@lynnwest Prove to me that I’ve misinterpreted the passage. I won’t take it on blind faith. It’s the New Testament God who doesn’t like to be tested. The Old Testament God was confident of his powers (unless iron chariots were used against him, of course, but that’s a different story). In fact, Elijah goes so far as to mock the priests of Baal for their inability to present proof of their God’s power. Yet you don’t want me to even ask why we can’t have such a proof of the Abrahamic God today?
Second, the Scriptures are not in agreement with each other. This is very well documented in many places on the internet (and very poorly documented in even more places, unfortunately). The Book of Genesis doesn’t even agree with itself, giving two mutually exclusive accounts of creation. And what consistency does exist might be explained by the fact that the process of choosing a Biblical canon involved rejecting many books as apocryphal precisely because they were inconsistent with the bits that people wanted to hold onto. It was a rather artificial process, so I’m not sure how that helps.
As for your other “proofs,” you haven’t actually given any arguments. You’ve just asserted that various things we find in the world (or the world itself) are proofs of God’s existence. Why should I believe they are? The most common arguments that invoke these things have been thoroughly refuted. To give a brief summary:
Existence itself proves that God exists
This appears to be the cosmological argument, or the argument from a First Cause. The argument goes that because the universe exists, something must have caused it to exist—and that cause is God. Now, there are two obvious objections to this. The first is to ask what caused God. For you see, the same argument can be run against Him: because God exists, something must have caused Him to exist—and that cause is… what? Supergod?
Of course, the standard response to this objection is that God just exists. But if God can just exist, then it is not the case that everything which exists must have a cause. Therefore, the argument does not prove that the universe cannot be the thing that just exists. Ergo, the argument fails.
The second objection runs as follows: even if we did have to admit that something caused the universe to exist, it does not follow that this thing must be God. A random quantum fluctuation is not God, and neither is a wave function of the multiverse. We would need to know a lot more about what this putative first cause was before we could say we had proof of God’s existence.
One might reply to this by saying that God really is just whatever caused the universe to exist—a label for an as yet unknown entity or event. Yet if that is the case, then a proof of God becomes meaningless. Leaving aside the possibility that the universe may not actually have a beginning or a cause, saying that God is just whatever created the universe drains all meaning and use out of the term. We might have to say that “God” exists, but it wouldn’t be God as we know Him or as theists try to use Him.
The complexity and order found in nature and its laws prove that God exists
This appears to be the teleological argument, or the argument from design. One common way of explicating the argument is through William Paley’s watchmaker analogy: perhaps we could accept that a stone might simply exist, but a watch is too complex to exist without an intelligent designer; but since the universe is like a watch, and not like a stone, it must also have an intelligent designer.
The central thesis of this kind of argument is that there is no other explanation for the complexity of the universe and the things found within it. But this is simply false. The reason why evolution has become such a hot topic is precisely because it is the kind of alternative explanation that could undermine the argument. Moreover, evolution doesn’t even need to be true in order for the argument to fail. This is because the design argument rests on the thesis that it is a conceptual necessity that no alternative explanation exists. Thus the mere possibility of an alternative destroys the argument.
One might accept this and back down to an abductive version of the argument from design. Instead of saying it is a conceptual necessity that only a God could be responsible for the complexity and order we find in the universe, it could be said that God is (merely) the best explanation of that complexity and order. Here again, evolution can come in as an alternative; but unlike before, the conceptual possibility of evolution would not be sufficient to undermine the argument. There is, however, overwhelming evidence for evolution—more than enough to meet any abductive standard. Indeed, it is one of the most secure theses in all of modern science. As such, the abductive version of the argument from design also fails.
Moreover, the argument from design suffers from a peculiar problem: the existence and extent of suboptimality in the universe. Human eyes, for instance, suffer from a blind spot and do not have particularly keen vision. This is not a necessary feature of all eye designs, however, as cephalopods do not have the blind spot and eagle’s have much keener eyesight than we do. The vastly different ways that similar organs do what is essentially the same job speak more to an evolutionary explanation than an intelligent designer. Thus abduction winds up favoring evolution over God. Again, then, the abductive version of the argument from design fails.
The ideas of justice and morality prove that God exists
This appears to be the moral argument for the existence of God. The first thing to note is that the mere ideas of justice and morality could not prove that God exists. Humans are capable of coming up with all sorts of ideas (e.g., unicorns or wizards). Instead, it must be some quality of justice or morality that suggests the existence of God. This is important because, in the absence of any proof that morality is not a constructed phenomenon of human society and/or evolution, the argument cannot get off the ground.
Second, there is no reason to believe that morality requires a God. Presumably, murder is wrong regardless of whether or not one gets caught. As such, punishment cannot be the deciding factor in whether or not something is wrong. But what role could God play in morality if not the Divine Punisher? One option is that He is the Divine Lawmaker. This, however, runs into a classical problem known as the “Euthyphro dilemma”: is something moral because God says it is, or does God say it is because it’s moral? If the former, then morality is arbitrary. If the latter, then God is not the source of morality. In either case, God is unnecessary. In the first case, humans are quite capable of making arbitrary decisions themselves; in the second case, we would do better to go directly to the source.
In response to this, the typical thing to do is appeal to God as some sort of ontological basis for morality. Again, this is premature in the absence of some proof that morality is not a social construction. Regardless, it is quite unclear why God is the only possible ontological basis even if it were conceded that He could be such a basis at all. But I do not concede even this. There is no reason to think that God even could be an ontological basis for morality unless we try to define Him as such. But this runs into a similar problem as the cosmological argument and makes the proof meaningless. Leaving aside the possibility that morality may be a social construction, saying that God is just whatever forms the ontological basis of morality drains all meaning and use out of the term.
The historical existence of a person called “Jesus” proves that God exists
This is, perhaps, the weakest of the arguments you put forward. The historical existence of a person called “Mohammed” doesn’t validate Islam, the historical existence of a person called “Siddhartha Gautama” doesn’t validate Buddhism, and the historical existence of a person called “Jesus” does not validate Christianity. As you say, the important issue is whether or not Jesus really was the son of God; but we would need antecedent evidence that there is a God for Jesus to be the son of before we could even try to answer that question. As such, this argument puts the cart before the horse. The existence of a particular person named “Jesus” does not prove that God exists.
Furthermore, there are a number of problems regarding the existence of God that have not been solved. I recognize that it is far easier to raise objections than it is to answer them—indeed, the time between your last post and this post can attest to this—and so I feel no need to list the questions theists must answer before their view can be considered even remotely tenable. I also recognize that there are traditional answers to those problems just as there are traditional responses to the putative proofs of God’s existence. As none of your putative proofs should be taken as convincing, however, I take the above to be a sufficient answer to your last reply.
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