A Letter to Andrew: Can We Know God Is Real, and That Death Is Not the End?

Dear Andrew,

Your dad tells me you don't want to be handed feelings. You want reasons. Good. So do I. I spent most of my life teaching philosophy at the University of Southern California, and I can tell you that wanting proof is not a sign of weak faith. It is a sign that you take God seriously enough to think about him.

Some people will tell you that faith means believing without reasons, or even against them. That is simply not how the Bible talks.

To disparage the role of reason in the production and sustenance of faith is to contradict the plain intent of the scriptures

— The Allure of Gentleness

Knowledge and faith are intended to go together.

— The Allure of Gentleness, ch. 4

Faith is confidence in what you have good reason to trust. It goes past what you can see, but not past what you can know.

Faith is not opposed to knowledge; it is opposed to sight

— In Search of Guidance

So let me walk you through two questions, step by step, the way I would with a student in my office. First, can we know that God is real? Second, can we know that death is not the end? I'll give you the arguments, some tests you can run yourself, and the objections you'll hear, with plain answers.

Part 1: Why the physical world can't be all there is

Start with something anyone can check. Look around the room you're in.

The first thing we observe when we look around in the physical world is that every event… depends on something other than itself

— The Allure of Gentleness, ch. 4

Your phone is warm because a battery is discharging. The battery holds a charge because someone plugged it in. The electricity came from a power plant, which burned gas that formed over millions of years. Every physical thing you can point to is like that. It is there because something else made it be there, or keeps it there. Nothing physical explains itself.

The domino chain

Now ask: what if that chain of dependence just goes back forever, with no beginning? Picture it this way.

If you have an infinitely long chain of dominoes and you tip the one near the back… You will never get to the final domino

— The Allure of Gentleness, ch. 4

Think about why. Each domino falls only because the one before it fell. If there is no first domino, there is never a first fall, and so nothing ever gets started. But things have gotten started. The dominoes in front of you are falling right now. So the chain cannot be endless. Somewhere there has to be something that does not wait on anything else.

A self-subsistent first cause

That is where the argument lands.

…a first cause that, in relation to nature, is supernatural and self-subsistent.

— The Allure of Gentleness, ch. 4

"Self-subsistent" is a big word for a simple idea.

By self-subsistent being I merely mean something that doesn't depend on anything else for its existence: a mind, a will, which has its existence entirely within itself.

— The Allure of Gentleness, ch. 4

Here is the logic in one line, the way I put it in a paper for other philosophers.

The dependent character of all physical states, together with the completeness of the series… logically implies at least one self-existent, and therefore non-physical, state of being

— "Language, Being, God, and the Three Stages of Theistic Evidence" (essay)

Notice the word non-physical. Whatever started the chain can't be one more physical domino, because every physical thing depends on something else. The source has to be of a different kind.

Everything else in this universe is created and is perishing. It is dependent on something greater than itself for its existence

— Life Without Lack

Paul saw this long ago: "Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made" (Romans 1:20).

Part 2: Order comes from minds

So far we have a first cause that is not physical. But what is it like? Here we look at the kind of world it produced. Our world is not just there. It is ordered. It runs on laws precise enough that you can land a robot on Mars by doing math on paper. And everywhere we can actually trace where order comes from, it comes from a mind.

…we clearly know that the order that is in a watch first presented itself to the human mind

— "Language, Being, God, and the Three Stages of Theistic Evidence" (essay)

Nobody finds a watch on a trail and thinks the gears just happened. The plan for the watch was in someone's mind before it was in brass. When we reason from what we know, the source of the vast order of the universe looks much more like a mind than like an accident.

Relative to our data, then, we must believe that the first cause of physical reality would also be a mind, and a sufficiently great mind at that.

— The Allure of Gentleness, ch. 4

"The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). That is not only poetry. It is an observation about what order points to.

What about evolution?

You will hear that evolution explains all the order there is. Evolution may explain a great deal about how living things change. But look at what it needs to work at all: stable chemistry, reliable laws of physics, molecules that copy themselves accurately. Evolution doesn't create order from nothing. It works on order that is already there.

…any sort of evolution of order of any kind will always presuppose pre-existing order

— "Language, Being, God, and the Three Stages of Theistic Evidence" (essay)

So the question is never really "evolution or God?" The question is where the order came from that makes any process possible in the first place.

Part 3: You are more than your brain

Now we come closer to home. Some people say that you are just your brain, a very complicated piece of meat running chemistry. If that were true, then when your brain stops, you stop. So it matters a great deal whether it's true. I don't think it is.

I am a spiritual being who currently has a physical body… nothing of intellect, creativity, or character is to be found in it.

— The Divine Conspiracy, ch. 3

Test one: 2 + 2 = 4

Here is something you can test yourself. Was 2 + 2 = 4 true before there were any human brains? Of course it was. Two moons plus two moons made four moons long before anyone counted them. Would it still be true if every brain in the universe disappeared tomorrow? Yes. So the truth of 2 + 2 = 4 is not a brain state. It does not live in neurons.

…the laws of logic have no factual import. They would remain true if no minds existed

— "A Realist Analysis of the Relationship Between Logic and Experience" (paper)

Logic and truth are real, and you use them every time you argue. But they are not physical things. You can't weigh a valid argument or measure the length of a truth.

Test two: try finding meaning in a cell

Here's a second test. When you think about Mount Everest, your thought is about something far away. It points to it. Philosophers call this "intentionality," or "aboutness." Now take any physical thing, a brain cell, a chemical, an electric charge, and ask: what is it about? It isn't about anything. It just is what it is. You could study a neuron under the best microscope in the world and you would never find the meaning "Everest" inside it.

