Every now and then someone challenges me to prove that God exists. By that they usually mean they want some sort of scientific proof for the existence of God.
The thing is, that can’t be done. Of course you can’t scientifically prove that God doesn’t exist either.
Scientists come up with theories such as “God exists” and then through experimentation develop tests they can apply to determine the validity of their theory. When done correctly their experiments can be replicated by anyone to achieve the same results, thus proving the outcome.
When it comes to things like determining the existence of God or not the scientific method falls short. At this point some folks shout, “Ah ha! See! You can’t prove God exists so he must not. You just checked your brain at the door of the church and bought into a bunch of myths!”
Folks like that miss the fact that there are a ton of things you can’t prove scientifically. For example, say you had a theory that “Hitler was a bad guy.”
Even though you won’t find many folks on the planet who disagree with that theory, there isn’t any way to prove it scientifically.
Weight of Evidence
But what we can do is look at the evidence and see where that takes us. It’s more like being in a court room than being in a science lab. When we take the time to evaluate the evidence it will lean in one direction or the other. We can look at the preponderance of evidence just like in a court room and come to a conclusion.
In doing so we can be reasonably confident that we’ve ended up at the truth of the matter.
In my experience I found the evidence pointing to the existence of God to be very compelling. It took me a while to come to that conclusion. Even so, the evidence only gets you so far.
Because even if you took the time to look at all the evidence that’s possibly available on the subject you still come up short of “absolute proof.” There is still an element of faith involved.
Just because there is some faith doesn’t mean it is “blind faith.” There is such a thing as “thinking faith” that’s rooted in evidence. If that weren’t the case I’d never believe myself. While I may not be the most intelligent person around, I still do think, reason and weigh evidence.
I couldn’t just check my brain at the church door.
Looking at Some of the Evidence
What follows is some of the evidence that I found over the years on the God exists side of the equation.
Before I get into it let me say that I’m not trying to persuade anyone with this. I just wanted to put it down to help clarify my thoughts. This isn’t an invitation to argue with me, though I am open to discuss things.
This article started to get crazy long. So instead of publishing it in one humongous article I’ve decided to break it up into a series of shorter articles that I will publish over the next few weeks.
Also, this topic overflowed from a conversation I had a while back on Facebook with an Atheist. Well I assume he was an atheist based on our discussion over there.
He asked me some good questions. I felt they deserved fuller answers which I can give here on Purposely Different.
Questions
Here’s what he asked me to get this conversation going.
Let’s start with this. You said that “the evidence was overwhelming that God does exist.” What is the evidence, how did it lead to that conclusion, and what is the nature of the God it led you to believe exists?
I would also be curious why you believe the Christian God is any different from the Norse Gods or any of the gods from any of the other cultures in human history.
Just to be clear I actually said, “to me the evidence was overwhelming that God does exist.” Those first couple words are pretty important because I understand that other folks may look at the same evidence and draw the exact opposite conclusion.
As far as I’m concerned everyone has the privilege of deciding for themselves what they believe about God. Personally my own focus has always been to find the truth wherever it leads. Therefore my own beliefs are constantly being refined as I discover truth more completely.
I’m far enough down this road that I’m pretty secure in what I believe, which means I’m OK if you think I’m wrong. Rather than argue and attempt to convince I’ll simply present my observations and opinions. You can accept them or reject them as you see fit.
And now that we’ve got all of that introduction out of the way, let’s dive in.
Here are my reasons for believing God exists.
- Personal Experience
- Creation
- Changed Lives
- The Person of Jesus
- Uniqueness of the Bible
- Miraculous Healings
- Bible Prophecy, Science & Archeology
- God’s Nature
- How God is Different from Other gods
Over the next several weeks I’ll be exploring these different reasons why I believe God exists. As I publish each article in this series I will link to the new articles from this list here.
