Every now and then a Letter to the Editor pops up in my local paper providing “proof” of the existence of God. Then some days later someone will counter with saying the first auther is ignorant and if they just understood more Science…
Really, both letters are a waste of words because neither will ever influence the other side. Here are some mistakes the letter writers are making and a way to begin a dialogue.
In one letter “proving” God, the author stated he accepted that the Big Bang happened. His argument was, in the most simple terms, that to create something from nothing could only have been done by God. The later letter responded stating that if the first author read more Science that he would see that there is a scientific explanation for the Big Bang.
To the atheist, you are incorrect. Science cannot, and never will, be able to totally explain the Big Bang. The best Science can do is provide explanations of what happened very shortly after the Big Bang started. Science does not even try to explain what conditions were like before. And cannot explain what initiated it. There can never be a Science proof of “why” the Big Bang occurred. Impossible to know, there can be no evidence from before the start of the creation of the Universe.
Of course, stating that God created the Big Bang is simply substituting one mystery for another mystery. Who created God? How did God come to exist? If there was nothing, where was God before she started the creation of the Universe? If God has always been, what was she doing before the creation of everything? Saying that one unknown, the Big Bang, was caused/started by another unknown, is no “proof”. Sure, we could provide an explanation for how God came into existence. Maybe it was the cosmic Sandwich that created God. Why? Well so God could create People who would come to love sandwiches, creating Happiness for the cosmic Sandwich. Rationally that doesn’t help at all in proving God exists.
Logic, and hence “proof”, must always start from something known, or what is referred to as a “given”. It does not work to start assuming the thing you want to prove is already proven. Can’t prove God exists by assuming that God exists. To me I find it surprising that someone could fail to realize that others might question how God came to exist. I’ll get back to that because I have given that some thought.
There is no way to logically “prove” that God exists. If you believe, then it is a personal belief. That’s the reason it is called Faith. You cannot prove or force someone else to believe. So don’t try. Instead, be happy to proclaim that you have Faith, and be happy if others listen to what God means to you and the role of God in your life. Just leave me to my own beliefs.
The mistake the atheist makes is in stating that their opinion represents Science and only Science. And uses that as justification for denigrating the Believer. True, God does not exist. But, with 100% certainty, Religion does exist. The science minded person is missing something if they have not considered why Religion exists, why the majority of humans who have ever lived have believed in God or gods. To discount Religion as faulty thinking is to miss so much about what it means to be Human, and the history of humanity. And yet atheists commonly seem to disregard the fact of Religion.
Mr. Atheist, do not simply discount the person of Faith who expresses their own beliefs. Understand that you can learn something about people. Something very, very real. Something scientific. Otherwise you would be like a physicist who only believes and accepts what he can learn in his lab. Real world observations are valuable and informative.
Religion is real. Many very intelligent people have believed in God. Especially many of the smartest people of the last millenia. There have been many that today would be called Scientists, who simply could not fathom that God was not real. It was such an ingrained part of their culture. Thinking about that, it is not so surprising that a letter writer today could fail to even consider asking the question, “How did God come into existence?”. I know I have, many times, learned something or been shown a new perspective and thought, “Wow, I never would have thought of that”.
Once a couple of high school age boys knocked on my door and wanted to tell me about their religion. They were doing some of their missionary service. I let them know my disagreements with what they said. After a while one of the boys, a bit emotionally, expressed that he believed in God and how good that made him feel. I dismissed that. That was a mistake on my part. Not that I needed to relate to him or ask to hear more, but he was expressing his personal faith, and I should have acknowledged that. It was what he felt, and hence perfectly real for him.
StoppedThoughts 