ASKING FOR “EVIDENCE” OF GOD? YOU MAY WANT TO LOOK AGAIN AT YOUR QUESTION

THE QUESTION: “WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE THAT GOD EXISTS?”

If you’ve spent any time with atheists – of if you are one yourself – then you know it’s common practice to ask Christians for evidence of God’s existence. And the practice is very understandable. After all, this seems like the most reasonable sort of question. If you have a claim that you want to posit – in this case that a deity, created and sustains the universe – then you ought to be able to produce evidence that this is so. These are just basic rules of good argument. If the Christian, or any sort of theist, can’t produce any evidence for their beliefs – well then what are they doing? Without evidence, it all amounts (at best) to interesting theories, or (at worst) to dreaming self-delusion.

Nothing seems more reasonable than this request; and yet right here Christians falter already. Sure, there are those who amass evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, etc.; but that’s already well past our question. We’re talking about that most basic of all belief questions, the existence of God – a question wich, if answered negatively, would make any question of the Messiah’s resurrection irrelevant.

But is this really the most basic of all belief-questions? And is it even a good one? In this post, I want to challenge this question: What is the evidence that God exists? – not because I want to advocate some sort of irrationalism, or act like evidence doesn’t matter; but rather, because I think we need to think much harder about just what we mean by “evidence” in relation to the transcendent ultimacy of being – that is, God Himself.

So, then, I’m asking my skeptical friends to do what they so often ask Christians to do: reexamine their assumptions. And we’re going to do this beginning with the next section.

WHAT IS EVIDENCE? THE MODERN SCIENTIFIC VIEW

Evidence is a tricky thing. It seems like the most obvious sort of concept: evidence is something we observe that confirms or disconfirms a given idea (a “hypothesis”). But what exactly is this “something”? This is not at all obvious. Is it the phenomena we observe? Is it the data we collect from our observations? Is it all that data taken together, which sways us towards one conclusion or another?

I use these potential definitions of “something” because they are potential definitions of scientific evidence, which for most skeptics – especially those who request “evidence” – is the ultimate standard of human knowledge. Our greatest knowledge, for this sort of skeptic, is the knowledge that we accrue through scientific investigation.

Science, for them, is the greatest accomplishment of humankind; it is the single best method we have ever found for wresting impartial truths from the natural world. Indeed, it is science that first truly showed us that the natural world, when investigated, can give us sufficient answers for virtually all of life’s questions – all on its own. (Or, at least, it can give us all the answers we might hope to get.) This is the fundamental belief – I would even call it a faith – of the skeptic.

In this view, clearly, science receives the highest of praises. Scientific evidence is the surest form of human knowledge. But this immediately raises the question: just what sort of evidence does science give? What is the nature of scientific inquiry?

This is an extremely difficult question, and volumes have been written on it. Sometime later I’m hoping to write on the construction and progress of scientific knowledge. But covering Popper’s notion of falsifiability, Kuhn’s concept of scientific revolutions, or Latour’s observations on the social structure of scientific experiment – all of that would be way too much to do here!

In this post, I simply want to point to two fundamental aspects of modern scientific knowledge: first, its use of experiment to find answers to its questions; and second, its conforming of nature to an abstract, idealized geometry.

THE EXPERIMENTAL NATURE OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

The first aspect is pretty obvious, once we think about it. We know that scientists constantly perform experiments in order to test their hypotheses. Experimentation is often considered a sort of gold standard of scientific knowledge: a theory is not considered “proven” until it has been verified by experiment. Indeed, a theory – even one that confirms all experimental evidence hitherto gathered – is not considered truly “scientific” unless it makes its own unique falsifiable prediction, which might be confirmed or disconfirmed in due time.

This is the single greatest virtue of science. Experiments, of course, are the products of conditions both social (peer influence, experimenters’ interests, and above all funding) and intellectual (prior advancements and theories lead scientists to ask certain questions at the expense of others).

