It seems on Twitter there is a constant argument between Christians and Atheists about whether God exists or not. Most of the time they are talking past one another. Too many Christians offer Bible proof texts, and Atheists insist there is no God because science can’t prove His existence.
Trying to use the Bible to prove God’s existence too often results in circular reasoning: The Bible is true because it speaks of God; God exists because the Bible says so. Note to my fellow Christians: Don’t do that. People who don’t believe in the Bible won’t accept it as proof of God’s existence.
On the other hand, Atheists who demand “proof” of God’s existence reveal that they are “spiritually challenged”, because relationship with God is by definition a spiritual, not physical (scientific) relationship. While science is not able to detect or quantify the spiritual, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
The fact that only 5% of Americans say they are Atheists and 92% say they are believers in God should explain the bunker mentality of Atheists who demand “proof”. The fact that they will not accept any proof that is offered makes them feel smug, as if they know all the answers and the question has been settled.
But the fact that 92% of Americans say they believe in God (with varying definitions of course) says that the awareness of a reality beyond the physical is strong in most of humanity. Obviously, 92% of Americans are not ignorant bumpkins who don’t understand biology or physics. While they know science, they also know there’s more.
Bad behavior by believers doesn’t disprove the existence of God either. While people of faith sometimes do stupid or horrific things in the name of their faith, that is evidence, not that what they believe is untrue, but that they don’t understand their faith and are poor examples of it.
The proof that there is a spiritual realm including God takes the form, not of photographs or DNA or bent light waves or whatever. It comes from the day to day experience of the believer. Once you take the illogical step of believing, you begin to experience things you could not have imagined before. Atheists are prisoners to their logic, so they are unable to take the “leap of faith”.
As a believer, I do not have the certitude of the Atheist who demands that I provide proof of God. When asked about God, I have to say, “Yes, I believe He exists, most of the time anyhow”. Far from making me a poor believer, I think it just points out how difficult it is to maintain a relationship conducted entirely through faith. My occasional doubts say nothing about God’s existence, only about the fickleness of my faith.
Perhaps the reason that only 5% of Americans are atheists after 160 years of Darwinism and decades of Evolution taught as fact in public schools is that Atheists, though they are humanists, don’t have much to offer humanity. Depression, despair and death don’t sell like the hope, purpose and eternal future offered by faith in all its various manifestations.
While Atheists may scoff at the rewards of faith in this life and the next, what if believers are right? We have a full and rewarding life here and an eternal life in a paradise in the afterlife.
And what if Atheists are right: that this life is all there is and the grave is the end? Then I guess believers will still have a full and rewarding life in the here and now and won’t ever know the Atheists were right.
