Blaise Pascal said, "What can be seen on earth indicates neither the total absence of God nor his manifest presence, but rather the presence of a hidden God." Isaiah 45:15 (ESV) says, "Truly, you are a God who hides yourself." Bertrand Russell, mathematician and philosopher wrote Why I Am Not a Christian and was asked what he would tell God if it turned out he was all wrong: "Why didn't you give more evidence?" The evidence is everywhere, start by looking in the mirror. Anyone who has witnessed a birth cannot deny the reality of miracles if they are in their right mind and morally upright. Wherever we look we see the "fingerprints" of God and proof, like Francis Schaeffer said, "He is there and He is not silent."
There are about 5 percent atheists in America and 2 percent Jews, and about 81 percent who claim Christianity. But people don't know that some atheists are intellectually honest, while some Christians are intellectually dishonest and bankrupt, not being able to defend their own beliefs, much less know what they are. What we are witnessing is the age of the practical atheist or the person who lives like an atheist, without accountability to God, but adheres religiously to a faith in God that doesn't change is life. Who is he who has blind faith, but the one who doesn't know why he believes and doesn't have an answer for the doubter or skeptic? The Bible commands us to be ready with the answers.
You cannot worship your way back to God, you cannot feel your way back to God, you cannot work your way back, or even rationalize your way back--the heart has to be prepared and the soil ready for the seed which is the Word of God to germinate and grow by God's power. This is why you cannot argue someone into the kingdom. Paul found this out at Mars Hill in Athens (Acts 17) when he preached about the "Unknown God." Everyone has a basic knowledge that God exists for God has set eternity in the hearts of man (cf. Ecclesiastes. 3:11). Paul asserted in Romans 1 that the evil man has suppressed the truth and once knew God and has fallen and that no one has an excuse--not even the Aborigines in Australia.
Many great thinkers have offered so-called proofs for the existence of God, including the great Greek philosophers who posited a Supreme Good, or First Cause (the uncaused cause re the law of causality or cause and effect), Unmoved Mover, or Logos (logic or reasoning) behind the universe or the cosmos. The great philosopher Thomas Aquinas tried to rationalize God with many proofs including the fact that there would be no justice without Him. If we are trusting someone's reasoning we are trusting in the finite and not infallible Word of God--all men are prone to error and God is bigger than our power of reason. C. S. Lewis has said that we couldn't think without a Thinker intending us to think or designing our minds for thought.
That's philosophical (a little philosophy leads you away from God, but a lot brings you back to Him), and now I will present five scientific proofs of God: DNA, the metabolic motor, and engine or machine of life itself (it can only be produced by life and is also necessary for life) is so complicated and stores so much information, that it suggests design and not accident or fluke and this design implies a Designer; biogenisis, or that life only comes from life, is the eternal regress that only God can solve and knows its origins--spontaneous generation or that life can arise from non-life was disproved 150 years ago by Louis Pasteur and now it is claimed that life couldn't have arisen by chance in The Intelligent Universe by Sir Fred Hoyle, renowned mathematician, and astronomer; the Second Law of Thermodynamics or Entropy states that the universe is running out of usable energy and must have had a beginning--things go from order to disorder and the orderly universe demonstrates some supernatural intervention; the Anthropic Principle of the nature of earth, perfectly suitable and designed in such a unique way for life on this planet suggests purpose in creation because there is a reason for everything, even the dust in the atmosphere that makes rain possible and the moon which makes the tides possible--the earth is fine-tuned for human habitation; and finally the Big Bang or the beginning of the universe implies there was a "Beginner" and it was so dialed with over 50 universal constants that it couldn't have been a fluke but a deliberate design by a designer or Supreme Being--who pulled the trigger? The theory of an eternal universe has been deemed untenable.
But why can't you prove God absolutely through science? God isn't audible, visible, nor tangible--He resides in another dimension unknown to us. You can't put God in a test tube! You can't make laboratory conditions to conduct an experiment because God is invisible and history is nonrepeatable. It would be like using a Geiger Counter to measure voltage. You cannot measure an infinite God or even define Him--we only know what is revealed because speculation is a fool's errand. The scientific method is irrelevant to knowing God and when science attempts to make philosophical statements such as Carl Sagan said, "The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be." This is not science, but "scientism" because this is not in the domain or realm of science to make philosophical or religious assertions or proclamations.
The point is that you don't have to stoop to the fool's level by trying to prove God's existence; he knows it and suppresses the truth (Paul said that the sinner is one who rejects the truth). What is the greatest proof is our dynamic spiritual testimony that he cannot deny! "I was blind, but now I see!" Don't engage the atheist in trying to level the playing field to his way of thinking, we don't have to defend God because He's not on trial--the atheist is! Nothing speaks louder than the Word itself for God's Word will not come back void according to Isaiah 55:11. Don't waste your time trying to get to God, but reason from God and assume God, just like Scripture does ("In the beginning God...."): Don't be put on the defensive--use the Word as an offensive weapon (it is the Sword of the Spirit)! Why? That their faith will not rest in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God--it is not our power of persuasion to convert, but the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.