However, once the experiment has been conducted to the best of one’s ability, with variables either suppressed or accounted for, then scientists must accept the data given by nature, so long as the experiment itself was sound. They may well conduct another experiment if they are dissatisfied with the data they have obtained; but they must accept and report the data of each experiment, whether they like the outcome or not.

Now, this is not so unique a virtue as it might seem: plenty of disciplines demand that one accept data or rational consequences one does not like. That is part of what it means to be an intellectual discipline, as opposed to a sheer exercise of imagination or rhetoric. But science is unique in that it makes observations of natural phenomena in an unusually systematic and focused way. Experiment allows for this, and it refines our everyday observations of nature in wonderfully successful ways.

THE MATHEMATICAL NATURE OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

But these refined observations would be impossible without another fundamental aspect of modern scientific knowledge: the mathematization – or the geometrization – of nature. Modern science makes nature uniquely quantizable, calculable, and geometrical. This is a key aspect of the modern view of the world – and one that is often overlooked by scientists. It may also be less obvious for most readers of this post.

However, this aspect won’t be hard to see once I point it out. You see, one fundamental difference between modern science and Medieval science is the place of mathematics – particularly geometrical mathematics.

Now, mathematics had indeed been used in many areas prior to modern science. For instance, it had been used in Ptolemaic astronomy, which notably used far more complicated mathematics to describe planetary motion than did Copernican astronomy (in fact, its simplicity was part of what recommended the Copernican model). Moreover, it had been used to describe the relationships between various bodies – one might think, for instance, of Archimedes’ work on the lever.

But what had never happened was the use of abstract geometry to describe the simple motions of all the objects of nature. In modern science, an object does not simply move in a way that accords with our observations; it also moves according to certain abstract geometrical laws – laws that are privileged over our empirical experience of their movements.

To take a surprising, yet absolutely fundamental example: in our experience, objects in motion tend towards rest, unless otherwise animated by an external force. This is what we see and know in day-to-day life, and this everyday experience forms a basis for Aristotle’s theory of motion. But the modern, Newtonian theory of motion declares just the opposite: that an object in motion tends to stay in motion, unless counteracted by some other, interfering force.

This law of motion, the principle of inertia, is foundational for modern science – but it is also strange, for it has nothing to do with our experience of motion. As Martin Heidegger has rightly noted, this law is a description of motion on a purely mathematical plane, in an abstract void without any sort of resistance. In Newtonian science, objects would move with perfect and ceaseless mathematical consistency if it weren’t for the other countervailing forces of the world, which frustrate the perfect motions of objects. Heidegger rightly notes how odd is this idea:

How about this law? It speaks of a body, corpus quod a viribus impressis non cogitur, a body which is left to itself. Where do we find it? There is no such body. There is also no experiment which could ever bring such a body to direct perception. But modern science, in contrast to the mere dialectical poetic conception of medieval Scholasticism and science, is supposed to be based upon experience. Instead, it has such a law at its apex. This law speaks of a thing that does not exist. It demands a fundamental representation of things which contradict the ordinary. (Martin Heidegger, What Is A Thing?, 89).

Noting this, Heidegger then looks at the famous predecessor experiment to Newton’s first principle – namely, the great “free fall” experiment of Galileo Galilei. Is this experiment not one of the first triumphs of science? This is what we are taught. But Heidegger offers us a more historically accurate picture, laying our modern mythologies of early modern science aside:

It becomes a decisive insight of Galileo that all bodies fall equally fast, and that the differences in the time of fall only derive from the resistance of the air, not from the different inner natures of the bodies or from their own corresponding relation to their particular place [as was the case in Aristotelian science]. (Martin Heidegger, What Is A Thing?, 90).

