Greg and Amy explain how the demand for scientific tests to prove God’s existence is a category error, then show how actual scientific evidence, answered prayer, and other lines of evidence can still point to a personal God.
Transcript
Question: Why is it considered very bad manners to ask for testable, repeatable, consistent evidence that gods and goddesses do exist? The Bible says to test all things. Isn’t existence a rather important thing? Before Jesus walked the earth, ancient Greek sailors caught in storms prayed to Poseidon to get them home alive. I don’t believe in Poseidon, but I wonder how so many prayers were so perfectly answered, since so many of them did get home alive.
Amy: Okay. So, that’s the first one. I don’t know if you want to respond to that first.
Greg: I would like to respond to that. Notice, please read the beginning, because there’s something in the wording here that’s very important for you to catch.
Amy: Why is it considered very bad manners to ask for testable, repeatable, consistent evidence that gods and goddesses do exist?
Greg: Okay, there’s two things there. Why is it considered bad manners? I don’t consider it bad manners. You don’t. I do not know anyone—of course, we’re in a kind of rarefied environment with apologists, etc., and theologians—but I don’t know of anyone who considers this bad manners.
This happens, I think, on some levels. You know, local churches, especially when they are somewhat anti-intellectual and/or have no idea how to answer the challenge, don’t want to hear the challenge. And what they do is they opt for “you just got to believe” kind of language. And we discourage this approach because it’s damaging. It’s damaging to Christians, and plus, it’s not helpful to those offering. So, this isn’t our view, obviously, and I think it’s a mistake to paint it as characteristic of Christianity. It’s not characteristic of Christianity. It may be characteristic of a lot of Christians, but there is no sense where this is true of Christianity.
No one is ever, you know, chastised for asking for reasons in the text. We have places like Acts chapter 1—Jesus appeared with many convincing proofs, for example. We have Paul going to the Areopagus and speaking to the pagans there—also speaking to Jews from Scripture—giving reasons for their view, reasoning with them, and some were persuaded.
Amy: So, John says, “These things are written so that you may know that he’s the Christ.”
Greg: The miracles that John records there. That’s in John chapter 20.
And so, that characterization does not apply to Christianity. It applies to some Christians. So, with that clarification, I’m going to set that aside.
Amy: Well, I want to say one more thing about that because what he might be saying here is that people object to saying you have to do scientific experiments to prove God exists.
Greg: Oh, okay. That’s the next phrase. And that’s the second liability with the way this question is raised. This is why, by the way, it is so important to look at a challenge in its pieces and ask questions about the pieces, like, “What do you mean by that? What’s going on here? Is this the way Christianity—?”
“No, that’s not true.”
“Oh, now you’re saying we have to do this empirically. So, are you saying that I have to have a test tube experiment that is repeatable to show that God exists?”
That is what he’s saying.
Well, that’s good to find out, you know, how acids and salts work together, or acids and basic things work together, and a whole bunch of other things, but this isn’t how we learn most of the things we know.
So, this is actually a category error, where you’re asking for something that is not appropriate to the category. How much does the color blue weigh? Well, colors don’t have weight, so this is a nonsense question.
So, why don’t we prove God through repeatable experiments? We don’t do that. Now, here’s what we can do. We can use science to see evidence for an agent. And, by the way, we do this in psychology. We do this in forensic pathology. Did the guy die of natural causes or foul play? Well, you use science, CSI stuff, to determine if an agent was involved. That’s certainly applicable here. And this is what the cosmological argument and the teleological argument, at least nowadays, in the last 100 years—150 years almost now—those arguments have been abetted by the scientific evidence that we’ve been able to uncover that more and more secures the confidence that a Creator does exist. And Stephen Meyer’s recent book comes to mind. Was it The Rebirth of the God Hypothesis?
Amy: I think The Return of the God Hypothesis. You’re confusing his book with Justin Brierley’s.
Greg: On the way back home last night, I was listening to an interview with Justin and Stephen on this issue. But they’re both good books. And one trades on the other, because Justin is looking at the amazing move towards theism, and part of it is because of the things that Stephen talks about in his book that science has produced. So, science can play a part in this.
