Why Your God?

Not a bad question, I guess. If a supernatural being created the universe, why does it have to be the God that Christians worship? The simplest answer is that the Christian God, as He has revealed Himself in the Bible and in the person of Jesus the Christ, is the God that best fits the evidence. I’ll get to that in a bit.

First of all let’s be clear about something that I’m sure most people would be in agreement with. While all philosophies might be wrong, they can’t all be right. You can’t have, for example the atheist belief that God / gods don’t exist and the Christian belief that Creator God does exist and have them both be correct. Either God exists or He doesn’t. You can’t have 5,000 gods of Hinduism and One God of Christianity. You can’t have an eternal nothing as in Buddhism and One God of Christianity. You can’t even have everything is god of Pantheism and Creator God of Christianity who is separate from His creation. These might all be wrong but they can’t all be right.

Virtually all philosophers agree that if there is the slightest chance of God existing, then He does in fact exist. Alvin Plantinga has refined Anselm’s argument as follows. He asks, “What is the greatest conceivable being?” Our answer goes past me and you and the Dali Lama and any other "great" human being we can think of and we come to an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being that we commonly call “God”

If we could think of something greater than God, then that is what would be called God. We can call it a Mind or something else but it amounts to the same thing ie. The Greatest Conceivable Being That Can Possibly Exist.

Therefore we can know that God exists because:
. It is in fact metaphysically possible that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists.

. Because it’s possible that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists, a Greatest Conceivable Being does exist in some possible reality.

. Because of the very nature of a Greatest Conceivable Being, if a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in some possible reality, it exists in every possible reality.

. If a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in every possible reality, then it exists in actual reality.

. If a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in actual reality, then a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in our reality.

Because the above premises are true and coherent, it stands to reason that the conclusion is also true: A Greatest Conceivable Being or God exists.

That takes care of many religions right there. There can only be one Greatest Conceivable Being so religions with many or thousands of Gods are eliminated. In fact, we've narrowed it down to Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Now we can begin to narrow it down from what we know scientifically. We know from science that if the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is external to as well as transcendent to the universe. That is because:

Existing outside of time, the Cause is infinite or Eternal,

Existing outside of matter (which is finite), the Cause is immaterial or Spiritual,

Existing as the Cause of time and energy, space, matter and the laws of physics, the

Cause is immeasurably more powerful than the mathematically precise universe and its exquisitely Finely Tuned constants and quantities.

The Cause cannot be “scientific” because neither matter nor the laws of physics (i.e., the laws that science has observed and identified), existed prior to the Singularity.

Therefore the Cause of the beginning of the universe is not scientific but Personal.

The transcendent Cause of the universe is therefore on the order of a Mind.

That Cause is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.

That Cause, is what is normally described as God. But how is the Christian God described? We know from logic and from observation and experience that the God of Christianity is:


Necessary - Creator God had to exist or there would be nothing,

All Powerful - Creator of space, time, matter and the laws of science,

All Knowing - Created the constants and qualities by which the universe functions,

Omnipresent - Not limited by space or time,

Timeless and changeless - Existed prior to time but is not now limited by time

Spirit - He exists outside of and prior to the creator of matter,

Personal - the impersonal cannot create personality. He came to earth in person, to show us the Way to a healed and forgiven relationship with God. This eliminates Islam and Judaism

Purposeful - He deliberately created the universe

Intelligent - Only intelligence can create intelligence

Caring - His character makes possible objective morality by which we live

Moral - What He asks of us is for our benefit

Merciful - At His own expense made possible the forgiveness of our sins, This eliminates Islam and Judaism as neither have a means of absolution or forgiveness.

Slow to Anger - He has put up with us from the beginning of human kind,

A friend to the poor,

Full of Grace,

Compassionate,

Patient - continues to bless those who hate Him,

Mind / Logos,

Triune: Father, Son and Spirit,

Source of objective morality,

All-good,

Infinite,

Unique,

Lord of lords,

King of kings,

Creator,

Sustainer of the universe.

Independent of His creation,

Perfectly Holy,

Love,

Truth,

Righteous,

Sovereign,

Self-existent,

Elohim - The strong One, mighty Leader, supreme Deity.

Yahweh - Self-existent, changeless, Provider, Present,

Adonai - Majestic, Master, Owner.

True God,

Transcendent,

Saviour,

Supreme Lord.

I’m sure there are more descriptions than this. So what do atheists mean when they say we can’t describe the God in which we believe? What do atheists mean when they ask, "Well which god(s) are you talking about when you say god created the universe?"?

Well, the fact is, out of all the religions of the world, this God, the Christian God, the God that was just described best describes the Creator of the Universe. Creator God IS the Greatest Conceivable Being.