In short, Galileo posited that in perfect conditions, with zero resistance from the air, two bodies would fall at the exact same velocity. In an attempt to show this, Galileo decided to drop two bodies from the Tower of Pisa, where air resistance would be minimal. The results might not be exact, but it should agree approximately with his hypothesis. And Galileo’s results did indeed fit with his hypothesis, at least in theory – but they also fit perfectly well with the theories of his opponents! Heidegger describes it thus:

Galileo did his experiment at the leaning tower in the town of Pisa, where he was professor of mathematics, in order to prove his statement. In it bodies of different weights did not arrive at precisely the same time after having fallen from the tower, but the difference in time was slight. In spite of these differences and therefore really against the evidence of experience, Galileo upheld his proposition. The witnesses to this experiment, however, became really perplexed by the experiment and Galileo’s upholding his view. They persisted the more obstinately in their former view. By reason of this experiment the opposition toward Galileo increased to such an extent that he had to give up his professorship and leave Pisa.

Both Galileo and his opponents saw the same ‘fact.’ But they interpreted the same fact differently and made the same happening visible to themselves in different ways. Indeed, what appeared for them as the essential fact and truth was something different. (Martin Heidegger, What Is A Thing?, 90).

Heidegger does not take note of all this in order to decry science; rather, he does so in order to get at something fundamental to its essence. Modern science is not simply a matter of making empirical observations, or even of making experiments. These things had been done in both ancient and Medieval times, regardless of what speculative excesses also occurred.

Rather, Heidegger is insisting that modern science is a specific way of observing nature, not simply in itself, but according to a certain idealized, geometrical conception. Galileo’s claims came from this conception. His opponents’ claims did not. But each was observing nature closely.

The Galilean conception gives no privilege to place, and pays no mind to what sort of entity is moving. Where for Aristotle fire would have “naturally” gone upward, and heavy objects downward; and where for Aristotle the stars in the heavens would have “naturally” moved in perfect, circular, eternally fixed patterns, while bodies on earth moved quite differently; for modern science, on the contrary, all things moved in the same way, according to the same laws, and only because they had been moved by other bodies nearby. This, clearly, was a totally different conception of motion; and it entailed a very different idea of our universe.

MODERN SCIENCE: THE REDEFINITION OF EVIDENCE

But with this modern science also changed our idea of what could count as evidence for a claim. Science did not simply demand rigorous, rational explanation. We had that demand before the modern era. Nor was science exceptional in demanding that we pay careful attention to empirical evidence. Nor was it the first to claim that we should not posit any more entities than necessary (the famous “Occam’s razor” – named, incidentally, after a Medieval scholastic, William of Ockham!). Science was not even unique either in emphasizing the importance of experiment, or in applying mathematics to the physical world.

Instead, science was unique in positing, prior to our observations of phenomena, a certain geometrical scaffolding on which all bodies should move – and in which all bodies should be equal, following the very same laws. Moreover, it was unique in its emphasis on experimental observation – specifically, it was unique in its desire to learn very precise, quantifiable facts of nature by way of intentional, controlled observation. Such controlled observation made it more clear how we might utilize nature ourselves.

(We should not underestimate the importance of utility in early conceptions of modern science, even if we speak of that utility a bit less often now. Francis Bacon, one of the most important early advocates of modern science, emphasized this utility in clear and sometimes startlingly violent statements – such as his claim that science “puts nature to the rack” so that we might torture her secrets out of her.)

In short, modern science did not simply ask that our answers be rational – human beings had been rational long before modern science came on the scene. Rather, science was unique in that it demanded the evidence we give for our answers be 1) empirical, 2) quantifiable, 3) testable (and replicable), 4) utilizable, and 5) correspondant to a conception of the universe as a three-dimensional Euclidian space (now, post-Einstein, a four-dimensional non-Euclidean space-time).

PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS: DOES SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE HELP?

