Is Belief in God Reasonable?

You have to put your feet down on something stable to gain perspective because everything is disorienting.

Is the story true? Does it fit into the world we live in?

Metaphysical Necessity

The law of cause and effect. Every effect has a cause. When you back up, there has to be an infinite cause. It's God. There is order to creation. Complexity doesn't start by accident.

Positions:

1. Nothing. It all came out of nothing, but it's very hard to hold this view because nothing can't do anything. And once you have something, it's no longer nothing.
2. Impersonal view. Impersonal things created everything. Again, this is a hard view to maintain because impersonal things don't have a will or volition, so how could the impersonal make or create the complexity we have? That leaves accident, chance, time, and a perfect mix of chemicals to make everything work out. That gives you an answer for unity, where everything comes from, but for diversity. Why are there different things? People, chairs, rocks, etc. The impersonal says everything is energy and matter, so you're no more special than a chair. If someone kills you, there's no moral meaning.
3. An infinite personal being made everything and that's why we're personal. He has a will and we have a will. He has desires and we have desires. He has aims and goals and we have the same. We are in His Image. We intrinsically have purpose and meaning.

The argument that believing in God is wishful thinking collapses in on itself. Maybe the belief that there's not a God is wishful thinking.

Why does water boil? All these molecules change, there's heat, it's set into motion, etc. But why does the water boil? Because I wanted a cup of tea. Scientific explanation doesn't negate the volition of one to set everything in motion. -John Lennox

Moral Necessity

If everything came out of impersonal things, yet we know we have meaning and purpose, but there is no meaning or purpose in the world- then, that's a cruel joke. You have no basis for morality. You only have a preference. "I don't prefer genocide. I don't think it is socially advantageous." The problem is, that we have a high sense of moral oughtness. We believe deeply in it.

"Where did these values come from? I worked all the way back to a place I didn't want to be and that's where everything I think matters in life came from a guy named Jesus of Nazareth. And you do too." - Tom Holland, a historian

Because of Jesus, we believe human beings have rights. We believe we should care for the poor. It was the fact that Jesus became weak and died for us that we say weakness may have a purpose. It's not something to call out, it's something to protect and love because you're made in God's Image. He came for you. He took on your weakness to redeem those who are weak to make us what we are meant to be under God.

That idea of value even among the weak is a very Christian idea. You won't find it outside of the sphere of Jesus.

Why are people so mean?

1. In an impersonal creation, there's no right or wrong and there's no one to judge it. There is no reference point.
2. There is a god, but he created us mean and it's intrinsic to our nature. So there's a god, but he's the devil.
3. An infinite personal being made us and He's not evil, and when He made us, we weren't either. But with space and time, something broke. The brokenness we see in us is not essential to us. It's a parasite. Good is eternal, but evil sucks everything out of us. If you believe that, then there's hope! We once lived without evil, maybe we can live without it again. It defines moral oughtness.

There is something in you that longs for beauty, for peace, for things to be right. God put Himself into the story. His fingerprints are all over us, a bit of His heart beats in our own. Then He came in flesh through Jesus. God hates what broke, but He did everything to restore us.