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We can preach at them, beat them over the head with our Bibles, and quote scripture until we are blue in the face. How does that "prove" that God exists? What do you think you can do to prove that God exists?

2007-08-11 07:23:16 · 35 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture Religion & Spirituality

35 answers

I believe that God chooses you, not that you choose God. Unfortunately, some people will never know the truth (until it's too late). However, once you do know the truth, you want to share it. Once a Christian, you should thirst for God's word and follow His commandments, most importantly, loving others as yourself. Non-believers should see Jesus's love within you and know there is something special about you because of it. When they ask to know your "secret" you can easily share your testimony with them.

2007-08-11 07:34:19 · answer #1 · answered by star1_stock 2 · 3 2

Strictly speaking, I don't think God wants you to prove he exists. The way I look at it is that when Jesus sat down to teach, he did so using parables. Now why would he do that? If he had spoken plainly wouldn't everyone have become a disciple? Yes, of course! So what is wrong with that? Why didn't he do that? I believe it was because he came to free them from the power of sin, and that to free them he had to give them the freedom to choose whether of not they should believe or not, and the only way he could teach and preserve that freedom he taught in a way that the believer would learn and the unbeliever wouldn't: parables.
I think you need to change your approach. I'm not sure what you could do, but one thought was had you considered starting a prayer group? No songs, no musical instruments, no teaching, no scriptures, no speaking in tongues. There are other places people can go to do those things. Just ask people each person for something to pray about. Rely on God working in the heart of the person to do the proving.

2007-08-11 08:00:05 · answer #2 · answered by Bad bus driving wolf 6 · 0 0

I like this quote from Ravi Zacharius:

To all of this the skeptic might say that such conclusions may be drawn only if the God of the Bible exists. To that I heartily answer, Absolutely! And on numerous campuses around the world it has been my thrilling privilege to present a defense for the existence of God and for the authority of the Scriptures, unique in their splendor and convincing in the truth they proclaim. But let us not miss what the skeptic unwittingly surrenders by saying that all this could be true only if God exists. For, implicit in that concession is the Law of Non-contradiction and the Law of Rational Inference, which exist only if truth exists. Truth, in turn, can exist only if there is an objective standard by which to measure it. That objective, unchanging absolute is God.

I have often wondered, when I see our angry culture claiming that God has not given us enough evidence, if it is not the veiled restlessness of lives that live in doubt because of their own duplicity. The battle in our time is posed as one of the intellect, in the assertion that truth is unknowable. But that may be only a veneer for the real battle, that of the heart.

2007-08-11 07:43:44 · answer #3 · answered by D2T 3 · 0 0

A central feature of the Christian faith is the assertion that everything we see and know about is explainable; we have both the reasoning capability and the tools to explore the world around us always asking "Why." We recognize that everything we see and encounter is only here for awhile, and we see no conflict with asserting that the world as we see and explore it need not be like it is, and at the same time asserting that there is a God. Indeed it is precisely because the world could have been very different that we are led to assert that god exists. This is the argument from the contingency of the world or universe to the existence of God. The argument from contingency is the most prominent form of cosmological argument historically. The classical statements of the cosmological argument in the works of Plato, of Aquinas, and of Leibniz are generally statements this argument. The fact that others, non-Christians, can be led to the same conclusion gives us confidence that our assertions about god's existence are rational and that no special relationship to god is required for that rationality no to reach that conclusion.

The argument from contingency draws on the distinction between things that exist "necessarily" and things that exist "contingently."

Something is “necessary” if it could not possibly have failed to exist. The laws of mathematics are often thought to be necessary. It is plausible to say that mathematical truths such as two and two making four hold irrespective of the way that the world is. Even if the world were radically different, it seems, two and two would still make four. God, too, is often thought to be a necessary being, i.e. a being that logically could not have failed to exist.

Something is “contingent” if it is not necessary, i.e. if it could have failed to exist. Most things seem to exist contingently. All of the human artifacts around us might not have existed; for each one of them, whoever made it might have decided not to do so. Their existence, therefore, is contingent. You and I, too, might not have existed; our respective parents might never have met, or might have decided not to have children, or might have decided to have children at a different time. Our existence, therefore, is contingent. Even the world around us seems to be contingent; the universe might have developed in such a way that none of the observable stars and planets existed at all.

