The Reality of God & Who Designed the Designer?

The Reality of God: The Layman’s Guide to Scientific Evidence for the Creator.  By Steven R. Hemler, Saint Benedict Press, 2015.

 

Who Designed the Designer?: A Rediscovered Path to God’s Existence.  By Michael Augros, Ignatius Press, 2015.

 

Logical arguments for the existence of God are an integral part of theology, and two new books, Steven R. Hemler’s The Reality of God: The Layman’s Guide to Scientific Evidence for the Creator and Michael Augros’s Who Designed the Designer?: A Rediscovered Path to God’s Existence are both works that defend theism from a Catholic perspective, though the approaches taken by the authors are significantly different.  Neither work should be taken as the sole, definitive work that finally provides conclusive proof of God’s existence after millennia of theological debates, but both, in their own ways, provide new arguments and reasoning for theists to ponder as they deal with the major questions of existence.

 

Hemler has advanced degrees in both Pastoral Studies and Civil/Structural Engineering.  Hemler’s perspective is both that of a man of science and as a man of faith.  Hemler also serves as the President of the Catholic Apologetics Institute of North America.  In his preface, Hemler writes:

 

“The question “Does God exist?” is critical to understanding our place in the universe and how we will live our lives.  That’s because what someone believes about God affects everything else he or she believes and does.  Indeed, the five most consequential questions in life are these:

 

1. Origin: Where did we come from?

2. Identity: Who are we?

3. Meaning: Why are we here?

4. Morality: How should we live?

5. Destiny: Where are we going?

   

Our answer to each of these questions and consequently how we live our lives depends upon whether or not we believe God exists.  Therefore, this book provides a basic introductory overview of evidence for the existence of God to help us answer the foundational question, “Does God exist?” for ourselves and in discussions with others.  As such, this book is intended to help strengthen our own faith and provide valuable information for discussion with those who may doubt the existence of God.”

 

Hemler’s book focus on both logical proofs and interpretations of tangible evidence in order to argue for God’s existence.  The book is divided into three sections: Cosmic Evidence of God’s Existence, Biological Evidence of God’s Existence, and Human Evidence of God’s Existence.  At times the arguments used are complex and may require a bit more than a basic knowledge of scientific principles, but the point of the book is to provide the average reader with reasons why religion dos not have to be in conflict with science, and emphasize that atheist materialism is an inadequate perspective for viewing the universe.

 

Hemler explains his approach, saying that:

 

“While we may have subjective (personal) reasons for belief in God, this book provides objective (scientific and philosophical) reasons that justify God’s existence.  As such, this unique book provides a clear and concise overview of key scientific evidence, philosophical reasons, and insights drawn from human nature itself demonstrating God’s existence.  

 

In this book, you will find “the rest of the story” (to quote famous radio personality Paul Harvey).  In the first two parts of this book, we explore aspects of scientific discoveries that you are unlikely to hear in scientific lectures, publications, or television shows, namely how recent scientific discoveries actually provide compelling evidence of God’s existence.

 

This, this is a book of Christian apologetics, which is the branch of theology that is concerned with the rational explanation and defense of the Christian faith…” 

 

These two books have the same goals, but their approaches are distinctly dissimilar.  Hemler’s focus on tangible evidence and scientific interpretations is expressly rejected by Augros, who prefers to take a specifically intellectual approach through mostly intangible arguments.  Augros’s perspective is that of a philosophy professor, studying the arguments for theism through first causes and logical defenses.  The book is written colloquially, and one does not need any special knowledge of philosophy in order to read it. 

 

In his introduction, Augros writes:

 

“The purpose of this book is to put forward a solution to these vexing questions [about how to prove the existence of God].  Specifically, my intention is to show, by purely rational means, that there is indeed a first cause of all things and that this cause must be a mind.  So far as that goes, this book is indistinguishable from a fairly continuous stream of “there is a god” books.  So why bother with this one?

 

For five reasons:

 

1. This book takes a fresh, nonpolemical approach to the question of a designer.

 

2. It slowly and carefully develops a single proof for the existence of a mind behind the universe.

 

3. It does not call on you to trust in the observations or theories of others, such as scientists, but instead reasons exclusively from things you can verify for yourself.

 

4. It solves certain fundamental problems of theism, or which the atheists are aware, but which current theistic books largely ignore.

 

5. The certainty reached in this book is greater than that attained in science-based books for or against a designer.”

 

The book calls out the “New Atheists” who have made careers and headlines promoting unbelief, ranging from recent celebrity atheists like Richard Dawkins to earlier twentieth-century figures like Bertrand Russell.  Notably, Augros is invariably cordial and even flattering towards these figures, which goes towards his approach of attacking ideas rather than people, and this approach seems to have been affected by his personal experiences.

 

Ultimately, one of the most telling passages in Augros’s book is a personal account of an intense debate he had once with an atheistic friend.  After arguing passionately for God’s existence for hours, Augros found that the atheist no longer had any rebuttals to the arguments for theism, and expected that his friend would now have to cede the point that God was real.  The result was rather anticlimactic.  The atheist conceded that he no longer had any defensible arguments to support his unbelief, but refused to convert to theism.  This illustrates that books that contend to prove God’s existence are helpful for bolstering theists in debate and defense of their faith, but in order for someone to receive the gift of faith, it is necessary to have something more than a watertight argument. 

 

It is said that humans cannot convert other people to faith– only the Holy Spirit can do that.  These books can help people keep their faith and defend their faith, but they will serve as a continuing part of the ongoing battle between belief and unbelief rather than a permanent resolution of that conflict.

 

 

–Chris Chan