There’s nothing wrong with requesting the sort of evidence that modern science demands. In many subjects, such evidence is highly useful. In the study of nature, especially, it’s helped us to unveil many of the world’s secrets. Alfred North Whitehead was not wrong: “The discovery of the true relevance of the mathematical relations disclosed in presentational immediacy was the first step in the intellectual conquest of nature. Accurate science was born” (Whitehead, Process and Reality, 327).

But this kind of evidence is in no way appropriate for all kinds of questions. For instance, take the question: What is justice? To answer it, I cannot possibly turn to modern science. I cannot give an empirical, quantifiable, testable, etc. answer to the question. How on earth could I quantify a definition of justice?

Perhaps you will disagree with this. Perhaps you’ll say: we could do certain social experiments to see what sort of social arrangement gives the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number. Or, perhaps, we could perform some sort of experiment to find the best way of redistributing resources. But there is a problem with such responses: they already presume a conception of justice. These answers simply presume that the most just society is one with the greatest happiness or opportunity or comfort for the greatest number of people.

But surely, you will say, this definition is just good, common sense? But that’s not true at all. The history of the world bears witness that this idea has occurred to very few indeed. We do not get to up and call our own definitions “common sense” without some sort of evidence of universal consent – and we don’t come even close to such universality here.

Rather, the question of justice is properly philosophical, not scientific. We can answer it by asking other philosophical questions – for instance, what is the good? What is human nature? What makes for human flourishing? What is society’s proper aim? And we can wrestle rigorously and rationally about the different possible answers to each question, looking at their consequences and possible problems to determine whether one answer is preferable.

In so doing, we can come up with a conception of justice. Then this concept, in turn, can guide our scientific research, which helps us answer other, further questions! But we cannot really do any scientific experiments until we’ve answered the first, philosophical question about justice.

So, for instance, we might test whether a certain practice seems conducive to our peace of mind, and hence our flourishing – but we can only do this if we have already determined that peace of mind is really an essential aspect of human flourishing! Without this presumption, the experiment is an utter waste of time.

WHY WE CAN’T GIVE “EVIDENCE” FOR GOD TODAY

The same is ultimately true for theological questions. When someone asks “What is the evidence for God?” – what exactly does this mean? The question seems so simple and so reasonable to many of us; and yet the question is actually utterly strange – even impossible. What constitutes “evidence” in the modern scientific view could not possibly pertain to God.

After all, think of the very definition of God as the major theistic faiths understand Him. He is invisible, uncircumscribed, unlimited, infinite, utterly transcendent, the personal source and ground of being itself! How could such a God be discovered? How could He be discovered among the entities of the world?

He could not be so discovered, unless He chose to reveal Himself in a particular way. He is not one entity among others to be discovered, tested, quantified, etc. By definition He cannot be experienced in the sense that most people mean when they say empirical – that is, He cannot be seen, touched, tasted, etc. He is not a matter for the senses, for experimentation, for geometrization.

Nor is God some sort of explanatory mechanism. He is not a variable in an equation. When someone like Stephen Hawking says that he does not believe in God because he does not see Him as a necessary cause for the early universe, he shows a remarkable incomprehension of the problem at hand. God is not there to fill in some gap in causal chain.

God’s status as “cause” has everything to do with Him grounding and sustaining each and every moment; it has nothing to do with His creating the universe in the distant past. Yes, God did create the universe in the distant past; but this is not primarily what we mean when we speak of Him as a cause of the universe. Rather, we speak of Him as an ultimate cause – and He is that at each and every moment that the world goes on.

I therefore have to agree with the scientists Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi in their sentiment on Hawking’s thoughts here: “Thus, it is all very simple [to Hawking]: as soon as physicists can show that there was no big bang, the notion of a creator God will disappear. It is astonishing to us that such a simplistic, linear concept of God is entertained by one of the most brilliant scientists” (Capra & Luisi, The Systems View of Life, 284).

