Seeing is believing?

[Sojourner]

"Show me proof of God's existence, and I'll believe in him." Ever heard that one? It's akin to the old adage, "seeing is believing." But these are examples of the distorted thinking that the world has with regard to the things of God. Logic dictates that we cannot truly believe in something that has been proven to us, as once we have the proof, belief no longer applies. At times, we may even have trouble believing what our eyes are telling us is a fact, but once we acknowledge a thing to be proven fact, it no longer exists in the realm of belief. Ultimately, belief in something, tempered by conviction, is faith, which also operates outside the realm of "seeing."

As the Apostle Paul points out, Creation itself declares the existence of God and His glory. “For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.” (Rom 1:19-20)

People see the handiwork of God in the heavenly realm, in the intricate structure of the atom and DNA, and yet reject the idea of a Creator. The design is self-evident, but a Designer is rejected. The universe is happenstance, and it all came from nothing by itself. “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God.’” “Professing themselves wise, they became foolish.”  They see, yet do not believe.

Consider the numerous miracles Jesus performed during His earthly ministry. The people of that day beheld with their own eyes, awesome, supernatural works of God, wrought by Jesus in the name of God. And it was clear to these people that such miracles could only be explained by the power of God working in Him. Thousands of people swarmed around Jesus daily, mesmerized by the gracious words with which He spoke of God and His kingdom. They witnessed miraculous healing, the casting out of demons, and even the dead being called forth out of the grave. Thousands witnessed all these things with their own eyes.

One can only wonder where they all were when the crowd was shouting, “crucify him!” and “give us Barabbas!” Where were the thousands He miraculously fed with a boy's lunch? Where were all those who filled the streets singing "Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord" after Lazarus was raised from the dead? Where were they when Jesus was suffering on the cross, when only His mother, the Apostle John and a few others stood beneath His cross Him on Calvary’s hill? If seeing is believing, everyone that witnessed Jesus’ miracles would have believed His testimony.

Despite all the seeing, most did not believe He was the messiah. He did not immediately throw off the yoke of the Gentiles and establish His kingdom in Jerusalem, so He cannot be God’s anointed one. Of the many thousands that saw and heard Him, we read that about 500 were present to witness His ascension into heaven following His resurrection, and only 120 were present when God poured out His Spirit on that world-changing day of Pentecost shortly afterward.

The religious leaders of that day likewise witnessed all these things. There was no question the power of God was working in Jesus. Yet, they refused to acknowledge it because they hated Jesus for telling the truth about their pomposity and hypocrisy. Choosing the way of Cain, they refused to alter their skewed perception and continued to do things their own way. Like Cain, they resented the faith and obedience of a godly brother whose righteousness and miraculous deeds were apparent. The way of Cain is the way many have since followed—hearing God, but neither listening nor heeding; looking, yet not seeing what is before them. Seeing, but not believing. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14:12)

The truth is, seeing is not believing. Only believing is believing. And God, in His infinite wisdom, chose faith as the path by which man can find God, and regain the sweet communion with Him lost in the garden of Eden. A lack of faith in His word led to the fall from grace in the garden. And His word manifest in the humanity of Jesus restores us. The failure of a man in a garden to submit to the will of God made us lose communion with God. And it was a man in a garden submitting His will to God that restored it: “Father if it’s possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet, not my will, but yours be done.”

Only by believing what the world rejects as foolishness, by accepting as reality a truth rejected by the intellect, can the inner, spiritual creature be reunited with its Creator. And God planned it so before Creation itself.

No, seeing is not believing, for many have seen without believing, and many have believed without seeing. Contrary to the wisdom of this world, which says "I'll believe it when I see it," only those who believe in God and His Christ will see the glory of God and dwell with Him in His kingdom.

And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that He exists and is a rewarder of those who sincerely seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

[Athanasius]

Where's @Oscar

[Sojourner]

I'm sure he'll be along soon enough.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I. Only by believing what the world rejects as foolishness, by accepting as reality a truth rejected by the intellect, can the inner, spiritual creature be reunited with its Creator. - - -

Is there not a single example of someone seeing and then believing? Could we scour the history of humanity and never find a single person that makes such a claim? Or I suppose if we do find such a claimant then surely they must be lying or mistaken. Some Christians really like to hammer home the idea of believe first, and that the intellect and wise men of the world will reject christianity as nonsense. I don't see how it doesn't matter that the intellect and wise men of the world reject  a wide gamut of ideas, Phlogiston...rejected , homunculi theory of human reproduction...rejected, Aliens from mars abducting and people and mutilating cattle....rejected. Perhaps the idea is that only the ideas that are universally rejected by the intellect and/or the wise men of the world are the ideas that you can consistently accept as true? Since the intellectuals and wise men of the world seem to be simply defined as people that reject Christianity then I suppose that I can see how a person might think that the assertions you've put forth here aren't gobbledegook....but still in practice it doesn't really pan out like that,


