{"id":15799,"date":"2019-03-17T06:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T10:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/?p=15799"},"modified":"2019-03-16T15:41:15","modified_gmt":"2019-03-16T19:41:15","slug":"why-i-am-done-trying-to-prove-the-existence-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/why-i-am-done-trying-to-prove-the-existence-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Am Done Trying to Prove the Existence of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

If you think you understand it, it is not God.\u00a0<\/strong> Soren Kierkegaard<\/p>\n

In Marilynne Robinson\u2019s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead<\/em>, Reverand John Ames (one of my top five favorite characters in all of fiction) frequently expresses doubt concerning his faith, something unexpected in a Congregational minister, at least in some circles. In the middle of the novel, Ames spends a few pages considering doubt and uncertainty in one\u2019s faith within the context of challenges from non-believers to \u201cprove\u201d that God exists. Concerning such challenges, Ames reflects that<\/p>\n

I must have told them a thousand times that unbelief is possible . . . And they want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them \u201cproofs.\u201d I just won\u2019t do it. It only confirms them in their skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I teach philosophy for a living. When philosophy and faith\/religion intersect, that intersection is often framed in terms of \u201cproofs for the existence of God\u201d\u2014many Philosophy of Religion courses are organized entirely around such rational proofs. Over my more than twenty-five years as a professor, I\u2019ve come to think that Ames\u2019 attitude about such proofs is exactly right.<\/p>\n

There is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things . . . So my advice is this\u2014don\u2019t look for proofs. Don\u2019t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they\u2019re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had the opportunity a few days ago to be the speaker at the first of four Tuesday Lenten \u201cComing to Faith\u201d gatherings at the Episcopal church I attend. People in attendance know me well; several of them are regular participants in an adult-education seminar that I lead once a month after the 10:00 Sunday morning service. I spent thirty minutes giving what, in the Baptist world I grew up in, would have been described as a \u201ctestimony,\u201d an account of \u201cwhat God has done for me lately.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my case, it\u2019s a story that begins with my breathing a conservative, evangelical Protestant atmosphere from the moment I was born, a story that continues today, sixty-three years later, still under the Christian tent, but in a much different place and closer to the edge of the tent than where I started. I enjoy hearing other people describe how they became the person of faith they are today (or perhaps no longer are), so I also enjoyed following a few threads of my own journey with friends and fellow journeyers. I write about this all the time on this blog, but it was a bit of a challenge to condense this coherently.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not surprising, because a person\u2019s faith journey is no more reducible to bullet points or sound bites than the presumed goal of that journey, relationship with what is greater than us. I framed the second half of my talk around a question a good friend asked me almost thirty years ago. I was a newly-minted PhD in philosophy; she also knew me to be (or at least trying to be) a person of Christian faith. \u201cVance, how can you be a philosopher and Christian at the same time?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall how I answered her\u2014I\u2019m sure it was entirely inadequate to the seriousness of her question, perhaps even a bit dismissive (as newly-minted PhD\u2019s can be). But her question has haunted me in a productive way ever since. I am an academic and a college professor; I am also seeking to be a follower of Jesus. Can this be done without cheating on one side or the other? If there\u2019s any one theme that is central to the almost seven years of this blog, it is contained in my friend\u2019s question from thirty years ago. How do my intellect and my faith, my brain and my heart, work together to create me?<\/p>\n

During the Q & A after my presentation, someone asked \u201cHow would you answer your friend\u2019s question if she was here today?\u201d After a moment\u2019s reflection, I said I would respond that \u201cI am the answer to your question. I am Exhibit A that one can be a Christian and a philosopher at the same time.\u201d And I don\u2019t intend that in a hubristic or prideful way. I mean to say that the only way to answer such questions is with an observed life\u2014no logical argument will ever get close to a satisfactory response. As Reverend Ames says, proofs \u201care never sufficient\u201d to such questions. I followed my response with a claim that I make often on this blog\u2014the best proof for the existence of God is a changed life. I was in one place, I find myself many decades later in a very different place, and the only coherent account I can give of how I evolved or journeyed from there to here involves God. Sometimes in opposition, sometimes is apparent solitude and silence, frequently doubtful, often hopeful, never certain, but always involving something greater than me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m currently serving as an outside reader and evaluator on a manuscript that a colleague and scholar in an area of philosophical expertise that I share has submitted to a major academic publishing house for review and possible publication. In a middle chapter of the manuscript, the author quotes Hebrews 11:1, a text that I often use in class as the jumping off point for a discussion of the nature of faith: \u201cFaith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author of the manuscript then points out that to develop a discussion of faith, the author of Hebrews does not follow this verse with further arguments and definitions. Instead, the author turns to familiar examples of what faithful people did in this world. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and more\u2014faith is understood by seeing what it looks like in action, not by proofs and arguments. According to the author of Hebrews, the existence of what is not of this world is seen in what men and women do in this world. As Simone Weil wrote, \u201cEarthly things are the criterion of spiritual things.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I have learned anything about faith in my more than six decades, it is that, as a living thing, faith is not reducible to the categories of argument, proof, or (sometimes) even logic. I read something in Robert Harris\u2019 novel Conclave<\/em> this morning while on the exercise bike that resonates strongly with this. The cardinal appointed to give the homily at the mass just before a conclave to select a new pope shocks many in attendance when he describes his hopes for the new pontiff:<\/p>\n

One sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the great enemy of tolerance . . . Our faith is a living thing precisely because<\/em> it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that the Lord will grant us a Pope who doubts, who sins and asks forgiveness, and then moves on.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Certainty without doubt has been the argumentative gold standard for centuries in logical arguments, and such arguments have their place\u2014but not in the life of faith. A lived example is far more convincing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you think you understand it, it is not God.\u00a0 Soren Kierkegaard In Marilynne Robinson\u2019s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead, Reverand John Ames (one of my top five favorite characters in all of fiction) frequently expresses doubt concerning his faith, something unexpected in a Congregational minister, at least in some circles. In the middle of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":15820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,9,11,14,17,19,21,27,35,40,45,47,48,57,585,61,68,73,91,104],"tags":[169,221,242,336,369,383,469,501],"class_list":["post-15799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-baptists","category-belief","category-bible","category-books","category-catholicism","category-certainty","category-christianity","category-doubt","category-faith","category-god","category-history","category-hope","category-human-nature","category-jesus","category-knowledge","category-literature","category-mystery","category-philosophy","category-stories","category-writing","tag-christianity","tag-faith","tag-god","tag-marilynne-robinson","tag-old-testament","tag-philosophy","tag-theology","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy I Am Done Trying to Prove the Existence of God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When it comes to God's existence, "don\u2019t look for proofs. 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