People often ask, “Can you prove to me that there is a God?” One man angrily demanded, “If there is a God and He wants me to believe in Him; then why doesn’t he come down here and show himself so that I can believe?” Yet, one wonders, even if God had suddenly appeared in front of him, would the man have believed or would he have come up with some other explanation? If he has chosen to reject the evidence for God that does exist, would anything really convince him?
Interestingly, there are many things in life that we cannot prove with absolute certainty. Yet if something is supported by overwhelming evidence, we can be certain about it, even if it can’t be absolutely proven. The existence of God is one of those things. There are so many clues that point to the existence of God that we can be certain that He exists. When taken as a whole, these clues provide overwhelming evidence for the existence of God. Here are evidences of God’s existence that stand as signposts along the journey of life.
The Evidence of Life
Many scientists today claim that the world began when life sprang from non-living matter. Yet they are powerless to explain why spontaneous life cannot be produced in their laboratories today. They are unable to replicate the creation of life, thereby proving their inferiority to a Higher Power.
The Evidence of Creation
Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The Universe began to exist. What caused it? It only makes sense to assume that it was caused by one who preceded the universe. Who but God meets that criteria? Thus, our universe, including our planet, Earth, is powerful evidence pointing to God.
The Evidence of Design
We see design and order manifested in our created world through the earth’s precise rotation on its axis, its orbit around the sun, the tides, the seasons, and the ebb and flow of life designed to correspond to earth’s movements. “The brilliant hues of sunset must give way to advancing nightfall, and the star-spangled darkness never withstands the approach of dawn. Roses, snowflakes, and rainbows are signposts pointing to the infinite beauty of God.
A doctor explained that he came to believe in God through the study of sequencing DNA patterns. He said, “I realized that such intricate patterns could never be the product of random selection; there had to be a God.”
It stands to reason that wherever one sees design, there needs be a Designer!
The Evidence of Fine-Tuning
Our earth is perfectly designed to sustain life. Its distance from the sun makes it neither too hot nor too cold. It contains a complete system of life with interdependency between its many life forms. We breathe in life-giving oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plant-life takes in carbon dioxide and produces oxygen. The balance we see in our natural world speaks of the order and control of an all-wise God.
The Evidence of Morality
People may differ in their definitions of right and wrong, and yet they all have moral codes by which they live. Even though people may lie, steal, or kill, there is an inherent knowledge that lying, stealing, and killing are wrong. Humans also demand justice for wrongdoing. Even those who declare that God does not exist and that the Bible is merely a human fabrication have a sense of justice which closely parallels Biblical morality. This built-in sense of morality is evidence for the existence of God.
The Evidence of Desire
Mankind has an intrinsic desire for God. Atheists may claim there is no God, but all over the world people’s behavior reveals an inherent urge to worship someone or something greater than themselves. Pascal said there is a “God-shaped vacuum” within every human being—a vacuum that is longing to be filled. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” The universal desire to worship points to the God who made us to find our fulfillment in relationship with Him.
The Evidence of Eternity
Why do nearly all world religions teach that death is not the end? Men hope for a better life to come. Men inherently believe that life has purpose, and eternity lends purpose to our existence. The hope of eternity in man’s heart is a signpost pointing to God who is inviting all people to come inhabit eternity with Him forever.
The Evidence of a Transformed Life
One of the most powerful evidences for the existence of God is a person marvelously changed from a self-serving life of sin into a person filled with loving concern for his fellowman. Millions of people from all over the world and from all walks of life have encountered God through Jesus Christ and have been transformed by His power.
Individually, these evidences answer some specific objections to the existence of God. Taken collectively, they provide overwhelming evidence that He exists.
21 Responses
Dear MZ (April 1, 2021 at 2:24 pm):
For someone who supposedly isn’t “interested in a rhetorical jousting match”, it’s funny how that’s rally all you’re doing! You want to convince others of the “Truth” (as you see it), try something other than Sophistry!
