This post is also available in: 简体中文 繁體中文 Nederlands English Suomi Français Italiano 한국어 Norsk bokmål Português Español Albanian Čeština Deutsch Ελληνικα Indonesia македонски Malti Română Русский Svenska Akkadian Burmese Filipino Georgian Hmong Lao

Auto Transcript:

Some times were asked the question: can we prove the existence of God. You know so it’s a strange idea because in one sense there’s a moral intuition that something exists like Immanuel Kant talked about two great realities that basically inspired him the starry heavens above the moral law within so there was a basic awareness I remember that even as a child I didn’t overtly believe in a God that I followed but I believed that there was a God out there it was almost like there was some sense. So can we prove that God exists I think there are evidential trails but not proof in the sense of a mathematical proof like two plus two equals four I think what we use is a sense of arguments that look for what we call the argument towards the best fit cumulative case arguments so we look at various things like in a murder case or a case trying to prove the issue of as the gale of someone in a crime you have to gather evidence from many different pieces and the cumulative case argument adds up in that sense I think we can point towards the existence of God the probabilities but it’s not the same as a mathematical proof. If I prove we mean equating it with 100% certainty then no we cannot prove with a hundred percent certainty of the existence of God but is the existence of God the most probable explanation for all that is, I think we have reasons we have arguments that have come down through history that make the reasonableness of God and God’s existence very very probable and likely. What do we mean when we say proof everyone should have a certain level of certainty that they’re looking for and 100% certainty is just out of the question. We can’t be 100% certain that we even exist we can’t have 100 percent certainty that we’re even here when we’re talking from a philosophical standpoint so the question is how much certainty are you willing to have before you act or believe something and that’s what we need to come up with thresholds of certainty what is the most coherent explanation what’s the best explanation for the world around us and if we look at it from that perspective as we do everything in life then we can have very good reason to believe that God exists most of the time when people ask that kind of a question they’re looking for the type of proof that we’re really only find in mathematics and maybe some of the hard sciences but that type of proof is really not necessary it’s not even helpful when you’re trying to determine whether or not God exists and what our relationship with him should be what is more interesting is whether or not we can come to know that God exists and whether we can really have a relationship with him and that is not that is not a difficult question to answer because the answer is yes God has revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ well I believe we attempt to prove God’s existence or argue for God’s existence because the evidence is so strong it’s so compelling that it seems almost illogical to argue against God’s existence so again if somebody sets out to prove God’s existence with a hundred percent certainty they’re likely to be disappointed but if they set out to show the reasonableness for the existence of God then I think there are very strong arguments that can be made and we can have some degree of satisfaction with that there is there is grounding there is a foundation for belief in God