His excuse for not believing is not because he is unintelligent or lacking proof (he has irrational doubt and skepticism for there is adequate proof if he wants to believe). He chooses not to believe and "will not believe" because he is unwilling to do God's will (cf. John 7:17). Jesus performed many miracles but they "would not" believe--not "could not." He is merely feigning intellectual problems because of moral rebellion and is sending up smoke screens or false issue to get you off track and put you on the defensive with questions you aren't prepared for; but you don't have to know all the answers to believe or to witness and when he sees he's not shaking your faith it will convict him.
The real reason people don't believe, then, is sin and the sin nature or original sin in man that is stubborn and rebellious against God's order in the universe. Second Timothy 2:25 says that repentance is the gift of God and He must grant it (cf. Acts 5:31; 11:18). Without repentance, there can be no faith or acknowledgment of the truth. This verse asserts that repentance precedes knowing the truth! We don't prove God to someone, we let them find Him out for themselves, just like you don't defend a caged lion when you go into a cage--he can defend himself. People react rather than respond to the gospel primarily out of conviction and then their hearts are hardened by God (cf. Isaiah 63:17; 6:10).
Jesus made is plain that it doesn't take brains to know God or believe in Him: He praises the babes and infants for bringing Him praise! Isaiah 35:8 says that even the fool will not go astray on the highway of salvation. God is able to open anyone's eyes and do a miracle of grace--the problem is in the heart, not in the mind and we must focus on that. The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. Just ask them if they would worship God if you proved Him to them; they most likely won't for they have no intentions of believing, but in finding more reasons to be a skeptic and have animosity for Christ in particular.
We lower ourselves by thinking we have all the answers (we just know the Answerer!); we must depend on the Holy Spirit to convert (we can convert no one) and the seed of the Word. If we won them by argument, their faith would be based on argument alone, and falter in light of more argument or evidence! It isn't a matter of debating but in witnessing--our lives sometimes speak so loudly they don't hear what we say--we are a walking a living gospel narrative by our own lives. God has hidden these truths from the wise of the world and revealed them to babes (Matt. 21:16).
The wisdom of the world is foolish to Him, said Paul in 1 Corinthians. We are only responsible for what God reveals to us and people go to hell for rejecting what they do know and the God they believe in (their own known sin). Deuteronomy 29:29 says that the secret things belong to God (we don't know all the answers and God wants faith, not knowledge), but those things that are revealed to us belong to us and to our children. The only reason we know anything for certain is that God has revealed it to us and we are standing on the Rock of Truth, Jesus the epitome and personification of truth itself. The Christian faith is a revealed faith.
You must start somewhere: In every truth claim you begin with some premise you can't prove but must accept. Either start with man and explain the universe and God, or with God and explain the universe and man. We all have presuppositions that bias our thinking and always interpret our reality according to our worldview or totality of convictions. Humanism dethrones God and puts him down while exalting man and putting him on a pedestal or throne as ultimate judge and jury of God when He is man's judge! The Greeks originated the idea of man as the measure of all things (homo mensura), and communists even believe that man is the highest being of man. The Bible makes no apologies but only assumes this as fact! The Bible starts with God and goes on from there: "In the beginning God...."
The problem is that man doesn't know his own sin, and we must show it to him, according to Martin Luther. Sin has blinded the eyes of the unbeliever and his heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9). Only God can open his eyes and make him see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Man's whole nature is deformed: his heart or emotions and feelings, his intellect and thinking, and finally, his will which is stubborn and rebellious against God's authority and guidance.
God cares a lot about right and wrong as the moral center of the universe and morality is not nebulous, but as rigid as any law of nature; it is not agreed upon by consensus but exists in its own right--man has the law of God engraved in his heart according to Romans 2:15. The problem with believing is repenting and likewise, the problem with repenting is believing--man has a dual dilemma! These two go hand in hand and can be distinguished, but not separated--they are complementary and one is the flip side of the other! We must have believing repentance, or penitent faith, in other words. If we want to believe God will convict and convince us; but for those who don't want to believe, no amount of proof or evidence will convert them, for they have their minds made up and don't want to be confused with the facts!
