We must begin with God and explain the universe, not eradicate any discussion of Him and deny Him or explain Him away by beginning with the universe and without Him in our worldview and explain Him away. Where you begin determines where you will end up.
"... The greatest question of our time is whether man can live without God." --Will Durant, Secular Humanist historian
"Men have forgotten God." --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author
"The only system of thought that Christ will fit into is the one where he is the starting point." --Athanasius, father of orthodoxy and church father
"God [justice] must exist for ethics [morals] to be possible." --Immanuel Kant, revolutionary philosopher (paraphrased)
"If God does not exist, all things are permissible." "A man cannot live without worshiping something." --Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist
"A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts." --Paul Johnson, historian
Many philosophers have either tried to prove or disprove God; nevertheless, this issue is one of the most frequent and basic of all philosophical and religious topics. Of all the great thinkers of mankind throughout history, nearly everyone had something to contribute to this subject. In fact, one's worldview or outlook (opinions on life) is rooted in this dilemma of mankind. Pascal made a wager that it's safer to bet there's is a God and be wrong than bet your life there isn't and be wrong--the consequences are higher and more profound and eternal--we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain according to Pascal. People know there is a God, but suppress the fact and many are practical atheists, acting and living like there is not a God, though they do profess Him, there's a contrast of the profession of faith and the reality of faith--viva la difference!
The reason there is no smoking-gun evidence for nor against God's existence is that God is pleased with faith and it requires a leap of faith to gain a relationship with Him ("Taste and see that the LORD is good..," says Psalm 34:8). You cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt either way and so, everyone has faith and makes presuppositions. Some who insist they have facts and Christians have faith is wrong, because Christianity is a religion of facts and they have no reason to fear them nor anyone's scrutiny.
The Bible makes no attempt to prove God, it just assumes Him and calls them who deny Him fools. If the Christians must offer proof, then the infidel must counter with proof too! The fact is that the burden of proof for the Bible's authenticity lies with the skeptic--many have tried to disprove it historically and archaeologically and have failed. If the Bible is so accurate here, why doubt its spiritual truths? You don't have to see God believe in Him; we don't see the wind but believe in it by seeing its effects and even feeling it!
The philosophical and logical fact is that you cannot prove a universal negative: you cannot disprove God, any more than disproving the existence of little green men! In order to do, you'd have to know everything and be everywhere at the same time. God does desire to be known and wants a relationship with us, but hides Himself so that triflers will not find Him, He desires us to search for Him with all our heart, soul, and mind. We shouldn't have to prove God, He challenges us to find Him and know for ourselves. God's existence used to be the so-called default position of academia and the civilized world, but people nowadays think they don't need Him to answer life's ultimate questions and that He is irrelevant.
There is no "proof" of God, but there is plenty of evidence for the one willing to believe--there's never enough evidence for the unwilling! There's no "smoking gun" evidence, either way, both propositions take faith. Evidence is not always certain or conclusive, it's only an argument for or against a proposition or theory. Take the scientific evidence if you will: DNA is the metabolic motor that is necessary for all life forms and requires DNA to be formed--whence the first DNA, if not created? Where did all the 50 plus constants of nature and physics come from, if not an orderly Designer? Biogenesis (and spontaneous generation has been disproved) and this means that life only comes from life--whence the first life form? The Anthropic Principle (cf. Isaiah 45:18) leads one to believe the earth was created and fine-tuned with man in mind by an all-wise God! The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, especially that of entropy (that everything goes from order to disorder and the universe is running out of usable energy sources) prove the Big Bang's existence (which begs the question of who pulled the big trigger?) and that time itself, a corollary of space and matter, had to have a beginning, just like the Bible postulates in 2 Tim. 1:9 and Titus 1:2.
The Bible is not a scientific manual, but where it does make scientific statements, it is without absurdity nor inaccuracy. It has proved to be ahead of its time on several occasions: the gravitational field, that the earth is round, the ocean currents, the water cycle, et cetera. In fact, the most obvious point of the Bible is that its very existence itself is a miracle!
There are multitudinous arguments for God: First, creation is the prime argument and evidence, ergo a Creator, since nothing can create itself or be its own cause; the moral argument saying that God cares a lot about right and wrong and has a moral compass--thus we have a conscience and values and since there seems to be a Higher Law we all acknowledge, there must be a Lawgiver and moral center of the universe; the cosmological argument of First Cause (nothing can be its own cause--God is eternal and ipso facto, not an effect and uncaused!) and He's the Prime Mover and the law of cause and effect, or causality, had to begin with an uncaused cause or we'd have no effects at all (infinite regress is impossible, known as the impossibility of crossing infinity); the teleological argument that purpose, harmony, design, beauty, and order all prove the existence of a Supreme, Ultimate Mind and Orderer in the cosmos; the anthropological argument that asks why does every tribe, nation and tongue profess awareness of Him? the ontological argument that asks why we feel His tug and where did we get this knowledge of His existence in the first place? Philosophers have offered numerous arguments, but there is no ironclad argument that forces one to believe if he chooses not to--it takes faith; God doesn't make people believe against their wills! He doesn't want robots or automatons! However, there's no ironclad argument against God's existence either--both propositions require faith.
