Evidence of God - Part 1

 “Show me evidence that your God exists”, is what I hear most atheists ask me. But what will they consider to be evidence? It is clear to me that all evidence is interpreted by those who perceive it. To me the entire world around me is overwhelming evidence of God. I interpret the world as being the work of God the Creator. To the atheist this same evidence is perceived but interpreted differently. They see the world around us as the result of a process of evolution. So asking for evidence and then being able to explain the evidence provided according to your own worldview isn’t really proof that Christians are wrong.

Consider now that the existence of Christianity itself is evidence of something. That’s all we can say about it… that it’s evidence of something. And this precisely drives home my point. The Christian claims that it’s evidence of God, but they can’t call that proof. The atheist claims that it’s evidence of “mass delusion”, or however they might explain it, but they can’t then call that proof. It’s evidence of something, and what it’s evidence of is up to each one’s interpretation of that evidence. When we come to a conclusion about it, it will be through our own logical reasoning, and our own logical reasoning is entirely under the influence of the worldview we already have. In trying to interpret any piece of evidence we pose hypotheses to ourselves and we accept or reject these hypotheses based on what agrees or disagrees with what we already know and believe. When we struggle to make something agree with what we know and believe, that’s when we start to consider making changes to what we have known and believed for so many years. But this is done only when we’re at our wits end trying to understand and accommodate some new piece of evidence.

Let me illustrate this further. I’ve used the existence of Christianity itself as an example. It is evidence of something. But so is the existence of the Muslim religion. Or the Hindu religion. Or even apart from religion, there are many people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, or to have seen ghosts. All of these bodies of people are making claims about what they believe to be true. They are evidence that the claims they make may, in fact, be true. And for each of these claims, the primary one is that their god exists, (or aliens, or whatever). If that claim is false then the rest of their claims are also false. So atheists ask things like “Why do you believe in Jesus and not any of the other 3000 gods that people claim exist?” Again, we as Christians interpret this evidence based on the world view we currently hold. Since our God has said that there is no other God apart from Him, we don’t even bother to investigate the claims made by other religions because we already reject their primary claim that there is a god that exists apart from our god. But this is no different to atheists. They don’t bother to even investigate the claims made by any of the religions because, according to their existing world view, they can immediately reject the possibility of any god’s existence. And if you ask anyone why they don’t believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, they should probably answer in that case that there is no evidence for such a thing; namely that there is no body of believers which make the claim that it truly exists.

When Christians are confronted with the evidence of other gods ("evidence" as I’m calling it - namely that there are bodies of believers in other gods), we are like anyone else. We must interpret that evidence. Some interpret it as those gods in fact having a true existence, but that they are demonic in nature. Others interpret it perhaps as many atheists would, and say that they are simply mythologies made by man, and that believing those mythologies as fact has filled some psychological need that exists in all people. Again it illustrates my point. We all interpret evidence according to our own worldview. And the same will go for claims about aliens or ghosts or whatever else. Neither Christian nor atheist can simply ignore these things. One way or the other we must all decide what we believe about them. So where does this leave us? Hopefully it leaves us seeing each other as equals. But also it helps us realize that the atheist can’t simply say “I’m not making any claims about god.” They are; namely that god does not exist. They are forced to make a claim about god because they are faced with evidence for god (the existence of religion itself) which they must interpret one way or the other.

And so the more correct question to ask a Christian, instead of “Show me evidence of God”, is “Give me good reason to believe in God.” This, then, allows us to show our interpretation of the evidence we see, and show our reasoning for interpreting it the way we do. The same can be afforded to the atheist; they can show us evidence of evolution, for example, but what they are really showing us is their interpretation of such evidence (the fossil record, for example). And Christians don’t simply ignore these evidences. Indeed, we cannot. What we reject, rather, is the interpretation of these evidences, and we have a different interpretation according to our own worldview. Christians, likewise, are better to ask “give me good reason to believe in evolution”, and not simply “show me evidence of evolution.” A request for “good reason to believe” will involve not only the evidence but the interpretation of the evidence. But it’s important to remember that there is always that element of interpretation according to one’s existing worldview.

At this point we haven’t said anything about which worldview is right or wrong, but that’s not what this post is about. There are atheists and Christians who are so sure of their worldview that they may never change. And there are atheists and Christians who have doubts about their own worldview and may be swayed to the other side. Most of the time people are simply content and function well with their current worldview and have no motivation to uproot all of their beliefs to see if another is actually true. I often find from both atheists and Christians alike this appeal to “just do more research” or to “think more critically”... and the thought there, really, is that the other person simply hasn’t thought their worldview through hard enough, because if they did they would surely come to the same conclusions as me! This is an error for anyone, on either side of the debate. One’s own thoughts will always be led by first interpreting information to agree with what they already believe. To ask someone to “do more research” is to first ask the person to gather more information, as the more information they have the more chance they have of finding something which they cannot accommodate into their own worldview. This is certainly good for anyone to do, and when information cannot be accommodated into one’s existing worldview, they may begin to change their worldview. But firstly any new information will be understood as it aligns with what we already believe. So then we ask them to “think critically”, which is to ask them to play the hypothetical of “if I didn’t believe what I currently believe, and instead believed what atheists believe, would this information make more sense?” This doesn’t really work, however, because that hypothetical is “just a game”. Thinking critically is a great idea; it perhaps helps us understand the other side’s perspective. But it won’t change our own view because when we “played the hypothetical” we were pretending to believe what the other believes. And this is different, incidentally, to an example where a seminary lecturer was teaching one doctrine and in my mind I’m thinking “No, I don’t think that’s right, because I don’t think it agrees with this or that Bible verse.” Thinking critically isn’t simply disagreeing with what you’re being taught. Again, the taught doctrine was being accepted or rejected by what I already knew and believed.

So what’s the point of all this, then? I think what really prompted me to write this is that it answers a whole range of objections I’ve seen made by atheists. I’ve alluded to some of these already; the question of why we should believe in the god we do and not one of the many others - it is, in fact, the very same reason the atheist believes in none. Then there's the demand for evidence as opposed to good reason. This fails to recognize that evidence will only count if it cannot be interpreted in a way that agrees with your worldview. And the appeal to thinking critically instead of “believing blindly”. This fails to understand that critical thinking is not an escape from one’s own biases. Anyone who says “I just want to believe what’s true” fails to realize that so much of what we conclude is true is based on what we have conformed to our existing worldview. And even the idea that atheism is logical and reasonable as opposed to faith… Faith is not believing something despite a lack of evidence. We all have evidence and we all have our logic and reasons for our interpretation of that evidence. Faith isn’t apart from that. Faith is trusting and relying on what you believe to be true. If you believe there is one god then by faith you trust that all other claims about another god are somehow false, even if you haven’t figured out yet in exactly what way each of them are false. And the atheist is no different - they, like us, have their worldview which creates certain expectations of what counts as evidence for god, and it’s essentially by faith in that belief that they are convinced that whatever claims are made by all of these 3000 odd religions will be false (however many there actually are in the world), and won’t produce the evidence they’re expecting to find of god. They don’t need to investigate each and every one of these religions because they are already convinced that they will be false. Faith in God may be a little more than that; we’re talking not only about faith in our own beliefs, but in relation to God we’re talking about faith in a person; faith in the character of God - that God will deal with us in the manner that the person He has revealed Himself to be would deal with us. When we experience that He does, it confirms our beliefs and strengthens our faith in those beliefs. This is what I meant when I once explained to an atheist that “faith becomes knowledge”. At that point I completely lost them precisely because they didn’t understand this fundamental idea. Knowing God starts with information about God (the words of the Bible) and our interpretation of that information (or evidence) as we build our theology and worldview around it. We have faith that what we believe is true, and when through experience we see that it is true, faith becomes knowledge.


Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." Matthew 16:16-17