The Basis of True Faith

The Bible is a gift. And, as is usual with gifts, the essential message has been wrapped carefully. Consequently, it is necessary to separate the cover from the gift in order to recognise the essentials. Only then will we understand the true message of the Bible.
It was Swiss researcher and writer Erich von Däniken who discovered, in the 1970s, that the Bible contains information on alien, intelligent, human life forms that came to earth from outer space in order to create or improve intelligent life on this planet. Many mythological tales of ancient cultures around the globe tell of gods from above who not only created human beings but also brought with them art and science. Having performed their task, they went back into space. Nevertheless, they often left wives and children behind who acted as some kind of governor or emissary.
From time to time, those gods from above fought against each other. Nowadays, the newly-founded scientific branch of Paleo-SETI-Research, whose purpose is to research into traces of extraterrestrial intelligence in Earth’s early history, has been looking closely into this matter.
It is beyond the scope of this work to analyse all the historical reports from around the world, which may contain such prehistoric extraterrestrial messages. Therefore, let us concentrate on the Old Testament of the Bible. However, if the Old Testament does in fact contain so much prehistoric extraterrestrial information, what is left for human belief in God? If the angry but merciful Creator of the Bible actually was an alien who happened to have some superior kind of technology unintelligible to earth people, what is left for the Christian faith? Furthermore, was the real Jesus just a free rider or copycat at a later date?
So, what we need is a new concept of God! Even changing religion would not suffice, because other concepts might also be imbued with extraterrestrial information. Consequently, our concept or idea of God needs a totally different starting point.
Greek philosopher Anaximander (611-546 BC) used the word apeíron to designate the original principle. He was the first philosopher who did not seek the origin of the world in a personalised God.
Another explanation came from ancient Greek philosophy with the idea of the First Cause. Philosophy teachers used to explain this term by using a stick to move a stone. While the hand moves the stick, the stick moves a stone, the stone moves a grain of sand, and so on. It was Aristotle who came up with the idea of the Prime-Mover God, who is quite different from the personified Creator that we are familiar with in Christianity. The Prime-Mover, rather, should be seen as the transcendental origin whose existence is based in eternal self-reflective thinking. The Prime-Mover himself must be unmoved because he is superior to the movement of the world. He has no beginning and no end. During the Middle Ages and early Modern Times, it was Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant who argued in favour of God’s existence.
Supporters of the ‘big bang’ and evolutionary theory may now claim that stars and planets are the outcome of exploded concentrated matter. However, nobody can explain where this matter should have come from and why it was concentrated for no apparent reason somewhere in the universe. Even more difficult is how to explain life on earth. Evolutionary theory does not explain how flowers were pollinated before bees, or other insects, appeared. Wind alone does not suffice. Or, vice versa, how did bees manage to survive before the existence of plants with calyxes? Who was first, the hen or the egg? There are animals whose organs are so perfectly adapted to their natural surroundings that it is difficult to imagine how this could have been done by evolution. Female whales, for example, have the perfect organ to enable their young to suckle under water, which makes it possible for the whale baby to drink its mother’s milk instead of sea water. How could such an organ develop by way of evolution? It must have been there right from the start. Evolutionary theory cannot explain such a phenomenon.
Generally speaking, believing in the big bang or evolutionary theory means nothing less than expecting the formation of a complete encyclopaedia out of the explosion of a printer’s workshop. Ultimately, there is no final evidence for the big bang or evolution. They are both just theories, made up by scientists who worked in a laboratory mixing some liquids and observing the results. Nobody can tell whether their assumption is right or not. Consequently, for those who believe in creation, there is no need to compromise their point of view. This, however, leads inevitably to the question of who is the Prime-Mover?