The moral argument for God is one of the strongest for Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, said that if there is no God, all is permissible. Just like Albert Camus, the French atheist philosopher, said, "The absurd is sin without God." Without God, we have no objective standard outside of ourselves ("If it feels good, do it") to base moral principles upon. We are forced to resort to a subjective world, making up our own rules as we go along and just justifying ourselves in the process ("...[E]very man did what was right in his own eyes," Judges 21:25). Truth and morality are not relative but absolute and exist in Christ. Morality is not found out by consensus, majority vote, convention, or even tradition--it is based in the Holiness of God and His divine nature which never changes because God is immutable or unchanging. Soli Deo Gloria!
There are about 5 percent atheists in America and 2 percent Jews, and about 81 percent who claim Christianity. But people don't know that some atheists are intellectually honest, while some Christians are intellectually dishonest and bankrupt, not being able to defend their own beliefs, much less know what they are. What we are witnessing is the age of the practical atheist or the person who lives like an atheist, without accountability to God, but adheres religiously to a faith in God that doesn't change is life. Who is he who has blind faith, but the one who doesn't know why he believes and doesn't have an answer for the doubter or skeptic? The Bible commands us to be ready with the answers.
You cannot worship your way back to God, you cannot feel your way back to God, you cannot work your way back, or even rationalize your way back--the heart has to be prepared and the soil ready for the seed which is the Word of God to germinate and grow by God's power. This is why you cannot argue someone into the kingdom. Paul found this out at Mars Hill in Athens (Acts 17) when he preached about the "Unknown God." Everyone has a basic knowledge that God exists for God has set eternity in the hearts of man (cf. Ecclesiastes. 3:11). Paul asserted in Romans 1 that the evil man has suppressed the truth and once knew God and has fallen and that no one has an excuse--not even the Aborigines in Australia.
Many great thinkers have offered so-called proofs for the existence of God, including the great Greek philosophers who posited a Supreme Good, or First Cause (the uncaused cause re the law of causality or cause and effect), Unmoved Mover, or Logos (logic or reasoning) behind the universe or the cosmos. The great philosopher Thomas Aquinas tried to rationalize God with many proofs including the fact that there would be no justice without Him. If we are trusting someone's reasoning we are trusting in the finite and not infallible Word of God--all men are prone to error and God is bigger than our power of reason. C. S. Lewis has said that we couldn't think without a Thinker intending us to think or designing our minds for thought.
That's philosophical (a little philosophy leads you away from God, but a lot brings you back to Him), and now I will present five scientific proofs of God: DNA, the metabolic motor, and engine or machine of life itself (it can only be produced by life and is also necessary for life) is so complicated and stores so much information, that it suggests design and not accident or fluke and this design implies a Designer; biogenisis, or that life only comes from life, is the eternal regress that only God can solve and knows its origins--spontaneous generation or that life can arise from non-life was disproved 150 years ago by Louis Pasteur and now it is claimed that life couldn't have arisen by chance in The Intelligent Universe by Sir Fred Hoyle, renowned mathematician, and astronomer; the Second Law of Thermodynamics or Entropy states that the universe is running out of usable energy and must have had a beginning--things go from order to disorder and the orderly universe demonstrates some supernatural intervention; the Anthropic Principle of the nature of earth, perfectly suitable and designed in such a unique way for life on this planet suggests purpose in creation because there is a reason for everything, even the dust in the atmosphere that makes rain possible and the moon which makes the tides possible--the earth is fine-tuned for human habitation; and finally the Big Bang or the beginning of the universe implies there was a "Beginner" and it was so dialed with over 50 universal constants that it couldn't have been a fluke but a deliberate design by a designer or Supreme Being--who pulled the trigger? The theory of an eternal universe has been deemed untenable.
But why can't you prove God absolutely through science? God isn't audible, visible, nor tangible--He resides in another dimension unknown to us. You can't put God in a test tube! You can't make laboratory conditions to conduct an experiment because God is invisible and history is nonrepeatable. It would be like using a Geiger Counter to measure voltage. You cannot measure an infinite God or even define Him--we only know what is revealed because speculation is a fool's errand. The scientific method is irrelevant to knowing God and when science attempts to make philosophical statements such as Carl Sagan said, "The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be." This is not science, but "scientism" because this is not in the domain or realm of science to make philosophical or religious assertions or proclamations.
The point is that you don't have to stoop to the fool's level by trying to prove God's existence; he knows it and suppresses the truth (Paul said that the sinner is one who rejects the truth). What is the greatest proof is our dynamic spiritual testimony that he cannot deny! "I was blind, but now I see!" Don't engage the atheist in trying to level the playing field to his way of thinking, we don't have to defend God because He's not on trial--the atheist is! Nothing speaks louder than the Word itself for God's Word will not come back void according to Isaiah 55:11. Don't waste your time trying to get to God, but reason from God and assume God, just like Scripture does ("In the beginning God...."): Don't be put on the defensive--use the Word as an offensive weapon (it is the Sword of the Spirit)! Why? That their faith will not rest in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God--it is not our power of persuasion to convert, but the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.