God is not empirically observable as a physical phenomenon; nor is God an explanatory device for whatever unknown variable we might be facing at the moment. Science will not “explain God away,” because there is nothing to explain on a scientific level. To believe this is simply to be confused about methods and questions. Science may well have things to say to our understanding of the God-world relationship; but it has absolutely nothing to say one way or another about God in Himself, according to His own nature. Scientific method itself precludes any sort of inquiry into God on this sort of level.

HOW WE CAN TALK ABOUT EVIDENCE FOR GOD

What then makes us think of God, and believe in Him? All sorts of things can lead us to Him: the example of loved ones who believe; a mystical experience of His presence; the power of His Word; the experience of beauty; the unshakeable sense of “something more.” But in all of these reasons and more there is one constant: a belief that our experience, in one way or another, bears the trace of God, and testifies to Him.

In other words, people see the effects of God everywhere: in the order of the universe; in the love they know through their relationships; in the narratives of their lives, which seem to point to some sort of purpose; in things, which gather into themselves rationally and testify to the world’s glory and intelligibility; and in the ideals they cherish, which are generally impossible to prove from a strictly materialist perspective. And of course, there are more reasons than those I have named here!

This is indirect evidence, to be sure, but the search for indirect evidence is now quite common in science. Einstein’s general relativity, for instance, received its first important experimental confirmation when the perihelion of Mercury, which had previously been shown to disagree with the predictions of Newton’s theories, was shown to agree with Einstein’s own predictions about what should happen if spacetime curved according to the gravitational effects of Mercury’s density – namely, that the perihelion’s deviation from Newton’s predictions should be about 43 arc seconds.

What Eddington observed in his experiment was, of course, an indirect effect of spacetime’s curvature; it was not the curvature of spacetime itself. Such curvature could never be observed by empirical experience; experimentation, therefore, had to be satisfied with indirect observations. So it is for many experiments today, which search for evidence of phenomena we cannot directly see. As long as experiments are carried out with sufficient precision, we can be quite satisfied with such observations. But the data gives indirect confirmation nonetheless.

Analogously, God-believers think that indirect evidence is sufficient for belief in a God. We are not talking about mere emotions or personal preferences here; we are talking about a genuine conviction that the indirect evidence – in this case given not by experiment, but by our everyday rational perception of nature – gives us sufficient evidence that indeed a God creates, governs, sustains and gathers all things.

Of course, one can perfectly well look at life as meaningless, and compile together every explanation that regards the universe as composed of the chance interactions of vibrating molecules or accidental mutations of species. Most of the time, in my experience, such an outlook usually combines a kind of Newtonianism with a hyper-Darwinian understanding of natural selection. Such a view generally does not have much room for important advancements in science, such as quantum mechanics in physics or complexity theory in biology.

But for the believer, empirical experience suggests something creating, ordering and guiding. Our perception readily receives things this way. And indeed, this was even a fundamental belief of science at one point: that all things were to follow a guided order, governed by our perception, to which they must conform.

The God-believer still agrees with this claim. We choose to think, against the atheist, that our perception does not deceive us; that what we empirically observe as ordered and purposeful is just that – ordered, and made with purpose, according to a greater Mind analogous to ours. Such a belief does not come from an unwillingness to look at evidence. It comes, rather, from accepting a broader definition of evidence, and a broader conception of reasoning, than most “scientistic” atheists could ever allow.

Unfortunately for the atheist, as I have argued here, this conception of “evidence” is far too narrow for the breadth and depth of human inquiry. We should therefore allow ourselves to speak more broadly. When we do we discover that, in fact, there is ample evidence of God all around us! We need only look at the order, beauty and purpose things display.

DAN TATE is a writer and blogger at Christ & Cosmos. A former atheist, he’s been surprised and amazed by the God of all things, and he’s passionate about sharing the gospel in ways that respond to contemporary concerns about theology, philosophy, spiritual practice, science, art, and more. A lifelong writer hailing from Upstate New York, he has a B.A. from Allegheny College, an M.A. from Syracuse University, and an M. Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary.