Not long ago a man asked me if God created us or did we somehow create the idea of a god for our own benefit? He has heard the gospel as he occasionally attends church with his family but he still has questions, which is perfectly normal.

Did God create us or have human beings used their imagination in order to give an explanation for their feelings?

Whatever your belief is, it must correspond to reality. Meaning, your belief must be rational and it must be able to provide evidence that explains life’s biggest questions. Too many people are suggesting unreasonable ‘what if’ questions regarding belief in God. Some are even throwing away concrete historical or scientific facts in order to disprove God.

Let’s look at this question before we rush to judgment on anything. I want to be sure to mention that this a merely a tickler of a response to a question that I could write many books on. Please note I’m not adding every possibility in this post but I hope that you do some of your own research as you search for truth.

In the Beginning

In order to prove that God created us we must first look at how the world began. The first verse of the bible is Genesis 1:1:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Here in this verse we see that God prompted the creation of all things which is not a surprise because we know that in order for things to be created there has to be a uncaused, first cause (God). Life cannot generate itself if there is nothing to create from. R.C. Sproul says the following about the beginning of life:

“If there ever was a time when absolutely nothing existed, all there could possibly be now is nothing. Even that statement is problematic because there can never be nothing; if nothing ever was, then it would be something and not nothing.”

Over the years people have suggested several questions regarding the origin of life. And at times people are throwing away concrete historical data and scientific facts in order to justify their reasons for disproving the existence of God. Additionally, Scientists have concluded that the most reasonable explanation for how life began is The Big Bang. While it may explain how we can retrace certain things like the expansion rate in order to calculate the beginning of time it does not provide evidence for what caused the beginning. For instance, what created the Big Bang to take place?

To that end, there are four primary arguments we must look at when we are asking this question. It will help us to discern what started the beginning and how do we know God started it all. If you have never heard of these, don’t worry, we will explain it in ways we hope everyone can understand.
1) The Kalam Cosmological Argument.
2) The Design Argument (also called The Telelogical Argument).
3) The Ontological Argument.
4) The Moral Law argument.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Kalam Cosmological argument simply states that something had to cause life to form since everything that begins to exist has a cause. An example of this would be the Big Bang Theory as mentioned above.

Genesis 1:2 says,

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

There was literally nothing in existence before the Lord formed it and we know that life cannot be created from nothing. In J. Warner Wallace’s book, God’s Crime Scene he states, “The Standard Cosmological Model accepted by physicists today is grounded on the foundational premise that our universe came into being from something beyond the space, time, matter, and energy of our universe” (Wallace, 2015, page 37).

In essence, the one who created us and everything we see around us has to posses the following characteristics.

He must be:
-Timeless
-Spaceless
-Immaterial
-All powerful
-Changeless
-Personal

God is the only reasonable explanation for anything that could have created all that we see around us. It should be clear that life cannot be formed from non-life or nothing.

The (Intelligent) Design/Telelogical Argument

Next, there is the Design or the Telelogical argument. With the Kalam we learned that there is evidence of an uncaused cause, we can also infer that the first event (creation) was created by an intelligent designer because of how purposeful everything was created. This argument states that there is an order to how creation is situated. Within design, beauty, order, frequency, and probability is seen throughout creation. Creation also appears to have been fine-tuned. So, it is also evident that an intelligent designer must have created all we see and experience today.

This inference also explains the divine creation of the universe. Our universe gives us valid physical evidence that it has been finely tuned and only earth is suitable for life. Our observations about how life began cannot and is not the product of random chance. That is something that scientists can agree on regardless of their worldview.

If God created us it would also explain the complexity of our minds. Since we are made in God’s image it only makes sense that another, far more intelligent mind created us.

The Ontological Argument

Thirdly, there is The Ontological argument, which says that the greatest being imaginable is God since there is not a greater or more powerful being that can be possible. If we are to imagine anything greater than God it is actually impossible because God is the greatest. In order to realize that the previous arguments are true we depend on the Ontological argument being accurate. Think for a moment, imagine a mathematical value that is greater than infinity. It is impossible because as we learned in school there is not a number that is greater than infinity.

Growing up my younger brother and I were extremely competitive and would try to outdo one another. If he said he hated me I would respond with, “I hate you times infinity.” He would then come back with telling me he hates me infinity times infinity. Of course we didn’t see how absurd our reasoning was. It is a similar idea with how powerful God is because we can’t actually imagine how vast his power actually is.

Think about it, is there another being out there greater that you could imagine?

The Moral Law Argument

Last is The Moral Law argument. It says that there is a law that God has revealed to each one of us that we know, inherently. Such as, murder is wrong and helping others is good. Christian Philosopher, Paul Copan says it this way, “Moral values exist whether or not a person or culture believes them.” One of my favorite examples of moral law is how C.S. Lewis describes it, in his book Mere Christianity. He calls it the law of human nature. It is the expectation that humans know what good behavior is and that they know what bad behavior is. It would appear we were given these rules to us from the day we were born. If we didn’t have the moral law stamped on our hearts then we wouldn’t know there is a difference between bad and good behavior. We wouldn’t seek justice when we notice someone doing wrong or have the judicial system that we have today. In fact, there would be no judicial system because all behavior would be admissible.

If God Created Us

If God created us it would explain the creation of life as outlined in Genesis how the Lord made the heavens and the earth and everything in between. This would also explain how life has purpose and how we as individuals have purpose and value. The Bible gives us answers to this question and we see evidence of it called reality.

If We Created God

My first question to the person who thinks that we created the idea of God would be for them to explain their reasoning why they can think their assumptions are correct the first place. How is it possible for them to ascertain reason, logic, and truth? And what kind of reasoning takes into account the fact that as humans we also possess creative minds. If we have creative minds and if we created God then we should be able to create far greater things than an idea of a creator. We should of created a being that allowed our subjective feelings to reign instead of him.

What would be the purpose of creating God? To promote or instill laws and a greater good?! How would we know the difference between good and bad if we are the ones doing the creating? There would obviously be the reality of a false hope and people don’t intentionally believe in something they know to be false.

In order to actually believe that we created this false portrayal of God there would have to be another explanation for life. This explanation would have to include why our universe appears to be perfectly fine-tuned. A world like ours doesn’t just happen to pop into existence by chance alone.

If we have falsely created a theory that there really is one true God then we should have created one that involved no pain, no heartache, and no struggle. Instead when we look at the evidence that we currently have and we see a loving and personal God. One that created everything we see around us and invites us into a deeper relationship with him. That is not being convenient, that is being rational and reasonable with the evidence that HE has given us.