological Argument. Explore and see if you don’t eventually (even years from now) wind up back where I am now.