Finally, the reason you cannot prove God is that He defies our thinking--He's infinite and we're finite and limited. In short, there are no laboratory conditions for proving or disproving God! We cannot put Him in a test tube, under a microscope, or measure Him; you can't test Him--don't test God!; nor can you do experiments with Him--He won't cooperate because it's beneath Him; we can't test our theories on Him--God tells all we need to know in the Word; or observe Him--He's incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ (He isn't visible, tangible, audible)!
"... The greatest question of our time is whether man can live without God." --Will Durant, Secular Humanist historian
"Men have forgotten God." --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author
"The only system of thought that Christ will fit into is the one where he is the starting point." --Athanasius, father of orthodoxy and church father
"God [justice] must exist for ethics [morals] to be possible." --Immanuel Kant, revolutionary philosopher (paraphrased)
"If God does not exist, all things are permissible." "A man cannot live without worshiping something." --Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist
"A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts." --Paul Johnson, historian
Many philosophers have either tried to prove or disprove God; nevertheless, this issue is one of the most frequent and basic of all philosophical and religious topics. Of all the great thinkers of mankind throughout history, nearly everyone had something to contribute to this subject. In fact, one's worldview or outlook (opinions on life) is rooted in this dilemma of mankind. Pascal made a wager that it's safer to bet there's is a God and be wrong than bet your life there isn't and be wrong--the consequences are higher and more profound and eternal--we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain according to Pascal. People know there is a God, but suppress the fact and many are practical atheists, acting and living like there is not a God, though they do profess Him, there's a contrast of the profession of faith and the reality of faith--viva la difference!
The reason there is no smoking-gun evidence for nor against God's existence is that God is pleased with faith and it requires a leap of faith to gain a relationship with Him ("Taste and see that the LORD is good..," says Psalm 34:8). You cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt either way and so, everyone has faith and makes presuppositions. Some who insist they have facts and Christians have faith is wrong, because Christianity is a religion of facts and they have no reason to fear them nor anyone's scrutiny.
The Bible makes no attempt to prove God, it just assumes Him and calls them who deny Him fools. If the Christians must offer proof, then the infidel must counter with proof too! The fact is that the burden of proof for the Bible's authenticity lies with the skeptic--many have tried to disprove it historically and archaeologically and have failed. If the Bible is so accurate here, why doubt its spiritual truths? You don't have to see God believe in Him; we don't see the wind but believe in it by seeing its effects and even feeling it!
The philosophical and logical fact is that you cannot prove a universal negative: you cannot disprove God, any more than disproving the existence of little green men! In order to do, you'd have to know everything and be everywhere at the same time. God does desire to be known and wants a relationship with us, but hides Himself so that triflers will not find Him, He desires us to search for Him with all our heart, soul, and mind. We shouldn't have to prove God, He challenges us to find Him and know for ourselves. God's existence used to be the so-called default position of academia and the civilized world, but people nowadays think they don't need Him to answer life's ultimate questions and that He is irrelevant.
There is no "proof" of God, but there is plenty of evidence for the one willing to believe--there's never enough evidence for the unwilling! There's no "smoking gun" evidence, either way, both propositions take faith. Evidence is not always certain or conclusive, it's only an argument for or against a proposition or theory. Take the scientific evidence if you will: DNA is the metabolic motor that is necessary for all life forms and requires DNA to be formed--whence the first DNA, if not created? Where did all the 50 plus constants of nature and physics come from, if not an orderly Designer? Biogenesis (and spontaneous generation has been disproved) and this means that life only comes from life--whence the first life form? The Anthropic Principle (cf. Isaiah 45:18) leads one to believe the earth was created and fine-tuned with man in mind by an all-wise God! The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, especially that of entropy (that everything goes from order to disorder and the universe is running out of usable energy sources) prove the Big Bang's existence (which begs the question of who pulled the big trigger?) and that time itself, a corollary of space and matter, had to have a beginning, just like the Bible postulates in 2 Tim. 1:9 and Titus 1:2.
The Bible is not a scientific manual, but where it does make scientific statements, it is without absurdity nor inaccuracy. It has proved to be ahead of its time on several occasions: the gravitational field, that the earth is round, the ocean currents, the water cycle, et cetera. In fact, the most obvious point of the Bible is that its very existence itself is a miracle!
