Proving God?

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)!  

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!  

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!

The Doctrine Of Christ...

"Know ye that the LORD, he is God..." (cf. Psalm 100:3).  
JESUS IS LORD!  "That rock was Christ..." (cf. 1 Cor. 10:4).     
"In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (cf. Col. 2:9).
"It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel..." (Phil. 1:7, NIV).
"He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it." (Tit. 1:9, NIV).
"You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine" (Tit. 2:1, NIV).  
"Christianity is Christ; all else is circumference." --John Stott, theologian

Christianity is all about Jesus--all else is peripheral or circumference, as John Stott says.  If you remove Christ, the faith is disemboweled--unlike Islam or Buddhism, in which the founders can be removed and the religion remains intact.  Without Christ, there's nothing left but ethics and pie-in-the-sky dreams.  2 John v. 9 says that if we "do not continue [abide] in the doctrine of Christ" we "do not have the Father"; this is to say that we must get the doctrine of the deity of Christ correct to be named by His name of Christian--Jesus said that Him being the Son of God is the Rock of the church to Peter.  Paul knew of early heresy when he wrote Corinthians in 2 Cor. 11:4 that they had fallen for "another gospel, another Spirit, another Jesus!" They're not worthy of the Name!

The cults (and they all have something nice to say of Jesus) masquerade their faith as false teachers or wolves in sheep's clothing to sound innocuous to the innocent and naive, but they are dangerous--it's just the bit of truth mixed with error that makes them dangerous.  People get enough of Christ to become immune to the real thing!  Jesus never made it easy to become a believer or disciple, but discouraged the halfhearted and insincere, not seeking shallow conversions or pseudo-conversions without any substance.  We all must count the cost and be willing to carry our crosses for His sake.

This is why JWs are so dangerous to Christianity--they parade themselves as genuine Christians and have a knowledge falsely so-called to fool the naive and unsuspecting students of the Word.  They are simply very aggressive and the believer may be fooled because he doesn't have the answers to their challenges. Just because they name the name of Jesus, don't be fooled, because inwardly they are ravenous wolves ready to devour the sheep.  The Bible warns us not to flirt with the enemy nor to welcome the false teacher who creeps in unawares or we share in his evil deeds--they are to be shunned or avoided, not fellowshipped with!

We must fight fire with fire and know how to meet them with the ammo of the Word or not try to convert them at all--they are already convinced of their heresy and may not welcome truth nor recognize it.  The Bible clearly teaches Jesus as the very incarnation and personification of God in the flesh--not sent from God, a prophet of God, a mere king, the messenger of God, spokesman or surrogate of God, part of God, only a God, inspired or anointed by God, but God Himself, co-equal, co-eternal, and co-existent in essence and glory with the eternal Father--anything less is simply heresy!

CAVEAT:  THE PERSONAGE PORTRAYED BY THE CULTS FALLS SHORT OF THE REAL JESUS, GOD THE SON, SECOND PERSON OF THE TRIUNE GODHEAD.

To assign Jesus to a label of some well-intended, but failed and misunderstood religious reformer or martyr, do-gooder, healer, miracle worker, good teacher, or anything less than the Son of God in all its glory and essence is blasphemous and belittles Him--even to call Him the greatest of all men or our best example of morals is an insult to His person in all its dignity glory, and majesty.  For to claim He was a good man or teacher would belie the claims He made and make Him out to be more a devil and deceiver than a good man--any like claim doesn't do Him justice and is merely condescending nonsense. 

Finally, we must realize they are seldom convinced by argument and we must rely on the power of the Spirit's witness and the testimony and conviction of the Word of God (cf. 1 Thess. 1:5; 2:13; Romans 10:17) as we abide in the doctrine of Christ (cf. 2 John 9).        Soli Deo Gloria!