God - The Final Frontier

Modern espousals of evidence for the existence of God are generally based on German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason restricting any possible understanding of facts to those who are eligible to human perception. Consequently, nobody ever succeeded in producing indubitable evidence for the existence or non-existence of God. At its best, human beings may enter the border area between Men and God which, however, should suffice to deduce the existence of the Prime Mover. Due to men’s natural restrictions, one should perhaps not expect the final empirical evidence. It must fulfil its purpose to accept circumstantial evidence until we know better. If men could accept this natural restriction, it should be much easier to cross the border between science and faith, which is the only way to overcome men’s restriction and reach a state of faith that is not based on mythical tradition, as is the case with most other religions. Similar to Deism, believing in the existence of the Prime-Mover, or World’s Mover, is faith that is based on reason.
Besides the question of existence, there are other questions concerning the nature of the World’s Mover. Does He influence today’s events, or did He just give the initial move once and for all? This may depend on the strength or the echo of the move. Was it strong enough to move the world forever? In that case, our fate could be determined already and we may not possess a free will. Has the merchant on a ship at sea really made his own decision when he threw his ware overboard to survive the storm? Probably not. Therefore, one may deduce that there is an echo from the initial move that lasts till today, because the World’s Mover is eternal - he does not yield to time.

Arguments for the existence of God

Human beings, who are naturally restricted in their perception, might never be able to perceive God’s existence as a whole, nor might they even prove it indubitably. However, there are several arguments that make life difficult for those who deny God’s existence.
In the ancient world, many attempts were made to prove God’s existence. Aristotle argued that there is a first cause that itself does not have a cause. He named it the ‘unmoved mover’ or the ‘initial unmoved moving cause’. He argued in favour of a divine mover by saying that, if all substance was transient, everything else must be transient, too. Time and change itself, however, are not transient (Phys. VIII 1, 251a8-252b6; Met. XII 6, 1071b6-10).
According to Aristotle, there is only one movement that can be eternal: the circular movement (Phys. VIII 8–10; Met. XII 6,1071b11). Therefore, the unmoved mover moves “as a beloved one”, as a target (Met. XII 7, 1072b3), because the desired, the imagined and the beloved can move without being moved itself (Met. XII 7, 1072a26). As He is non-physical reason (nous), and the act of thinking about the best subject is his primary concern, He thinks himself, i.e. “thinking the thinking” (noêsis noêseôs) (Met. XII 9, 1074b34f.). As only living subjects can think, He must be a living thing. This unmoved mover must be God (Met. XII 7, 1072b23ff.).
 

Anaximander considered the search for the nature of the origin of existence and the arché (αρχή), the prime substance from which existence was derived, as being the basic problem. The beginning or first principle is an endless, indefinite mass (apeiron), subject to neither old age nor decay, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything which we can perceive is derived. Its origin is the unlimited. There is some kind of eternal nature ruling things in the visible world. The apeiron (άπειρον, ‘the indefinite’) is the most extensive and most including. It is the principle of being things from which the worlds and their natural order were derived. From here, everything originates and everything ceases to be. That is why there is an unlimited number of worlds that come into existence and die away, returning to where they came from, repeatedly. Time is inherent, because origin, existence, and passing away are well separated. The indefinite must be source and the nature of existence. Movement is eternal and produces the worlds. Creation and passing away will continue as long as the source is unlimited.
Anaximander maintained that all dying things are returning to the element from which they came (apeiron). The one surviving fragment of Anaximander's writing deals with this matter. Simplicius (Comments on Aristotle's Physics 24, 13; see wikipedia) transmitted it as a quotation, which describes the balanced and mutual changes of the elements:

Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.

This passage is often considered as the ‘first phrase’ of philosophy. Its main point seems to be the necessity of creation and deterioration. It obviously refers to the perpetual alteration of opposed forces or shapes and its basic idea seems to be the continual exchange between opposed shapes, as in nature, in which movement and change are common phenomena. Anaximander sees those things as natural causes to which all living beings are submitted. Whatever exists in cosmos is submitted to change and modification, as one thing takes another thing’s place and, after life, there is death and vice versa.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a scholasticist and renowned philosopher, devoted himself to the question of God’s existence. He saw philosophy as the basis of theology. In the Summa Theologica, he considered in great detail five reasons for the existence of God. These are widely known as the quinquae viae, or the ‘Five Ways’, as follows:

The argument of the unmoved mover, or ex motu, tries to explain that God must be the cause of motion in the universe. It is, therefore, a form of the cosmological argument. Some things are moved and everything that is moving is moved by a mover. An infinite regress of movers is impossible. Therefore, there is an unmoved mover from whom all motion proceeds. This mover is what we call God.
The argument of the first cause (ex causa), says that God must have been the cause, or the creator of the universe. Some things are caused and everything that is caused is caused by something else. An infinite regress of causation is impossible. Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause of all that is caused. This causer is what we call God.
The argument from contingency (ex contingentia) claims that many things in the universe may either exist or not exist. Such things are called contingent beings. It is impossible for everything in the universe to be contingent, for then there would be a time when nothing existed, and so nothing would exist now, since there would be nothing to bring anything into existence, which is clearly false. Therefore, there must be a necessary being whose existence is not contingent on any other being or beings. This being is whom we call God.
The argument from degree or gradation (ex gradu) is heavily based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. According to this argument, varying perfection of varying degrees may be found throughout the universe. These degrees assume the existence of an ultimate standard of perfection. Therefore, perfection must have a pinnacle. This pinnacle is whom we call God.
The teleological argument or argument of ‘design’ (ex fine) claims that everything in the universe has a purpose, which must have been caused by God: All natural bodies in the world act toward ends. These objects are in themselves unintelligent. Acting toward an end is characteristic of intelligence. Therefore, there exists an intelligent being that guides all natural bodies toward their ends. This being is whom we call God.
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), in his work Proslogion, put forward a proof of the existence of God known as the ontological argument. Anselm defined his belief in the existence of God using the phrase “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. He reasoned that, if “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” existed only in the intellect, it would not be “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”, since it can be thought to exist in reality, which is greater. It follows, according to Anselm, that "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" must exist in reality.
Among others, Thomas Aquinas criticised Anselm by saying that God must be much bigger than anything humans can think of. Although the ontological argument might be controversial, it is nevertheless a milestone in theology.
Modern Age philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650), who also figures as an ontologian, sets another milestone by his famous philosophical statement “Cogito ergo sum” (French: Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am; or I am thinking, therefore I exist). If “I” exist, somebody must have created me and this one might be superior so that it could only be God, whose existence is the logical outcome of this argument.
In 1440, another great European philosopher, known as Nicholas of Kues, wrote one of his major works De Docta Ignorantia (Of Learned Ignorance) in which he proposed the theorem “coincidentia oppositorum”, the coincidence of opposites within God, a key statement of his vision of God.
The absolute largest thing of all is reality, as it is everything that it can be. Since it is just whatever it may be, it can not be bigger and, for the same reason, not even smaller. The tiniest, however, is that beyond which nothing can be smaller and, as the greatest thing is of the same species, it is clear that the tiniest thing coincides with the largest (Nikolaus von Kues, Philosophisch-Theologische Schriften, Wien 1964, S. 205; translation by author).
For catholic theologian and philosopher Robert Spaemann, faith in God is the “immortal rumour”. His argumentation about the question of God connects with Friedrich Nietzsche, who once wrote: “We won’t get rid of God, I’m afraid, because we still believe in grammar.” Following structures as in the grammar of language, that reclaim some kind of superior sense or meaning, we understand that the world has been following logical principles. As a precondition, men must be able to recognise the truth and see God’s traces in the world. His biggest trace is men itself. However, this trace only exists if men agree instead of seeing themselves as some kind of machines who just simply spread their genetic material over the world and who gained logical reason as an outcome of evolutionary adaptation. Nevertheless, God exists independently from men’s perception. Spaemann’s ultimate evidence for the existence of God is the grammatical argument of God’s existence, which he believes resists even Nietzsche’s theories:

“The Futurum Exactum, the second future tense, is necessarily bound to the present tense. Claiming that something takes place now, also means that it is the past of the future. Therefore, all truth is eternal. It is true that on the evening of December 6th, 2004 many people gathered in the philosophical academy in Munich in order to attend a lecture on logical reasoning and faith in God. It is not only true on this evening, but forever. If we are here today, we will have been here tomorrow. The present remains true and real as the past of the current present. But what is the nature is this reality? One might say, through the traces it leaves due to its causal impression. However, these traces will cease through time. And they are traces only if the original event will be remembered” (“Der Gottesbeweis” In: Die Welt vom 25.03.2005; translation by author).

However, memory might stop one day in the future and so may earth cease to exist. But in the future past, there must be some kind of earlier present now, being the past of the current present. If there is no present, then there is no past and the futurum exactum would have no meaning. It that case, it would be false that, on December 6th, 2004, many people gathered in the philosophical academy in Munich in order to attend a lecture. This would be nonsense, of course, because in this case the lecture had never taken place and reality as seen by the audience was false. The only way to solve this inconsistency is to assume that there is some absolute consciousness in which everything happens that is past and in which the eternal truth is true forever. This must inevitably be God.

