Sorry Christians: God Does Not Exist
According to Got Questions, “The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved.” This answer is corroborated through hundreds of years of philosophy. Some of the greatest thinkers this world has ever known have fallen on both sides of the question.
God Does Not Exist Philosophically
Everywhere we look, ideology slouches along the freeways and autoroutes, sometimes carrying a cross, sometimes a sickle, sometimes a crescent, but always busy doing somebody in somewhere, somehow. -- Robert Todd Carrell
All fear is imaginary, reality is its antidote. --André Comte-Sponville
The gods too are fond of a joke. --Aristotle
I had therefore to remove knowledge to make room for belief. --Immanuel Kant
The great spiritual geniuses, whether it was Moses, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, or Jesus have taught men to look inside themselves to find God. --Ernest Holmes
God Does Not Exist Linguistically
In fact, the more you look into whether God exists, the more muddy the water gets. And thus, we find our first rationale for determining that God does not exist—through hard definition.
Exist: have objective reality or being.
God Does Not Exist Evidentially
In fairness, objectivity of God’s existence does not rest on philosophers’ opinions on the matter, but it does lend itself to the second reason God does not exist. Sorry Christians, God does not exist because there is no evidence for his existence (though there is evidence of his existence). God does not have a birth certificate; he has not been recorded on video, and all claims of his existence are found internally—they are subjective.
God Does Not Exist Biblically
We find this biblically, too. Nearly every occurrence of God interacting with humanity came through divine interaction with individuals and not through large groups. And, even when God did move through corporate gatherings, the experience was always translated by an individual. Look at Acts 2. When the Holy Spirit came upon them, the crowd presumed some of them were drunk, but Peter spoke up and called the people to evaluate the time (it was early morning) and the words (they were not slurred or gibberish), for they were actually fulfilling prophesy.
Paul Tillich once said,
Jesus Christ is not to be rationalized; he is to be experienced.
In other words, you can’t just compile a list of characteristics, historical events, and nuances to understand Jesus. To do so would drastically underappreciate who he is. In this way, the personal nature of Jesus is not summed up in his existence. Rather, it is our existence that is summed up in Jesus.So, does the preceding conclude that God does not exist? Not exactly.
God's Creation Points to Existence
Psalms 19:1-4 gives an excellent picture of seeing God through things bigger than us. It reads,
"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 3 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out through all the earth."
Romans 1:20 continues the picture,
"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."
In all this, through philosophy and literary context and even biblical narrative, the objective existence of God is, sorry Christians, lacking.But then again…
That’s exactly as God designed it.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the first 6 days of the Genesis account, God’s power was on full display, but no one saw it. As history continued, God’s power was revealed only in the success of following his commands... until Moses.
When God met Moses on Mount Horeb, He instructed Moses to go to Egypt and free his people from Pharaoh. Moses, anticipating resistance, asked God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” To this God replied, ‘I Am Who I Am”.
God could have said, “I am the creator of the Heavens and the Earth”, but in so doing, his existence would have been defined by the objects he created. He could have said, “I am the Father of Abraham”, but this, again, would have limited his existence. Rather, God said, “I am has sent me to you.”
The magnitude of God’s answer is of maximum importance. God did not appeal to his existence, because existence cannot sufficiently describe Him. When the Hebrew was translated to Greek, the Septuagint translation included the significance that ‘I AM’ denoted “I am all that exists, is, and shall be.” This furthers the point,
God is bigger than existence.
The writer of Hebrews understood this. Hebrews 11:6 states, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must have faith that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” To put it another way, if you are looking for a clear-cut sign that God exists, you are making God smaller than he is. If you want to try to prove God through the vastness of the Heavens and Earth or the design of life, you will only be showing a small piece of who He really is. God is bigger than creation; He is bigger than philosophy; and, yes, He is bigger than existence.
What do you think? Does God exist?
Leave your thoughts below, I’d love to interact with you.
