Can Sports Help Prove the Existence of God?
Eddy Pineira stepped onto the football field with only a few seconds left in the game. His team, the Chicago Bears, had a chance to defeat the Denver Broncos. With the game on the line, Pineira kicked the ball through the uprights, securing the win for the Bears.
After kicking a game-winning field goal, Pineira said this in front of a national audience: “For everybody listening, If you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, you better start because he’s real, I promise you that.”
I always want more—as a fan and a Christian. Without giving us more, Pineira leaves us with a dangerous assumption. He is making a direct correlation to the success just experienced and it being proof to a watching world of why Jesus exists. I disagree with this particular logic.
Attributing athletic success to the existence of God feels closer to the prosperity gospel than it does to something taught in an introduction to apologetics class (which is why I am writing this piece in the first place). Connecting sports success to the existence of God would also mean any failure experienced in sport is evidence that God does not exist.
But Pineira’s bad example does not mean we cannot look towards sports to experience or believe in God. Quite the opposite.
I think sports provide four solid reasons why we can believe not only in God’s goodness, but also his existence.
The Aesthetic Argument
We need to understand the reality of a world where God does not exist. Survival is paramount. That’s all that matters. There is no ultimate meaning. There is no purpose. Yes, beauty can exist—but it is accidental, not essential.
In his book Reason for the Hope Within, author and Christian philosopher, William C. Davis, says:
“If everything (including humanity) is the result of random, impersonal forces which encouraged only survival, then it seems highly unlikely that the process would yield organisms (humans) which recognized values like these [artistic beauty] which aren’t survival-conducive.”
He goes on to say that:
“Values like these [artistic beauty] are what we would expect if humans (and the human environment) were created by a personal, loving, and beauty-valuing God. God’s existence is a much better explanation for the existence of non utilitarian value than any explanation without God.”
The aesthetic argument—or the argument of beauty—reasons that the existence of beauty and our ability to appreciate it fits much better into a worldview where God exists than one where He doesn’t.
What does sports have to do with this?
Sports shows our desire for something beyond mere survival. It’s evidence of something intrinsic within us that wants to not only see beauty and celebrate it—but see it a second or third time.
I recently watched a local high school football game on television and after a 70-yard touchdown run, I was disappointed. Why? Because the broadcast did not have the ability to show us an instant replay. The play was so incredible that I wanted to see it again. There is something inside of me—of us—that wants to see beauty a second time.
Maybe that’s why we are obsessed with taking a video of everything we witness on our phones instead of just enjoying the moment in real time.
One of the reasons ESPN’s Sportscenter continues to captivate our attention is by leveraging our desire to skip the boring parts of the game and get right to the highlights. It’s an instant replay of what we may have missed or want to see again. Instant replay has nothing to do with survival of the fittest and everything to do with an intrinsic impulse for more beauty..
If God did not exist and survival was the pinnacle of our existence, why would we spend countless amounts of time watching something that entertains us or re-watching it for the same reason?
The beauty of sports show that we were designed to appreciate, cheer, and celebrate things around us that hold absolutely no weight on our ability to survive or not.
The Moral Argument
Brian Davis walked toward the green in the 2011 Verizon Heritage Golf Classic. He had just tied Jim Furyk on the 72nd hole to force a sudden-death playoff. But before he started to line up his putt, he called over the officials.
The officials looked at the replay and determined Davis’ club did not hit the reed. They decided to take one more look, in super slow motion. Davis was right. His club hit a reed on his backswing.
The rule book identifies a reed like that one as a “loose impediment,” and according to Rule 23 of the USGA's Rules of Golf, loose impediments can’t be moved. The result was a two-stroke penalty. Nobody saw it, and Davis didn’t feel it. But he thought he might have seen the reed move a little, so he self-reported it to the officials. Furyk went on to win the tournament.
Davis later estimated that the loss cost him close to $2 million. It was not just the tournament’s prize money on the line but also an entrance into the Masters and endorsement bonuses. Davis said:
“But it's not so important that you cheat to achieve it. Golfers are expected to police themselves. It’s in the gentleman’s tradition of the game. It’s what makes our sport unique. I’m a fan of the Arsenal Football Club and my father-in-law is Ray Clemence, who was a goalkeeper for Liverpool and England, so I know it’s not the same in other sports. I’m not happy when a player goes down in the box after barely being brushed by a defender, but I know it’s part of football’s gamesmanship. It’s not the same in golf. Even for anyone to think you’re a cheater is horrible.”
Here is that last sentence again: Even for anyone to think you’re a cheater is horrible.
Why is this significant? Pastor and theologian Tim Keller explains in an interview with The Atlantic: “If there is no God, then evil and suffering and violence are perfectly natural. The weak are killed off; the stronger survive. That’s the way the world is. There is no right and wrong—there is just what is. To believe that some things that happen are evil requires some supernatural standard of good—something from outside of nature—by which to judge which natural things are truly natural and which things are unnatural. But as Nietzsche says, there is nothing outside of nature.”
The moral argument argues that our tendency to categorize anything as right and wrong points towards something outside of ourselves pulling us towards that end.
There is something inside of us that hears the story of Brian Davis calling the penalty on himself that says: “That is good. That is right.”
Likewise, there is something inside of us that hears about the Houston Astros winning the 2019 World Series by cheating that says: “That is not right. That is wrong.”
If God does not exist, why would we have a strong emotional pull towards either end of the right/wrong spectrum in something as non essential to survival as sports?
The Teleological Argument
The argument from design (teleological argument) was first conceived by Thomas Aquinas. He reasoned that the perceived order and complexity in the world is evidence of a designer—and the designer is God.
How does the existence of sports support this argument?
Sports require order. They require rules and boundaries and structures. And when any of those are violated, the play stops or a penalty is assessed to the perpetrator.
Our desire to provide order around things—like sports—show that maximizing play, fairness (moral argument), and competition demands structure.
If God did not exist and we adopted a worldview promoting naturalism and survivalism, wouldn’t sports, if they existed at all, drift towards chaos and purposelessness, not order? Wouldn’t even the most barbaric of sports we have conceived, like UFC, exist without any sort of boundaries?
The Athletic Argument
Does the existence of order within the game of sports, an emotional response to what we would categorize as right or wrong, and an appreciation of the beauty within each game point to the existence of God? I would argue that those three things fit better in a world where God exists than one where He does not.
Maybe a better question to consider is this: does the existence of sport itself fit better in a worldview where survival is of greatest importance and there is no greater meaning and purpose or in a worldview with a creative God who seeks to make himself known through the systems and structures—and sports—that surround us?
I would call this final argument: The Athletic Argument. It argues that sports exist, not as a way to prepare us for some future battle for the sake of survival, but as an element of play for the benefit of society to enjoy communally. In a naturalistic worldview, sports would seemingly not exist. What purpose would it serve for us to play? If survival was humanity's primary objective, at the very least, sports would be some sort of primal preparation grounds for those involved—and those who sit back and watch.
But sports are more than that. They’ve become a universal language where we may disagree on many things with our opponent, but for that period of time during a game, we can watch together, play together, abide by the rules set forth, and enjoy competition and sport for what it was meant to be: a gift given to humanity, by a designer, to show his desire for unity, order—and play.