How can we know that God exists, and that we didn’t just invent him?

Graham Leo

It’s a fair question. Richard Dawkins is well-known for his comments on questions like this one. Here are just two of his comments:

“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic about it?” 

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”

On the surface, these sound like promising arguments. Why would you believe in something that not only cannot be proven, but is on the same level of probability as leprechauns or little green men from Mars.

For Christians, it is perhaps a primary question, too. Probably every Christian at some time in their life, asks the question of themselves: “Could I just have imagined all this? Am I just believing in this because of my parents or my friends? What if I’m wrong about it all and God doesn’t even exist?”

When faced with a question about evidence-based belief, it is sometimes worth asking this question: What evidence would convince me about this question?

What evidence would be sufficient to show that the butler murdered the housemaid?

What evidence would be sufficient to show that the world was round and not flat?

What evidence would be sufficient to show that the child stole the bike?

If we establish this standard before we get too deeply into thinking about an enquiry, it provides us with a benchmark. It forces us to set the height of the hurdle that we need to jump over before we start. It stops us from just continually increasing the height of the bar if we don’t like where the evidence is taking us. It stops us from drawing a conclusion too early if we like what we are seeing from initial enquiries.

So what evidence might satisfy us that God is not merely the invention of our minds? The following might suffice:

1.     We might demand some sort of historical evidence of some kind. Since this God has presumably been around for longer than we have, what sort of trail has he left? What footsteps, what echoes of presence, what evidence of past actions?

2.     We might ask for evidence similar to that which we would require for demonstrating some other transcendental manifestation. For example, think (at least theoretically!) what we might demand to prove someone’s claim that there was a ghost or a haunted house. (Not that I believe in haunted houses, but the example is helpful.)

In such a case, we might demand to actually encounter something definable that defies a normal physical explanation, e.g. chains rattling, vases falling off shelves, blood running down a wall, screams in the night etc. etc. So in the case of trying to demonstrate that God is not just our invention, we might demand that God has left us with some tangible physical evidence, i.e. something that we can label, locate or perceive in a reasonably objective fashion..

3.     Because the idea of God involves some sort of personal Being, we might demand some form of communication. We wouldn’t ask for communication if what we were trying to prove was the Yeti or the Black-Crested Crowing Parrot, or the Golden Mountain. But a God who doesn't communicate is nothing like the Christian God, so we need some evidence of communication. 

So this is the height of our hurdle. We are saying that if there is a God whom we have not just made up in our minds, then we should be able to find evidence that is:

1. Historical;
2. Physical and tangible;
3. Communicative.

There are two objections we need to get out of the way at this point. The first is that we are just setting up a straw man type of argument here, except ours is a strong man not a straw one. That is, we are setting up the evidence quest to suit what we know. Well, it might look like it, but we are trying to be fair and saying that if there really were a God, these three strands of evidence should be evident.

The second objection goes like this: “Look! None of that will suffice, because I just don’t believe in God, and never will. Nothing you will say or show me will ever convince me!” That is not the spirit of fair-minded enquiry we are engaging in here. We have set up a hurdle-height which we will say, with fairness, “When you have shown me this, then I will at least open my mind to the possibility”. This is the only spirit in which we can have this discussion.

Let’s see whether these hurdles can be leapt over, to answer the question as to whether we might just have invented God for ourselves.

Historical Evidence

We might now point not to our own experience, but to the experience of the Old Testament Hebrews who kept a very careful record of their history. We will note at the outset that this nation, of all nations, has maintained a scrupulously careful record of their history. Because they regarded it as holy scripture, they watched over every letter and pen stroke. We can be confident that the text of the Hebrew Bible is extraordinarily close to what was originally written. Further, even if it were only written down or re-edited, hundreds or even thousands of years after it was first composed, it has been handed down via carefully-guarded oral transmission for that entire time and not changed in any substantial way.

In their historical records, the Jewish people kept careful note of many miraculous events, as they regarded them. These events were so remarkable that they defied ordinary human or physical causes. They include the escape from Egypt in the Exodus via the crossing of the Red Sea, the pillar of fire by night and the column of cloud by day which guided and preceded the people for forty years in the desert, the provision in that same desert of miraculous food (manna) and water from bare rocks, and the fact that the shoes of the wanderers did not wear out for that entire time.

The point of all of this is that because these events covered so many years and affected so many people, if they were just imaginary, someone out of that vast crowd over so many years would have pointed out that the stories being told were just fairy tales. On the contrary, they have always been presented and accepted as true, accurate history. There was either a mass delusion affecting large numbers of people or else they were all terribly gullible – or else these events really happened.

