If we had access to all the information within the cosmos, would this prove that there is a creator?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Creator and the Creation Stories’ (2001).

Now that’s a very interesting and profound question, because, in the first place, at the heart of it is this word ‘prove’, which carries different meanings in different situations. For instance, you can prove a mathematical theorem: one and one make two. You can prove it by mathematical logic. Given your presuppositions and your numeral system, then one and one make two, and five times five make twenty-five. So you can prove things by mathematical logic. Philosophical things have to be proved by logic as far as we can; but then, in all logical systems you have to have your axioms. You have to start believing something before you can prove anything. Let me demonstrate to you what that means.

Suppose I say to you, ‘A is true’ (whatever A is.)

You say, ‘Prove it.’

So I quote B to prove A.

Then you say, ‘Prove B’.

So, I say, ‘C—C proves B and B proves A’.

But you say, ‘I don’t believe C either’.

If you had to prove everything, you would never prove anything; it would be an infinite regress, as they call it, and you would never stop anywhere. Any sensible system of philosophy will tell you that you’ll have to start with axioms that you can’t prove, but you assume them to be true because they seem reasonable. You cannot prove everything in the universe by sheer logic, but once you have the axioms you can begin to prove your premise. So it is with God himself.

Moreover, the mathematician Kurt Gödel developed a theorem in 1930 that startled the mathematicians and philosophers of his day. Gödel proved mathematically that in any closed system (i.e. where you can’t bring information in from the outside) you will never be able to prove everything within that system by the laws within the system.¹ That shocked the scientific world at the time. Because, if our universe is a closed system and you can’t bring anything in from the outside, you will never finally prove everything within the universe. So this matter of proof is a very profound thing.

Forgive me for appearing to make it a little difficult, but we shall have to face this if we want to be rigorous in our thinking. That’s why Christians say that if you want to explain this universe, ultimately you won’t explain it unless you’re prepared to go outside of it and bring in the evidence of a creator.

But now let’s think of another level. If I said to a married man, ‘Prove that your wife loves you’, what kind of proof would he offer? I don’t suppose he’d offer me a sum in arithmetic, or tell me, ‘She allows me to keep £5 pocket money a week’, or something. How would you prove that your wife loves you?

‘Oh,’ you say, ‘she darns my socks and she feeds me well.’

So I say, ‘She’s only doing it in the hope that one of these days you’ll die and she’ll inherit your fortune and marry somebody else’.

How would you prove that I’m not correct? What kind of proof would suffice? In that circumstance, I suggest to you that you can’t prove somebody loves you by mathematical formula, Q.E.D. What you’d have to do is to survey the evidence and then take what people call a leap of faith. Faith in the Bible is a response to evidence. So, you’ve known your good wife for years, you know the way she behaves and you think you know her character, her lovingkindness and all the rest of it. You cannot prove it one hundred per cent, but on the basis of the evidence you take the leap of faith and trust your dear wife.

When it comes to proving that God exists, it’s not a question of a mathematical formula or of an equation in chemistry, for God is a person. ‘There is evidence’, says the Bible. There is evidence in the cosmos around us—we’ve been discussing some of it last night and tonight. Suppose we had all the information in the cosmos: that would be a colossal amount of evidence that would point to a creator. What little we understand of the universe points to a creator, a designer. But when the Bible says that the invisible things from the creation of the world are seen, namely his divinity and almighty power (see Rom 1:20), it doesn’t say that creation shows us the love of God. Creation also shows us earthquakes and volcanoes, and I take evidence for a designer to be overwhelming. But knowing God is not merely accepting the result of some logical proof. God is a person, and if you and I are ever going to know God, God will have to let himself be known by us. In prayer, our Lord Jesus said:

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. (Matt 11:25)

Why is that? Well, God is a person, as I’m a person and you are too. If you wanted to know me, you could put me through a machine that would analyse my blood and bones, or use encephalography to examine my brain, or dissolve me into atoms and all this kind of thing. You could know a colossal amount about me, but you’ll never know me unless I am prepared to let you know me.

You see, if it’s a question of getting to know an atom, that’s simple if you’ve got a moderately high IQ. Put the atom in a cyclotron, speed things up to nearly the speed of light, bash the charged particles into the atom, and the poor old atom has to give up its secrets. It’s only a thing. You don’t get to know a person that way, and God is the supreme person. If we’re ever to know him, it won’t be simply as the proof of a logical equation. There is evidence that he exists, that he is the designer; but he has made himself known to us through his word, spoken and written (we call it the Bible), and supremely through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. If we humble ourselves and come to God through Christ, God will let himself be known by us.

Now, finally, the question says, ‘If we had access to all the information within the cosmos . . .’. When our Lord was here on earth, according to the Gospel of John he did some spectacular signs. For instance, on one occasion he miraculously multiplied five loaves and two small fish and fed a multitude, giving them a sign that he was God become man, the Creator (see John 6). The Bible tells us of an interesting thing that happened. The next day, the crowd came seeking him. What for? Well, because they had a free meal yesterday and they wanted another one today. They had seen the physical miracle. And our Lord said to them, ‘Sorry, no more bread today. You seek me, not because you saw signs, but simply because your stomachs got filled’ (see v. 26). What they should have done was to take the evidence of this miracle right in front of them, that their stomachs were full of the bread and fish, and ask themselves, ‘But who did it? Whose hands broke that bread? Who is this?’ The bread and fish ought to have led them to ask about him and whether they could get to know him.

If you had all the information in the cosmos, it would point overwhelmingly at the evidence for the existence of God. But that wouldn’t be enough, would it? You would need to come to God, hear him, and get to know him by responding to his voice and word. I’m no authority on the topic, but that’s how I believe men eventually decide to marry their wives. They weigh them up, as their wives also weigh them up. Each person watches the other’s ways: their behaviour, their disposition and their character. They listen to what people say about them, and consider all the other evidence about them. Then, of course, there has to be that personal relationship, the posing of the question from both sides, and the acceptance of the person. It seems to me, that’s how it is with God. Sorry for that long sermon, but I wanted to try and be fair to the question because this matter of proof is something that often gets in the way of our coming in simple faith to God through Christ.

¹ On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems, Monatshefte für Mathematik (1931).