Modern scientists, e.g. Helmut Hansen in his essay “Die Signatur Gottes - Ein moderner Gottesbeweis” (was available under: http://helmuthansen.bei.t-online.de/gott/), claim that it might be possible to verify God’s existence empirically. According to today’s opinion, theologians and philosophers of the past, including Nicholas of Kues, mainly ignored the chance to provide conclusive proof of God’s existence. Immanuel Kant’s evidence has to be empirical in order to be acceptable, or at least must consider the perceptible world. However, if God and the world, as creator and creation, should be seen in concordance with each other, then the world must possess certain structures. This inherent worldly structure must coincide with those that are generally associated with God. Traditionally, God is associated with those typical “omni-” characteristics, e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, or omnipresence. Helmut Hansen writes in his 2002 net article:

“If God’s creation, or – using the modern term – the ‘physical universe’, is the visible expression of those omni-characteristics in one way or another, then its consistent and coherent structure must correspond to them in some way or another. If one could determine precisely this almost divine structure theoretically, then, according to scientific thinking, one could verify whether the universe which we consider real possesses such a theologically and theoretically precise structure or not.

So it could be possible to achieve a new level of evidence for the existence of God of which up to the present one could only dream about, even after more than 2000 years of thinking. As those omni-characteristics associated with God are of transcendental nature and therefore placed outside of the empirical world, there is no understanding about how and how far those omni-characteristics communicate with our visible world.”

Modern evidences: The Omega Point Theory

The following passage, taken from Wikipedia, gives a pretty good summary of the Omega Point Theory:

“In his controversial 1994 book The Physics of Immortality, Frank J. Tipler claims to provide a mechanism for immortality and the resurrection of the dead consistent with the known laws of physics, provided by a computer intelligence he terms the Omega Point and which he identifies with God. The line of argument is that the evolution of intelligent species will enable scientific progress to grow exponentially, eventually enabling control over the universe even on the largest possible scale. Tipler predicts that this process will culminate with an all-powerful intelligence whose computing speed and information storage will grow exponentially at a rate exceeding the collapse of the universe, thus providing infinite ‘experiential time’ which will be used to run computer simulations of all intelligent life that has ever lived in the history of our universe. This virtual reality emulation is what Tipler means by ‘the resurrection of the dead’. In more recent works, Tipler says that the existence of the Omega Point is required to avoid the violation of the known laws of physics.

According to George Ellis's review of Tipler's book in the journal Nature, Tipler's book on the Omega Point is “a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline", and Michael Shermer devoted a chapter of Why People Believe Weird Things to enumerating flaws in Tipler's thesis. [..]”

In Tipler’s view, theology is just a special branch of physics which could answer the question of God shaped into three basic questions concerning metaphysics, liberty and immortality:

“[..] I shall argue in the body of this book that these questions can be answered, and that the answers to all three are probably He does exist, probably we have free will, and probably He will grant us eternal life after we have died. I say ‘probably’ because science is not in the business of giving an absolutely certain-to-be-true answer, valid for all time. Science can only give ‘probably true’ answers, as witness the fate of the geocentric hypothesis of Ptolemy, [...]” (The Physics of Immortality, p.7).

