Bible Question:

I am an atheist. I want you to prove to me that there is a god in the world. I believe that science is god. So do not prove that God exists from the Bible, because I know that Jesus said He was god. Can you prove that for me?

Bible Answer:

This week I read a surprising article in Forbes ASAP. I would like to quote it at length for you and then answer your question. Forbes Magazine is a secular publication.

It’s too easy, with the benefit of modernity, hindsight, and all that, to regard science as the most fearless, objective, apolitical, democratic, and open-minded of human endeavors – the seeker of truth. Never mind anything by divine right . . .

Throughout the 16th century, as it gradually dawned on everybody that Columbus hadn’t, after all, hit some island off Japan or India (where he was headed at the time) but that he had in fact come across an entirely new continent, everything epistemological hit the fan. For a comfortable 2,000 years, life, the universe, and everything had been what Aristotle . . . said it would be . . So what was [America] doing there?

Things got rapidly worse in the first decades of the 17th century, as people like Galileo started seeing other centers of attraction, such as Jupiter circled by its moons. To compound the felony, sailors started coming back across the Atlantic to Europe with hundreds of new American animal and plant species that were not described in Aristotle’s list . . .

In the desperate search for some way to bail out the sinking ship or shut the stable door, a couple of quick thinkers came up with some solutions. One was a French engineer named Rene Descartes who . . . suggested that the only way to find truth was to go on doubting until you stripped away all dubious elements so as to arrive at a point where what remained was so self-evident that it was beyond doubt. That would be truth.

The other guy, an English legal eagle by the name of Francis Bacon, opted for correlation and analysis as a means of certainty. Amass enough evidence and you were halfway there. His admirers then came up with a Royal Society for doing this stuff, with correspondents all over the place sending in cards and letters filled with their observations. The Royal Society motto, “Take Nobody’s Word for It,” generated a procedure for making sure other people were seeing what you were seeing, known as “witnessing.” If enough people agreed they were all witnessing the same thing, then it was a “matter of fact.”

In the late 19th century, at the University of Nancy, France, the recent discovery of X-rays convinced people that other rays should be there too. Sure enough, once some guy demonstrated N rays (named after the town), they became a hot ticket to a Ph.D. And, no doubt, somebody got a degree, in N-ray studies. Then one day some American, who hadn’t heard about these rays, said the truth was he couldn’t see them. Sure enough, when everybody looked closer, nor could they. Collapse of theory.

This kind of collapse riddles the history of the so-called truth finding sciences. Here’s a list of the greatest hits of scientific theory collapse. For centuries it was known that disease came from miasma, a foul air emanating from marshes and putrescent materials and such creepy stuff . . . Until 1884, when Louis Pasteur discovered germs. For centuries electricity was a fluid . . . until 1820. It was a well-known fact rotten apples spontaneously generated little worms and grubs found inside them . . . until 1767. The atom was indivisible . . . until 1877 . . . Light was particles until 1801, when it became waves; until 1905, when it became particles again; until 1924, when it became both. And my all time favorite, the one that really makes my point: Space and time were absolutes until 1886, when Ersnt Mach introduced the insidious concept of relativity and set the stage for Einstein.

In the end, the can of worms Columbus opened with his trip to India is this: There is no truth to find. Truth is what you want it to be . . . (James Burke, Forbes ASAP, October 2, 2000).

While I disagree with the author’s summary, it is clear that he made his point. The theories of science are constantly changing because science is a constant search for truth. Science is an art form that seeks truth. It is an art form because a scientist creates an hypothesis, tests the hypothesis, changes the tests when the tests prove to be inadequate and discards the theory if it is wrong. Science is not truth. It is only man’s guess at the truth until something proves it to be wrong.

We Would Need To Be God!

Neither science nor I can prove that God exists. Nor can you prove He does not exist. No one can prove He does or does not exist because we cannot not see Him. In order to prove that, you or I would need to know every part of the universe and everything about the universe because God could be anywhere. We would also have to know everything about the other dimensions of time and existence. In short, we would need to be god to know everything and be everywhere at the same time because God might move. We would need to be god in order to prove His existence. Science and scientists are inadequate for the task.

Science cannot tell us how the stuff that caused the “big-bang” came into existence or where it came from – how anything got started. That is a problem for science if it really is the god of truth. Science cannot tell me why 4,000 or 2,000 year old prophecies in the Bible came true. It cannot tell me how 700 – 500 BC year old prophecies came true predicting the exact week in which Jesus would die. Or, why 1,000 year old prophecies were accurate about Jesus’ birth, life and His death.

What Is Truth?

Our experience is not a measure of truth. Atheism says there is no god. Did science prove that? If so, what is the name of the test for determining that god does not exist? Our experience does not prove or disprove god. I have heard men and women claim their god has done something wonderful for them in their life. People are always using experience as proof that god is real or their religion is correct. How do they know? How can they be sure it was their god and not mine? My God may have lovingly done them a favor! How do we determine truth? I started my quest for truth by determining which sacred book could be validated as truth. The Christian Bible passed the test of fulfilled prophecy. It has hundreds of prophecies that have been fulfilled!  This is the test of truth no other sacred book can match. When the Bible speaks, it speaks truth! Among other claims, it states that Jesus Christ is God.

Conclusion:

Science is not fool proof! It is constantly changing as one theory after another is being revised and updated because we do not really know – we are learning. Evolution is no exception. Science is only as good as the human mind and that is faulty, biased and guilty of serious errors. May I suggest truth can be found in a supernatural book – a sacred book – the Bible. It has been proven to be accurate when it speaks to history and prophecy. It predicted Jesus’ birth and death, including the week in which He would die. It predicted His return to life, and historical records witness to the life, death and miracles of Jesus. Jesus is God! God only asks us to embrace this truth that Jesus is God and wants to be our Lord and Savior.

Suggested Links:

Searching For God
Christians: Are They Wrong?