So, now, when he is asking, “Well, doesn’t the Scripture say to test all things?” Well, we have to deal with that in context. We find that in 1 Thessalonians 5, and it says, “Do not despise prophetic utterance, but examine everything carefully” or “test it carefully,” whatever translation. But, curiously, you don’t test prophecy by putting it in a test tube—repeatable experiments kind of deal. That’s not a test that applies there. And, in fact, it is appropriate for us, not just with prophetic words, to test or assess, but we test other things, too. And this is consistent with the biblical record—that we are testing and assessing whatever. “What sign will you give that you’re the Messiah?” “The only sign that’s given will be the sign of Jonah,” to which he is referring to the resurrection. So, there’s a testing and a sign that’s entailed there.
So, we do see this testing motif going on, but we have to keep in mind what you shared—was it earlier this show or the one before? I think it was the last show—about how different things are tested in different ways, and we cannot confuse those.
This challenge by Mike, unfortunately, falls prey to a straw man fallacy, the way it’s worded. We can repair that by changing the wording and making the challenge appropriate to Christianity and the kinds of things that Christianity holds to be true. As it is right now, it’s a challenge that fits a mischaracterization of Christianity on a number of levels, and therefore it doesn’t survive as a real challenge.
Yes, we ought to test things in a number of different ways. We don’t test most of the things we know in a test tube, as it were. So, you know, you can’t ask that of us here.
There is a question about answered prayer in this. Did you want to address that?
Amy: Well, I just wanted to say quickly, just a couple points with this, to reiterate. Science does point to God, because it does point to design, fine-tuning, all these things—to the existence of an agent, that sort of thing.
Greg: That’s right.
Amy: But when it comes to things like prayer, you cannot test prayer. You can’t test anything that an agent does who’s not a force. A force you can test, because if you give them a certain input, you get the same output every time. But with a human being—you can see this with any parent—just because they don’t give you what you ask them for, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. So, prayer cannot be tested in some sort of empirical way. I mean, in general, I don’t see how you could do that.
Greg: Well, there’s one thought I have about that. He mentions Poseidon and people praying to Poseidon for a safe trip. People have safe trips. Forget about prayer. Sometimes their trips are safe. Sometimes they’re not. And so, they can put up prayers to all kinds of false gods and have different things happen, and they say, “Well, the gods answered us this way. They were favorable, or they were unfavorable.” It doesn’t tell you anything, really.
Now, Christians, they pray, and sometimes they get what they ask for, and sometimes they don’t, because you’re asking a person. It’s not a mechanical process. So, in a certain sense, there’s a similarity with the other. However, the difference is the abundance of evidence that we have of the existence of the God to whom we pray. It’s not just whether or not they answer prayers. I mean, what evidence did anybody ever give for Poseidon? I’m actually curious about that. So, they have this belief. What are the reasons? Well, I don’t know, but, as far as I can tell, there’s no apologetics for these guys. But for Yahweh, there is. And there’s a great number of lines of evidence—not just for a personal God, but for Yahweh—that one could appeal to. That puts it in a separate category. Okay?
But the way you can test prayer—and J.P. Moreland has mentioned this—is you offer prayers that have specified complexity. So, when you say, “Okay, God. I’m moving to Kansas, and I need a house in Topeka that costs $20,000. I’m looking for a four-bedroom, blah, blah, blah.” You get all these details. “That’s what I need. I can’t afford any more.” And then it turns out, when you get there, somebody knocks on your door—a real estate agent—and, “You’re interested in a house. I got one down the street,” and it turns out to be precisely what you prayed for.
Now, those kinds of prayers that are answered, I think that’s evidential because of the complexity that’s specified to a certain end. It’s a complex prayer: A, B, C, D, E, and F. And the details are meant to match something that fits in the answer. So, there is a way you can test prayer in that fashion. Prayers that are really general—I don’t think any other test of the efficacy of prayer—and I know there are some so-called scientific ones—I don’t think any of those are useful, because they don’t take into consideration the particular God that we’re praying to.