WNG?:Is Belief Reasonable?
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Grab your bibles and turn to
To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
9 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
5 which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
7 The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
8 the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
9 the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
12 Who can discern his errors?
Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
13 Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;
let them not have dominion over me!
Then I shall be blameless,
and innocent of great transgression.
14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
PRAYER
The Psalmist (King David) has a very strong conviction that the earth/ creation is not by accident!
That as he looks out at the night sky, as he walks under the bright afternoon sun, as he takes in the creatures that wander around him, that live in the ocean, he is extremely humbled and rejoices that this God is not just a God who creates, but a God who lives and is still around to be praised, and to be related to.
How do I know he believes this, because he wrote a poem!!
We tend to write poems to those we love and express our love for and who can actually receive it.
He frames his poem at the beginning and end with the phrase “ O LORD our Lord”
those are two different words
LORD means YHWH- that is the name God gave to the Hebrew nation as his personal name.
YHWH- it made it so that he was not just a god out there somewhere but the God who i near.
The second word means lord as you would think- the one I bow to.
It is not just oh lord you are lord. It is Oh YHWH (the personal god who has revealed himself to me) you are my lord!
So he is proclaiming this song not.... to a far of unreciprocating God, but one who is well established and at work in creation, and who shows love and honour to those he created.
PAUSE
That is how you and I if we believe in the God of the Bible are invited to see the universe!!
To take it in, and be blown away by the beauty and intricacy of creation and respond!
And that is what we are doing when we worship. And the larger our view of God the greater our worship experience will be.
And ultimately if we are wondering how we respond, the psalmist shows us. Through worship.
All worship is a response to God’s revelation of himself!
And as the biblical narrative continues and we look to Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God with us, who said if you have seen me you have seen God the father, who Paul writes of in , 17...
“He is the image of the invisible God and.....all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
So very clearly.... what the Christian faith proposes is that There is a God who created all things and continues to sustain them. And in recognizing that the creative God of the universe longs for relationship with his created through his Son Jesus Christ, we find purpose, identity, and our fullest humanity!
NO SMALL CLAIM
PAUSE
We have been walking through a series over the past few months called Who Needs God?
And if you want to go deeper in some of this stuff in a very approachable way, I would suggest Tim Keller’s books A Reason for God and Making Sense of God which I have been using alot in preparing for this series.
Where we are really challenging the notion that meaning, purpose, morality, freedom can be found without God.
And that in all of those categories, belief in something outside of a secular worldview and a secular worldview is a closed worldview, one that does not allow for anything outside of the here and now.
A worldview that makes room for God actually makes more sense, and is actually life giving and brings freedom!
And one of the reasons people in a modern age are continuing to seek out spiritual connection, in fact it is growing, is because there is a massive gap in our post-modern age.
The reason that in the midst of all our advances, we are the most depressed, anxious culture in the world is because there are fundamental questions that technology, individualism, secularism, and politics cannot answer!
And so far I have posed not that Christianity is so obvious that only a moron wouldn’t believe it, but instead that when comparing a worldview that includes the divine to a closed secular worldview, it does a better job of explaining our existence AND encourages a flourishing existence more than a secular one can or ever could.
Belief accounts for the data; what we witness and experience in the world.
So today, I would like to make a case for belief in God:
The problem is that there are is not one argument that works for everyone.
For some their heart needs to be stirred, for some an intellectual argument will be more likely to do the trick, so that means that there is not one argument that will satisfy every person.
So I would like to lay out a few and hopefully speak to your heart and mind and whatever other part of you will listen!
So what are some reasons to believe?
I. Why Believe?
A. Why is there something rather than nothing?
Have you ever thought of that?
Everything that exists must have a cause.
The universe exists, there must be a cause.
What was that cause?
Since the 1920’s the Big Bang Theory has been the basis for understanding the universe and its behaviour, plenty of that behaviour is displayed on the TV Show Big Bang!
replacing what was called the Steady State Theory that everything had always been and was staying that way.
The Big Bang theory theorizes that everything had a beginning!! Time and space.
So that theoretical physicist and cosmologist Steven Hawking writing in 1996 that
“Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.”
In other words everything points to an origin.
Steven Hawking writing in
Steven
There was a time when time and space did not exist and then it did!
Why?
