The foundation of belief

I recently had a brief discussion with an atheist about reasons for believing that God exists. Initially the discussion was about the credibility of reports of modern miracles. I asserted that I’m a cessationist and that my belief in Christ is not grounded in external evidence. Then the discussion turned to evidence for God’s existence. I concluded that he must be a naturalist, since his disbelief in God was grounded in his view that all reports of modern miracles don’t stand up to scrutiny, and therefore the miracles as reported in the Gospels are necessarily of the same nature.

In response to my statement that I don’t ground my belief of God in miracles or other scientific evidence, he said that I should probably change my views to reflect my [his] stated reality.

For the first time through some form of debate with an atheist, I quickly had to remember why I believed in Christ and the message of the Bible. The misunderstanding was that I do believe in the evidence for God. My point was however that I don’t “ground” my belief in God’s existence on those evidences.

Before I share what my belief in God is grounded in, I’d like to make a point about naturalism. For those of you not familiar with the term, naturalism is the view that, almost like empiricism, the natural observable world is all that exists; or that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience. It denies the existence of things that humans can’t experience through the senses, thus it excludes any knowledge of God or the supernatural.

My problem with naturalism is that it assumes God must be provable exclusively through the empiric, scientific methods. But why believe that God who is [super]natural, must be provable by natural means? Imagine that a God exists and created our world. He created all the devices we operate with (our rational, cognitive thoughts and our many other abilities) and the world around us. Can we seriously assume that we, the created, with our limited grasp and understanding of the world in which God created us, and our limited ability (or inability) to [consistently] reason objectively, must be able to grasp fully our creator who created the very devices we operate with? However abstractly, even our scientific method was also created by Him! Yet naturalists insist that if God exists, He must be provable through our [created] ability to reason and do science.

To put it in another way, before you can use science to disprove God, you must first prove that the scientific method is sufficient for disproving God. Presupposing its sufficiency for what you wish to conclude, and then concluding thus, is circular reasoning, and I daresay not very scientific to begin with!

In any case, I think there are many evidences for God’s existence: natural, scientific and philosophical reasons. I believe these evidences are exceptionally good and accurate. However, my belief in God is not rooted in such evidences, but rather only bolstered by it. Rooting your belief of God in evidence places you on shaky ground, because your faith in God, as with anything else in life, can always be challenged. I must state for the record that personal experience is also a bad thing to base your belief of God in.

Rather, my belief in God is rooted in my understanding of the basic human condition, that is the hinge around which all of scripture turns. There is no better explanation of the world and it’s inherent problems since the beginning of recorded history, than human sinfulness; and no better solution than that God who created everything has worked so profoundly in history to reconcile his creation back into relationship with him. It doesn’t require astrophysics to realize the basic sinful nature of every human being, and that the best counter for our nature is to submit to an all loving God who has graciously made it possible for us to escape the justice he requires for our rebellion and hate against Him and our fellow man; who changes our hearts when we realise our sin and rebellion; and who sanctifies us.

Even as a Christian I never believed it when people told me that “people desire to dethrone God and to rule themselves”, until in recent years I realised my very own thought pattern as a youth: I fully desired to be independent and be my own boss; I wanted nobody, including my parents, to have authority over me and ever tell me what to do – especially if I didn’t want to be obedient; I wanted to do everything “My Way”, because, as every teenager knows: their parents are stupid and they (the teenager) are smart and have all knowledge!; I am smarter, I am better, I am superior!; I wish to seek and please my own will…

Sound familiar? It comes very close to being the exact opposite of the Lord’s prayer “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done”. Is it so hard to realise that our nature hates God? Is it so hard to realise that our nature seeks to remove God completely from our lives? Is it any surprise then that there are so many atheists that do exactly this?

It is my view that once you understand the concept/theory that I dub “The basic human condition” and the best explanation and solution to it, and how it is universally applicable to every human being that ever existed (including the best of people who fought against this very condition) and including yourself, then you simply cannot deny the existence of God, no matter how hard anyone tries to cast doubt on your belief.