The argument from contingency rests on the claim that the universe, as a whole, is contingent. It is not only the case, the argument suggests, that each of the things around is us contingent; it is also the case that the whole, all of those things taken together, is contingent. It might have been the case that nothing existed at all. The state of affairs in which nothing existed at all is a logically possible state of affairs, even though it is not the actual state of affairs. For example, a pile of cheerios on a table isn't a "pile" filled with cheerios, but rather the pile is formed by the cheerios themselves. When the cheerios are gone, the "pile" is gone. So, because the cheerios are contingent --they can go away-- when they do go away the pile itself goes away, too. The contingency of the cheerios gives this same property to the "pile."

It is this that the argument from contingency takes to be significant. It is because it is thought that the universe exists contingently that its existence is thought to require explanation. If the universe might not have existed, then why does it exist? Proponents of the cosmological argument suggest that questions like this always have answers. The existence of things that are necessary does not require explanation; their non-existence is impossible. The existence of anything contingent, however, does require explanation. They might not have existed, and so there must be some reason that they do so.

Critics of the argument from contingency have sometimes questioned whether the universe is contingent, but it remains at least plausible to think that it is so. Some critics, for example, insist that there is no "universe as a whole"; that is just a linguistic artifact. Such critics would, for example, assert that there is no such thing as a shopping list: there is just a sequence of items on a piece of paper; but a "list" is purely conceptual, it is in our heads and has no independent existence. This tries to sidestep the notion that there is an "everything" which has to be explained. Yet, this seems to be equally problematic. While it is true that we cannot gather everything together in a single place and say, "Explain that." it certainly seem plausible to ask, "If all that exists could be different, then why does all that exists present itself to us in the way that it does?"

The only adequate explanation of the existence of the contingent universe, the argument from contingency suggests, is that there exists a necessary being on which its existence it rests. For the existence of the contingent universe must rest on something, and if it rested on some contingent being then that contingent being too would require some explanation of its existence. The ultimate explanation of the existence of all things, therefore, must be the existence of some necessary being. This necessary being is readily identified by proponents of the cosmological argument as God.

HTH

Charles

2007-08-11 07:41:14 · answer #4 · answered by Charles 6 · 1 0

i'm only someone with limited perceptions, only like everybody else. I believe God does exist, yet no longer in any anthropomorphic experience that ought to have the skill to be shown or measured scientifically. This being the main possibly reason of the an prolonged time previous debate, I end that i won't provide any friendly answer that ought to convince you the two way.

2016-11-12 01:25:57 · answer #5 · answered by weberg 4 · 0 0

Believing that God exsists is a leap of faith. Nobody can prove that He is not Real either. Isaiah 56:10 You have to have the spiritual eyes to see Him! You have to Be an example of a faithful Christian and live a godly life yourself in order to win souls. 1st Timothy, Colossians 3:1-2.

2007-08-11 07:35:58 · answer #6 · answered by ShadowCat 6 · 1 1

An individual can only prove to him or herself that God exists because that takes a great amount of faith. People who are not convinced will not be convinced by anything.

2007-08-11 07:28:56 · answer #7 · answered by just wants to know 7 · 1 1

God exists in the hearts and beliefs of people. People exist, their minds exist, their hearts and beliefs exist.

So what kind of person could say that God doesn't exist?

Surely it is a matter of opinion.
Just because I don't believe in God, I still cannot deny he exists. I could probably find logical thought that would deny his reality, but I still could not deny his existence.

I have the utmost love and respect for you and your beliefs, even if I do not share them.

May peace go with you throughout your life.

PS: Don't worry about that silly, silly Binary Purple. She needs so badly to be loved. Please help me by showing her what it is to feel love, because she has a heart of ice.

2007-08-11 07:43:33 · answer #8 · answered by ? 5 · 0 1

Nobody will, because nobody can-

"We live in a world of unimaginable surprises--from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth--and yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn’t know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image."

2007-08-11 07:27:57 · answer #9 · answered by dr schmitty 7 · 2 1

God cannot be proven true nor false. That is the main problem with the concept of God. Anybody's idea of God is equally valid: Jesus, Thor, Allah... All the same!

Try it! Prove that Thor does not exist.

2007-08-11 07:27:36 · answer #10 · answered by Benjamin Peret 3 · 4 1

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