An Argument from Science for the Reality of God

In the Confessions Augustine makes the following argument to carve out room for his view that the relationship of humanity to God involves the inter-relationship of time and eternity:

"See, there are the heaven and earth. They cry out that they were created; for they change and vary. Whereas anything which exists but was not created cannot have anything in it which was not there before, and this is just what is meant by change and variation. They cry aloud also that they did not create themselves: 'We exist because we were created; therefore we did not exist before we were in existence, so as to be able to create ourselves.' And the voice of the speakers is in the very fact that they are there to be seen [observed]." (Confessions, tr. Warner (Mentor, New York, 1963) 260.)

I have updated Augustine's Argument as "An Argument from Science for the Reality of God."

1. To understand and explain something scientifically means to show the development of or cause of that object's present existence and state within the natural environment or framework of natural laws which are used to understand and explain it.

2. An entailment of what it means to understand and explain something scientifically, then, is that everything that is understood scientifically has come into being: otherwise its present existence and state would not have a development or cause.

3. But, in Augustine's words, "...anything which exists but was not created [did not come into being through development or cause] cannot have anything in it which was not there before...": otherwise something came into existence without cause or development, which is contrary to scientific understanding and explantation.

4. "There before," however, can have two relevant meanings: either "there before, temporally," or "there before, as the source of being for what is there now."

5. But for purposes of scientific understanding and explanation, "there before, temporally," depends for coherence on "there before, as the source of being for what is there now": otherwise temporal succession would be made up of descrete elements with respect to being, in which case it could not be true that one being or state in time is integral to another, as is required to show the development of or cause of an object's existence and state.

6. Therefore no temporal sequences, even if infinite in number and extent, explain the present existence and state of the world without assuming being that is "there before, as the sourse of being for what is there now."

7. But an assumed being that is logically distinct from time and is the source of being for the world's existence is Eternal Being serving as Creator, or God.

8. It is thus demonstrated that the same assumption that supports the reality of God underlies the work of science.