On “Proving” God’s Existence

Logical arguments for God’s existence are usually not definitive in convincing people. Having been involved in college apologetics for four years, many Muslims, atheists, agnostics, and New Age adherents have joined, debated, and been part of our meetings. In all four years, rarely have I seen a student accept Christianity merely by the five classical “proofs” for the existence of God.

Why is this?

In large part, what counts as a “convincing” argument depends on a person’s existing worldview. A worldview that doesn’t accept the possibility of things beyond material existence, will, by necessity, reject any explanation that appeals to forces outside the material universe. A quick and sudden change in a person’s fundamental narratives and assumptions, without which our arguments are unconvincing, simply does not happen regularly or at all, in my experience. Usually, a person’s underlying and often unconscious worldview must first be questioned before it can be replaced. This can only happen by an act of faith, by a person thinking to himself “What if…?”

The Invisible Pair of Glasses and the Necessity of Faith

Suppose a person was blind without a certain pair of special glasses. Other people tell him about these glasses, but he says, “absent convincing evidence of the existence of these special glasses, I will not believe that such devices exist.” You see the problem with that statement is that it is precisely his blindness that will keep him from believing because “convincing evidence”, for him, consists of seeing these pair of glasses.

Only by an act of faith, wherein he puts on a pair of glasses he doesn’t at first believe in, can he finally see for himself that such glasses do in fact exist. As St. Anselm says, “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.”

Only when people consider the possibility of a different truth that culminates in a change in worldview can logical arguments for God’s existence have its influence and power. But by this point, the heavier lifting had already been done (the change in worldview through an act of faith). The arguments only add to the momentum to the change in direction, but are not the first mover of the change, but are rather confirmatory and add justification to the initial experience.

If you say that this is confirmation bias, then it is in the same way that a blind person who now can see can look at himself in the mirror and see the glasses, which have helped him, resting on his face. Not only can the blind person now see his glasses, he can also see the path he walks, his friends’ faces, all the myriad things in his house which he had only felt and heard before. The truth of the reality of his glasses are not just from seeing them but by how they allow him to see more fully all of existence. For this we often quote the venerable C.S. Lewis who said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

This “explanatory” apologetics is often more powerful than logical arguments because it taps into one’s daily experiences – love, music, reason, meaning, significance, morality, spirituality, pleasure, pain, the desire for justice, the longing for peace – and brings all these narratives under a single God, his world, and his story. One only needs to put the God-glasses on to make sense of all them together. Such an act is an act of faith that happens in a heart that has been drawn by God’s Spirit.

Are Arguments Pointless?

Although logical proofs for God’s existence are not definitive in conversion, they are not unhelpful because we can scarcely tell when God’s Spirit has already softened a person’s heart, such that if their heart was a ship, the sail has already been unfurled, needing only a strong wind to drive them to the right shores.

A more practical benefit of “argumentative” apologetics is that it is an effective way to strengthen those who are already Christians by answering their questions, thereby removing the pebbles in their shoes as they walk as believers in the world.

So how does God’s spirit move to subtly change a nonbeliever’s heart?

The Spirit moves where he wills, and has many ways of changing hearts. Oftentimes, the demolition work of a pre-existing worldview happens brick-by-brick through the persistence of a caring friend, through the simple life and prayer of a grandmother, through the faithfulness of a father, or through the passion of a traveling evangelist. And many times it is through the community of believers that a questioning teen become a part of. The church’s life and love is, for many, the ultimate apologetic for Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.