Is There Scientific Evidence for God? An Atheist, Three Nobel Prize Winners, an Agnostic, and a Philosopher Weigh In

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There are certainly some things that science cannot answer—things that we can’t account for solely by using our reason, logic, and powers of observation. Atheists like Richard Dawkins believe that Christians are simply inserting “God” into these gaps in our knowledge, using His existence as a “catch all” explanation for the things science simply hasn’t discovered or figured out yet.  Are they right, or is there any positive evidence that might lead us to conclude God exists? Here are some insights from a diverse group  of respected thinkers:

​The Atheist With a Ph.D. from Cambridge, twelve honorary degrees, too many awards to count, and a movie made about his life, Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous and respected scientists alive today.  Specializing in theoretical physics and cosmology, Hawking is well known for his prediction of a singular beginning to the universe. (1) A hundred years ago, most scientists believed that the universe was eternal. Now the general consensus of science is that the universe had a beginning—that all of space, time, and matter exploded into existence out of nothing (the “Big Bang”). Hawking wrote:

All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago. This is probably the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology.

What is this “evidence” Hawking is referring to? One piece was discovered by Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, American physicists and astronomers. They won the 1978 Nobel Prize for helping to discover the cosmic background radiation, which confirmed the Big Bang. Wilson recognized the implications for the existence of God:

Certainly there was something that set it all off. If you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.(2)

In an interview with the New York Times Penzias agreed:

The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five Books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.

In 1989, NASA launched a satellite that measured the cosmic background radiation discovered by Wilson and Penzias, providing further proof of the Big Bang.  Project leader George Smoot won the Nobel Prize for these findings in 2006. He said:

There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.(3)


The Agnostic

Robert Jastrow was an A

merican astronomer, physicist, and the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies—and he was an agnostic. Even so, he could not deny the connection between Big Bang cosmology and the implication of a Creator. He said:

Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.

The Philosopher Recently named among the 50 most influential living philosophers, William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher and proponent of what is referred to as the “cosmological argument” for God’s existence. When analyzing the evidence from cosmology and the Big Bang, Craig recognized that the beginning of the universe had to have a cause. (The law of causality states that whatever begins to exist, must have a cause.) For time, space, and matter to instantaneously come into existence out of nothing, the cause would have to be outside of time, space, and matter. He noted:

[The evidence] gives us powerful grounds for believing in the existence of a beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful, Personal Creator of the universe.

Conclusion:

You may be thinking, “But this doesn’t prove that the God of the Bible exists!” You’re right—”proof” is a strong word. But I might suggest that there is ample evidence to lead a rational person to accept that He does in fact exist. Far from a “God of the gaps” explanation, many scientists believe that scientific evidence points toward God. Here’s what it comes down to: either a spaceless, timeless, immaterial and immensely powerful “cause” (which happens to sound a lot like the God of the Bible) brought the universe into existence out of nothing…..or nothing did.

I’ll leave it to you to decide. Which option is more reasonable?


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​References:

(1) Realizing the implications for the existence of God, Hawking has since married

quantum physics to General Relativity to come up with the “No Boundary Proposal,” to eliminate the singularity.  See William Lane Craig’s response here.
(2) Quoted in Fred Heeran, Show Me God, (Daystar, 2000) Chapter 6
(3) Quoted in Ibid.

Love the way you write Alisa! Clear and concise with logical conclusions, or at the very least, important thoughts for further exploration.

Alisa Childers

5/23/2017 01:01:42 pm

Thank you Dermot!

Chase A

8/6/2019 08:06:03 pm

You end by implying that it is more likely for there to be a cause than for it to start from nothing. If so, what caused God to exist? There are only two options, and they are the same ones as the creation of a universe without a creator. Either a real cause, or nothing. The point I’m making is that it is equally as plausible for the universe to be created out of nothing than a conscious being from nothing. One is definitely more complex from the start than the other is.

Edgar de Andrade Xavier

12/31/2019 01:32:39 pm

I’m very interested in arguments in favor of the existence of God, mainly when they are grounded in physic cosmology. Excuse mmy bad English, I’m a Brazilian.

Chase Arline

12/31/2019 03:29:16 pm

What is in this article is cherry-picked ideas from very specific sources that may show support. Scientists as a demographic have the lowest belief in Christianity than any other (excluding agnostic/atheist obviously). This author literally ends the article by implying that it is extremely unlikely for something to be created from nothing. Where was god created then? Also, the big bang theory has evidence that time did not exist until a specific point during the big bang. How would anything create a cause before time? Reactions require time to take place, so how would God do anything without time? Or space? Why is it okay to accept God made the universe because “nothing” couldn’t, but also to refuse that God can be created by “nothing”?

JM

11/26/2020 03:22:24 pm

“Where was god created then?”

It doesn’t say God was created. If God was created then it wouldn’t be the creator, but a part of creation. Go back and read the post.

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