Your disdain for definitions is a prime example. Why do you sneer at them? Because you know you’re wrong! The words “evidence” and “proof” are indeed synonymous. One proves something by producing evidence for it, and without evidence there can be no proof!.
Don’t argue with me about it, argue with Merriam Webster. According to its definition, Evidence is “something that furnishes Proof”! And Proof is “evidence that compels acceptance . . . of a truth or a fact”.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evidence
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proof
Which is why you can’t prove “the claims of Christianity correspond with reality”, since you lack any proof or evidence that they do. Instead, all you have are half-baked arguments, supported by nothing (except empty rhetoric which, as I said before, has been refuted many times).
Why did I put “failure” in quotes? Obviously because you’re wrong about that! But why did you raise the Straw Man of changing the subject from the “failure” of “Secular scholars” to “non-Christians”? Sorry, chuckles, but many Scientists, while pursuing Secular explanations for the world around us, are also religious, and that includes scientists who are Christians!
Case in point: Kenneth R. Miller, professor of Biology at Brown University, who was a powerful witness for Evolution (and against so-called “Intelligent Design”) in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover. Guess what? He’s also a devout Catholic! (As, of course, is the Pope, who also accepts the “secular” explanation for how Life developed known as Darwinian Evolution).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District#Witnesses_for_the_plaintiffs
By the way, you’re also wrong about “an explanation for where life comes from”. In the first place, Evolution has nothing to say about that! In the second place, scientists studying that problem are offering a Hypothesis, not an “explanation”. It’s precisely because (so far) that there’s no evidence or proof for where life comes from that a Hypothesis is all they can make. Should we ever get proof (through evidence), then the Hypothesis will become a Scientific Theory!
(I do hope you won’t respond to that with the usual Sophistry about it being “just a theory”. After all, Atomic Theory is “just a theory” – unfortunately for Hiroshima and Nagasaki it’s a correct Theory!)
Again, the track record of “Secular Scholars” in the field of Biology (and the fight against disease, is far better than that of those who provided Supernatural “explanations”. Which is why you’re well advised to get the Covid-19 vaccine, and not give a “goat to Asculapius” (Pagan god of healing) instead! Your “games” won’t save you from a potentially lethal illness. Only the secular field of Science can.
And stop lying about what I wrote. I never said that “faith” kept us “in the darkness” of anything! I merely pointed out the Historical Fact that supernatural explanations for disease were failures, while the work of “Secular Scholars” was a success.
Which brings us to your Sophistry about Pasteur. First, as you know, he wasn’t the only one who developed Germ Theory. Plenty of others deserve credit as well in the fight against disease, including Jenner, Lister, and Semmelweis (there are many others). Second, again you engage in a false dichotomy, in which the only “Secular Scholars” you think exist are Atheists. In fact, Pasteur and the others were Secular Scholars as well. They didn’t seek either a Biblical nor Theological solution to disease. They found the solution through Science, not Scripture!
(And unless you can give a proper source for that quote, why should I believe it? By “source” I mean evidence, or proof, that he said or wrote that, where and when he did. The Internet is full of supposed “quotes” that turn out to be completely bogus!)
So, your argument fails again, because of your bias against Science, and your insistence that Faith is the same thing as proof. (It isn’t.) Let me repeat, one can pursue a “secular” explanation for the Universe while also being religious. The two need not be “at war” with one another. But that doesn’t mean the “witchcraft” explanation for disease is as “valid” as Germ Theory (it isn’t). And Germ Theory is very much Secular!
You have no idea what I “believe”, because you are so blinded by your “faith” that you stop thinking completely! Instead, you just provide “knee-jerk” and false responses to things I never said! All to defend the “indefensible” – your “proof” for the existence of a Creation (who may not necessarily be the Christian god, after all), which actually “proves” nothing!
