The existence of God

Over President's Day weekend, our family made the trek to Indiana to visit with some dear cousins.

Along the way, there was a great deal of traffic.  In one situation I was about to pass a truck when he put his blinkers on.  I could have sped past, but decided to cancel my cruise control, slow down, and let him over.  He hesitated, but when I waved him in, he took me up on the offer.

We have just witnessed a proof for the existence of God.

The presence of what we called morality is a challenge to materialism (the belief that all there is is the physical and nothing else).  Let's assume for a moment that evolution is a real thing.  As Darwin argued, the only motive for the actions of all beings is "survival of the fittest," meaning that all living things seek to protect their existence and propagate their genes.  This makes sense only in a purely materialistic worldview.

Certainly, a lot of our actions can be categorized by survival: eating, dressing, working, rearing children, even mating.  However, while the drive to "do what we do" can be explained by survival (or materialism, as it were), it cannot account sufficiently for "what we ought to do." 

Stealing from others might be a very good survival skill, but not a moral one.  Cutting in line may help you be the 'fittest', but not a moral one.  On the flip side, helping a sick person is not good for survival.  It takes your time, effort, and energy, and exposes you to illness.  Animals don't help their sick.  But we feel that we "ought" to help a sick person.

Where does this sense of "ought to" originate?  I doesn't seem to be located in our physical body or brain.  It suggests that there is something outside of ourselves where such values exist, whether we like them or not. 

Values like justice, compassion, and kindness must come from something.  It seems to make sense to

more specifically say they come from someone, a being that holds these characteristics and has decided to plant those values deep inside every human being. 

So, when I slowed down my van to let the truck driver over into my lane, it would appear God was poking his head into my everyday life yet again.