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PART 2

THE PHILOSOPHICAL/CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE

1) The God Instinct: There has never been a civilization in the history of the world that didn't search for a Supreme Being or beings in one form or another, with the exception of Communism, which lasted only 74 years in the Soviet Union, and is crumbling everywhere else it still exists. Yes, generic Marxism still thrives on college campuses (something I think we would agree is not good) but only because they never have to actually put it in practice -- there, it's still perfection on paper constantly compared to the warts of real live democratic capitalism. But I digress...

I submit that the God Instinct is as powerful as our instinct for water. It may not be as immediate, but it is every bit as indelible -- what else can explain that only civilizations based on the belief in something beyond the physical world last?

2) The Universe Meaningless -- Atheism is nihilism: This a point I've obviously pounded on a bit, but it bears repeating. A meaningless universe can produce only meaninglessness. Yet the human soul instinctively cries out for meaning and purpose which cannot be found in an accidental, chance universe, again like looking for fresh fruit on a dead tree. Where does this cry come from? Sure, individuals may be able to embrace atheism for their entire lives but not societies. As Dennis Prager once said about Islam in Europe and how it is becoming so powerful and dominant there, "you can't fight faith with no faith." European secularism offers no compelling alternative to Islam, something crucial in assimilating immigrants -- it offers only a belief in accidents and atoms and that nothing is worth dying for, which is why Europeans are unwilling even to defend themselves. It also doesn't offer anything worth really living for either, something more transcendent and substantive than the next meal or party or America-blaming session.

This survival-threatening effect on society is not strictly psychological either. It's even reproductive. Secular people (of any political stripe) tend to have far fewer children than religious folks. If not for the heavy immigration into Europe of Middle Easterners and others, Europe's population would be dwindling.

Christianity offers a lifeboat from a dying world to a place of eternal bliss. Atheism offers only the same grim fate no matter what you do, which makes your every endeavor futile, just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

3) Morality is reduced to meaningless opinions. As Dostoevsky said, "if there is no God then everything is permissible." Why were the 9/11 hijackers "wrong"? They were just atoms colliding with other atoms, so it is a purely arbitrary, subjective act to assign it any more moral significance than a tree falling on an ant or a meteorite striking the earth.

Yet a desire for a transcendent moral code -- in spite of our flawed nature that prevents us from perfectly living up to it -- just won't go away no matter how we try to drown it out, like Lady MacBeth "Out, out, damned spot!" If that was not so, it would have been driven away by our other desires like leaves before a gale. This desire is either that God Instinct again or it's a birth defect of the human species because all other species on earth survive fine without it.

I probably have forgotten a few things, but that is more or less my circumstantial evidence for God's existence. As a species, our deepest desires are meaning, morality, and immortality (eternal fellowship with each other -- family at its ultimate), not mere survival as with all other life forms. You are left then with two possibilities:

a) These desires have an eternal source beyond the physical world, or:

b) These desires are a mistake of nature, and ultimately humanity's fatal flaw because once you convince a society that its very deepest desires are not rooted in anything truly transcendent but are nothing more than birth defects, that society will begin to die.