CONSIDERING HOW MUCH and the extent to which so many college-credentialed Americans and those who want to be taken as smarty-pants are obsessed with demanding a proof of the existence of God that they are rather remarkably free in giving their credulity away in so many things other than that. If Sean Carroll or one of the other imaginary, would-be Lords of Creation came up with a theory of everything, I would bet you that a small fraction of one percent of those who would embrace it on the basis of the meat-headed claim that it would finally dispose of God - probably why Carroll et al want them to believe they've almost got one nailed down - would begin to understand it. I'm sure I wouldn't. The many true believers in it would be as reliant on the Lords of Creation as they like to imagine medieval Catholics were reliant on the faith which they so despise - one which is largely a fiction created out of Brit anti-Catholic propaganda and a few details added by later atheists but which didn't much exist.
I wonder if any of the people who demand "prove it" would be any more open to having that proof presented to them or if they'd reject it in pretty much the same way that Trump cultists are still Covid skeptics or QAnon lunatics reject reality on an even more comprehensive basis.
I doubt one in a hundred of you guys could say what you mean by "exists," to start with. I'd have a hard time saying what that means and, unlike you, I've thought about it. So did Eddington, in fact, the next chapter in The Philosophy of Physical Science talks about it, The Concept of Existence
I find a difficulty in understanding books on philosophy because they talk a great deal about "existence", and I do not know what they mean. Existence seems to be a rather important property, because I gather that one of the main sources of division between different schools of philosophy is the question whether certain things exist or not. But I cannot even begin to understand these issues because I can find no explanation of the term "exist".
The word "existence" is , of course, familiar in everyday speech; but it does not express a uniform idea - a universally agreed principle according to which things can be divided into existing and non-existing. Differences of opinion as to whether a thing exists or not sometimes arises because the thing itself is imperfectly defined, or because the exact implications of the definition have not been grasped thus the "real existence" of electrons, aether, space, colour, may be affirmed or denied because different persons use these terms with somewhat different implication. But ambiguity of definition is not always responsible for the difference of view. Let us take something familiar, say an overdraft at a bank. No one can fail to understand precisely what that means. Is an overdraft something which exists? If the question were put to the vote, I think some would say that its existence must be accepted as a grim reality, and others would consider it illogical to concede existence to what is intrinsically a negation. But what divides the two parties is no more than a question of words. It would be absurd to divide mankind into two sects, one believing in the existence of overdrafts and the other denying their existence. The division is a question of classification, not of belief. If you tell me your own answer, I shall not learn anything new about the nature or properties of an overdraft; but I shall learn something about your usage of the term "exists" - what category of thing you intend it to cover.
So, the discussion of the existence of God will probably end up convincing no one who doesn't really want a "proof of God's existence" because they don't really want one to start with, they want a reason for not choosing to believe in God, or the existence of Jesus or, from what I see from that linked comment thread, apparently really want him to not have said all the good things he did say.
My choice to believe is related exactly to those things that were said by him which I think are the most radical extension of the basis of the Mosaic Law as "do to others what you would have done to you" what you do to the least among you you do to The Lord, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, if you have stuff to give it away to those who aren't going to pay you back (I suspect that among the hard sayings concerning economic justice and charity are the real motives for rejecting him). It has nothing to do with any proof, you prove things about numbers and imaginary lines, shapes and three dimensional things you have in your mind, those kind of things are the only ones you get that tight a level of argument for that it can be even optimistically called "proof". Proof is another word that's used loosely, "proof" generally has nothing to do with what we choose to believe. The wider issue of life is covered by the concept of truth as opposed to lies, accepting the truth or choosing to believe what isn't true or being duped by slick talkers into choosing to believe them. The media that you guys worship enough to believe should be allowed to lie with impunity because Madison and a bunch of slave owning rich, white men told you to make no laws restricting, does that all the time. Yet you don't have sufficient concern about that to prevent that peddling of lies by law.
America's college-credentialed class would seem to have a now and then, off and on, very slippery and corrupt relationship with the concept of proof and the truth except on that one issue covered by the challenge to "prove it."
If you read the things I posted the last week or so, you will come to a passage from Jeremiah which gave a solid means of knowing God, not surprisingly one covered even more radically in The Gospel by the Jesus you deny existed, to do justice, to do economic justice, to do right by the least among us is to know God. I don't need more than that to have full confidence, especially as atheism seems to so regularly come up with reasons to do evil, especially among its "ethicists" who always seem to be coming up with lists of people it's OK to kill and others who want to convince us that science says it's best to do nothing for those we really don't want to help. Things like that led to me rejecting atheism.
You know, in all of the history of Western Thought and that elsewhere, in science, for example among all the different interpretations of quantum mechanics, in string and membrane theory, in all of the varying interpretations of natural selection, psychology, sociology, etc. etc. etc. etc. atheists and agnostics and "skeptics" and those "free thinkers" (who so regularly, as materialistic determinists deny the possibility of free thought) believe all kinds of things that are and were not true and delusional and not infrequently self-contradicting. Apparently the quality of your belief is no guarantee of it producing reliable, durable knowledge. Maybe you should fix atheism, scientism and materialism, I think your demands for "proof" are a distraction from the problems with your own faith.
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