The Thirteen Principles of Faith | Belief In The Existence of G-D | Part One

God exists; God is perfect in every way, eternal, and the cause of all that exists. All other beings depend upon God for their existence.

Two articles, based on my recently published book Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused and Illusory World of the Atheist, provoked a heated response from many non-believers who strongly disagreed with its contents. The first was an excerpt that appeared on Aish.com, and the second was an article written by Rabbi Adam Jacobs, managing director of Aish Hatorah, NYC, and columnist for the religion section of the Huffington Post, entitled “A Reasonable Argument for God’s Existence.” That blog elicited an avalanche of 8,000 “Liked this” postings to Facebook and 6,500 comments.

Dr. Jerry Coyne, the well known atheistic/evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, took some potshots at both Rabbi Jacobs and myself on his own blog. In a post that was long on sarcasm and short on substance, he ridiculed the idea that one could draw conclusions about the existence of God from the complete bafflement of scientists regarding a naturalistic origin of life. He also accused Rabbi Jacobs of misrepresenting a statement by the late Nobel Prize winning scientist, Francis Crick.

It would have been worthwhile for Dr. Coyne to have attended the recent Origins Conference at Arizona State University; there he could have heard Origin of Life expert, Dr. Paul Davies, explain the disputed statement of Crick in the same way as Rabbi Jacobs.

Invariably the main objections from readers fell into one of the following seven categories:

1. Rabbi, this is just the old “Argument from Ignorance” or a “God-of-the gaps” argument.
2. Rabbi, you ignored the implications of Darwinian Evolution.
3. Rabbi, you ignored current Origin of Life research, particularly the RNA-World research.
4. Rabbi, you are “quote mining” (i.e. presenting statements by scientists out of context and misleading the readers).
5. Rabbi, this is just the “Argument from Incredulity.”
6. Rabbi, you are “primitive, backward, superstitious and anti-science.”
7. Rabbi, we must have unwavering faith in science and scientists.

In the spirit of reasoned discourse and seeking the truth, I present my response below to each of these objections.

–Aish.com