Can God’s existence be proven?

 Or conversely, can anyone confirm that God does not exist? And if neither one or the other could be done, what about it? Today, we will talk about the introduction to the arguments for and against God’s existence and will try to answer whether and what such debates are significant.

We live in a time when not only the online world is full of various debates and arguments for and against God’s existence.

This topic has fascinated me for a long time, and it is most interesting how people have thought about it in the past and present. This is also indicated by the fact that I only recently heard the atheist Richard Dawkins say that the question of God’s existence is perhaps the most important.

When you look up the frequency of the English phrase “arguments for God,” we find that this phrase began to rise dramatically after 2001, after the attack on the New York Twin Towers.

It reached its peak of use in 2010, related to the onset and zenith of the so-called New atheism (dose 177). Although its use has declined, it has increased slightly in recent years. Anyway, it is a topic not only of cultural and religious interest but also of academic interest.

Many faculties worldwide have courses devoted to the history and philosophy of religion, which are directly related to this. For example, you can enroll in studies on the religious philosophy of David Hume, on God, the cell, and the universe, or on proving God’s existence. 

“If only it were that easy.”

So today’s topic is arguing for and against God’s existence—first, a little personal. When I began to doubt God’s presence sometime in my younger, prettier but less educated age, I decided to ask. I didn’t look as sophisticated as Socrates with my questions, but rather like the Little Prince visiting different planets.

I thought he was going to break his stick over me, if not his guitar, but his answer was probably more surprising to me than my question was to him. He answered, “I wish it were that easy.” After that, he talked a little more and gave me some more specific reasons, but his intellectual modesty was quite apparent to me, and I appreciated that.

What is the goal?

First, I think it is perfect to ask at the beginning what the goal of all arguments for God’s existence should be. Let’s start with the obvious thing – ideas don’t have plans, but people do. And different people may have other projects.

But mostly today, supporters or users of these arguments do not see it as having a particular superpower, which is to convince someone definitively. And that, for these two reasons.

First, these arguments have little logical force in themselves. This is because the strength of their conclusion depends on the truth of the statements on which they are based. This means that they can be questioned, and so often, because of reasonable objections, these statements and the conclusion of the argument will not be sure.

Instead, we will always have fun here and think about probabilities. But that’s okay because our whole life is about choosing between options that are likely to be true. And that’s why these arguments are not detached from ordinary life, but rather our everyday life from these arguments.

Second, these arguments aren’t about instantly converting others to the opposite view because our psychology, philosophy, and life need to be revised. Even if the opinions pointed toward a particular, very probable conclusion, it would be another thing to be convinced by it logically and psychologically and to change our thinking and behavior.

As a recent example, we can take the many arguments about COVID-19 and vaccination. Although clinical studies show precise results, many not only did not accept them but thought and behaved as if these results were exactly the opposite. In other words, we can always find some excuse for not accepting certain conclusions – and it is often that it makes life more comfortable for us or that we will belong to a particular group whose identity we want to adopt.

That is, we all have our preferences and prejudices. And not only our conspiring fellow citizens but also us, and we have to admit it. As Richard Feynman said, it is essential not to be fooled; the easiest person to fool is ourselves.

Another and sometimes overlapping example is precisely conspiracy theories – no matter what good argument we come up with against them, experienced conspirators have built their own, so to speak, immunization strategies, thanks to which they can never be refuted. Not because they are correct but because they do not play fair and move their logical pieces differently than the rules allow.

But it’s not just about conspirators. We do not operate in such a way that we automatically accept the opposite conclusion if some argument points to it. Or perhaps more precisely, it works for less essential things that can be quickly searched on Google.

However, the more critical and deeply embedded our beliefs are in our worldviews, the longer, at least typically, such a conversion will take. And with worldviews, it certainly applies to both sides. So, you cannot expect any instant transformation from the arguments. And if so, what significance can these discussions have?

Benefit of discussion

So, must the goal in such vital debates as the existence of God be a complete worldview conversion? To ask such a question is to answer it. We all know it doesn’t work that way. But that doesn’t mean that discussing essential things in the universe, including God’s existence, doesn’t have its meaning. Their contribution can take many forms.

For the first time, we can learn something new. It can be new knowledge I learned during the debate or a new perspective I have never had before. Or they can be virtues that we can cultivate in this way – we can learn to listen, formulate our arguments, make reactions, not be unnecessarily nervous or angry, represent the arguments of the other side truthfully if not even more strongly, and thus be an example to all listening.

