“You’re just using a God-of-the-gaps argument!” Apparently the new atheists are having an influence with this type of response. A friend of mine referred to all of the god-of-the-gaps arguments for God’s existence. I asked who he’d been reading. Dawkins and crew were his favorites.

The God-of-the-gaps reflects the view that all arguments for God are those based on ignorance. God is a placeholder to plug gaps in a person’s knowledge. All the while science works tirelessly to displace God as the real causes for things are discovered.

Modern scientific arguments often refer to probabilities. This is why the main person that the new atheists attack is William Paley. Paley developed the modern argument for design. He postulates that if a person comes across a watch in the woods, the person naturally concludes there must be a watch-maker. This seems intuitive to many people. One then may look at obvious design in nature and conclude that there must be a designer. The evidence for this has brought many atheists, including one of the greatest 20th century philosophers Anthony Flew, to the conclusion that God must exist.

The scientific reasoning that supplies the conclusion to what is seen as the best explanation for something is called abduction. When a person finds a note with a message he concludes that someone must have written it. This is the most reasonable conclusion one can draw from such evidence. Similarly, when a person finds the equivalent of 700 terabytes of information in a gram of DNA, realizes the fine-tuning of the universe, understands the golden ratio or golden mean, and sees biological design far more complex and efficient than what humans have made inherent in all that is living, it is easy to infer the existence of a Creator of these things.

Much resistance to the intelligent design position, which has explained the aforementioned evidence in nature, likens their view to a more advanced version of Paley. These scientific arguments seem to rely too much on probability due to their nature. Those supporting intelligent design point to several lines of argument. The most popular are the irreducible complexity and the fine tuning of certain things seen in nature.  It is important to note there are other arguments that don’t rely on scientific premises. These are a different class of argument.

Before looking at this different way of thinking of arguments for God’s existence, one should understand causality. Most think along the lines of accidentally ordered causality. An example of a series of accidentally ordered causes is that of a painter and her painting. The painting can exist independently from the painter. Or, to consider another example, a child is produced by his parents but can continue living even after his parents have died. These examples are what most people think of when considering arguments for God’s existence. The early deists could speculate arguments for God’s existence were like Paley’s or at best like an accidentally ordered series. This type of deity may have existed at some time in the past but was hands off at best now.

Those that follow arguments along the lines of Aquinas’s five ways should understand that these claim to show the necessity of God’s existence. These arguments need to be grasped from the perspective of essentially ordered causality. An essentially ordered cause is simultaneous with its effects. For example, while I’m typing these words they only continue to be typed as long as I’m willing it. While a person is playing an instrument the music only continues as long as the person who plays wills it. The classical example is that of a rock being moved by a stick. The rock only moves along the ground while the stick moves it.  We’re not talking about shuffleboard or golf here. The stick itself is moved by a person’s hand and so on until it reaches a first thing that is causing the entire series. Arguments that show God now exists rely on understanding an essentially ordered series. These arguments point to certain effects that can only now be realized if there were in fact a being that everyone knows as God sustaining them right now.

Understanding the different types of causes is the first step in knowing where to start when thinking about the different types of arguments for God’s existence. Not all arguments deal with probabilities, even if those that do so are just as persuasive. Instead, those that involve essentially ordered causality claim to show that God necessarily exists.

It is in relation to these later class of arguments, proving God’s existence again and again in thousands of pages of philosophical texts, which the new atheists never address. In fact, they don’t even begin to understand these arguments (let alone consider them). This may be something one could forgive IF it weren’t the case that the new atheists claim to have shown God doesn’t exist or that there is no good reason to believe in Him. Imagine the outcry if I dismissed someone’s position without considering ANY of the best reasons or the evidence for that position. What would make it even worse is if I then wrote an entire book that claims to answer the position without even considering it. At best the new atheist texts present a caricature. They twist the argument to something no theist ever even claims. Following Bertrand Russell they’ll say, for example, “Everything needs a cause.” There is no Christian philosopher I know of that actually says this. We say that everything that begins to exist needs a cause.

Consider the nature of something that exists. I’m addressing the humans reading this. Is it your nature to exist necessarily? If it were, there would never be a time you did not exist. As we were conceived at a certain point in time, we didn’t always exist. Existence is something that is given to us (not something we have by nature). Not everything that exists can have existence given to it in this way for two reasons. One is this leads to an infinite regress. The issue with an infinite regress is the same as the problem a man would have in trying to jump out of a bottomless pit. He’d never be able to get a foothold to jump as there is no bottom.

A second issue is the source of you currently existing is outside of your nature. Whatever is causing you to exist is sustaining you in existence right now. Your existence is an effect of an essentially ordered series. At some point the essentially ordered series needs a being whose very essence is to exist. This being has many attributes. Though I won’t list them all, He necessarily exists as part of His very nature (meaning he can’t not exist). He’d be omnipotent, omniscient, and immutable. The list of other attributes that we could include everyone recognizes as pointing to the being we call God.

My own personal journey included asking why I should believe Christianity is true. I was an open-minded seeker that read both the Bible and the best books written by Christian apologists. Upon reading all the evidences for Christianity, I not only found it to be true, I realized I could NEVER have enough faith to be an atheist. The entire universe became more lucid via the light Christianity provides.