Have you ever thought about how hard it is to prove anything? In court, lawyers know this well. No judge or jury requires proof “beyond all doubt.” That would be impossible. Why? Because there is always a chance, no matter how far-fetched, that things are not what they seem—a suspect could be framed, have an unknown twin, or maybe even aliens are involved.

Because of this, civil courts only require a preponderance of proof (Is it more likely than not?) Criminal courts raise the bar, requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But even then, the system never asks for absolute certainty. If it did, no one could ever be convicted.

And yet, when it comes to God, people often demand this higher, unreachable standard. They say, “I’ll only believe if you prove it beyond all doubt.” But if that is the rule, then almost nothing in life can be proven—not history, not science, not even your own experiences of anything.

Here’s why: proof is always limited by our ability to understand what we are proving. Think about the atomic world. If I asked you to prove to me that atoms exist, your ability would be limited by your understanding of the math and experiments that prove their existence. The same is true with God.

If God is infinite, then by definition, He cannot be fully grasped by our finite minds. A god who could be completely explained by human reason would not be God at all. A God small enough for us to fully understand would not be great enough to create galaxies or design the human brain.

Our ability to prove anything is limited by our ability to understand and explain it.

So our objective is not to prove God’s existence beyond all doubt. The real question is, “Do we have enough evidence to believe?” Just like in court, the verdict does not depend on removing every possible doubt. It depends on weighing the evidence honestly and asking, What best explains reality as we know it?

In the following sections, we will look at two key pieces of evidence:

1. Order in our universe, and
2. Morality in our species.

Taken together, these make a strong case for God’s existence—strong enough to go beyond a reasonable doubt to a place of certain faith.

Imagine watching a game in a packed stadium. The seats are arranged in an orderly fashion to maximize the viewing area and the number of people who can be accommodated. The team colors and branding give the scene a sense of unity and purpose. Then, the teams take the field. Players wear uniforms, coaches call plays. The band plays in rhythm, and the cheer squad follows a carefully choreographed routine. Even the crowd joins in with chants, cheers, and stadium-wide waves. You see patterns everywhere—coordination that makes the game possible. The beauty and order are a tribute to more than chance. The whole scene hints at the talent of the architects, designers, builders, coaches, and referees.

Now, look up from the field. Observe the night sky. Stars scatter across the heavens in precise positions. Planets move in silent rhythm. The moon pulls the oceans in steady tides. Galaxies swirl with breathtaking symmetry. Just as we can observe an order governing the game, we observe an order that controls the cosmos. Order on the field points to coaches and referees. Order in the heavens points to something greater still. Both reveal intention. Both point beyond themselves.

There is a tremendous amount of evidence we could examine at this point. But let’s zoom in on the most fundamental components of our universe to see how deep the precision goes.

Our world and the atoms that make it up are held together by four basic forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Gravity pulls stars into galaxies and keeps planets in orbit. Electromagnetism binds atoms and allows molecules to form. The strong force glues protons and neutrons inside the atom. The weak force drives radioactive decay, helping unstable atoms become stable. Think of the universe as a machine. Matter and energy are the raw materials. These four forces are the gears that keep it running.

• Gravity is the engine that drives motion.
• Electromagnetism is the wiring that directs power.
• The strong force is the bolts that hold the frame together.
• The weak force is the fine adjustment, allowing for change.

What is important to note is that all four forces must work in balance. If even one were slightly off, the machine would fail. Take the weak force as an example. If it were different by as little as 1 part in 10^100, life could not exist. To see how small that chance is, consider this: the entire universe contains about 10^80 atoms. This means that the odds of the weak force falling by chance into the exact range for life would be like sending a blindfolded individual out into the universe to find one atom, in a single try, by chance alone. And that is only one measurement in one force. All four forces must be tuned at the same time, in the same place, for life to exist. The odds are truly staggering. Such precision does not come from chance.

Let’s look back on that field where the game is playing out. The players know the rules. The referees enforce them. The crowd recognizes when someone breaks them—even if they cheer for the guilty side. The game would collapse into meaningless chaos without a shared sense of right and wrong. Life is the same way. Across cultures and centuries, people know that courage is better than cowardice, that honesty is better than lies, that love is better than hate. We may argue about details, but the core remains. Across cultures, places, and time, humans have operated by very similar rules of play. Where did such notions of right and wrong arise? Why do Darwinian applications of “survival of the fittest” become immoral when the animal was born homosapien? 

