Evidence

[Lantern Keirebu]

Here's a question I have for my theistic evolution brethren. What evidence do you have to give to say God exists? If I were an agnostic or an atheist, what reason would you give me that would convince me the God of the Bible is real?

 

[hms lion]

Well, since the foundation of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus, I would probably start there. I would point to the historical evidence for Jesus's existence and resurrection. I would talk about how said belief was ingrained in Christianity from the very start, in spite of the beliefs of the disciple's Jewish background, and the prevailing views of the pagan Roman world.

 

[lesliedellow]

Here's a question I have for my theistic evolution brethren. What evidence do you have to give to say God exists? If I were an agnostic or an atheist, what reason would you give me that would convince me the God of the Bible is real?

You can't convince somebody who doesn't want to be convinced, and, in my experience, atheists don't want to be convinced.

They are certainly not convinced by somebody trying to argue against established scientific fact.

 

[KWCrazy]

God's existence cannot be proved. God offers us salvation through faith, which is the belief in things unproven. God stopped proving Himself to man after the arrival of Jesus. If someone will accept nothing short of absolute proof that God is real, he will have it when it's too late and he stands before God.

The best way to show the existence of God is to demonstrate that existence by maintaining the peace and love of God in your heart. If you're a cantankerous, miserable person you aren't going to have much success convincing someone that you have the Holy Spirit within you. Demonstrate the existence of God, don't try to prove it. This is hard to do over the internet with people who know nothing about you. For the most part, though, people are here to reaffirm what they already believe. Atheists aren't going to pay much attention to your arguments, they will be too busy promoting their own.

 

[Lantern Keirebu]

Well, since the foundation of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus, I would probably start there. I would point to the historical evidence for Jesus's existence and resurrection. I would talk about how said belief was ingrained in Christianity from the very start, in spite of the beliefs of the disciple's Jewish background, and the prevailing views of the pagan Roman world.

That's definitely a talking point, but I wouldn't blame anyone if they had questions about that. There's enough to say Jesus most likely existed and was crucified, but as to actual evidence of His resurrection, there is nothing defnitive.

You can't convince somebody who doesn't want to be convinced, and, in my experience, atheists don't want to be convinced.

They are certainly not convinced by somebody trying to argue against established scientific fact.

I would say it's only a small number of people who willingly evade the thought of God existing or a god. I believe most people want to know whether or not God exist. Now, the overall reason why I ask this question here, is because theistic evolutionists accept most scientific observations. So in essence would be in agreement with a lot of what atheists accept of the world. If that is the case, what evidence could one present to an atheist or an agnostic?

God's existence cannot be proved. God offers us salvation through faith, which is the belief in things unproven. God stopped proving Himself to man after the arrival of Jesus. If someone will accept nothing short of absolute proof that God is real, he will have it when it's too late and he stands before God.

The best way to show the existence of God is to demonstrate that existence by maintaining the peace and love of God in your heart. If you're a cantankerous, miserable person you aren't going to have much success convincing someone that you have the Holy Spirit within you. Demonstrate the existence of God, don't try to prove it. This is hard to do over the internet with people who know nothing about you. For the most part, though, people are here to reaffirm what they already believe. Atheists aren't going to pay much attention to your arguments, they will be too busy promoting their own.

Based on what the Bible says, God's existence can certainly be proven. The thing is however, it very much seems like if evolution is true and the billions of years is true, you can't prove God's existence. This is contradictory. How can the Bible say we can know for sure God exists, and yet nature tells us we can't know for sure?


So I'm interested in hearing more answers to this question. Because theistic evolutionists agree with most scientific observations and their implications, you probably couldn't point to those things as evidence for God's existence.

 

[lesliedellow]

I would say it's only a small number of people who willingly evade the thought of God existing or a god. I believe most people want to know whether or not God exist. Now, the overall reason why I ask this question here, is because theistic evolutionists accept most scientific observations. So in essence would be in agreement with a lot of what atheists accept of the world. If that is the case, what evidence could one present to an atheist or an agnostic?

One could, for example, point to the fact that gravity would only have to be one part in ten to the fifteen stronger or weaker for this universe to either not exist at all, or for it to exist but be full of nothing except hydrogen and helium.

But if somebody does not want to be convinced, as they generally do not, they can dream up ad hoc hypotheses to explain that way. Such as there being a near infinite number of universes, and we supposedly live in the one which just happened to strike lucky.

