For those of you in church on Sunday, I hope you enjoyed the introduction to the summer series, "Difficult Bible Passages." Obviously I was speaking to those who already believe in God. My premis was if you believe in God, then believing that he created the heavens and the earth as well as all living creatures should be a natural step. From there, that should help you to believe other passages of the Bible you may not understand.
At our elders meeting after church, Josh made the point that maybe we need to "prove" that God exisits first. That's a whole 'nother topic and sermon. In reality, no one can "prove" that God exists. Either your heart is soft and willing to listen to the voice of God to even become a believer or you are stubborn and prideful and don't want to believe in God.
What do you all think, can we prove that God exists?
2 comments:
Hi Evan and fellow Coastlanders,
I have to make a quick clarification on the Elder’s discussion last Sunday in regards to the existence of God. First of all, I never said that we should try to “prove” that God exists. There is no way to prove that God exists with 100% certainty. However, the issue of faith and science has been framed by the secular culture in such a way that seems to suggest that for an individual to believe in the Bible, its miracle accounts, and its creation story then one has to “suspend” their reason and intellect.
The point I was trying to make on Sunday (I guess rather poorly) is that this “faith verses Science” perspective is a false dichotomy. In actuality, there are very good reasons to have a Justified True Belief in a God who created and interacts on a personal level with His creation. A JTB is a belief in which one moves from Evidence > Knowledge > Trust (or faith). For example, I have a JTB that a chair will hold me up if I examine its design (Evidence) and see that it is structurally sound (Knowledge). I would be a fool to believe a chair that has had its legs broken off but with the seat barely balancing on the remains of the four legs would hold my weight. If I were to trust in this seat to hold me up I would have a Blind Faith despite the Evidence (broken legs) that gives me the Knowledge (structurally unsound chair) informing me otherwise.
The secular media would have us believe that our Faith in a Creator God is on the same caliber of the faith in the dilapidated chair. The world claims that the Evidence (scientific observation) gives us Knowledge (evolution, random impersonally developed universe, etc.) that would have any “thinking” person reject any notion of a Creator God.
This is simply not the case. There is much evidence and argumentation that supports the belief of the God of the Bible. (To name a few: The Cosmological Argument, The Design Argument, The Moral Argument, and An Argument from Consciousness). These are not the same things as a direct proof, but these taken together build a case for the high probability of a self-existent, personal Agent that is timeless, changeless, immaterial, moral, and extraordinarily powerful (powerful enough to create out of nothing). In this context, our discussion on Sunday makes perfect sense. If there exists this type of God, it is not unreasonable to believe in the miracles described in the Bible
In reference to our conversation Sunday (in which I attempted to summarize the Cosmological Argument), I concluded my thoughts with the question: What is more probable to believe: that there is something that is self-existent with the power to create the universe out of nothing or that nothing (the absence of a thing) brought forth the universe. Thank God, we do not have to put our brain on the shelf to believe in the Creation event or its Cause.
This is a fantastic post. Thanks tons Josh! This is exactly how I envisioned this blog site to work. I know most people only read it and don't post, so thanks for clarifiying your position.
And by the way, I never meant to suggest that Josh said we could "prove" that God exists. He just brought up a great point in our elders meeting and I appreciated it.
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