Whether God Exists

I've been part of an interesting discussion on Dboy's Steaming Pile of Blog about the existence of God. In fact Ludicrousity and I along with a group of about 30 others are discussing the existence of God right now in class at Kingsley College. I've read (or at least scanned through) all the posts (all 46 of em!) and it's been a great discussion.

Master Peebody has said that maybe he could believe if God came down out of the clouds and shook his hand thus removing any doubt about his existence. In one sense God HAS come down out of the clouds and shaken our hands. At least that what Christians believe is the meaning behind Jesus Christ's entry into the world. He is God in the flesh - who became human so that we could see, touch, and know experientially what the otherwise unknowable and invisible God is like. Remember the old song? "What if God were one of us? Just a slob like one of us?" (Okay, now I'm showing my age.) Of course, that's not quite the same as what Master Peebody is looking for, but it's about as close as we're going to get. (Even then, as someone else rightly posted), some people in Jesus' day saw his miracles and even his resurrection but still would not believe.

I'm not saying what follows is the case with Master Peabody who I don't know other than from his posts and from those he seems like a nice guy asking some of the most important questions a person can ask. But it's true of SOME people that the intellectual objections they put forward are not real objections at all but a mask for a deeper set of problems, i.e. moral and ethical ones. You see if I say I believe in God my life has to change. If I say I believe that Jesus is the Son of God I then have to take seriously the fact that he wants my life. He wants to be the Lord of my existence and human pride finds that hard to give up. "Darwin has disproved God" can often simply mean, "I don't want to give my life over to my Creator."

Finding watertight proofs for God's existence is a fool's project because there simply are no undeniable, unassailable, take it to the bank, proofs. (There are of course very strong evidences, but they are in the nature of circumstantial rather than forensic evidences.) There are other ways than intellectual proofs to approach this problem however. C.S. Lewis suggests a little thought experiment. Close your eyes and think about the world we currently live in with all that it contains and ask yourself whether it makes sense, whether it offers up any kind of ultimately satisfying meaning. Now open your eyes, and mentally erase that picture. Close your eyes again and imagine the same world but this time imagine it AS THOUGH CHRISTIANITY WERE TRUE. Now, does it seem to make more sense? Does it now seem to offer up a greater purpose to existence? Lewis thought it did and I agree with him. There is a deep magic at the heart of this world if we can only imagine our way (and I don't mean "fantasize" - there's a difference) into the reality of it.

The bottom line is Christians do not claim to have ALL the answers to life's questions. They only claim to have the best set of answers on offer. That's good enough for me.