Why do religious people try to prove God exists?

Great Debates
1

The title pretty much says it all. One of the key aspects of religion is that it requires FAITH. Faith is defined as belief in the absence of evidence or proof.

So why is it that so many devout people are constantly trying to use science to ‘prove’ that God exists? Isn’t that a complete rejection of faith? An admission of doubt?

I know a few Christians who are not like this, including some scientists (not ‘Christian Scientists’, but scientists who happen to be Christians.) If you ask them how they can believe in God despite the physical impossibility of many of the events in the Bible (parting of the Red Sea, the Flood, etc. - things we know cannot have happened as described in the Bible), they’ll simply say, “I have Faith”. If you ask them how they reconcile that with science, they’ll say, “I don’t. God’s world is not scientific, and I don’t pretend to understand it.” If you ask them for an explanation in more detail, they’ll say “I don’t have one, because I can’t know the mind of God.” Etc.

I once asked a pastor who had degrees in science how much of the bible needs to be taken literally to be a Christian. He said, “In my opinion to be a Christian you have to believe that Christ existed, was the son of God, and died for your sins. You have to believe in Christian law as laid down by Moses and modified by the teachings of Jesus Christ. Everything else is open for debate.” In his view, the Bible is basically a series of morality tales inserted into history by God, and much of it can be seen as allegory in the tradition of ancient moral teaching, and does not need to be taken literally at all.

That seems like awfully weak tea for a religion, and awfully convenient for a science-minded person who still needs to be a religious authority, but at least it’s consistent with the notion of ultimate faith while accepting the reality of our scientific understanding of the world.
So what’s up with all these people working feverishly to ‘prove’ the Bible? Aren’t they in some sense admitting that they don’t operate on faith, but instead can only satisfy their belief with scientific proof? And doesn’t that put them in direct violation with God’s commandment that they believe in him unconditionally? Why don’t churches condemn these activities on the grounds that they are questioning God and their own faith?

My first attempt at a possible answer is that these people really do not have faith. They are trying to resolve the conflict between their religion and what we now know about the world that we didn’t know when the Bible was written. Trying to prove that the ark existed or that logical arguments can be constructed to prove that Jesus had supernatural powers is basically a result of the internal conflict between belief and the evidence of their own eyes and brain. They have lost their faith, but not their religion.

Any other thoughts on other motives?

2

I think trying to prove it is mostly a result of receiving a legitimate challenge and not knowing how else to proceed, since the only sane response is “Hmmm, come to think of it, I guess I must have been wrong all this time”, and people are averse to admitting that.

3

It’s evidently never occurred to you that an argument is more likely to be accepted if it comes from a source that the OTHER side accepts as valid.

The Bible is enough, or should be enough, for all Christians. But non-Christians don’t accept the Bible as being valid–but they do generally accept science.

4

Pretty sure you’ve nailed it right here.

Back in the day it was easy to just “have faith”; you didn’t really have many alternatives, and the ones that existed weren’t much better than what you had. Back then it wasn’t such a huge leap to just believe something someone just told you, especially if they could back it up with other people who knew the same story, which apparently was enough. As the religion and its tenets have shifted in the face of modern science from “absolute, literal truth” to “mostly parable,” to believe in it wholeheartedly with faith only has become much, much more difficult, if not impossible.

5

who ever tried to prove to you God"s existance through science. Answer: nobody… Thanks. Except maybe a television program which is a spin from the getgo to make you disbelieve God all subliminally. If -you got a problem- with those who love God then as it says, -you got a problem- And ask yourself why are you concerning yourself with what others are doing? Why are you asking dumb questions on a message board? If you love sports then I’ll bet youd like to find others to talk to about sports. People who like God just want to talk about what they love as well. deal with it

6

Maybe it’s because those who have faith know that they will never convince the other side with a faith-based argument. So they try to appeal to their logic-based sense of proof in order to convert or at least convince.

7

I think it started in Ancient times. Or at least, started for Christianity, in Paul’s time. Ancient Greece was known during those times for its Philosophical schools – hanging around, discussing the unknowable was just what smart people did back then. You wanted to look smart, you had to work with their game, as best as you could. Now science has replaced philosophy. You can’t let them win just because they changed the rules on you.

8

People experience intense internal conflict when they feel (rightly or wrongly) that they are violating their own identity.

