Problems Producing Empirical Evidence for God

1. Jeremiah 33:25 and the “fixed laws”

God says He has established His covenant with day and night and the “fixed laws [ordinances] of heaven and earth.” Lisle’s point: The Bible presents the regularities of nature as God’s ordinances — the consistent way He upholds the universe (see also Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3). They are not independent, self-existing things.

2. Atheists take the laws for granted

If there is no Lawgiver, why does the universe obey universal, invariant, mathematical laws at all? Naturalism can describe the laws (once they are observed), but it struggles to account for their existence, universality, and reliability. Saying “that’s just the way the universe is” is not an explanation — it is an admission that one has no explanation.

3. Specific examples of laws

• Law of biogenesis: Life comes only from pre-existing life of the same kind. One kind does not give rise to a fundamentally different kind. (This is observed; the evolutionary claim of chemicals-to-life and one kind transforming into another contradicts it.)
• Laws of chemistry: Operate uniformly. With sufficient activation energy, hydrogen and oxygen form water in a predictable ratio. The regularities are mathematical and reliable.
• Planetary motion: Kepler’s laws (orbits are ellipses, not perfect circles; the period-squared-to-distance-cubed relationship, etc.) and Newton’s law of gravity. These are precise mathematical descriptions of how God governs the heavens.

Lisle notes that the values of the physical constants (strength of gravity, electromagnetic force, etc.) appear finely tuned. An Intelligent Designer can choose those values; undirected nature has no reason to produce life-permitting ones.

4. Anthropic Principle

The universe’s fundamental constants and initial conditions fall into an extraordinarily narrow range that allows life. Secular versions often try to neutralize this with multiverse speculation or the weak anthropic principle (“if it weren’t this way we wouldn’t be here to notice”). Lisle (and many design advocates) treat the fine-tuning as positive evidence of purposeful design.

5. Mathematics and logic as transcendent

This is one of Lisle’s strongest points:

• The basic laws of mathematics and logic are universal, invariant, and abstract (they are not made of matter or energy).
• They are discovered, not invented. Humans did not create the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 or the law of non-contradiction; we uncovered them.
• You cannot coherently imagine the laws of logic being different (e.g., a world where something can both be and not be in the same sense at the same time).
• Therefore they are transcendent truths.

Secular naturalism’s problem – Faith in that which they can not see

Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as:”Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

In a strictly naturalistic worldview, matter and energy are all that ultimately exist. Everything real is physical, located in space and time, and subject to the laws of physics. Yet the laws of mathematics and logic are none of those things. They are abstract (they have no mass, energy, or location)(But they are still Confident in what they hope for), universal (they apply everywhere and everywhen), and necessary (they cannot be otherwise). Math is used for assurance of things they do not see.

Because they are non-physical, they have no place to “live” inside a purely material universe. A number is not a collection of atoms; the law of non-contradiction is not a force field or a particle. Naturalism therefore faces a basic ontological problem: it must either deny that these abstract truths are real (which collapses the very reasoning the naturalist uses) or admit entities that its own worldview cannot accommodate. Something as a Conservative I have to struggle with everyday.

Nevertheless, every scientist—including the committed naturalist—relies on these abstract truths constantly. Every equation, every logical inference, every claim that an experiment has been repeated under identical conditions presupposes the reality and reliability of mathematics and logic. The naturalist is therefore in the awkward position of depending every day on realities that, according to his own system, should not exist.

In the Christian view, mathematics and logic reflect the orderly, rational mind of God. They are grounded in His unchanging nature. That is why the physical universe (which God upholds) is intelligible in mathematical terms.

Overall force of the argument

Lisle is not claiming that Christians deny the laws of nature. He is claiming the opposite: only the biblical worldview gives a coherent reason for their existence, uniformity, mathematical character, and our ability to discover them. The atheist uses the laws every day while lacking a foundation for them within his own system.

This is less an “evidence” argument in the classical sense and more a transcendental one: the preconditions of intelligibility (laws, logic, math, uniformity) are satisfied in the Christian worldview and left hanging in naturalism.

Why adding More evidence does not Always Work.

The transcendental nature of Lisle’s argument is precisely why classical “evidence” (fine-tuning numbers, biogenesis observations, mathematical elegance, etc.) never functions as a neutral, knockdown proof for the naturalist. Even if every empirical detail lined up perfectly, a consistent naturalist can always re-interpret it inside their own system—multiverse, as-yet-unknown physical processes, “that’s just how a mindless universe happens to be,” etc. The data get absorbed; the worldview remains untouched.

This is why simply piling up more empirical data rarely settles the question. Even if the evidence for design, fine-tuning, or the origin of life were produced in overwhelming quantity, a consistent naturalist can still fold it into a naturalistic explanation and remain unpersuaded of God’s existence. The more fundamental issue is whether naturalism can account for the laws, logic, and uniformity that make any scientific evidence possible at all. On that point the Christian worldview has an explanation; pure naturalism does not.

References

1. Lisle, Jason. “Don’t Creationists Deny the Laws of Nature?” Chapter 4 in The New Answers Book 1, edited by Ken Ham. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2006.