…persons think, and their thoughts pick out or select specific objects… No physical thing has it.

— The Divine Conspiracy, ch. 3

…brains, as well as units of language, simply do not have the 'semantic' properties that consciousness manifestly has

— Renewing the Christian Mind, ch. 32

Your brain is a wonderful instrument, and it works closely with your mind. But they are not the same thing.

…the person is not identical with the brain

— Renewing the Christian Mind, ch. 14

Why this matters for the argument

If only physical things exist, then truth and logic have nowhere to live. And then the person who argues for that view has to use truth and logic to argue that they don't really exist. That saws off the branch he's sitting on.

If narrow Naturalism cannot provide for truth, it also cannot provide for logical relations

— "Knowledge and Naturalism" (paper)

Objections you'll hear, and plain answers

These are not quotations. They are how I would answer if you brought these to me across the table.

"Then what caused God?"

Answer: The argument never says everything needs a cause. It says that things which depend on something else need a cause, and every physical thing is like that. A self-subsistent being is, by definition, the kind of being that does not depend on anything else. Asking what caused it is like asking who the bachelor's wife is. The question misunderstands the word.

"Evolution explains all the order."

Answer: Evolution explains change in living things that already exist, under laws that already hold. It presupposes order; it doesn't produce order from nothing. Ask the person where the laws, the chemistry, and the copying came from. That is the question the argument is about.

"Brain scans prove thought is just the brain."

Answer: Brain scans show that thinking and brain activity happen together. That is correlation, not identity. A scan shows where activity is happening. It never shows what the thought means or whether it's true. When you read a book, your eyes move in a measurable way, but no one concludes that the story is your eye movements.

Part 4: What this means for death

Now put the pieces together. The source of everything is a great, non-physical mind. And you are a mind too, a spiritual being who has a body, not a body that happens to think. So the obvious question is: can a mind exist without a brain? We already know one does.

God, many are now shocked to realize, does not have a brain. And he never misses it. This is something one must never forget. Body and brain come from him, not the other way around. And in him our own personal being will be as secure without body and brain as it now is with body and brain.

— The Divine Conspiracy

I used to tell my students this, and they would laugh, and then they'd stop laughing and think about it.

It's often shocking to people when I tell them God doesn't have a brain. But He is spirit… He doesn't miss it, doesn't need it… Everything is a 'no-brainer' to God.

— "The Redemption of Reason" (paper)

You will never stop living

Here is the plain conclusion, Andrew, and I want you to hear it as good news.

You are never going to cease to exist. If you are afraid of going out of existence, fear no more

— Life Without Lack

…we are by nature unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny… We will never stop existing, and there is nothing we can do about it.

— The Great Omission

And it is not some ghostly, thinned-out version of you that continues. It is you.

…we may be sure that our life—yes, that familiar one we are each so well acquainted with—will never stop.

— The Divine Conspiracy, ch. 3

Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25–26).

Jesus shows his apprentices how to live in the light of the fact that they will never stop living

— The Divine Conspiracy, ch. 3

Death loses only limitations

So what actually happens when we die? We lose less than people fear.

When we pass through the stage normally called 'death,' we will not lose anything but the limitations and powers

— The Divine Conspiracy, ch. 10

Indeed, we will then be in possession of ourselves as never before… God has a much better use for us than that.

— The Divine Conspiracy, ch. 10

When we pass through what we call death, we do not lose the world. Indeed, we see it for the first time as it really is.

— The Divine Conspiracy, ch. 10

Think of it like stepping out of a room with one small window into the open air. You don't lose the view. You finally see it.

Part 5: How to hold these arguments honestly

Now let me be careful with you, because you deserve honesty more than you deserve a win.

• These arguments show that believing in God is reasonable, more reasonable than the alternative.
• They point to a great mind behind everything, a mind that does not need a brain.
• They show that you are more than your body, which makes life after death not just possible but expected.
• What they can't do is replace knowing Jesus personally. An argument can bring you to the door. It can't walk you through it.

…faith is never meant to exist apart from knowledge, where knowledge is possible.

— Living in Christ's Presence

And knowledge of God is possible, but the deepest kind comes the way you know a friend, not the way you know a formula. Jesus said, "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

An experiment you can run

Jesus offered a test that any honest person can try: "Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own" (John 7:17). That is an invitation to an experiment, not a demand for blind belief. Try living the way Jesus taught for a while, honestly and on purpose, and watch what happens. Pray, and pay attention. Evidence comes to the person who acts on the light he already has.

Argue gently

You will argue about these things for the rest of your life, and I hope you do. Just remember how Peter put it: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15). Notice that it's the hope you're giving an account of. You're not trying to defeat someone. You're trying to show them something good. Ask questions. Listen longer than feels natural. Let a good argument do its work slowly. The person across from you is also a never-ending spiritual being, and God loves them as much as he loves you.

A blessing for you

Andrew, may you keep thinking hard and never be afraid of a question. May you find that every honest question, followed far enough, leads you toward the One who made your mind. May you come to know Jesus not only as the conclusion of an argument but as your friend and teacher. And may you live every day in the steady confidence that you will never stop living, and that the best part is still ahead.

With love, and with great confidence in you,

Dallas

Willard quotations verified in his books and papers in the Dallas Willard Books + Papers notebook. Scripture from the NRSV (1989), checked against the published text. The objection answers are Dallas's teaching in his own voice, not quotations.