Episode 13 – Is There Scientific Evidence for God?

Is There Scientific Evidence for God's Existence?

The short and simple answer is that God is what science points to more than anything else. You may ask: where? Show me God, or let me hear God. We answer: you did not ask whether we see or hear God in the same way that we see or hear physical objects. Had that been your question, we would of course have said no. You asked whether science points to God.

The Nature of Science and Evidence

Knowledge combines sensory observation and reason. A human being is not a mute machine or a camera that merely captures images so that we can look at its screen and ask whether God appears in them. Rather, a person analyzes sensory input with the mind and reaches conclusions. This process begins in the earliest moments of childhood and develops as one grows. Even animals draw conclusions from what they sense and connect an effect to its cause. From the smell of food, an animal knows there is food nearby and searches for it. Some animals, such as dogs, follow a trace in search of whoever left it.

If you see a bitten apple bearing the marks of human teeth, you know that a person bit it even though you did not see that person. If you hear a chant sung in a beautiful voice, you know that someone is singing it. These are elementary forms of knowledge. Indeed, they are so self-evident that people do not call them science, because the word science usually suggests deliberate reflection and analysis, which are unnecessary in such matters.

The Innate Principle of Causality

Every event has a cause. This is a rational, innate, and self-evident principle requiring neither teaching nor exceptional intelligence. We act according to causality in every movement: we eat because food removes hunger, drink because water removes thirst, sleep because it brings rest, and work because it enables us to earn a living.

Through this principle of causality, you know that you and the universe around you have a Creator and Governor who brought the universe into existence, prepared it for life, perfected its details, and regulated its laws. The effects of His power appear within you and in the movements of the beings around you.

The question, "Is there evidence for God's existence?" is therefore imprecise, because nothing exists without pointing to God. If you entered a house that was not yours, sat on its sofa, and ate cooked food placed upon the table, would a rational person then ask whether there was evidence that the house had a builder, the meal a cook, and the sofa a maker? Would you ask whether there was evidence that any of these things came about through an agent? Would such a question not be exasperating?

Quranic Evidence for God's Existence

God Almighty says: “Say, ‘Observe what is in the heavens and earth.’ But of no avail will be signs or warners to a people who do not believe.” [Yunus 10:101]. “What is in the heavens and earth” is general and comprehensive. Everything within them points to God and to His attributes. But those who fundamentally reject belief in the unseen will not benefit from evidence, however clear and compelling it may be.

He also says: “Do they not look into the realm of the heavens and the earth and everything that Allah has created?” [Al-Araf 7:185]. “Into the realm of the heavens and the earth”; it does not say merely "toward." The word "in" encompasses reflection and contemplation upon the details. What points you ever more clearly toward the Creator is: “And everything that Allah has created”. That is, everything God created points to Him. Everything He created points to Him.

How strange that God should be disobeyed, or that anyone should deny Him! In every movement and every stillness, there is a witness to God. In everything there is a sign showing that He is One.

The correct question is therefore not, "Is there evidence for a Creator's existence?" It is: "Can anything escape and cease to be evidence for the Creator's existence?" The answer is no.

God, the Manifest and the Hidden

Ibn Taymiyyah spoke truly when he said, "The greater people's need for something, the more generously the Lord provides it." Indeed, people's need to know their Lord is their greatest need. You therefore see God generously providing them with evidence of His existence and ways of knowing His attributes. One of God's names is the Manifest.

In Zad al-Masir, Ibn al-Jawzi explained the words of God Almighty: “He is the First and the Last, the Ascendant and the Intimate.” [Al-Hadid 57:3] by saying that He is manifest through His overwhelming arguments, luminous proofs, and signs demonstrating the truth of His oneness. God is manifest and apprehended by minds and evidence, while at the same time He is hidden because He is not seen like the other things observed in this world.

This is the proof in all its precision, simplicity, clarity, and depth. Every being in existence points to God's existence. What you observe is not a collection of random beings; their structure and movement show that they were created, meaning that they were made through will and power. Nothingness cannot create them, nor could they create themselves when they did not exist before coming into being. They necessarily have a Creator characterized by will, power, knowledge, wisdom, greatness, and every other attribute indicated by His creation.

The Difference Between Evidence and Answering Doubts

In this episode, I could have explained the impossibility of an infinite regress, how a contingent being requires a necessary being, and how a temporal event requires an eternal origin. I did not do so because none of those matters is part of the basic proof itself. Answering objections and discussing doubts are not part of the original evidence; they are responses to someone whose faulty reasoning prevents him from accepting this perfectly clear evidence.

When I explain regress, its impossibility, temporal origination, and eternity in later episodes, you may say, "I did not understand. I did not understand a thing." That is no problem. Who said you must understand every answer to every doubt before believing in God? You can believe in God's existence through a rational and innate conviction founded upon firm scientific principles without understanding those doubts or the responses to them.

As the saying goes, the hardest task is explaining what is already clear, because clear matters need explanation only when someone disputes self-evident truths. There is then no shared ground upon which to discuss and prove them.

The Example of the Sun: Explaining the Obvious

Suppose a person saw the sun at midday and said, "I am not convinced that there is a sun. Perhaps it is an artificial, blazing sphere placed before us." We might answer, "How is that sphere suspended in the air? It must have a rope holding it, yet we see no rope." He might reply, "Perhaps the rope is transparent." We would then ask what suspends that rope, who moves it, and what kind of rope could withstand such heat without breaking. He might say, "Then perhaps the sphere contains an enormous magnet with the same charge as a piece of metal hidden in the earth below it. The two repel one another, leaving the sphere suspended in the air." We would then enter calculations of the required mass of the magnet, the force of gravity, and how gravity exceeds the magnetic repulsion, and so forth.

Someone hearing our discussion might say, "All of this is evidence that the sun has risen? I thought the matter was much clearer than that." No, this is not evidence that the sun has risen. These are merely responses to a person denying clear and self-evident things. You are not required to understand them in order to hold a sound scientific and rational conviction that the sun has risen. The problem is not the reality of the sun's existence but the person denying it. However numerous his denials and doubts become, they do not change the sun's existence from a clear, self-evident reality.

As the saying goes, nothing remains sound in the mind if daylight itself requires proof.

The Importance of Separating the Evidence from the Responses

Yes, in later episodes we will answer doubts raised against God's existence. But everything we say there will not be part of the evidence itself; it will be an answer to objections raised against that evidence. Confusing the two is a mistake. A person may possess innate faith, yet upon hearing complex discussions answering doubts, he may imagine that God's existence is obscure and hidden and requires intelligence, philosophy, and complication. He has failed to distinguish that what he heard was not part of the proof of God's existence but answers to doubts, and that the complexity lies not in the reality of God's existence but in the difficulty of debating someone who questions self-evident matters.

For all these reasons, it is necessary and important to separate the evidence for God's existence from responses to those who deny this self-evident truth. Repeatedly voicing many doubts against something does not necessarily indicate its weakness. In the case of God's existence, the constant repetition of doubts reflects the deniers' struggle against a reality that confronts and imposes itself upon them. They resist it with every doubt in order to soothe their troubled souls.

“Do they not look into the realm of the heavens and the earth and everything that Allah has created and [think] that perhaps their appointed time has come near? So in what statement hereafter will they believe?” [Al-Araf 7:185]

Peace and God's mercy be upon you.