And, to borrow another maxim of our age, “Who are you to judge?”

That is a very good question, one with only three possible answers.

1. Morality Comes From Around Us:

Societies must collectively agree on what is moral and what is amoral. These decisions are codified in statutes and enforced as laws. In such arrangements, decisions about right and wrong must be made through some form of democratic process. Sometimes the entire society is involved in the process. Other times, only an elite few are involved. But is morality simply a product of crowd-sourcing ideas, a sort of morality by majority? 

We should hope not!

What happens when the majority in a society decides to preserve itself by oppressing others? If morality is a product of social decisions, what do we do when a society holds an immoral view like “women ought to have less freedom than men, are not allowed to drive, and shouldn’t be educated? In this case, we would recognize that quantity does not necessarily make quality. One billion people can be wrong at the same time. Majority morality is like letting the scoreboard decide the rules of the game—it can tell you who’s winning, but it can’t tell you what’s right.

Further, if morality is imposed by moral majority, how would we change such a society? Is change even possible? For example, consider the topic of abortion. Globally, nations take a wide range of views. Mexico outlaws abortion. The United States endorses it. And China mandates it under certain circumstances. They cannot all be correct. But each society has made a determination about what is right and wrong for the collective. If we wanted to unify views on abortion by enacting moral change across the globe, how could we do it without ourselves being immoral?

Well, since the majority has defined right from wrong. When one does not abide morality, he/she is by definition immoral. Right and wrong, moral and immoral, are not simply descriptions of what a person does, but what they espouse. For example, someone who advocates for pedophilia is considered immoral even if they do not act on their beliefs. Once a society decides on a moral absolute, those who speak against, resist, or attempt to alter the moral standard are themselves immoral.

So, if morality is determined at the societal level, cultures could never change except through immoral agents. Consider a scenario where a society and its high courts determine by course of law that a black man was valued at only 3/4 of his white owner. What right does an individual or individuals have to protest? It would be morally obligatory to label such abolitionists as immoral. In such a system, individuals like Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln would be the rebels. And slave-owning Southerners held the moral high ground.

Are we comfortable adopting a framework of morality that demands such determinations?

Of course not. Something tells us that this revision of history would be immoral. But again, we must wrestle with the question, how do we know this? What right do activists have to tell a society that their actions are immoral without a higher moral mandate?

2. Morality Comes From Within Us. 

Today, the standard for right and wrong is influenced greatly by the idea of individualism. Morality is what any given person “feels” is right and wrong. This view is best summarized by the mantra of our age, “just do what your heart tells you to do.”  But to say that morality is justly based on the views of individuals is to set up an inevitable clash between opposing interests. 

Encouraging others to “follow their heart” feels noble and freeing until they try to steal your car. In such a world, the assailant is living by his own moral standard. Namely, he has a right to your stuff. And his ability to take your stuff justifies his right to do so. After all, the entirety of the animal kingdom progresses on the maxim “survival of the fittest.” In such a world, you would have a moral obligation to sit quietly while burglars ransacked your home. In fact, to object to his actions would reveal your own immorality. The same goes for exploiting the weak, conducting chemical warfare on school children, and parents employing their children, whom they created, in the sex trade. 

And by what right do you argue otherwise? 

But we know that such actions are immoral. But how? By what right do we determine theft to be wrong?  

Some argue that morality is a construct created by evolutionary processes. Individuals who were genetically predisposed to being tribal and operating within a group fared better than those who were genetically predisposed to selfishness. So, those in a group protected one another and were able to have families and produce offspring. Those outside the group were picked off by lions and were unable to pass on their genes to the next generation. 

But this does not explain acts of altruism. The same evolutionary processes that disposed us to helping those in our tribe should have also disposed us to not helping those outside our tribe. It is an inevitable corollary in a world of scarcity. And yet, how do we explain everyday acts of altruism? Humans help total strangers. They feel guilty if they don’t. They feel indignation towards others if they do not. Humans even act in such ways when the person in need is an enemy. Where is the morality of a person putting themselves in harm’s way or sacrificing something of his/her own resources to help a total stranger? Or a rival? 

And still, something tells us that it is morally wrong to deprive help to someone in need. 

But by what right do we make such an assertion?

