Proving God's Existence Absolutely: Our Modern Desire for Certainty

Recently, a lot of talk has been swirling around a series of debates between atheists and theists (mostly Christians) and between supporters of Intelligent Design (mostly protestant Christians as well) and its detractors?

On ABC, the 1990s TV star Kirk Cameron and author and preacher Ray Comfort debated two members of the Rational Response Squad, a group of atheists that try to persuade people to denounce theism.

There has also been talk surrounding proponents and opponents of ID. You can see examples on blogs and on campus news papers and so on.

Supporters of ID and evangelical theists arguing in favor of God, are struggling to wear the mantel of "science" as a way of legitimating their claims. In our time, in large part, "science" is the arbiter of truth. So everybody wants a piece of "science." Just listen to pastor Comfort on ABC. He states the point clearly in his opening remarks when he disagrees with those that say God's existence can't be proven (namely, he seems to be referring to the atheists he opposes on the stage):

I believe God's existence can be proven absolutely, scientifically without even mentioning faith.

What is interesting here is the commonsense belief that "science" is the arbiter of truth. The mantel of "science" can prove God, as the theists see it. And as the atheists argue it, "science" shows that evolution and life can form without God and that God is an irrational and superfluous idea.

There is a similar reliance on "science" to determine legitimacy and truth in our age when it comes to the struggle surrounding ID and its opponents. Opponents are generally supporters of "science"--often they are biologists, chemists, anthropologists etc (or other people in positions with something at stake in the debate) at universities. More significantly, ID proponents also want a piece of "science." They desire the legitimacy the mantel carries. To call ID "science" is to see it as a legitimate way of finding the truth of the matter. To call ID "science" is to hoist it up onto the symbolic platform that "evolution" rests. (A platform, one might add as an aside, that ID supporters are directly challenging by referring to it as "just a theory" and so on.) It is to give ID social significance and weight--I mean, ID would be "science" after all.

It seems that the aim of many ID proponents and evangelical theists is to fashion God into a rationally explicable phenomenon. From the evangelical perspective, I get the feeling that putting God in terms of "science" is seen as an effective way to spread the Good News. That God can be explained by "science" is a symbolic weapon that is strategically valuable for evangelicals. That God can be explained by "science" and isn't just "irrational" and "backward" beliefs is seen a leverage point, particularly among more educated communities. But at the same time, the desire to fashion God into an explicable being is implicitly a reaction to the dominance/prominence of the claims that faith is "irrational" in the first place.

If the "rationality" or "irrationality" of faith is not of significance to you, then its probably the case that being able to explain God with "science" is not all that important either. To some people, God is ultimately an ineffable experience. God is bigger than "science," they might say.

In these debates between atheists and theists, supporters of ID and opponents of the way of thinking, we are seeing a clash between foundationalisms--scientific realism and religious fundamentalism. But one foundationalism is politically, socially and economically weaker than the other. The foundationalism rooted in Scripture is weaker than the foundationalism rooted in the Laws of Reality. For many, Scripture may well be able to account for "science" and account for the features of Reality like the "circular" shape of the earth (as Comfort said), but in the everyday arena, "science" is used to justify God. Implicitly, then, Scripture is incomplete if it alone cannot explain God. In some sense, "science" is a contemporary crutch, a modern foundation on which Scripture can rest.

Pull them apart. These are two different areas of culture that fulfill different desires. One enables us to control and predict the world of things. The other enables us to hope and love bigger and bolder and to go beyond the merely possible.

Balls, Strikes, and Worldviews

After a game of baseball, three umpires were having a beer.

One says, "There's balls and there's strikes and I call 'em the way they are."

Another says, "There's balls and there's strikes and I call 'em the way I see 'em."

A third says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and they ain't nothin' until I call 'em."

Let's look a bit closer at these three different responses for a moment.

One might be referred to as a naive realist. The World Is The Way It Is and he's just trying to match unproblematic words to the things he's seeing out there happening before his eyes.

The second guy might be called a critical realist in that The World Is the Way It Is, but he understands that his seeing the world is perspectival.

The third guy might be called a postmodernist insofar as he understands that the world of things is meaningless until he invests it with significance by naming "strikes" and "balls" and telling a story about who "won" and "lost."

While guys one and two differ by degree, guy three differs in kind from one and two. The difference hinges on epistemology. Words don't simply correspond to things out there in the world, they invest the world with meaning and symbolism.