As is obvious just from this quotation, Tipler raises hopes which he cannot fulfil. He himself doubts the existence of the Omega Point God who, furthermore, does not seem to be identical with the God of common knowledge (p. 12). This is an extremely bad starting point for someone who tries to prove the existence of God!
Neither can he prove the existence of eternal life. As he says on page 66: “The Omega Point Theory is based on the Eternal Life Postulate.” This means that Tipler postulates an aspect he was going to prove as a precondition for the correctness of his theory. However, demanding something as a precondition which is supposed to be the subject of evidence means killing off the theory as a whole.
Tipler starts his arguments with a nominal definition of human beings who, in his view, are nothing but some kind of computing machines. The brain is seen as the centre of computation and the human soul is just a running software programme. Those are just some superficial facts that can be proved easily, an analogy of which could be a fisherman who uses a fishing net which has string holes four inches across, so that he only catches fish which are at least four inches big. From this, he deduces that all fish are four inches long, which should be no surprise, of course, and which does not necessarily mean that there are not other fish smaller that four inches, which he erroneously concludes. Furthermore, for Tipler’s theory to work, it is essential to assume that man is just a biochemical machine. It should be clear from this that there are still many fish which are not caught by a net that has such wide holes in it.
In Tipler’s view, everything that is alive codes information. Life is just some kind of data processing and the human mind is some kind of highly developed computer (p.124). This definition does not include highly developed biological life forms on a carbon basis, but also any other kind of machine that can compete with the former in some way. Eternal life, in his view, is a continual progress in life that will go on forever, while resurrection is nothing but a perfect computer emulation of the death. But an emulation is nothing more than an emulation, however perfect it may be. Tipler believes that the emulated sensing and feeling of those emulated will be real because they have no way of telling that they are just perfect simulations. Furthermore, people in this computed world would live forever. However, Tipler does not consider what might happen if the computer goes down or has a power failure.
Processed individuals would gain their freedom in the way that there were several parallel worlds in which every possible future development is being implemented, claims Tipler. One may conclude, however, that those individuals trapped in such a parallel world do not have a free will. Besides, they do not know that there are copies of him or herself also trapped in different paralleled worlds, having totally different experiences in life, which brings up the question of how far these individuals are supposed to be related to each other.
Another problem is that Tipler’s machines must not only be intelligent and aware of themselves. They also must have conscience. Tipler proposes the so-called Turing test to guarantee this. This test states that there is a human being and machine, each of them in one separate room with no sight of each other. In a third room there is another person asking questions to both of them in order to find out who is the human and who is the machine. If the asking person cannot tell which one is which, even after years, then the machine passes the test. However, there are some problems with that procedure. First of all, the machine must be able to lie, because it could be asked “Are you a machine?”. Second, how much time must pass by until the person asking the questions will give in? It could not last forever, because human life is biologically restricted. After, say, a hundred years, the person questioning and the one answering will both be dead and the only survivor will be the machine. Besides, a cyborg or something that was as intelligent as a human being, and that has the qualities of conscience and self-awareness, would probably refuse to join in such a rather dumb game. He also could decide not to spread human life but copies of himself instead. Thinking individuals are unlike machines, in that they are simply unpredictable.
One important idea of Tipler’s is that terrestrial life must leave its planet because earth is doomed to destruction and life can only survive in space. To do this, men must build space probes, so-called Von Neumann Probes, whose task is to create new life somewhere in space. This point is interesting insofar as life on earth could have been created by robot space probes, as an alternative to the currently valid evolutionary theory. According to Tipler, life must go into space if it does not wish to either die of heat, i.e. to submit to the final state of the universe, or the so-called heat death, or run into an eternal circle in which all events in nature repeat themselves in exact detail over and over again, which also means that an exact copy of the reader will have to read an exact copy of Tripler’s book. This process is also known as the Eternal Return (p.66-67). In the long run, this might lead to Nihilism, the “Overman” and, finally, Nazism. Unfortunately, Tipler does not indicate how much the eternal reading of his book contributes to that.
For Tipler, the universe is defined as the entirety of everything that exists. If God exists, then he is somewhere in the universe, or a part of it, and physicists must find Him one day. However, what if God does not want to be found?
Tipler believes that Einstein’s equations make it possible for life to force the universe to avoid collapse. All mankind has to do is conquer the universe and reach a much higher level of existence. However, if God is the universe, then men are supposed to conquer God and force him to allow eternal life. By doing this, life would also restrict God’s omnipotence and gain his omniscience, which obviously conflicts with omnipotence.
Even the Holy Spirit has an equivalent in Tipler’s theory: the Universal Wave Function, which terminates in the future Omega Point. This wave function is supposed to be alive somehow and would repeal physics, so to speak. It is not clear how this is supposed to work, nor how the mathematical formula has been worked out, despite the high volume of maths and calculations Tipler presents.
But even the most complicated formula and calculations cannot deny that Tipler announces nothing but a computer process as eternal life. Actually, he reduces men to characters in a computer game. Yet he demands massive amounts of public money to be spent on space research and super particle accelerators, even though a simple Gameboy might do just as well.