Going beyond the Old Testament times, we might point to the life and miracles of Jesus. Again, similar circumstances protect us from the fairy tale argument. The first three gospels, at least, were all written within 20-40 years of Jesus death. They were read by people who were present at those events. This included several groups of people who had strong reasons to discount the stories as false if they could. The Jewish ruling authorities, the Romans, the unbelieving from all sides – all these would have been delighted to prove these stories were false.

Yet there is no historical evidence – none – that anyone seriously suggested that Jesus did not live, that his miracles were faked and that he did not rise from the dead. All that any of these three groups would have had to do was to produce a body, or produce someone who was at the feeding of the 5000, and point out that he had brought his own lunch with him. Surely that was the easiest thing in the world, especially for those with such power as the Romans. Again, there is not a single shred of evidence that anyone ever tried to do so.

This leaves our historical evidence for a remarkable man called Jesus who did amazing miracles looking very strong. We haven’t proved God yet, but we have some interesting evidence.

Physical, Tangible Evidence

Firstly, there is the simple, undeniable fact of the existence of the universe – the ultimate question of why there is something rather than nothing. We won't get into debates about how it might have been created, but simply that there is anything at all.

Just saying that something material was always here won't help us in this argument. Eternal matter would be just as much a problem as an eternal God, and invite the question of whether we are not only imagining God, but whether we are just all imagining everything, including ourselves. That way madness lies.

Then, secondly, there is the puzzling fact of what scientists call ‘the anthropic principle’, the fine-tuning of the universe. The great scientist, Fred Hoyle, who was an atheist or at least an agnostic, couldn’t help but observing that our earth, located where it is in this universe, is so precisely aligned to other planets and the sun, is so structured in size, mass and orbit that, as he said, “It looks as though someone has monkeyed with the Physics”. Had our planet Earth been just a little larger, a little closer to the Sun, a little different in its composition of atmosphere and other elements, life as we know it would have been impossible. The very existence of earth with life invites a transcendental explanation.

Thirdly, there is the question of the existence of human beings, as sentient, emotional and personal beings. Even if we could get across the hurdle of evolving plants and animals from nothing or from eternal matter – even a pinpoint of dark matter or heavy matter or quantum dust or as-yet-undiscovered-mass – this will not help us explain why we, as animals fall in love, act generously and charitably, think and feel and laugh and cry.

Without some sort of transcendental Presence, we struggle to explain why, since the very earliest records of humankind, we have buried our fellows with flowers or food or weapons because we are convinced that there is an after-life. We are convinced that this dead body in front of us is not the end of the story. There is no record of a cow or lion being buried thus by their fellow-creatures – only human creatures get this treatment and they have done so for thousands of years.

Fourthly, not only emotions such as love and kindness puzzle us, but also the existence of two other great elements: goodness and truth. Why is goodness good and not evil? Why is there truth that is stable and true? Why does mathematics always work? Could it be that we value goodness because there is an Original Good Person? Could it be that we love truth because there is an Eternal Truth?

These items which lie before us on the evidence table are not in themselves proof that we did not invent God. But they shake our confidence that everything in existence is pure matter, or that we can know everything there is to know about the world by just looking at its physical properties.

Communication

Finally, in our search for evidence, we might ask about those stories where God is said to have spoken to human beings. While we might discount the word of the madman in Ward 17C of the local mental health facility who claims to have heard from God, it is harder to discount the stories of the ancient Hebrews who claimed to have heard God from the mountain, giving the law at Sinai.

It is harder to discount the more recent voice of God speaking words of approval over Jesus at this baptism, apparently heard by others. It is harder still to avoid the claims by Jesus that he was God himself, and that his miracles demonstrated that.

As we noted earlier, if only someone could have disproved his miracles, or discredited his resurrection, we would feel ourselves on safe ground, but we have not a single attempt from contemporary sources. This is a real and troubling gap to those who would deny the truth of Jesus.

the record of those who have spoken to us about God for thousands of years is that they have encountered a God who communicated to them. Some of them claimed to have heard his voice. Some of them claimed to have felt his presence. Most recently, the coming of Jesus has been claimed to be the coming of God himself in human flesh. And there were miracles aplenty to prove this claim - including a resurrection from the dead.

Summary

What have we now achieved?

I don’t think we have proved the existence of God beyond our own imaginations. What I think we have done, using fairly our hurdle for proof that we set up at the beginning, is that we have produced a body of evidence that will at least give us pause. We will at least have to concede that if the Christian story is just an invention, it is one that crosses at least 4000 years, many different cultures and empires, and one that has stood the test of endless enquiry and examination.

We will have at least removed our raw scepticism, and allowed us to look at the story and claims of Christianity with  a mind that will at least be open to the possibility of truth. And that is enough to start with.