 

[disciple1938]

Here's a question I have for my theistic evolution brethren. What evidence do you have to give to say God exists? If I were an agnostic or an atheist, what reason would you give me that would convince me the God of the Bible is real?

I wouldn't. The Christians commission is to proclaim the good news not to prove it. It is the commission of thre Holy spirit o convince.

 

[Bjornke]

God's existence cannot be proved. God offers us salvation through faith, which is the belief in things unproven. God stopped proving Himself to man after the arrival of Jesus. If someone will accept nothing short of absolute proof that God is real, he will have it when it's too late and he stands before God.

The best way to show the existence of God is to demonstrate that existence by maintaining the peace and love of God in your heart. If you're a cantankerous, miserable person you aren't going to have much success convincing someone that you have the Holy Spirit within you. Demonstrate the existence of God, don't try to prove it. This is hard to do over the internet with people who know nothing about you. For the most part, though, people are here to reaffirm what they already believe. Atheists aren't going to pay much attention to your arguments, they will be too busy promoting their own.

So true! generally it is harder to convince someone unless they have experienced it on their own, or are in need of some help. I have seen an atheist who losses his entire family finally turn to God, because in his loss he finally sought God and was surprised to see how much He comforted him.

 

[gluadys]

God's existence cannot be proved. God offers us salvation through faith, which is the belief in things unproven. God stopped proving Himself to man after the arrival of Jesus. If someone will accept nothing short of absolute proof that God is real, he will have it when it's too late and he stands before God.

The best way to show the existence of God is to demonstrate that existence by maintaining the peace and love of God in your heart. If you're a cantankerous, miserable person you aren't going to have much success convincing someone that you have the Holy Spirit within you. Demonstrate the existence of God, don't try to prove it. This is hard to do over the internet with people who know nothing about you. For the most part, though, people are here to reaffirm what they already believe. Atheists aren't going to pay much attention to your arguments, they will be too busy promoting their own.

So true! generally it is harder to convince someone unless they have experienced it on their own, or are in need of some help. I have seen an atheist who losses his entire family finally turn to God, because in his loss he finally sought God and was surprised to see how much He comforted him.

Usually when we say the existence of God can't be proven, we mean "can't be proven by scientific means" or "can't be demonstrated by formal logic". We overlook the fact that there are other kinds of proof--the proof of the heart, the proof of experience.

It's true, that sort of proof can't be conveyed in an internet post, or even well by words generally--other than poetry. But it is a powerful proof and probably the only convincing proof--as in the case mentioned above.

There is an old saw that Christians are the only bible the non-Christian world ever reads. The only effective way to show that God is real is to live in a way that makes God real for those who interact with you. Cultivating the fruits of the Spirit in one's own life is a better proof of God's existence than any syllogistic proof.

 

[lesliedellow]

I wouldn't. The Christians commission is to proclaim the good news not to prove it. It is the commission of thre Holy spirit o convince.

I couldn't have put it better myself. Every single time conversion is mentioned in the New Testament, it is said to have been the work of God, or of the Holy Spirit.

 

[frogman2x]

Here's a question I have for my theistic evolution brethren. What evidence do you have to give to say God exists? If I were an agnostic or an atheist, what reason would you give me that would convince me the God of the Bible is real?

If you were an agnostisc or atheists there is nothing you could do that would convince them the God of the Bible is real.

All we can do is tell them what we believe and why we beleive it and leave the results up to God.

It is important when discussing creaionism that we avoid using the Bible to much and insist they stick to what real science has proven and how they proved it.

kermit

 

[Papias]

Lantern-

I pretty much agree with the earlier posters. You can't (and aren't expected to) force them to believe.

I've got atheist and agnostic friends. They are just regular people - they aren't monsters, evil, sadists, etc. Together we sometimes change each other's minds, have good conversations either way, or whatever. I've seen some of them change their views, say, from atheist to agnostic, or Mormon to atheist, or whatever.

Will they all become Christians? I leave it up to God.

Papias

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

Here's a question I have for my theistic evolution brethren. What evidence do you have to give to say God exists? If I were an agnostic or an atheist, what reason would you give me that would convince me the God of the Bible is real?

My personal opinion?

I've never liked the "argument from design" e.g. that life and everything else in the universe is so complex that it couldn't possibly have originated by itself. Not only do we know that's not true (we see complex organs forming all the time) but it also relies on ignorance - the more new pieces of evidence that are discovered, the weaker than argument becomes.

