Why doesn't God make His presence more indisputable?
A visitor has asked...
You can’t look at whether the Bible is true or whether God is real from the perspective of science, because science is just another faith based ideology that is tied to assumptions we accept even though we can’t prove them anymore than we can prove the Bible to someone who does not want to accept it.
How do we know the radioactive half-life of element q is x million years when nobody has been living long enough to measure it? How do we know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating when nobody has been measuring the Doppler shift of stars for more than a few decades? How do we know that a meteor impacting Mexico caused an explosion large enough to create a worldwide layer of sediment when there are no surviving witnesses of the event? How do we know the speed of light is constant all over the universe when no man has traveled beyond the moon? The reality is that we don’t. The people who choose to believe these things accept them on faith. They trust that the scientists who invented them based their ideas on facts and sound reasoning, and nobody within the science community ever goes back to critique the ideology based upon conjecture based upon fallacy that modern science is built upon.
You have asked why God does not make His presence more obvious, but reality is that the evidence of His presence is much greater than the evidential base of most things we take for scientific fact. Modern science is diametrically opposed to recognizing evidence of God, and is doing everything it can to conceal the myriads of proofs that are out there for anyone with an open mind to see. You must be careful not to close your mind like the poor unfortunate people who call themselves “free thinkers” and “atheists”. God is always up to the challenge of leading you to answers that affirm your faith in Him, as long as you approach Him with an open mind.
The foundation for the Christian Faith is not science, or the Bible, or even whether we believe God is real, it is Jesus. Anyone who would deny that Jesus existed is not using sound reasoning. Anyone who would deny that He was crucified again is not using sound reasoning. And anyone who rejects the idea that He came back to life is either ignorant of the facts, or they must go to great lengths to justify in their minds why Jesus’s closest friends would be willing to die rather than refute His resurrection.
How do you tell the difference between fable and historical record? How do you determine whether an event was caused by God or if He was just given credit for something people didn’t understand? The reason I know that the stories in the Bible are true is because Jesus said so. My faith is in Him, so I believe what He said, and therefor I believe what the Bible says.
So why doesn’t God make His presence undeniably obvious today like He did for certain Bible accounts? Because belief in God is not about seeing miracles. How many miracles did Jesus perform and the people still rejected Him (Matthew 11:20-24)? How did the children of Israel react only a very short time after seeing the plagues of Egypt (Exodus 14:11-12, Exodus 32)? In the parable about the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus warned that some people won’t repent even if someone comes back from the dead to warn of their pending doom (Luke 16:31). Jesus told us, “...blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29 – NIV). Whenever I find myself wanting God to give me some kind of sign I remind myself of this.
Please don’t let your faith in God be based on seeing something obvious. When you put your faith in Someone who is Faithful (2 Timothy 2:13), you don’t need to see anything. Faith is about being certain of the truth even when there is no evidence to support it. Why does a farmer plant seeds in the ground? How does he know they will grow? Is it based on a scientific understanding of the phenomenon of life and cellular reproduction? No. Even the most knowledgeable scientist cannot explain it. How life works continues to be a mystery understood only by God.
Have faith, and believe.
James :)
“Why doesn't God make His presence more clearly known to us today? It seems He could make His existence indisputable. There are stories in the Bible that contain acts of God that indeed seem like they would make any witness to the events believe in Him. But, those stories were thousands of years ago. And even when I read those stories, it seems like so many of the stories were earth events attributed to God, just as lightning, earthquakes, or other earth events have been attributed to deities by other belief systems prior to the scientific age. Other Bible stories contain content that doesn't seem much different from other fables that can not be proved (or disproved for that matter). Couldn't God give modern man indisputable evidence to His existence? Why does it require such a tremendous amount of faith to believe in God?”
You can’t look at whether the Bible is true or whether God is real from the perspective of science, because science is just another faith based ideology that is tied to assumptions we accept even though we can’t prove them anymore than we can prove the Bible to someone who does not want to accept it.
How do we know the radioactive half-life of element q is x million years when nobody has been living long enough to measure it? How do we know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating when nobody has been measuring the Doppler shift of stars for more than a few decades? How do we know that a meteor impacting Mexico caused an explosion large enough to create a worldwide layer of sediment when there are no surviving witnesses of the event? How do we know the speed of light is constant all over the universe when no man has traveled beyond the moon? The reality is that we don’t. The people who choose to believe these things accept them on faith. They trust that the scientists who invented them based their ideas on facts and sound reasoning, and nobody within the science community ever goes back to critique the ideology based upon conjecture based upon fallacy that modern science is built upon.
You have asked why God does not make His presence more obvious, but reality is that the evidence of His presence is much greater than the evidential base of most things we take for scientific fact. Modern science is diametrically opposed to recognizing evidence of God, and is doing everything it can to conceal the myriads of proofs that are out there for anyone with an open mind to see. You must be careful not to close your mind like the poor unfortunate people who call themselves “free thinkers” and “atheists”. God is always up to the challenge of leading you to answers that affirm your faith in Him, as long as you approach Him with an open mind.
The foundation for the Christian Faith is not science, or the Bible, or even whether we believe God is real, it is Jesus. Anyone who would deny that Jesus existed is not using sound reasoning. Anyone who would deny that He was crucified again is not using sound reasoning. And anyone who rejects the idea that He came back to life is either ignorant of the facts, or they must go to great lengths to justify in their minds why Jesus’s closest friends would be willing to die rather than refute His resurrection.
How do you tell the difference between fable and historical record? How do you determine whether an event was caused by God or if He was just given credit for something people didn’t understand? The reason I know that the stories in the Bible are true is because Jesus said so. My faith is in Him, so I believe what He said, and therefor I believe what the Bible says.
So why doesn’t God make His presence undeniably obvious today like He did for certain Bible accounts? Because belief in God is not about seeing miracles. How many miracles did Jesus perform and the people still rejected Him (Matthew 11:20-24)? How did the children of Israel react only a very short time after seeing the plagues of Egypt (Exodus 14:11-12, Exodus 32)? In the parable about the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus warned that some people won’t repent even if someone comes back from the dead to warn of their pending doom (Luke 16:31). Jesus told us, “...blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29 – NIV). Whenever I find myself wanting God to give me some kind of sign I remind myself of this.
Please don’t let your faith in God be based on seeing something obvious. When you put your faith in Someone who is Faithful (2 Timothy 2:13), you don’t need to see anything. Faith is about being certain of the truth even when there is no evidence to support it. Why does a farmer plant seeds in the ground? How does he know they will grow? Is it based on a scientific understanding of the phenomenon of life and cellular reproduction? No. Even the most knowledgeable scientist cannot explain it. How life works continues to be a mystery understood only by God.
Have faith, and believe.
James :)
posted by AskAboutGod | Tuesday, June 24, 2014
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