Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to Questions that Matter, a podcast of the C.S. lewis Institute. I'm your host, Andy Newman, and today it's just me talking to you, and I want to try something that may be a terrible failure. It's an experiment. So the good news is this podcast episode will be relatively short and I hope paidless.
[00:00:26] So I want to try reading something to you. It's an article that I wrote for the C.S. lewis Institute. We have a series of articles that we're developing called Challenging Questions. And I was invited to write the one on can youn Prove the Existence of God? Which I then adapted from my recent book, Questioning Indirect Journeys of Belief Through Terrains of Doubt. So I'm, I'm going to read a short article. I think it's only going to be about five minutes or so, but I, I, I'm a big fan of Kevin DeYoung's podcast Life and Books and everything. And every so often on those podcasts, well, quite often he has a guest or two or three guests, and they go for 45 minutes to an hour, sometimes longer than an hour. But then every so often he says, today I'm just going to read to you a piece that I had published in Wherever, and it's only five minutes of him reading something. So I've never done this. On questions that matter, you may say, randy, that's a question that doesn't matter to me. Or you may say, that was nice. Thanks. Please don't ever do that again. Or you might say, oh, that was okay. Every so often. I'd be up for that. So please give us some feedback about whether you think this experiment was a success or a failure. There's a link in the show Notes, I think, where you can email me, you can email me through the C.S. lewis Institute website. You can find me on there, or you can even email me directly@randydavid newmanmail.com so here is this challenging question article I wrote called can youn Prove the Existence of God?
[00:02:13] This might be the shortest question and answer article you'll ever read or hear. If the question is can you prove the existence of God? My answer is no.
[00:02:23] You may wonder then why I, along with millions of other people, believe in God. The answer is, the answer to that question might be a bit longer. My answer begins with some questions. What if we don't need a proof? What if we have pointers instead of proofs? What if we can't be absolutely certain about God's existence, but we can have a very high level of confidence that God exists? What if asking for demanding absolute certainty belies a level of arrogance that seems unrealistic for mere humans with our limited levels of intelligence, it seems that a demand for absolute certainty comes from an exalted view of human reason propounded during the so called enlightenment of the 18th century. Pre Enlightenment views, especially those found in the Bible, tell us we can have great confidence not only in God's existence, but also his goodness, love and grace. Knowing him is our greatest privilege.
[00:03:33] If confidence is a more realistic expectation than certainty, perhaps we should look for pointers instead of proofs.
[00:03:42] A short search on the Internet for debates between atheists and Christians can lead to exchanges about proofs for God's existence.
[00:03:51] Introductory philosophy textbooks recount so called proofs by Anselm, Aquinas, Augustine and others.
[00:03:59] Even some whose names don't begin with the letter A.
[00:04:03] They attach labels like ontological, cosmological, moral and teleological. I've invited friends to debates about this issue and I've even sponsored some. I've been embarrassed when these proofs failed to prove if a skeptic can find one hole in one of the arguments. I've doubted if even Ansel, Aquinas and Augustine could have turned the tide.
[00:04:29] But what if we don't really need a proof? What if we need only pointers that suggest a belief in the supernatural, that it makes more sense than a rejection of the supernatural? What if you can't prove Jesus really said all those things in the New Testament that claim he said those things? But the archaeological, historical and manuscript evidence points far more to in the direction of acceptance than in dismissal. What if you can't prove God created the world with a sense of order or design, but all the complexity and beauty in the physical universe suggest this is more likely than the conclusion that this happened through chaos and chance?
[00:05:17] If we're seeking confidence more than certainty, one factor can help toward our goal coherence.
[00:05:26] If all belief systems contain things that we can know and things that we can't, we should look to see which systems hold together best or which beliefs resonate with the reality that we see all around us. Here's an illustration.
[00:05:44] Let's say you're walking in the woods and you come upon a turtle sitting atop a tree stump there which is three feet off the ground, three feet above the ground. Picture it. You got it. Turtle sitting on a tree stump. Three feet off the ground or three feet above the level ground.
[00:06:05] Knowing what you know about trees and turtles, a few conclusions seem more likely than others. We know that trees don't just stop growing with a flat surface on top. We know people often cut down trees with saws that make for a flat surface on a tree trunk. We also know that turtles crawl horizontally and can't ascend three foot vertical planes. We could conclude that a someone cut down the tree and someone lifted the turtle and put it on top of the stump.
[00:06:39] Or we could conclude that a the tree stopped growing and part of it fell off, leaving a perfectly flat surface on the stump and b the turtle climbed up the vertical surface until it got to the horizontal plane and stopped for a rest.
[00:06:58] One conclusion coheres better with what we know about the reality of trees and turtles.
[00:07:05] Now let's consider some issues that are more important than how a turtle got on top of a tree stump.
[00:07:12] We live in a world with many competing perspectives, some religious and some naturalistic. A Christian perspective says we live in an ordered world created by a good God who made people in his image. The naturalistic perspective believes we evolved by random chance in a universe without any purposeful cause.
[00:07:35] We also live in a world where people value equality and respect.
[00:07:39] Which belief system supports our commonly held values? How did we arrive at believing we should treat people with impartiality and kindness?
[00:07:51] We can't know with absolute certainty how or when our world was created or grasp all the complexities of human existence.
[00:07:59] But I want to suggest that we can have a high level of confidence that it makes more sense to believe we we live in a created world with a personal God than to believe we are nothing more than cosmic accidents. I say this because we treat people with dignity and fairness, or at least we believe we should. And values like equality and respect cohere better with the Christian view than the naturalistic one.
[00:08:28] What tips the scale in favor of belief in God is the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The New Testament claims no one has ever seen God but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
[00:08:50] The invisible God took on visible flesh so that we could know that he exists. More than that, we can experience God's love for us displayed most powerfully when Jesus died to atone for the sins of people who were made to relate to their Creator. Jesus teaching about God's nature has captivated the hearts and minds of millions of followers for centuries. This kind of confidence can transform doubtful skeptics into joyful worshipers.
[00:09:24] I hope that's helpful for you. I hope the reading of it worked for you. Please let us know what you think and like all of our Challenging Questions articles. You can now find them on our website cslewisinstitute.org you can read them there, give us feedback about that or any other aspect of our website. We hope all of our resources help you love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. Thanks Sa.
