Why I Don't Attempt to Offer Evidence for God Anymore

 

Former Protestant minister and current atheism proponent Dan Barker gave a talk at the Oxford Union Debating Society about eight years ago. His thesis was evidence that God does not exist. His opening assertions rested largely on the fact that early religion ascribed deity to natural events or what is called animism. In short, a cave man heard thunder, so to rationalize it and find solace, the cave man assigned a god to thunder. It was about making the unknown knowable as a psychological tool to cope with what's scary. It was about re-gaining control.

It would seem that Barker cast the presumption that all religion was a device to control and answer for the unknown. Barker's whole argument starts from the place of the objective, observable, and material world. In his mind, knowledge is only available from what can be directly confirmed through science -- the real. I guess he hasn't seen the Matrix. 

I get it. We all want assurance that what we believe is the best possible answer. Objective truth is a safeguard. We can lay out evidences for God all day and still not present a strong enough case for objectivity. Theistic truth is largely experiential, faith-oriented, and what physical proofs we offer might just be circumstantial. Even if our evidences are plausible, to a materialist, it's still too heady. 

I do have a counter claim to the whole animism thing. In 2nd Temple Judaic thought, which Christianity was birthed from, nature deities were believed to be real. Granted, these deities were not the Almighty, but rather angels and demons, who had been tasked as God's heavenly staff managers. They took responsibility for some aspect of God's divine creation. So a god or regent of thunder was not so  because man needed an answer for thunder, but because God's energies of managing creation were translated through his ministering spirits -- his laborers. Storms were not the gods themselves, but gods (small "g") were responsible for cosmic and global maintenance on behalf of God. 

If early Christianity and Judaism believed this, then those who worshiped and offered to the gods of war, thunder, the harvest, or whatever were probably of a common mindset. It was not that nature was deity (save pantheism and panentheism), but that these angelic beings had an assigned role within nature. Not pure animism in the slightest. 

Regardless, Barker's declination of Christianity is built upon his presuppositions and biases, largely because he wasn't finding solid enough proofs. Let me be the first here to admit that I possess zero provable grounds for God's existence or evidence that is indisputable from a materialist perspective. Yet, I believe knowledge is not just materially objective. I may lack physical proof for God beyond the circumstantial, but theism is logical nonetheless. The simple fact of existence is a logical testimony for the potential for God. Physicists like Michio Kaku actually give room for God because there was a cause to the big bang, though this is likely to be connected in physics to an infinite symmetry of vibrating strings in string theory, which suggests multiple universes and big bangs happening all over in an overarching vibration of energy (energy can only translate and can never cease). Oddly, the Orthodox Church often speaks of God's activities as his energies. Simplified, someone  plucked the strings or agitated the bathwater that formed new bubble universes. 

It would seem that science is actually OK with ideas beyond our material universe and even the possibility for God. This doesn't suggest that this God is sentient or emotive, but existence does suggest that we know far too little to make such faith assertions -- and they are -- like God does not exist. Perhaps we are at a draw then. I can neither sufficiently prove God for the materialist, nor can they prove the absence of God in the immaterial. 

Scripture says that Christians ought to give a reason for their faith, but that doesn't mean I need to obnoxiously make my case for people who have already rationalized against it. I can give my case without trying to prove anything. So, I don't bother to make materialist claims for God anymore. Instead, I just point to our finiteness and let people sift through the evidence of my own life lived for Christ. Sadly, that proof is sometimes wanting. 

So, stop giving perceived proofs and start living love out. Let God's energies be fulfilled through you, as we are the replacement regents and agents of God for the demons who fell from their managerial tasks. God's energies in us -- becoming more like Christ -- will give weight to what seems only circumstantial to the materialist-atheist. 

Peace!