Does the Christian God exist?

I want to start off in a similar way to a famous Christian apologist by the name of Greg Bahnsen who felt it necessary to ensure we are all on the same page about who or what "God" will be debated. To be specific, I am defending the position that the Christian God who is the transcendent, eternal, and personal deity that is responsible for the entirety of all things material and immaterial in our observable reality, exists. Although there are numerous avenues of argumentation surrounding the ontological concept of God's existence, I will start by offering what I feel is the most compelling line of evidence: the moral argument. 

The brokenness in our world is unmistakable. Often times people are instructed and urged to "find the good" in their every-day lives. Yet no one needs any sort of assistance in identifying the evil that seems to be so apparent regardless of where we direct our attention. It is in the very identification of said evil where I base my first point: How are we as humans, able to label anything as evil? Everyone in the East and the West, from the 1st to the 21st century knows it is fundamentally wrong to murder, to steal, to abuse, to lie etc. We might be tempted to fall into the trap of the now culturally appropriate mindset which claims "it's only wrong if it's wrong to you". Yet, this theological stance instantly vanishes when the crime is committed to the individual who made the claim; we all know good vs evil because we feel wronged when the evil is done to us. It is intrinsic and embedded within our souls. As C.S Lewis pondered this, he came to the conclusion that "human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it". It is from this explanation we arrive at the institution of objective morality. We have discovered that good and evil are not mere abstract subjective constructs that are dependent on culture or time; indeed morality is mind independent: that is to say that the standard which constitutes good and evil is independent of the subject human being. With this established, let's proceed to where this objective standard comes from. 

I asked earlier how we as humans are able to label anything as evil. A definition of evil, I suppose, would be beneficial for the sake of productive discourse. Evil, in it's simplest form is the perversion or distortion of the good. Having things is good, stealing is bad. Giving an account is good, lying is bad. Discipline is good, abuse is bad. Defending yourself is good, taking the life of another is bad. All evil is a distortion of the good. This now invokes two certainties that I would like to present: Good was present before evil existed. 2. If there is objective goodness and subsequently objective morality that is mind independent and indeed transcendental, there has to be an objective, eternal, transcendental moral law giver. I would like to briefly touch on both of these points as I wrap up with initial argument. 

1. Good was present before evil existed. Mark 10:18 states that "No one is good but One, that is, God." If God is eternal, which to be God...this is a requirement, otherwise God is now a created being. So, since God is eternal, He bears eternal qualities. One of them, as Scripture states is His goodness. He doesn't just do good things, He is the very essence of good. All that is good and that we know to be good exists in and through Him. And if that goodness is consequentially eternal, evil entered afterwards. This reinforces the claim of having to measure evil against the knowledge of what good is. 

2. Objective morality is set forth by a moral law giver. If morality is something that is agreed upon across cultures, socio-economic classes, and spans of time, as we have already discussed, we can confidently claim that morality did not source from the human mind. Its inception came from a moral law giver who exists outside of space, matter and time. It is my stance that there is no better explanation for the moral law giver than what is laid out in Scripture as the God of the Christian worldview. Furthermore, I would state that this explanation is what best describes and accounts for the observable reality that we are all privy to. As Paul Gould states in reference to this moral line of evidence: "The customary subjectivist explanation of morals as the result of Darwinian evolution cannot give us objective moral values. Why not? For the simple reason that, as atheist philosopher Michael Ruse puts it: “we could as easily have evolved a completely different moral system from that which we have.” Therefore, if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. As we have seen, we have good reasons to believe objective moral values do exist, so this implies that God exists."

As we look at the objective morality that is discernable, actionable, and judged upon, it is my position that this morality only points us towards the existence of God.