3. Morality Comes From Above Us: 

The moral argument differs significantly from the previous argument in a significant way. The cosmological and teleological arguments are descriptive in nature. That is to say, they are based on facts we observe about our universe. The moral argument, by contrast, is not based on the description of what is but on prescriptions of how things should be. They do not deal with how things are but how, we believe, they ought to be. As prescriptions of how things should be, they are essentially commands. From where do commands come? From where do instructions come? Instructions come from instructors. Commands come from commanders. And prescriptions from prescribers.

This is more than simple wordplay. With rare exceptions, communities have affirmed ideas about the importance of integrity, fairness, and respect for life. Throughout time and across different cultures, regardless of vocabulary, cultural background, or religious beliefs, people have universally and collectively recognized some actions as right and others as wrong. From where do these instincts come?

We have seen that universal forms of morality cannot be a product of our society. And their formation evolutionary process runs contrary to the rules of natural selection. So they must form somewhere outside of human individuals and social collectives. 

An apologist is someone who defends or justifies a particular belief or ideology, often in the context of religion or philosophy. They may engage in debate, provide logical arguments, or use various forms of persuasion to support their position. If you have ever justified why you were late for a class, broke the speed limit, or forgot an anniversary, you, too, have been an apologist. An apologist is like a lawyer defending a client in court. They defend important ideas. Just as a lawyer argues for their client’s innocence, an apologist argues for the validity of their beliefs. Both must use evidence to prove their point beyond any reasonable doubt.

What did God do to prove his point, his existence?

When you think about it, the whole weight of Christian Scripture depends on the fact that there really is a God, one who has spoken. It is, therefore, strange that the Scripture offers little by way of argument for God’s existence. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). The Bible simply begins with a declaration of God’s act as Creator rather than with an attempt to prove the existence of God. In fact, you can sum up the entirety of biblical argumentation for God’s existence in a single verse: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1) 

If you think that seems harsh, try this thought experiment. Imagine a husband whose wife arrives home one day with this bit of news. “I was talking to my co-worker today about you and had the strangest interaction. She told me that she doesn’t believe I’m married. She refuses to believe in you. She said that I made you up. At first, I thought she was joking. But she was dead serious. She doesn’t believe you are real.” What would be the reaction of the very real husband? How might he respond? “Did you show her the wedding ring? How about the wedding photos online and the pictures of our kids? Take her the marriage license. That should convince her. And all the while, he would chuckle at the absurdity of the conversation. Her denial doesn’t make him less real. It only makes her less reasonable. If there is a God, why would we assume his reaction would be any different, especially in the face of such probable proof?

While God offers no verbal argumentation in Scripture, he has certainly not been silent on the matter: Paul recognized this when writing to the church at Rome:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”
Romans 1:19–22

So, God himself is an apologist. In fact, by weaving into the fabric of this universe evidence of creation, he was the very first defender of truth. 

On December 6, 2020, astronomers working with JAXA awaited the return of Hayabusa2 (a toaster-sized capsule launched by the Japanese space agency) and its payload of 5 grams of material from asteroid Ryugu. While they were anxious for whatever made the 60,000-mile journey back to Earth, what they were really hoping to see was chondrules. Chondrules are small, seedlike rocks measuring up to just a few millimeters across embedded inside larger rocks (called condrites). Chondrules are essentially rocks within rocks and are thought to have formed shortly after the birth of our solar system. The majority of the roughly 60,000 meteorites that humans have discovered throughout recorded history are chondrites.

Scientists believe that understanding how chondrites formed is key to unlocking how the solar system, and perhaps the universe itself, formed. “In our understanding of how Earth—any planet in the cosmos, in fact—came to be,” writes Jonathan O’Callaghan, “there may be nothing as important as the mystery of the chondrule.” But the secret has alluded astronomers for years. In fact, there is no consensus on how these objects formed. Another scientist stated with frustration, “There are as many theories about how chondrites formed as there are scientists who study them.” O’Callaghan explains the problem:

For chondrules to form, dust must have been heated to temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees C by some process in the early solar system, before rapidly cooling over just days or even hours. This process, whatever it was, most likely occurred throughout the solar system; that seems to be the only way to account for the large abundance of chondrules found in chondrites on Earth.

But the frustration of the scientific community may best be expressed by Fred Ciesla, a planetary scientist from the University of Chicago: 

We can’t build a story about how planets form without ever invoking chondrule formation. It’s obvious that there’s a piece of the story that we’re missing.

To this, I would simply suggest that perhaps there is not a piece missing, just being overlooked. God has provided ample proof of the probability of his existence.