How Do We Know God Exists?

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Planet Saturn

By Spencer D Gear PhD


God has given us two pieces of evidence in His infallible Scriptures. They tell us the truth about how anyone (Christian and non-believer) can know of God’s existence. Whether you believe the Bible or not does not alter the fact that God provides these two pieces of evidence that are certain evidence for God’s existence.

(1) The first piece of evidence is found in natural revelation. We see it in the immensity Psalm 19:1 describes, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (NIV). Look into the skies at night-time and day-time and what do you see? To the naked eye, we see a whole array of planets in orbit. We call them the stars and they declare God’s glory. H. C. Leupold, a commentator who understood Hebrew, wrote:

“Heavens” are in an emphatic position (at the beginning of the sentence) in the Hebrew as much as to say: ‘The very heavens declare, or even, The heavens in a distinct sense declare. Since the participle follows and expresses continuous action, we must render the verb “are telling,” for they do it continually by day or night. Downright majesty is the “glory” which these heavens advertise. Since this is a truth which is apparent even to the heathen (cf., Rom. 1:19ff.), one of the most general names for God is used—‘el, “the Strong One”.[1]

Creation reveals the nature of God. He didn’t begin the Psalm with a comparison of God and evolution, or of nature versus science. For the psalmist, the heavens and the skies form the structure of knowing that God exists in the earthly and heavenly realm.[2]

NASA may give us some insight by confirming the enormity of this evidence:

NASA[3] Telescope Reveals Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star

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This illustration shows the possible surface of TRAPPIST-1f,[4] one of the newly discovered planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes have discovered that there are seven Earth-size planets in the system.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In only a few centuries, the scale of the solar system and of the universe expanded incredibly as a result of investigation and study. The telescope and the Copernican theory replaced the Earth with the Sun at the center of the solar system. The five wandering lights (called planets by the Greeks) became individual worlds. New discoveries in physics and spectroscopy made it possible to analyze and even weigh the distant stars. Still larger telescopes moved the Sun from the center of things to the fringes of the Milky Way galaxy, a huge system of 100 billion or more stars. Then the Milky Way became only one of billions of galaxies in an expanding universe. New telescopes, sensitive to radio waves, probed the universe, discovering strange objects and powerful sources of energy that our eyes could never see.[5]

Is there anything more that NASA can tell us?

clip_image006An ear for the universe.[6]
An ear for the universe. The dish antenna of a large NASA radio telescope located at Madrid, Spain is outlined against the sunset sky. The antenna is 64 meters (21 Ofeet) in diameter. It is used to track interplanetary spacecraft, to send commands to them, and to receive from them the radio signals that carry scientific information and pictures of other worlds. Other, even larger, radio telescopes analyze radio waves from distant stars and galaxies. Radio telescopes have even detected a whisper of noise from the edge of the universe, an echo of the Big Bang that formed the universe 15 to 20 billion years ago. Radio telescopes like this one could also be used to detect extraterrestrial life – by listening for the communications of other civilizations in space.

clip_image008The big blue marble.[7]
Earth, the home planet of humanity, rises above the scorched and cratered surface of the Moon in this photograph taken from the Apollo 11 spacecraft shortly before the astronauts set foot on the Moon. In addition to making it possible for to see new worlds, the Space Age gave us a new view of our own planet. Astronauts, poets, writers, and average people alike were struck by the image of the Earth as a tiny, blue, hospitable, life-bearing world, floating in a vast uncaring blackness, side-by-side with the battered and lifeless Moon.

(2) The second piece of evidence for God’s existence is found within the human person.

According to the Wise Man (King Solomon) of the Book of Ecclesiastes, he states it clearly: “He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[8] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Eccl. 3:11 NIV). We see one beauty in summer, another in autumn, a third in winter, and finally the beauty of spring and its flowers. Then the writer turns to the internal dimensions of a person:

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                                                 Royalty-free Dreamstime.

What makes human beings higher than animals is this sense of eternity that God has placed in people. My son wrote on one of his social media posts, “I don’t believe in life after death.” God has declared he’s a liar. Every human being has the sense of eternity within him or her. This is an aspect of our being made in God’s image and likeness that was not lost with the fall into sin.

“Man has a deep-seated ‘sense of eternity’ (Delitzsch), of purpose and destinies.”[9] Even though people deny it, all have eternity in their hearts. They want to live beyond what they see and hear.

Conclusion

God has placed the evidence for his existence so clearly that all human beings can see it: (1) We see his existence in the skies he has made and continues to demonstrate His evidence, and (2) Within every human being there is evidence of God’s existence in eternity in human hearts.
Nobody is without excuse when they stand before God.

Notes


[1] H. C. Leupold 1959. The Wartburg Press / Evangelical Press, London, England, p. 178.

[2] Some of these ideas are gleaned from Willem A. VanGemeren 1991, Psalms, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 5, The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 179.

[3] See NASA explanation of use of images and research in the public domain HERE.

[4] “NASA announced the discovery of the most Earth-sized planets found in the habitable zone of a single star, called TRAPPIST-1,” Largest Batch of Earth-size Habitable Zone Planets Found Orbiting TRAPPIST-1, Exoplanet Exploration, available at: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/trappist1/ (Accessed 27 September 2022).

[5] NASA, “The Unfolding Universe,” available at: https://history.nasa.gov/EP-177/ch1-2.html (Accessed 27 September 2022).

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] The NIV footnote is, “Or also placed ignorance in the human heart, so that.”

[9] H. C. Leupold 1969. London: Evangelical Press, p. 91.

Copyright © 2022 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 28 September 2022.