Things that were not, cannot create themselves into being there needs to be an outside force.
Scientist Francis Collins reflecting on the idea that there was nothing and then there was something says this ....
“…it implies that before that, there was nothing. I can’t imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature.”
As Christians we point to the very first text in our Bibles the book of Genesis (which means what?) Beginnings..there is a hint there.
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.
Now there are some common arguments that are offered to try to throw a wrench in the argument of first cause.
Arguments against first cause:
a. there was no first cause- things have just been rolling along for infinity
b. if everything must have a cause what caused God?
The first of these rebuttals is that it calls on the need for the supernatural to take place
It requires an unscientific miracle!
The proposition is that matter sprang from nothing, or always existed without cause, and for infinity goes backward never having a beginning.
That is an extremely unscientific claims
A miraculous claims without a first cause.
The second argument, who created God, suggesting that God must stand under the very rules of science he created is a illogical.
The god proposed in thees arguments is not the god we worship!!
It is definitely not the God of .
20 For his 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. So they are without excuse.
15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,
2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began
God has been at work long before anything we call time ever existed.
God as a first cause is a logical explanation of why there is something rather than nothing.
In the beginning was the word and the word was God?
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.
B. Why are we somebody rather than nobody?
Our world is perfect for life
Should we just take it for granted that we can live and breath and function in our universe or are there a handful of things going on that make it possible that if it were any different we would not be able to exist and neither would our world.
Quoting Collins again, he says...
“When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are …constants..that have precise values. If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases by one part in a million million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people”
Collins who came to faith through these kinds of logical conclusions is not alone in statements..
Steven Hawking responding to this kind of data we find in the universe.
"I think there are clearly religious implications”
This is what is known as the FINE-TUNING ARGUMENT
it screams for a mind, a design.
PAUSE
Could it happen by accident? Sure!
Is it plausible.....no.
Some have estimated that the probability of our planet accidentally providing the perfect life-permitting environment as it does is 10 to the negative 100th - there was a one in billions of trillions that by chance it could have produced life on the planet.
Now you may have noticed that I really stuck to my notes on that last statement. That is because that stuff makes my mind explode. For some people it strikes a chord and they are like, yeah powerful, but for people like me who get confused when Im asked to pass two pieces of paper, it is so overwhelming!
So here is an illustration to make the point:
(this is not my own)
Imagine a man is brought before the firing squad. 10 expert marksman, stand 10 feet away and fire Every one of them misses.
Could it happen by accident?
YES! But is that the reasonable conclusion, or would it make more sense that there was a plan, a design, a conspiracy.
The Fine-tuning evidence in our universe makes more with a creator.
One of the most recent “solutions” offered by those who oppose the fine tuning argument is to propose the “mutiverse thesis”.
Some scientists have argued that the fine-tuning agrument must be hitting a chord with the scientific community, that they are grasping when they use the multiverse thesis.
The multiverse thesis suggests that there are possibly an infinite number of different universes, so it makes sense that out of a infinite amount of universes that one of them would be the perfect fit for human flourishing. For life as we know it.
MIT professor Alan P. Lightman calls this grasping evidence of science’s “crisis of faith”.
Tim Keller
He says that it is evidence that the fine-tuning argument is extremely strong when scientists put forth the multiverse thesis even though there is not one shred of evidence for it nor any way to test it.
So it seems that
The solution when everything we know about our world points to a designer is to imagine that there are a bunch that don’t.
The way we disprove a benevolent creator when everything we know about our world points to a designer, is to imagine that there are a bunch of worlds that don’t
But ours does point to a designer, but what if there are trillions that don’t.
imagine that there are a bunch that don’t
Do we know of any....no!
That is called faith! And a rather strong faith!!
So why are we somebody rather than nobody, why can we live and survive in this universe.
King david points to God and says..
Belief in God
Our world was perfectly set up for life!
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
Now for the philosophers, poets and artist.... belief in God also answers the question....
c. Why are things beautiful?
If all things are by chance. The result of a closed universe unmoved by an ultimate mover, moved forward by chance or accidental natural forces, some argue that beauty and longing make no sense!
Is beauty really just a hardwired response to data?
Do we just find trees nestled next a a mountainside beautiful to look at because our ancestors found food in trees like that?
Is love a result of chemical forces that we inherited from ancestors that helped them survive?
