Is There Proof God Exist?

It’s interesting how one can grow up believing things as fundamental as God’s existence, and yet feel wholly unprepared to defend those beliefs when put on the spot. Ministry a lot of times is focused on teaching the word of God and scripture. We are not taught at church the inaccuracies of the scientific teaching we (our children) are taught in school. The Pastor is not telling the congregation:

“Hey are you aware that your children are being taught that Haeckel’s Embryos are 100% accurate and fact? That they are the BEST evidence for Darwinism?”….basically Ernst Haeckel’s comparative drawings depict embryos of a fish, salamander, tortoise, chicken, hog, calf, rabbit and human side-by-side at three stages of development. The illustrations support Darwin’s assertion that the striking similarities between early embryos is by far the strongest class of facts for evolution.

BUT they are FAKE! First exposed in the 1860’s by his colleagues. Haeckel himself admitted to faking the illustrations. He actually used the same woodcut to print embryos from different classes because he was so confident in his theory he figured he did not have to draw them separately. In other cases he doctored the drawings to make them look more similar than they really are. At any rate, his drawings misrepresent the embryos.

“By the way folks, this is STILL to this day being taught in school as fact and one of the foundations for Darwin’s theory of Evolution.”

This is in no way reflects negatively on our Pastors. Today, as if knowing I was going to do this revision, my Pastor touched on this very subject. Pastor Ken said, there are two main things to consider when it comes to a sermon…depth and width. If the message is too deep it becomes off-putting, if the message is too wide it becomes watered down.

Apologetics is not something that is currently common place in the Church. This is something that needs to be addressed at a group level and not during the Sunday sermons. Where there can be Q&A etc….

That’s a normal experience – not something to feel bad about.Let it motivate you to think more deeply about your faith, and thus it will be used for good.

What trips up many Christians is the over reaching nature of the question itself. Prove is a strong word – one that sets the bar at an unrealistically high level. How about: Proof beyond a reasonable doubt?

In Scripture, we’re told to “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15) Giving an answer requires some forethought, but it’s a lot easier than proving something!

So our first response to a friend asking this question might be, “No, I can’t prove God exist, but I can offer some good reasons to believe in him.” If your friend protest, ask him if he can “prove God doesn’t exist.” He’ll quickly see that he doesn’t have proof either.

What are some positive reasons we can give for believing in God (outside of quoting Bible verses, which most non-believers will not accept)?

Reason #1: God Makes Sense of the Origin of the Universe
“Both philosophically and scientifically.” William Lane Craig said: “I would argue that the universe and time itself had a beginning at some point in the finite past…This is commonly know as the Big Bang, and it is accepted almost universally by the scientist worldwide. But, something cannot just come out of nothing, there has to be a transcendent cause beyond space and time which brought the universe into being.”

Reason #2: God Makes Sense of the Complexity of the Universe
“Scientist have been stunned,” Craig declared, “to discover that the Big Bang was not some chaotic, primordial event, but rather a highly ordered event that required an enormous amount of information…[The universe] had to be fine-tuned to an incomprehensible precision for the existence of life like ourselves. That points in a very compelling way toward the existence of an Intelligent Designer.”

Reason #3: God Makes Sense of Objective Moral Values
“A third factor,” Craig explained, “is the existence of objective moral values. If God does not exist, the objective moral values do not exist. Then morality is just a matter of personal taste…to say that killing innocent children is wrong would just be an expression of taste…But we all know deep down that objective moral values do exist,” he continued, “so it follows logically and inescapably that God exist.”

Reason #4: God Makes Sense of the Resurrection
If Jesus of Nazareth really did come back from the dead, then we have a divine miracle on our hands and, thus, further evidence for the existence of God.

The scientifically supported evidence from the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe to support life, the inescapable existence of objective moral values that originate from beyond us, the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and our own experience with the living savior – these combine to form a powerful case for the existence of God!

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

ROMANS : 1:20