Creationism

Creationism is the religious belief that life and the universe were created in some form by a supernatural being. In the ancient world and during the Middle Ages, philosophical discussion on creationism concentrated on the idea of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Alternatively, it [ ] that the creation of the world could also be some kind of formation of a previously existing matter, as the Greek philosopher Aristotle supposed.
Christian supporters of creationism frequently insist on a literal interpretation of Creation according to Genesis. In this belief, a creationist God manipulated natural procedure, which can either refer to the creation out of nothing (ex nihilo) or the introduction of order to the previously existing chaos (tohuwabohu). This view spread among Protestant Christians in the 19th century, most of which merged with fundamentalist and evangelical lines in the 20th century as some kind of opposition to the ideas of the scientific movement and evolutionary theory. In the late 20th century, Islam and some parts of the Jewry took similar views.
Creationism, strictly speaking, takes the view that scientific aspects support creation according to traditional myths and that literal interpretation of those reports in Genesis or the Koran reveals actual events. Unfortunately, creationism does not explain how exactly creation came about. Creation myths in Genesis or elsewhere only become intelligible under the co-consideration of the Gods-Astronauts-Hypothesis (or ancient astronaut hypothesis, as it is sometimes called). Using common interpretation techniques, scientific facts, as empirical source of information on natural history, regularly oppose literal interpretation of the Bible. The Gods-Astronauts-Hypothesis, however, may solve this contradiction under the assumption that religious and other texts were written by people who did not know about genetics or terraforming and who could explain either of them only with God’s omnipotence.
Other strong arguments in favour of creationism derive from the weakness of evolutionary theory. First of all, there are neither eye-witnesses nor final evidence for evolution. Fossils and archaeological discoveries, in the end, can only be pieces of circumstantial evidence that could be subject to misinterpretation. Furthermore, chance plays an extremely important role in evolutionary theory. However, as already stated, believing in big bang or evolutionary theory means nothing less than expecting the formation of an encyclopaedia out of the explosion of a printer’s workshop. Even if one might consider an infinite period of time, it is virtually impossible, according to probability calculus, that life just happened to come into existence by mere chance. Another problem is the creation of animals or plants by natural mutation or selection. Positive mutation is extremely rare and has never been witnessed reliably. Neither does natural selection necessarily produce new species. As a consequence, evidence in favour of Darwin’s evolutionary theory or natural selection is rather scarce.
Furthermore, creationism does not necessarily exclude mutation since the world has been created. In the view of so-called “evolutionary creationism”, God is the creator who used evolution as a tool to create species and who also uses evolution in order to improve them. There are, yet, different views on how much influence God executes on this. But the common point of view is that natural selection is not the cause for the appearance of new species, as this is executed directly by God who intervenes in the process of evolution.
Whichever view one may prefer, the result is still the same: the world as we know it. The important point is that evolutionary theory simply cannot explain everything so that it is a poor alternative to creationism. One may remember the example of bees and flowers, or the mother whales, which also goes well with Thomas Aquinas’s argument of the first cause, because the prime move certainly would echo in its creation. Even Kant would be satisfied, as this world is perfectly perceptible to men through their senses.
Politically, creationism is frequently regarded as a threat to secular order, e.g. in the USA. Teaching evolutionary theory could oppose creationism in a rather unfair way. Attempts to teach creationism in schools frequently are prevented by legal means under the assumption that the separation of state and church would be abolished. Main representatives of creationism in the USA are the so-called evangelical Christians, who also have great political influence. Their best known representative might be former president George W. Bush. But also in Europe, though creationism is rather unpopular in politics, the European Council in October 2007 regarded creationism as a possible threat to human rights. However, both views are based on traditional interpretation of the Bible without considering the Gods-astronauts-hypothesis.

Evidence for the existence of God

Aristotle	The Prime-Mover who started the movement of the world.
Anaximander	Discussion of the nature of the origin of existence, Ápeiron – the unlimited.
Thomas Aquinas	Five ways (quinquae viae): unmoved mover, first cause, contingency, degree or gradation, “design”.
Anselm of Canterbury	Ontological argument: nothing greater can be conceived.
René Descartes	“I think, therefore I am”, and someone must have created me.
Robert Spaemann	Grammatical argument: regarding the transience of the world, the futurum exactum can only be true if there is a greater, eternal consciousness.
Helmut Hansen	God reveals himself in the structure of the universe.
Frank Tipler	Omega Point Theory: the ultimate point of development which the universe may reach, but the theory’s weaknesses are numerous. Life, for example, is seen as the ability to compute information and at the end Men are just like God.