The World and The Intellect rejects all sorts of religious and non religious ideas. One cannot simply catalog the spiritual propositions that the intellect rejects in order to accumulate a list of 100% true not made up spiritual facts. Instead you would end up with a list of assertions from many religions and cults and internet weirdos and only a fraction of that list would contain true and goodly Christian spiritual facts. this looks to me like a bit of verbal prestidigitation, it is presented as if we are being given a metric and method for distinguishing true spiritual information from vile and lowly lies, however it can't actually do that because the intellect and the worldly intellectuals reject all sorts of stuff that has nothing to do with Christianity and that mere rejection does not offer any mechanism for justifying why rejected buddhist ideas should remain rejected and rejected Christian Ideas should be wholeheartedly embraced as the sweet nourishing nectar of spiritual truth. I imagine that if a group of weirdo's believed that the earth was flat they too could claim that you can tell its true based on how rejected it is by "the World" (which is just another way of saying people that don't accept my deeply held beliefs as fact). The rejection tells you nothing and only serves to baselessly confirm a narrow set of rejected beliefs while ignoring all of the other rejects for no discernable reason other than that doing so would immediately collapse the argument in upon itself. Utterly epistemologically useless.


II. Creation itself declares the existence of God and His glory - - -

Well, if Paul the apostle said so then how could I even question this? If this is the case then everyone should qualify for a supernatural visitation or emmanation because we all already know for a fact that God is real and I guess presumably that its the Christian God...I mean that is at least an order of magnitude better than a mustard seed of faith. Honestly If this is true it really makes you wonder why anyone would even bother with the Idea that there are people that reject the existence of God and His glory and that this rejection provides useful information about what the truth of God actually is. At best all you could really say is that people claim to reject this thing that they know for a fact is true. It really punches holes in the idea the people that witnessed Jesus' miracles later came to reject the divinity of Christ because like the miracles didn't even matter, they knew it was true before the miracles and continued to know for the rest of their lives. Does the bible specifically say that these teeming thousands that you are claiming didn't come to the crucifiction because they rejected the undeniable self evident evidence of God that absolutely permeates every aspect of creation and on top of that they rejected the entirely superfluous miracles of Christ? How do you know that they couldn't get that day off of work or maybe just didn't want to see a crucifixion because I imagine its a disturbing event to behold or that since they had all of these spiritual spoilers so they knew that Jesus is literally God therefore wasn't ever really in any danger that matters. Just saying that I'm skeptical of the claims of the bible in general, but i'm especially skeptical of how you arrived upon these numbers and how you know the reasons why more people didn't show up for Jesus' big earthly finale.

 On another note why in heaven would God give prophecies and predictions of the messiah that he knew would be incongruous with the apparent earthly activities of Jesus? Like again if Paul's claim is true and righteous and goodly then the prophecies were as gratuitous and unnecessary as the miracles were, but in addition to being completely redundant they were also ambiguous. To what end?? To give people that could not possibly have an excuse or even the option to not know the truth of God/Christ the illusion of an excuse to pretend that they were rejecting deep spiritual truths so that later Christians could really belabor the idea that this rejection that cannot actually be rejection is in fact confirmation of spiritual truth that you don't actually need confirmation for because if you exist in creation then all of the confirmation you  or anyone else will ever need is everywhere all of the time and everyone already understands this truth.

I could go on and on and on about how this is foolishness to my worldly intellect, but i'm sleepy and in your mind i must be only pretending that that I don't know that you are correct and goodly and true about God and the mechanics of knowledge and truth because I've seen DNA and atoms and stuff and the hallmarks of their intelligent design is as plain as the nose on this face that heavenly father created. Perhaps my brain isnt working well because I've been awake far too long, but i don't even see how the internal logic of any of this hangs together. Good Night

[Sojourner]

Ah, there you are. Just so you know, my first post represents the expression of recent ruminations rather than a challenge to you or your atheism/agnosticism. Not throwing down the gauntlet here. Your feedback (or push back, in this case) is welcome, though I expect little to be accomplished other than a pointless exchange of words. Neither you nor I will influence the other's perspective regarding God's existence--or even find the other's argument compelling. That leaves little room for a meaningful dialogue.