His excuse for not believing is not because he is unintelligent or lacking proof (he has irrational doubt and skepticism for there is adequate proof if he wants to believe). He chooses not to believe and "will not believe" because he is unwilling to do God's will (cf. John 7:17). Jesus performed many miracles but they "would not" believe--not "could not." He is merely feigning intellectual problems because of moral rebellion and is sending up smoke screens or false issue to get you off track and put you on the defensive with questions you aren't prepared for; but you don't have to know all the answers to believe or to witness and when he sees he's not shaking your faith it will convict him.
The real reason people don't believe, then, is sin and the sin nature or original sin in man that is stubborn and rebellious against God's order in the universe. Second Timothy 2:25 says that repentance is the gift of God and He must grant it (cf. Acts 5:31; 11:18). Without repentance, there can be no faith or acknowledgment of the truth. This verse asserts that repentance precedes knowing the truth! We don't prove God to someone, we let them find Him out for themselves, just like you don't defend a caged lion when you go into a cage--he can defend himself. People react rather than respond to the gospel primarily out of conviction and then their hearts are hardened by God (cf. Isaiah 63:17; 6:10).
Jesus made is plain that it doesn't take brains to know God or believe in Him: He praises the babes and infants for bringing Him praise! Isaiah 35:8 says that even the fool will not go astray on the highway of salvation. God is able to open anyone's eyes and do a miracle of grace--the problem is in the heart, not in the mind and we must focus on that. The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. Just ask them if they would worship God if you proved Him to them; they most likely won't for they have no intentions of believing, but in finding more reasons to be a skeptic and have animosity for Christ in particular.
We lower ourselves by thinking we have all the answers (we just know the Answerer!); we must depend on the Holy Spirit to convert (we can convert no one) and the seed of the Word. If we won them by argument, their faith would be based on argument alone, and falter in light of more argument or evidence! It isn't a matter of debating but in witnessing--our lives sometimes speak so loudly they don't hear what we say--we are a walking a living gospel narrative by our own lives. God has hidden these truths from the wise of the world and revealed them to babes (Matt. 21:16).
The wisdom of the world is foolish to Him, said Paul in 1 Corinthians. We are only responsible for what God reveals to us and people go to hell for rejecting what they do know and the God they believe in (their own known sin). Deuteronomy 29:29 says that the secret things belong to God (we don't know all the answers and God wants faith, not knowledge), but those things that are revealed to us belong to us and to our children. The only reason we know anything for certain is that God has revealed it to us and we are standing on the Rock of Truth, Jesus the epitome and personification of truth itself. The Christian faith is a revealed faith.
You must start somewhere: In every truth claim you begin with some premise you can't prove but must accept. Either start with man and explain the universe and God, or with God and explain the universe and man. We all have presuppositions that bias our thinking and always interpret our reality according to our worldview or totality of convictions. Humanism dethrones God and puts him down while exalting man and putting him on a pedestal or throne as ultimate judge and jury of God when He is man's judge! The Greeks originated the idea of man as the measure of all things (homo mensura), and communists even believe that man is the highest being of man. The Bible makes no apologies but only assumes this as fact! The Bible starts with God and goes on from there: "In the beginning God...."
The problem is that man doesn't know his own sin, and we must show it to him, according to Martin Luther. Sin has blinded the eyes of the unbeliever and his heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9). Only God can open his eyes and make him see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Man's whole nature is deformed: his heart or emotions and feelings, his intellect and thinking, and finally, his will which is stubborn and rebellious against God's authority and guidance.
God cares a lot about right and wrong as the moral center of the universe and morality is not nebulous, but as rigid as any law of nature; it is not agreed upon by consensus but exists in its own right--man has the law of God engraved in his heart according to Romans 2:15. The problem with believing is repenting and likewise, the problem with repenting is believing--man has a dual dilemma! These two go hand in hand and can be distinguished, but not separated--they are complementary and one is the flip side of the other! We must have believing repentance, or penitent faith, in other words. If we want to believe God will convict and convince us; but for those who don't want to believe, no amount of proof or evidence will convert them, for they have their minds made up and don't want to be confused with the facts!
The moral argument for God is one of the strongest for Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, said that if there is no God, all is permissible. Just like Albert Camus, the French atheist philosopher, said, "The absurd is sin without God." Without God, we have no objective standard outside of ourselves ("If it feels good, do it") to base moral principles upon. We are forced to resort to a subjective world, making up our own rules as we go along and just justifying ourselves in the process ("...[E]very man did what was right in his own eyes," Judges 21:25). Truth and morality are not relative but absolute and exist in Christ. Morality is not found out by consensus, majority vote, convention, or even tradition--it is based in the Holiness of God and His divine nature which never changes because God is immutable or unchanging. Soli Deo Gloria!
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