There are multitudinous arguments for God: First, creation is the prime argument and evidence, ergo a Creator, since nothing can create itself or be its own cause; the moral argument saying that God cares a lot about right and wrong and has a moral compass--thus we have a conscience and values and since there seems to be a Higher Law we all acknowledge, there must be a Lawgiver and moral center of the universe; the cosmological argument of First Cause (nothing can be its own cause--God is eternal and ipso facto, not an effect and uncaused!) and He's the Prime Mover and the law of cause and effect, or causality, had to begin with an uncaused cause or we'd have no effects at all (infinite regress is impossible, known as the impossibility of crossing infinity); the teleological argument that purpose, harmony, design, beauty, and order all prove the existence of a Supreme, Ultimate Mind and Orderer in the cosmos; the anthropological argument that asks why does every tribe, nation and tongue profess awareness of Him? the ontological argument that asks why we feel His tug and where did we get this knowledge of His existence in the first place? Philosophers have offered numerous arguments, but there is no ironclad argument that forces one to believe if he chooses not to--it takes faith; God doesn't make people believe against their wills! He doesn't want robots or automatons! However, there's no ironclad argument against God's existence either--both propositions require faith.
Finally, the reason you cannot prove God is that He defies our thinking--He's infinite and we're finite and limited. In short, there are no laboratory conditions for proving or disproving God! We cannot put Him in a test tube, under a microscope, or measure Him; you can't test Him--don't test God!; nor can you do experiments with Him--He won't cooperate because it's beneath Him; we can't test our theories on Him--God tells all we need to know in the Word; or observe Him--He's incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ (He isn't visible, tangible, audible)!
He lives in other dimensions or extra dimensions! He's outside the parameters of science and its domain and scientists have no right to comment on His existence--that would be scientism or the harnessing of science or its authority for nonscientific questions and dilemmas--thinking that only science is the ultimate avenue to truth and has all the answers. But don't panic, He can be experienced in real-time by invitation in Christ through a salvation experience.
In the final analysis, skeptics say believers may have a psychological need to believe or need a crutch--God is the ultimate crutch, glad to say; however, they may have a psychological need not to believe and have a crutch too--if you don't worship God, you'll find someone or something else to worship (we're hard-wired for worship). Common crutches are humanism, escapism, superstition, cynicism, and supernaturalism--self-help, drugs, to the occult! In sum, no one can discount God for lack of evidence; the heart of the matter is that it's a matter of the heart; people feign intellectual problems but the problem is moral!
Listen to Robert Louis Stevenson: "I believe in God, and if I woke up in hell, I'd still believe in Him." Also, we believe in the sun [God], not just because we can see it, but because we can see everything else [God opens the eyes of our hearts]! As someone said, there's enough light to see, and enough darkness not to see! We were blind, but now we see! If you could prove God without a doubt He wouldn't be worth worship, He'd be limited and in our box!
In the final analysis, skeptics say believers may have a psychological need to believe or need a crutch--God is the ultimate crutch, glad to say; however, they may have a psychological need not to believe and have a crutch too--if you don't worship God, you'll find someone or something else to worship (we're hard-wired for worship). Common crutches are humanism, escapism, superstition, cynicism, and supernaturalism--self-help, drugs, to the occult! In sum, no one can discount God for lack of evidence; the heart of the matter is that it's a matter of the heart; people feign intellectual problems but the problem is moral!
Listen to Robert Louis Stevenson: "I believe in God, and if I woke up in hell, I'd still believe in Him." Also, we believe in the sun [God], not just because we can see it, but because we can see everything else [God opens the eyes of our hearts]! As someone said, there's enough light to see, and enough darkness not to see! We were blind, but now we see! If you could prove God without a doubt He wouldn't be worth worship, He'd be limited and in our box!
The question to challenge: One must inquire of the infidel whether there is any evidence that there is no God, and whether he's going in the direction of the preponderance of the evidence or whether he's biased against God from the get-go because it takes more faith to be an atheist than a believer since there's more evidence for His existence than against, which is hard to come by! For some, there's never sufficient evidence! You must be willing to go where the evidence leads--faith or no faith without evidence is blind faith. The unwilling will never accept the truth for they reject it; it has been said that a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still!
All this goes back to the beginning assumption of all logic, reason, and religion: In the beginning, God--nothing can come from nothing (ex nihilo, nihil fit in Latin) and matter/energy are not eternal, since any theory of an eternal universe is untenable--everything in time and space had a beginning!
God needs no proof, He just is in Himself--the great I Am.
"Our faith is not dependent upon human knowledge and scientific advances but upon the unmistakeable Word of God." --Dr. Billy Graham, evangelist (par excellence!)
"I don't have enough faith to be an atheist." --Norman L. Geisler, theologian, and Bible scholar
Soli Deo Gloria!
All this goes back to the beginning assumption of all logic, reason, and religion: In the beginning, God--nothing can come from nothing (ex nihilo, nihil fit in Latin) and matter/energy are not eternal, since any theory of an eternal universe is untenable--everything in time and space had a beginning!
God needs no proof, He just is in Himself--the great I Am.
"Our faith is not dependent upon human knowledge and scientific advances but upon the unmistakeable Word of God." --Dr. Billy Graham, evangelist (par excellence!)
"I don't have enough faith to be an atheist." --Norman L. Geisler, theologian, and Bible scholar
Soli Deo Gloria!
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