Moreover, a good argument could be made that such knowledge and moral contribution is often much better than convincing someone or winning a debate.

In this sense, even unsuccessful argumentation, which would not lead to any worldview conversion, has a great potential to be successful in these other aspects. If we summarize it in slightly different words – even an overall flawed argument can have a few good observations hidden in it, and those alone can be worth it.

It also improves our argumentative and personal qualities, including knowledge and epistemic humility. Now, let’s start with one fundamental question – whether the question of God’s existence can be solved with the help of science.

Is it a scientific or a philosophical question?

Can science investigate God? This, of course, depends on whether the scientific methods could test God’s existence. And that relies mainly on whether the so-called methodological naturalism – that is, the fact that science should deal only with natural causes – is how science should and can work.

That deserves a separate dose. But opinions on this are also divided – whether among scientists or philosophers, as well as among believers and non-believers. This is not a meaningless question; on the contrary, it is essential, but there are specific problems with it.

I want to take advantage of this question because it’s crucial. However, it does not have only one solution. Some either deny that science can arbitrarily test God and his activities. First, God is not part of this world in the sense that all other physical objects are part of it.

It is not only a physical object but a mind, which is supposed to be (among other things) omniscient and all-loving. And so, even if we could want to test her, it might be against her will and plans. And it could be as laughable from a broader perspective as if ants wanted to start scientifically testing the existence of some superintelligence in the universe.

Others would argue just the opposite – that we see from the nature of our universe that the universe had its Creator. Some believers claim that God’s activity can be seen indirectly in specific biological structures, in the setting of physical constants and the like.

Others, on the other hand, may perceive such empirical observations oppositely – they say that God’s absence can also be seen in tests of the effectiveness of prayer or the well-known objection of why God does not let amputated limbs grow back.

And yet it is true that many can come up with certain domains where God can be tested, so to speak (setting physical constants) but not in others (effectiveness of prayers for healing). But everyone has answers to these objections and counter-objections, and then there is the question of whether such a selective position is consistent.

One of the popular positions, probably since the time of Newton, is that God works through the natural order. This view has existed since at least the Middle Ages and later reformulated from the time of Descartes and Newton that God works through natural laws.

However, it differs in exactly what way, but we will not go into this adventure hole now. But if God is the first cause and works through laws that he will either not break or only very, very exceptionally, how exactly do we test such a view?

I’m not saying there aren’t different, even creative, answers to this; I’m just pointing out that only some positions can be easily tested, even if we had high-quality test tubes ready.

However, many see this question as a philosophical one. Maybe it would be easier for us if we could test God’s existence in our laboratory, but some, or rather, many things seem impossible and perhaps never will be. And that is why many philosophers are divided on many issues.

One, albeit simplistic, view of how science developed is that many of today’s scientific disciplines were first part of philosophy. However, when sufficient progress was made in these branches, the given field separated from this philosophy and thus created a separate discipline – such as geology, biology, physics, and the like.

If so, which discipline has made sufficient progress to give a quantitative or at least qualified answer to whether God exists? However, according to many experts, nothing like that happened, so this question is still part of philosophy. This question is philosophical because there is yet to be a consensus that a specific relevant authority can resolve this dispute.

Imagine we disagree on the result of a particular football match. I claim that it was some result X and you that result Y. We are certainly not both right, but maybe we are both wrong. What to do then?

Now, it’s easy – we check the result with a particular relevant source, such as a short Google search. If we disagree on the speed of light, we’ll also check it similarly – but here’s the point: it’s not the all-knowing Google itself, but the scientific authority and consensus that we can easily find and read on Google.

But what if there is no way to verify something, or when no authority could authoritatively and qualifiedly decide this for us? What if there is no consensus that it can be verified, or when there are arguments whose conclusions come to different or even opposite conclusions?

Such a situation is a reasonable assumption that in such a situation, we will still be talking about philosophy and philosophical reasoning. Although it may seem very improbable to some, we may someday come to a position where the majority of philosophers and scientists will agree that the question of God’s existence is, for example, a question of physics or – since we are probably talking about the distant future – let’s say some scientific discipline that does not yet exist at all.

Arguments that God’s existence has and can be tested by scientific fact exist and are much more sophisticated than it might seem from Dawkins’s above statement. But this is still a statement with its problems and is only generally accepted by some scientists and philosophers.

Today, we discussed that we can be optimistic that all these arguments, even if they are all bad, can be good for something. But I don’t want to say they are good or bad before we look at them more. And all these more concrete arguments for and against God’s existence and his attributes await us in future installments.