God, Math, and Existence

Who or what created numbers? The Big Bang? God? I don’t really know that it matters. Now, before my Christian brethren get ready to lynch me as defecting from Theism or creationism, let me explain myself. When I’m talking about numbers, that is not the same as talking about information. There’s really only one explanation for information, and that is intelligence. Numbers themselves are simple abstract concepts. You can have two cars or chicken wings, for instance, but you cannot possess the number two all by itself. You cannot interact with the concept of “two”. We call objects, matter, energy, and so forth concrete objects. (Not to be confused with concretes, which are a very tasty treat found at Ted Drewes.) Anyway, besides being abstract, numbers also happen to be very necessary to our universe. They have to exist as a logical consequence of things (matter, energy, people, objects, etc) simply existing. They are, in a sense, uncreated. No matter how you think the universe got here, neither God nor a cosmic hiccup intentionally produced numbers. Now all of the things that numbers represent- almost- were created at some point in time. Even naturalism’s strongest adherents accept this as fact. Numbers are different, as is the whole of mathematics itself. Numbers exist because they have to.

Now, most people who are Theists believe in the self-existence of God. We believe that God exists in the same way that mathematics exists. I don’t need to explain how He exists or where He came from, really. Like numbers, the God of the Bible is self-existent. Christians do not believe in a contingent god, one that needs an explanation for how he came to be. Christians believe in a God Who is absolutely necessary for existence to even have meaning. Created gods, as John Lennox has pointed out, are a delusion, and I don’t know anybody who believes in a god who needed reason for being. Who needs to worship a being that is dependent on another being for its existence? Ought we not to worship the greater of the two, as that will be who is really in control? If the cosmos spawned God somehow, ought not we to worship the cosmos? In Christianity, God is- by definition- necessary and uncreated. If God exists, my atheist friends, He exists because of Who He is. It is the nature of His being, so to speak. Before atheists, agnostics, and Christians can hope to discuss beliefs, they must agree on the definition of the terms, and atheists and agnostics must understand what a Christian means when he says the word “God.” After proper definitions are provided, I believe we can actually accomplish something.

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