This doesn’t mean that “there’s a dude way up in the sky” is a good premise on which to base one’s identity, but people do it anyway.

9

also as for proof of The parting of the red sea or the flood. listen here-- it is fact that egypt had approximately 1 million jewish slaves that also is historical fact that up and recollonized directly accross the red sea all at once. as for the parting of the sea, well 1million ppl crossed through it in front of many many egyptians who not one has disclaimed the parting of the sea yet all did speak of it in those days. Now A earthquake 10 ft deep can cause a tsunami that will wipe out an entire ocean front city, imagine what a earthquake the size of the grand canyon can do. And did. prove that it didnt would be a neat trick.

10

I harp on this other part, but in fact no person believes in the existence of God; either they assert it or they don’t assert it, but “believe in” is not an action that can take a testable proposition as its object. They can believe in doing as God tells them, but believing in God’s existence is nonsense.

11

When someone says: “I have faith”, it’s usually implied that it’s a question of private belief, that it regards only the individual in question and those who share the same faith. That’s not enough if you want to use your religion to lord it over everyone.

Clinging to literal interpretations:
Once I start saying that some parts of the Bible may not be literally true, it opens up the possibility that the parts I would really like to be literally true may not be. If Hell isn’t literally true, perhaps Heaven isn’t either and when you die, that’s it. If Jesus didn’t really give a blind man his sight by rubbing muds into his eyes, then perhaps being born-again isn’t a moral/existential reset button and I’m still a dysfunctional asshole who has a lot of introspection and self-work to do before I can say I’m a new person rather than just get baptised and accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Best not lift that rock, lest we find something truly uncomfortable.

12

I’m not religious and never have been (despite being raised in it) so I can only speculate as to the motives of the religious. However there’s one possible reason that seems pretty obvious.

Religions, notably christianity, make loads of claims about reality. Their holy book is about 40% history book, making claims about notable events that took place in the physical world. And if those notable events did not occur, then their religion is false. (Or has false details, but if you’re into things like an inerrant bible the stakes start out really high.)

Imagine, if you will, a religion that said the earth was a flat disc balanced on the backs of four elephants that all stood on the back of a giant turtle. If your religion said that, then you would reasonably expect to find that beneath the flat earth there were four elephants and a turtle. Wanting to look off the edge would be no more sacrosanct than checking what the weather is like; god makes the weather; god made the elephants; they’re all real; looking at them is no big deal.

I’ve heard tales of religious people who look for things like the ark not to prove anything to anybody, but to just experience part of their cultural history. I’ve also heard tales of religious people being quite shaken when reality turns out not to be how their religion told them it would be.

13

Sam: I think it would help if you gave specific examples: Why does Mr. Jones, a famous biblical scholar and advocate of religion, do X, Y and Z in order to prove the existence of God, or that some event in the Bible actually happened? It’s really hard to explain why some unspecified people do some undefined thing. Unless we operate on faith. :wink:

Some folks no doubt do it to make money, not having any belief at all. Some perhaps because they don’t understand what faith is.

14

One of the more entertaining attempts can be found on YouTube if you search for “dillahunty vs bruggencate”.

15

I did, and discounted it as the only answer for the simple reason that not all religions are proselytizing. I have relatives who wouldn’t dream of pushing their religion on others, but who have traveled to see the ark, the ‘footprints where man walked with dinosaurs’, etc. They are also highly educated people, and nice as can be. But they seem desperate to believe that science and their Christian beliefs are not contradictory.

16

My mom once got a real thrill out of visiting a farm where her ancestors lived a couple hundred years ago. Some people take an interest in their history and the significant elements of their culture.

17

I disagree. I am talking about a trait shared by many people, and looking for commonalities… Making it about a single person is like tryng to ask why people live as long as they do by focusing on an individual old person and asking them how they did it. Their answer is more likely to obfuscate than enlighten.

18

Just out of curiousity… Does your faith teach you to be polite and kind to others?

19

This sounds plausible, at least for some of the people who do it.

20

Sure. But that’s different. That explains pilgrimages to the holy land, or trips to places where biblical events occurred. It doesn’t explain people who believe that, for instance, manna from heaven was carbohydrates from Venus’s atmosphere when it passed close to Earth after being ejected from Jupiter.

I guess another possibility I hadn’t thought of is that some of them may in fact be doubters, and are searching for enough of a scientific explanation to quell their internal doubts and allow them to re-discover their faith.