God In A Box

They say you put God in a box (making Him one-dimensional) whenever you limit Him or define Him in any way--He defies description!  We cannot describe Him, only know Him  The Bible never attempts to give a full description of Him, only enough truth to help us get to know Him.  Enough light to but see, there's enough darkness to keep us in suspense of the mystery of knowing God.  However, to know Him is to love Him, the ultimate goal of relationships.  Someone may ask, "How big is your God?" and not realize that to limit Him in any way is to commit idolatry--thinking less of Him than warranted.  In the final analysis, it's not how big your faith is, but how big your God is. (NB:  J. B. Phillips also wrote, Your God Is Too Small.)

God is by definition infinite or without limit, not finite!  Some like to think of Him as the Great Spirit, the Doting Grandpa, the Man Upstairs, or the Celestial Killjoy or Policeman, or even as the Great Mathematician behind all the wonders of heaven's equation.  Even if we think of Him as just our Father, that would be limiting Him; for He is also Judge, Lord, and Creator, et alia.  We need the full revelation.  We can know a lot about God without any real appreciation of it or knowledge of God verified through life's experiences.  We must turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God.  The more we know, the more we will want to know, for God satisfies our thirst and hunger and then gives us more of it--we can never get too much!

To live in reality, according to Plato, one must know what God is really like! And likewise, A. W. Tozer said that what we think of God is the most important thing about us! Martin Luther told Erasmus of Rotterdam that his thoughts of God were too human--we need the Spirit's illumination!  We must access our knowledge of God gleaned from the Word and not speculation or conjecture.  We have truth and we are blessed if we reckon upon it and put it to use.

When we say that God is limitless, or unlimited, it means God never runs out of His attributes, His mercies are new every morning, and His love is eternal! God is good all the time and all the time God is good--find out for yourself, I challenge the reader--don't just take my word for it!   However, one caveat is that someday His patience with man will cease and the Day of Judgment will commence. The Bible is not some teaser to just give us an appetite for Him, but to enlighten us and open our spiritual eyes to be wise and walk with Him in fellowship.  It doesn't satisfy just to hear about God or to hear a description--we want to know Him intimately and be known by Him.

One must reckon that God is perfect and what this entails according to Arthur W. Pink:  "He cannot improve for the better for He is already perfect; He cannot change for the worse [or need improvement] since He's perfect."  God's icon is Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever!  God cannot change nor relent for He is not a mere mortal!  God is wholly trustworthy and is Mr. Dependable--always Himself and in character!  He never acts arbitrarily, whimsically, nor capriciously!  In short, He's a law unto Himself and is without the contradiction of change and vicissitude or the ebb and flow of human emotion, passions, or feelings.  He cannot be frustrated or challenged, with no learning curve, never being surprised, but always on top of things!

The words "I cannot" are not in His vocabulary, except to contradict Himself or His work!  With God, nothing shall be impossible (cf. Gen. 18:14; Job 42:2).   He can make the biggest possible rock and move the biggest possible rock.  As Einstein said, "God doesn't play dice with the universe."  So we do not limit Him or His presence, for He's fully present everywhere and even extra-dimensional.  He is here and He is not silent!  And Christianity is about this God who is here.  God is fully sovereign and powerful over everything in creation and leaves nothing to chance!  In fact, "He is not far from every one of us" (Acts 17:27).

One final lesson Job learned is that we do not frustrate God nor His purposes and will.  He acts with or without our cooperation and involvement.  It is said that there are no maverick molecules in creation.  However, God just chooses not to do certain things, though He could--for instance, He didn't have to save us!   It is said that His power is necessary for His wisdom or it would be pathetic, and His wisdom is needed for His power or it would be scary!

God knows us and all possibilities about us--what we want and don't want, need and don't need, even if we don't!  He sees through our veneer and we don't fool Him for who we are.  In fact, He knows us better than we do!  All this is comforting to know since God knew everything about us before our salvation and accepted us anyway!  His perfect knowledge extends to knowing all that possibly could be!  We're people of the Book, but we know the Author!  "The world by wisdom knew not God," (cf. 1 Cor. 1:21).   In sum, we all must learn to "think outside the box" so to speak!  (NB: Your faith can be no bigger than your God and you can never find a God in a box!)   Soli Deo Gloria!