A Short Proof of the Existence of God

By Stephen E. Parrish and Philip Hooper

To succinctly prove the existence of God, I will compare two competing philosophical systems. These are (1) Perfect Being Theism and (2) Naturalism. Perfect Being Theism (PBT) is the view that God exists as the perfect being: omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, sovereign, necessarily existing in all possible worlds, and so on. God is the most fundamental part of reality and everything else is caused to exist by God. Naturalism is the view that all that exists is the physical universe. This belief can also hold that there are other physical universes (the multiverse). However, it does not hold that there is anything deeper or more fundamental than the universe, except possibly abstract entities. Abstract entities are (if they exist) things like numbers, propositions such as “snow is cold,” and universals like greenness. Atheism almost always stands on the shoulders of naturalism, so, for the sake of brevity, I will herein consider naturalism and atheism to represent the same thing.

One more definition is needed prior to our discourse. This is the concept of possible worlds. To put things simply, a possible world is reality as it could have been. The actual world is reality as it is. The terminology can be somewhat confusing. If, for example, there is a multiverse, then there is a plurality of universes in the world. What determines whether a world is possible or not? The answer is the law of noncontradiction and the nature of the entities therein. Worlds that have no contradictions in them are possible; worlds with contradictions are impossible. For example, at first glance it seems that there are possible worlds wherein I had a brother rather than a sister, in which there was no World War II, and even worlds where the speed of light is twice as fast as it is in our world. This is because none of these seem to contain an inherent contradiction. Impossible worlds are worlds in which there are round squares, for example, where 2 + 2 = 17, and wherein Biden both is and is not president in the same manner and at the same time.

Having set the stage, the argument I will make consists mainly in examining answers to three questions. These questions are (1) Is this world the only possible one or are there many, and thus probably an infinite number, of other worlds? (2) Why does anything exist? And (3) Why does God exist?

(1) Is the actual world the only possible world? It seems not. The reason being that the world seems full of contingencies. A contingency in this sense is that things could have been different. For example, there seems to be no contradiction in the notion that you have one more hair on your head than you do. There are seemingly countless ways that the universe could have been different, without contradictions generated. Most of both theistic and atheistic philosophers agree that the universe is full of contingencies and that therefore things could have been different than they are. In which case, there are many possible worlds. The only way that the actual world could be the sole possible world is if this world were created by a necessarily existing God, and that this is the only world that God would create. Leibniz and Spinoza are examples of philosophers who purported these concepts, though in different ways from each other. The biggest problem with this view is that this world is so great, with an infinity of entities and variables, that it is difficult to imagine that there is only this one unique world that a Deity would create. But we really don’t know this for certain. At any rate, the God option is not open to atheists, because if one believes in God (as the source of this solo world), one is not an atheist. So, it seems that for naturalism to be true, there must be more than one possible world—and probably an infinite number of worlds.

(2) Why does anything exist? The truth of this matter is much disputed. Some philosophers hold that nothing contingent would exist on its own. That is, the natural situation should be that there are no contingent objects. If this were the case, then the only way to explain why there is something rather than nothing, why there are vast numbers of contingent things, is to posit the existence of a necessarily existing being who causes contingent entities to exist. However, if one moves in this direction, then one has gone a long way in the direction of theism, and so this is not a viable option for atheists. The other possibility is that there is an infinite number of possible worlds of which one of them had to be actual. The world empty of all concrete (as opposed to abstract) beings is thus only one of an infinite number of options, and thus it is infinitely unlikely that the empty world is the one that is instantiated or actualized.

On theism, God, being the perfect or greatest possible being, exists necessarily and chooses what world he will instantiate. With atheism, there is no being to choose to actualize a world, so which world is actualized is so by chance alone. One problem for atheism is that there seems to be vastly more chaotic worlds than orderly worlds. Since the laws of nature seem to be contingent, why do they hold rather than any other set of laws, or much more likely, no set of laws? Further, given that the actual world and everything in it exists by sheer chance, brutely, without a cause or reason, even though the laws of nature have held up to this point by mere happenstance, there is no reason why they could not cease at any moment. Indeed, it’s astronomically more likely that these laws would fail or disappear. Furthermore, and more devastatingly, given that the universe is here only by chance, there cannot be any laws of nature. If something happens consistently over time by chance, it is not a law that this is the case; it is merely a coincidence. This is also a refutation of the idea that everything exists: that there are an infinite number of universes, each being one way reality could exist. Were this true, then it is almost infinitely more likely that our universe would be chaotic at any time, rather than stay the same.

Another way of looking at this is to take any object in the universe. For example, take a proton which I will call Bob. Why does Bob-the-proton exist at time T1? By chance, for no reason. Why then would Bob also exist at the following moment, time T2. Again, for no reason. There is no causal or necessary relation between objects at different times. Since Bob exists when it does for no reason, there is no reason it would exist in the next moment, or the next, and so on. Indeed, it seems that for Bob to exist at all by chance instead of other possible objects, or even nothing at all, is extremely unlikely, and since there is no reason why Bob would remain in existence, that it exists over time is vastly, infinitely unlikely.

An attempt to get around these problems has been the concept of “Brute Necessity.” This is the idea that something can be both brute or without reason, and necessary. However, this seems to be an oxymoron. To be brute is to be for no reason. To be necessary is to be such that it could not be different. In short, a brute necessity is something that exists in some manner for no reason, but also must exist in that manner without possibility of being different. This is contradictory. In spite of its recent popularity, brute necessities are logically impossible.

Hence, there seems to be no possible way for atheism and naturalism to be rationally plausible. Ergo, theism must be true.

(3) Why does God exist? Since there is no other explanation as to why an orderly universe exists and continues to exist, even remaining consistent over time, then God as the Greatest Possible Being (GPB) must exist. He exists because his non-existence entails a contradiction. Being the GPB, having sovereignty over everything, he must exist in all worlds. Another way to look at this is to ask how God could fail to exist. He cannot fail to exist by chance, for then God would not be the greatest possible being. Just as having six faces and 8 corners is included in the concept of a game cube (i.e., a die), so is necessary existence included in the concept of God as the perfect being. And a being whose existence is a matter of chance cannot be a necessary being. Nor can anything destroy him or prevent him from existing. The only way that God could fail to exist is if the concept of God is self-contradictory. We have excellent reason to say that there are no contradictions in the concept of God, and that therefore God exists, because only God can explain why the universe exists. No other explanation for the universe succeeds. God exists and exists necessarily.

— Dr. Stephen E. Parrish is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he taught for 23 years. He received his Ph.D. from Wayne State University in Detroit. He is author of God and Necessity, The Knower and the Known, and most recently, Atheism? A Critical Analysis. At present he is working on a book on metaethics. He has three grown daughters, and lives with his wife and cat.

— Dr. Philip Hooper is pastor of St. John’s Free Lutheran Church in Duluth, Minnesota

Image by Julius H. from Pixabay

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