What about music and art?
What are these feeling we feel when we see a beautiful photo, take in the Sistine Chapel, rock out to Journey, or Duran Duran (sorry my 80s is showing!!) Beethoven, or Ben Rector.
Now some could say, who cares? Feeling something doesn’t make it so?
But what if our feelings are a longing for something?
As one poet wrote..
what if these are Blessed Longings showing themselves.
That when we look at art or listen to music it is hitting a chord of longing in us.
St. Augustine suggested that these unfulfilled desires are a clue to the reality of God.
For every desire we have there is a way to satisfy it.
You are hungry for a steak, because there is steak to be eaten. Unless you are a vegetarian, then there is steak flavoured tofu to be eaten!
We have thirst and there is drink to be had!
There are desires that correspond to real life objects that satisfy these desires.
There is sexual desire that can be satisfied for a moment by sex
There is hunger that is satisfied by food
We know what being tired is and that it is satisfied by sleep.
There is relational desire satisfied by friendship.
The Christian would argue that the longing that grows in us when we witness beauty, or cry at a beautiful song is the result of an unfulfilled longing in us for joy, love, beauty, hope that no amount of food, sex, friendship, or success can ever satisfy!!
it is the longing of the hymn Joy of Man’s desiring that cries out..
Jesu, Joy of man’s Desiring
media help.
Jesu, joy of man's desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light.
Word of God, our flesh that fashioned,
With the fire of life impassioned,
Striving still to truth unknown,
Soaring, dying round Thy throne.
Through the way where hope is guiding,
Hark, what peaceful music rings;
Where the flock, in Thee confiding,
Drink of joy from deathless springs.
Theirs is beauty's fairest pleasure;
Theirs is wisdom's holiest treasure.
Thou dost ever lead Thine own
In the love of joys unknown.
There is a hunger a thirst that only Jesus satisfies!!
Jesus was hitting on this point when he spoke to the crowds in Gallilee
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
and in Jerusalem a little while later, while everyone is trying to find satisfaction in religious ritual, an inner longing for something beyond themselves, he says.....
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ”
Jesus says all those desires in you, those longings for more than what you can accumulate, or experience, they are found in me.
PAUSE
But the argument goes....nothing we believe about God or beauty, or feelings can be trusted because they are all simply a part of our genetic make up. We believe them because we have no choice. it is how we are programmed.
That is a problem for them as well. How then do we decide on any of the truth of claims of natural selection?
then the longing we feel when we see beautiful art or blast some beautiful music makes sense.
If what our brains tell us about love and morality and beauty are not real, just chemical reactions meant to pass on genetic code, then isn’t what their brain is telling them just a result of the same chemical reactions. Why is their truth to be believed and not others?
Tim Keller points out that arguments for evolutionary biology as the reason behind beliefs about beauty, love, morality may prove more than its proponents would like.
PAUSE SLOWLY
If we cannot trust these beliefs and convictions we cannot believe any!
But if we believe in a God who loves to create and who made us to relate and long for him, who at one point called creation into being, who as a rational being created a rational universe that actually makes the practice of science possible...
then the big bang makes complete sense!
then the fine-tuned universe you and I find ourselves in makes sense
then the fact that we can trust our faculties (which every scientist and theologian does in order to make any claim at reason and understanding) makes sense
then the longing and meaning we feel when we see beautiful art or blast some beautiful music makes sense.
These things don’t make sense in a closed universe
Without God you have no reason to trust your reasoning- but you live as though you do
You have no reason to trust that love and beauty matter, but we all live as though they do.
The cry of the psalmist makes sense to our experience.
We look at creation and we see order. We look at creation and the beauty hits something in us.
And the invitation is that of King David. To respond in humility and awe at the God who created all things, knows all things, sustains all things, and stepped into the time and space he created and invited you into relationship with him. That is reason to worship and live with purpose and hope.
“Oh LORD our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth.
Who are we that you care for us; that you even give us a thought.
But you do so much more than that.
Who are we that you would fine tune the universe for us, but you do so much more than that!!
Jesus who are we that you died for us.
Who are we that you would fine tune the universe for us
Teach us more of what it means to reflect on your creation, and respond to your might and love for us.
amen
Behold your handiwork....
I look u p to the heavens and you are there
Creation.....?