“a deity whose existence can never be proven”
I don’t believe that the thinking behind that premise is as rigorous as that generally demanded in scientific endeavors.
If there were an omnipotent God, so far above us in intelligence and puissance as to be able to create the universe, He would be able to demonstrate His existence to whom he pleased, while denying people the means necessary to prove His existence to other people.
That’s just a matter of logic, though. Not only *can* His existence be proven, it *has* been proven to many people now living. If one approaches the matter appropriately, one can discover many intelligent, educated, level-headed people to whom God has proven His existence.
Many would say that the inability of these people to prove God’s existence to third parties demonstrates the invalidity of the experiences they hold to be direct contact with God. A “scientific” experiment, you see, must be replicable. The problem with that argument is that God is not subject to scientific experiment. Contact is at His initiative only.
Still, no person is able to prove to another that his encounter with God was genuine.
Consider that as a logical problem. A schizophrenic cannot “prove” to others that he sees hallucinations, yet we accept that he does. On the other hand, when a credible source claims to have had an encounter with God, many will dismiss the evidence of that report on the grounds that...wait for it...it couldn’t have happened because God doesn’t exist.
Circular logic, anyone?
But wait, some might say, we have the evidence of *many* schizophrenics all reporting hallucinations, and their reported experiences are consistent in many ways. It is the combination of the number of reports with their consistency that is convincing.
And one can say the same thing of people who have encountered God. There are many, and their reports are consistent.
That, say the God-haters, is either because their experiences are hallucinatory, sharing the consistency of the schizophrenic experience, or fraudulent, and therefore deliberately consistent in fabrication.
However, sufficient investigation will reveal that these reports are numerous, consistent, *and* quite often involve elements that *could*not* have originated with the individual reporting the encounter.
And yet, this immense mass of evidence, spanning more than 2,000 years, is dismissed out of hand by the God-haters on the grounds that...here it is again...the evidence for God’s existence couldn’t possibly be valid because God doesn’t exist.
They say, “I don’t want to hear that God has proved his existence to thousands of people...though I do accept the reality of historical events for which far less evidence exists. I want some person to prove it directly to *me.* I’m not going to take anyone’s word for it that he had an encounter with God, any more than I would take their word for, say, the sequencing of the human genome or any of the thousands of other scientific facts that I have not seen for myself.”
The charge of dismissing arguments or evidence “out of hand” is often seen on the Internet, though robbed of much of its force by overuse.
However, most of the people who demand proof of God’s existence have, in fact, dismissed the very possibility of such evidence a priori, solely on the grounds that their conclusion precludes its existence.
As G. K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, “If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, “For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity.” I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case, as in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-Christianity of the average educated man to-day is almost always, to do him justice, made up of these loose but living experiences. I can only say that my evidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it. For when I look at these various anti-Christian truths, I simply discover that none of them are true.”
(Orthodoxy is available for free on line.)
I could spend all night commenting on the many nuances of your last post, but frankly, I don’t see the point of doing so. Your reference to agnostics and atheists as “God-haters” is more than just inaccurate — it shows a deep bias that reveals your lack of objectivity.
This comment of yours is telling: “If there were an omnipotent God, so far above us in intelligence and puissance as to be able to create the universe, He would be able to demonstrate His existence to whom he pleased, while denying people the means necessary to prove His existence to other people.” I have to concede you are right, in that as a last resort, a believer can always fall back on the “God can do anything he wants, and who are we to question the ‘mind’ of God?” Well, I do. I suggest to you that there is nothing rational about a supernatural entity that hides the ball except to a select few “special” (or “chosen”) people. Why would a supernatural entity that needs worshipping (any interest concept in and of itself, I hope you recognize) “hide” its existence to begin with, or reveal its existence to only a few members of its creation? It makes no sense, and this “secret club” stuff is one of the most ridiculous aspects of religious belief. Why in the hell would a supernatural being go to the trouble of hiding secret messages revealing “truths” in a Bible “code” when delivering tablets with “handwritten” instructions gets the point across so much more efficiently and effectively?
Then you wrote: “Not only *can* His existence be proven, it *has* been proven to many people now living. If one approaches the matter appropriately, one can discover many intelligent, educated, level-headed people to whom God has proven His existence.”
My response: Baloney. See above. Furthermore, God does not speak to people. Period. Except serial killers, apparently. Your point about schizophrenics proves MY point. People may believe they talk to God (they are kidding themselves) but people who actually hear back are psychotic. Maybe God has a special love for paranoid and schizophrenic people, but more likely, those folks are just imagining they hear God. The reason no one truly gets a clear and unambiguous message from God is not all that difficult to understand. It’s because there is nothing there except a deity man conjures in his own image.