Christian reading

Chapter 5. Evidence for the nonexistence of God (ending)

Proof 6:

The omnipresent God does not exist because he is nowhere to be found. No scientific experiment can register the presence of God. The so-called supernatural phenomena can be explained scientifically and without any reference to God.

God appears only to those he wants to show himself to – and in his own good time. Is it surprising that God will not reveal himself to those who do not believe in him? Yet, there are many people who have found God in their lives. What better proof can there be than one’s own personal experience?

Science rejects the concept of God a priori by the very methodology it uses. Therefore, scientific discoveries are no proof of "God’s absence," but rather they provide evidence that this type of methodology precludes God’s existence from the start.

It is also worth noting that science does not know everything. New scientific discoveries replace old ones again and again and, sometimes, totally reject the beliefs of the past. This means that the scientific methodology is far from perfect.

Proof 7:

The One and Only God does not exist because there are so many world religions, and they are all radically different from each other. It is impossible to determine which religion is closer to the truth.

The existence of different religions underscores the fact that humans have been granted the freedom to believe as they wish. Each believer determines for himself or herself what the truth is.

There are many radically different theories in science as well. Does it mean that science has not been successful in its search for truth?

Proof 8:

All-wise God does not exist because faith in God is mostly practiced by uneducated people. Highly educated people tend towards Atheism. Faith is a product of a religious environment.

There are many believers among intellectuals too, just as there are many atheists among the uneducated.

A person’s social environment is certainly a factor in forming his or her worldview, but it does not have the final say. There are enough believers in atheistic societies, and there are enough atheists in theistic countries.

Proof 9:

The one true God does not exist because there are errors and contradictions in all the sacred scriptures.

Errors can be critical and non-critical. Religions that had critical errors in their doctrines have eventually ceased to exist. Minor errors in sacred scriptures only prove the humanness of the scribes. It is human to err; God makes no mistakes.

***

Intelligent atheists understand the futility of such an approach for "proving" the non-existence of God, so they change their tactics slightly. Since it is impossible to prove the non-existence of God with absolute certainty, they formulate the problem differently: what is the probability of God’s existence? It is assumed that God’s existence and non-existence have varying degrees of probability. Therefore, atheistic reasoning proceeds as follows.

Proof 10:

The universe is highly complex, and the probability of its random appearance is very small. If the universe was created by God, then it follows that he must be a much more complex object and, consequently, the probability of his existence is much lower. Therefore, the probability that the universe came into existence without the participation of God is higher than the probability that the universe was created by God. In other words, God’s existence is statistically improbable.

This reasoning is based on an erroneous understanding of what probability is. The probability of random appearance of the universe is not “very small”; it equals zero. And there is no justifiable reason for making this value any higher. This is directly related to the question of how the universe began in the first place, which we will touch upon a little later.

As for the probability of God’s existence, we simply don’t have enough data to make any calculations. God is above all human concepts; he exists outside of time and space. So how can we calculate the probability of his existence? God is incomprehensible to the mind.

(to be continued)