The Evidence of God

The Harmony of Natural Law Is Evidence of God’s Design

March 2, 2023

A compilation

Audio length: 9:15
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The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.—Psalm 19:1–4

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For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.—Romans 1:20

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This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. ... This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God, or Universal Ruler.—Isaac Newton¹

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A scientist’s religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.—Albert Einstein²

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For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all… My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we light a candle to see the sun?—Wernher von Braun³

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I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.—Abraham Lincoln⁴

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Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.—Immanuel Kant⁵

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If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of man was an accident, too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-products of the movements of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—that is, of materialism and astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents.—C. S. Lewis⁶

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We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand those laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.—Albert Einstein⁷

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In 1968 one of the astronauts who had traveled to the moon and back was asked by a reporter if he had seen God, as a Russian astronaut was reported to have said he hadn’t seen God. Frank Borman answered quite distinctly, “I can’t comment on what he didn’t see, but I saw evidence that God lives.” About seeing the earth rise for the first time on the moon, he said, “This must be what God sees. I was absolutely awestruck.”⁸—Dennis Edwards

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Newton was a devout man who wrote extensively on religion during his life. His work in physics never changed his beliefs. “Gravity explains the motions of the planets,” he wrote, “but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion.” Newton went further. He couldn’t believe that God simply wound up the universe like a clock and then let it go. It left no room for things like divine intervention. And that’s something Newton couldn’t bring himself to accept. “God governs all things,” he wrote, “and knows all that is or can be done.” Newton the physicist saw the universe as a divine machine; and God the divine mechanic, ever-ready to provide a needed tune-up.—Andrew Boyd⁹

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The more we learn about the creation, the more I am impressed with the orderliness and unerring perfection of the natural laws that govern it.—Wernher von Braun¹⁰

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All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths contained in the Holy Scriptures.—Sir John Herschel¹¹

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People can’t help but believe in God if they just look at creation. All they have to do is look at creation to know Somebody had to design it, pattern it, put it together, and make it work like it does. God’s beautiful creation works so beautifully, so systematically, so perfectly, it’s obvious that all that didn’t just happen by accident. Creation, so-called Nature, is not just natural. It’s God-created. It’s supernatural. It’s miraculous! The greatest proof of God’s existence is His creation.—David Brandt Berg

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If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.—C. S. Lewis¹²

Compiled by Dennis Edwards. Published on Anchor March 2023.
Read by Simon Peterson. Music by Michael Dooley.

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¹ Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687.

² Albert Einstein, “The Religiousness of Science,” in The World as I See It (Rudolf Kayser, 1934), 29.

³ Wernher von Braun, Letter to the California State Board of Education, September 14, 1972.

⁴ Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman.

⁵ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 1781.

⁶ C. S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, 1970), 52–53.

⁷ Albert Einstein, cited in Denis Brian, Einstein: A Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996), 186.

⁸ Christian Provstgaard, “Men on the Moon: Stories of the Apollo program and the Space Race, 1957­­–1972,” https://cprovstgaard.blogspot.com/.

⁹ Andrew Boyd, “Physics or Metaphysics,” Engines of Our Ingenuity (blog), https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2434.htm.

¹⁰ Erik Bergaust, Wernher von Braun (Stackpole Books, 1976), 113.

¹¹ John Herschel (1792–1871), British astronomer who discovered more than 500 stars; as quoted in the Evidence Bible compiled by Ray Comfort under comment on Psalm 33:8.

¹² C. S. Lewis, in Jeramy and Jerusha Clark, Define the Relationship (Waterbrook, 2009), 14.

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