I'm actually more amenable to contending with a rabid atheist than a disgruntled ex-Christian, as I at least know what I'm dealing with. If you gave the Christian faith a spin and concluded you were sold a bill of goods, my advocacy for the faith will fall on deaf ears, which leaves little chance for a meeting of the minds. Then again, to you, any outcome seems incidental to the dialogue itself. Besides, your verbosity and irascible temperament make engaging with you less than desirable. Good night.

[Oscar_Kipling]

Ah, there you are. Just so you know, my first post represents the expression of recent ruminations rather than a challenge to you or your atheism/agnosticism. Not throwing down the gauntlet here. Your feedback (or push back, in this case) is welcome, though I expect little to be accomplished other than a pointless exchange of words. Neither you nor I will influence the other's perspective regarding God's existence--or even find the other's argument compelling. That leaves little room for a meaningful dialogue.

I'm actually more amenable to contending with a rabid atheist than a disgruntled ex-Christian, as I at least know what I'm dealing with. If you gave the Christian faith a spin and concluded you were sold a bill of goods, my advocacy for the faith will fall on deaf ears, which leaves little chance for a meeting of the minds. Then again, to you, any outcome seems incidental to the dialogue itself. Besides, your verbosity and irascible temperament make engaging with you less than desirable. Good night.

My wordiness and irascibility seem to be beside the point, seems my Ex-Christianess would cause nearly any discussion with me to be pointless even if I were succinct and jovial.

[Fenris]

I often see various non believing types asking for "proof" of God's existence, as though we're in a court of law or something. So I'm inclined to chime with some thoughts that I heard from my son.

In human spheres, there are different mechanisms for proving something, and they all require different levels of evidence.

For example, there's civil court. The level of proof required for a judgement is called "preponderance of the evidence." To non lawyer types (anyone here who isn't RK  ) this means 51%. If I have even slightly more evidence than the other side, the judge rules in my favor.

Or move on to criminal court. There the level of proof for guilt is called "beyond a reasonable doubt". Notice that it doesn't say "beyond ALL doubt". Just beyond reasonable doubt. Juries and judges can't take every possibility into account and do sometimes get it wrong. So we could say that's like 90%.

Then we have proofs in mathematics. There, something has to be 100% correct. If some hypothesis has even a single exception then it isn't true.

And then we have religious faith. That doesn't fit into any of the above. It's something that speaks to us on a personal level. It's the sum total of our life's experiences and how we see the world.

[Athanasius]

And then we have religious faith. That doesn't fit into any of the above. It's something that speaks to us on a personal level. It's the sum total of our life's experiences and how we see the world.

The other reality about proof of God's existence is that they're no assurance of faith, obedience, a wanting to be in relation(ship) with God, etc. One might talk with God in a garden and still manage to do the very thing that ought not to be done.

Proofs as such also often only make sense on reflection, after one is 'convinced'. Before then, what's to say an intelligent creator is this god or that god, or aliens, or transdimensional beings, or natural processes we don't understand? Pascal and Anselm were clever but short of subjectivity no one can get quite to the point of definitive proof.

And so, Christians like their personal relationships because the subjective witness of the Holy Spirit to the person is what does the trick, and not listening to William Lane Craig debates for a month straight - as entertaining as they might be.

[Fenris]

The other reality about proof of God's existence is that they're no assurance of faith, obedience, a wanting to be in relation(ship) with God, etc. One might talk with God in a garden and still manage to do the very thing that ought not to be done.

That's true I suppose. Although it isn't an issue nowadays.

And so, Christians like their personal relationships because the subjective witness of the Holy Spirit to the person is what does the trick

This is more what it's like nowadays.

[ProDeo]

The other reality about proof of God's existence is that they're no assurance of faith, obedience, a wanting to be in relation(ship) with God, etc. One might talk with God in a garden and still manage to do the very thing that ought not to be done.

So true...

I remember in my unconverted state of mind wrestling with faith I concluded that if God was real I would follow and serve Him as a logical act, you are not going to argue with your Creator, 2+2=4 logic. Then at the moment I became aware I had to follow suit and I did although it felt like jumping into the deep without the ability to swim.

In my talks with unbelievers I often proposed the question to them : will you serve God if He reveals Himself to you and you are 100% sure that He exists? And I realized my 2+2=4 logic did not work for others. I got comments like:

1. Well, I have a lot of questions for God first;
2. Maybe I don't like Him.

Which made me conclude, there are hears ready for Him and hearts that are not. Oh wait Jesus already said that in the parable of the sower.

[Oscar_Kipling]

Christianity seems to me to be one of a few special propositions where the importance of collecting evidence, investigation, falsification and most other mechanisms that people commonly use to get at the truth is minimized or altogether dismissed. To be fair i've encountered other self proclaimed Christians that claim to believe that there are arguments and proofs for God that rely on evidence and reason (I believe WLC has made such assertions). I've also encountered those that will insist that undeniable proof of God is all around us and/or is written on the hearts of every human.