In the end, you’re the one who’s wrong, for two reasons. First, because (to repeat in the hope it gets through your thick skull), I never said anything about the “shackles of religion”. (Being Jewish, that would make be “shackled” to). Second, it was “Secular Science” that gave us modern Medicine (etc.), produced by people who studied “the Book of Nature” to find the answer, not the Bible! (Though, their determination to aid Humanity by finding that answer may indeed have come from their Faith.)
So let me finish the same way I ended my earlier Comment: so far as whether or not a Creator exists (and who that being is), the only honest answer anyone can give is “I don’t know”. As Jefferson said in his Notes On Virginia: Ignorance is preferable to error, and one is closer to the Truth who believes nothing, than one who believes what’s wrong.
P.S. – (He wrote that after dismissing various explanations for the presence of sea fossils on the tops of mountains, including Spontaneous Generation and Noah’s Flood.)
Hi again Etaoin, and thanks for your response. If I have indeed engaged in rhetorical jousting, then I do apologize. I did try to avoid that, but I know that it is generally more difficult than we expect to keep our egos in check.
As we have both said, evidence is what produces proof. On the other hand, it makes no sense to say that proof produces evidence. One produces the other, one is the antecedent of the other. The arrow of causality goes from evidence to proof, never from proof to evidence. Evidence is a more conservative claim than proof, and is logically and epistemologically prior to proof. Clearly these are not identical terms.
As you said, quoting Merriam Webster, Proof is “evidence that compels acceptance“. This is precisely, as I have explained already, what we do not claim to have. “Evidence that compels acceptance”, or “proof”. But we do claim to have enough evidence that a rational man can provide a reasonable warrant (though perhaps not an incontrovertible or conclusive one) for his belief in a Creator.
Intentionally or otherwise I think you have made that point as clearly as I have, and I don’t see a need to belabor it further.
Some of your arguments I do not necessarily disagree with, such as that a Creator does not explicitly rule out the mechanism of evolution (what it rules out is philosophical naturalism) or that religious people can’t take a different view of Genesis and science than Young Earth Creationism.
But there are really only two basic assertions that I am disputing from your original post; that religion has somehow hindered the progress of scientific discovery, particularly in the field of medicine, and that claiming to have evidence is the same thing as claiming to have proof. I am satisfied to let others read our comments and let them draw their own conclusions on whether I have honestly engaged with your points or have engaged in rhetorical gamesmanship and vice versa.
As far as the Pasteur quote, that would be a quote from The Literary Digest from 10/18/1902, I cannot trace the quote further, as The Literary Digest who was in turn quoting from the journal Germania, doesn’t provide any further details on their source than that.
“If he has chosen to reject the evidence for God that does exist, would anything really convince him?”
Who knows? Perhaps a billboard with a baby on it would do the trick?
Afterall, according to your logic, the billboard itself is “evidence” of God too!
But then again, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
One doesn’t need to “chose” to reject the “evidence” you speak of in order not to believe. They could just, down deep in their heart, simply not believe.
There are many things that are not explainable and some people are perfectly OK with that. They don’t have the need to go attributing everything they can’t explain as “evidence” for the existance of a God.
Life and all the things in existance is truly “miraculous” when you think about it. The order of the universe from the largest things we know down to the smallest is simply amazing and wonderful. What makes things such as life, positive-negative attraction, gravity, cell division and even conciousness operate they way they do?
The answer? I don’t know, I may never know, and I’m OK with that.
Saying a God did it doesn’t explain it any clearer. But some people simply accept that instead of admitting the possibility that we may just be here by chance. They’d rather believe in a God that has always existed and has no beginning and no end, rather than matter having always existed in one form or another with no beginning and no end, and finally arranging in a way that allows for something, rather than nothing.
Dear Gaytheist (March 5, 2021 at 1:44 am):
Or perhaps not.
Especially when accompanied (as on this website) with the same tired, old, cliche’d arguments that were demolished long ago!
In essence, this website is just offering various versions of the “god of the gaps” argument: whenever we don’t know the answer, there is god. Sorry, but if one is offering “proof” (or “evidence”) I require more than that. (What’s required for belief is another matter entirely.)