That said... I still think the fact that inanimate material (like atoms or proteins) follows a set of rules - natural laws - is interesting. Instead of everything being made out of thin air, one step at a time, it's as though the universe and everything in it has been programmed to generate itself, by something more rational and logical than we are.

Maybe the design hypothesis should be replaced by the programmer hypothesis.

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

I also agree with hms lion's comment: despite what so many atheists believe, there is a great deal of historical evidence for the existance of Jesus. There is no evidence that Odin or Zeus or Horus ever existed.

Of course, there is plenty of historical evidence for other religious figures like Mohammed and Buddha too, so we can't judge how valid a religion is solely by whether or not its founder was real.

I disagree with some of the other comments though - that people can only believe in God if they recieve the Holy Spirit. Maybe we're just using it as an excuse when we're not convincing enough, or just plain lazy.

 

[Anthony Puccetti]

Here's a question I have for my theistic evolution brethren. What evidence do you have to give to say God exists? If I were an agnostic or an atheist, what reason would you give me that would convince me the God of the Bible is real?

I'm not a believer in the theory of evolution,but the evidence is the very existence of the universe and the order and life of the Earth. Only an omnipotent being could have the necessary power to make matter come into existence,because the difference between nothing and existence is absolute. And it is reasonable to believe that the order and life on earth is created and sustained by supernatural power,because natural causes alone do not have the necessary power to organize themselves in purposeful arrangements that sustain living creatures or are living creatures. The necessary power could only be above nature,or super-natural.

The naturalistic and mechanistic perspective fostered by the natural sciences has led many people to think that nature is self-creating and self-sufficient and made them unable to imperceptive of the truth that nature is created and sustained by supernatural power.

 

[Archie the Preacher]

Here's a question I have for my theistic evolution brethren. What evidence do you have to give to say God exists? If I were an agnostic or an atheist, what reason would you give me that would convince me the God of the Bible is real?

You are pulling the same phony scam the agnostics and atheists pull when they are trying to stir up some bother.

No matter what is presented, it isn't good enough. We could have Jesus come in and slap them upside the head and they'd have an excuse to NOT believe. Why? They don't want to believe; their entire self-image would go spiraling down in flames if they even consider the evidence.

The same for you, LK. No logic or argument is going to impress you, because you have the silly notion that claiming God created the Universe in six days will be the convincing factor. And like them, your self-image goes down in flames if you even consider the evidence.

Here's the reality: You need to work on witnessing to whoever you can - God will make sure you and they find each other - and stop tearing down other Christians.

 

[MKJ]

An old thread, but what an odd question. None of the arguments made for the existence of God are impacted at all by whether one believes in evolution or not.

There are however many ex-Christians out there who were told by someone-or-other that they could not be a Christian and believe in evolution or modern cosmology. So when they looked at the evidence and found it convincing, they gave up on being Christian.

Very sad.

 

[ForJesusChrist]

Why are you asking these questions, if you are a Christian?

 

[Doctor Strangelove]

Here's a question I have for my theistic evolution brethren. What evidence do you have to give to say God exists? If I were an agnostic or an atheist, what reason would you give me that would convince me the God of the Bible is real?

There are people on the atheist side who claim that they can scientifically prove that God does not exist, and there are Christians who try to use science to prove that God exists. Both approaches are misguided and make a poor use of science.

 

[Doctor Strangelove]

Well, since the foundation of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus, I would probably start there. I would point to the historical evidence for Jesus's existence and resurrection. I would talk about how said belief was ingrained in Christianity from the very start, in spite of the beliefs of the disciple's Jewish background, and the prevailing views of the pagan Roman world.

For a Christian, the starting point and the end point is Christ, or should be. Some misguided Christians take as the starting point the Bible, and the literal reading of the first chapters of Genesis.

The occupation of some YEC people seems to be if they can make a science that fits in with their reading of Genesis, then the Bible is proven to be scientifically true, so then people will eventually believe in Jesus because the book of Genesis has all of these amazing, scientifically-validated facts. I think this is poor apologetics. What happens is, someone will "witness" by starting with some unclear verse from Genesis, then the discussion will veer off into topics like dinosaurs, continental drift, alleged problems with the speed of light, and often a rant about, "I don't know about you, but my grandmother wasn't a monkey." By this time, the person who is being "witnessed" to is completely confused and alienated.