Unlike say the claim that my Toyota Camry hybrid gets 116 mpg/hw, you folks seem to be saying that one must be prepared or motivated to accept the truth of the proposition before they can see the truth of the proposition. There is a sense in which this could be viewed as an innocuous consequence of how arguments work, however I do not think it can be denied that there is a malignant form of this where the conclusion is foregone and the reasoning is motivated. Perhaps it is true that God has so thoroughly  entangled the truth of his nature, character and even his existence with subjective expirience that it is futile to approach the question of God as you would gas mileage. I have to wonder though, is it mere coincidence that this approach is very similar to, and perhaps even indistinguishable from the sort of biased reasoning that many of you would likely detect and reject as a reasonable means to justify belief in say the multiverse or even a Toyota that does 116 highway miles per hour.

It is always a little frustrating that for most other propositions many Christians would see how flawed it is to use this motivated reasoning to justify beliefs even to one's self....but it is perfectly acceptable when seeking the Lord. I do not see a good reason to make the exception for Christianity that you guys have and so it goes I suppose that God has disqualified people like me who are unwilling to intentionally use bad reasoning.

[Athanasius]

Christianity seems to me to be one of a few special propositions where the importance of collecting evidence, investigation, falsification and most other mechanisms that people commonly use to get at the truth is minimized or altogether dismissed.

Not in Christianity proper, but most Christian practice isn't 'Christianity proper'. Think of this similarly to how a lot of Christians affirm a belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, but then provide arguments in favour of Modalism. There are differences between affirming a believe in X, Y or Z, explaining the belief that's affirmed, understanding what's believed, and so on.

When it comes to faith, it's of course important to: collect evidence, investigate, falsify, and so forth. But it's equally important to keep perspective. Faith isn't about propositions like 2 + 2 = 4 and is substantially metaphysical. It's theological, and it's philosophical. But it's also existential. How do engage in what sounds like a scientific endeavour of faith? Just as there are no definitive proofs of God's existence, there's nothing to definitively defeat the proposition that God exists, even if we determine that it's not A, B or C god that exists.

And it's frustrating to grow up in a tradition that emphasises feelings, downplays the evidence of this-or-that, or suggests ludicrous theology or beliefs that are clearly at odds with what we know of the natural world. But as with anything, there are bad conceptions and there are good conceptions, and the good conceptions aren't going to run away from those things.

To be fair i've encountered other self proclaimed Christians that claim to believe that there are arguments and proofs for God that rely on evidence and reason (I believe WLC has made such assertions). I've also encountered those that will insist that undeniable proof of God is all around us and/or is written on the hearts of every human.

It is, but the paradox is that you won't believe so until you believe so. WLC and others can make the case that belief in God is rational, but they can't argue that it's rational therefore you should believe it. You simply can't be compelled in that direction. You can't choose what you find compelling or what you believe.

[Fenris]

Christianity seems to me to be one of a few special propositions where the importance of collecting evidence, investigation, falsification and most other mechanisms that people commonly use to get at the truth is minimized or altogether dismissed.

One point of note is that Christianity is not falsifiable. There's no way to prove it wrong, especially as everything of note is so heavily spiritualized that everything of import that Jesus did takes place in another realm.

In my mind, that's a strike against the faith. It's set up in such a way that it can't be proved incorrect.

Before you ask, yes, Judaism is falsifiable.

[Athanasius]

Before you ask, yes, Judaism is falsifiable.

How would one attempt to falsify Judaism?

[Fenris]

How would one attempt to falsify Judaism?

The core belief of Judaism is that God made a perpetual covenant at Sinai with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Furthermore, God promises multiple times in the bible that the Jewish people will never cease to exist.

Some examples

Lev 26 "Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. "

Jeremiah 30:11 For I am with you to save you, declares the LORD. Though I will completely destroy all the nations to which I have scattered you, I will not completely destroy you.

Jermiah 31 This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord Almighty is his name:
“Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, "will Israel ever cease being a nation before me.”

Deut 4:31 For the LORD your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers, which He swore to them by oath.

2 Kings 13:23 And the LORD was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them, and had respect unto them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them...


2 Kings 14:27 and since the LORD had said that He would not blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam son of Jehoash.

etc etc.

How is Judaism falsifiable? If these statements are ever proven wrong, then Judaism will have been proved false. How could these statements be proved wrong? If the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, cease to exist, then God's word as transmitted in the bible will be disproved.

And it's not like people haven't tried to do that.