God’s existence. In case you don’t consider it a given.

Since Christian creeds usually begin with “I believe in God,” people think the existence of God—and proving it—is a theology subject. It’s not really. It’s an apologetics subject.

Theology, the study of God, takes God’s existence as a given. As does the bible.

Genesis 1.1 NASB

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

John 1.1 NASB

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The authors of the scriptures never bother to explain God’s existence. (They do have to explain Jesus’s existence, but never God’s.) Because he’s just there. Existing. Creating. Interacting with humanity.

Not battling the universe, nor Titans and other gods, so he could reign over them and control the elements. He’s not at all like the creator-gods or king-gods of pagan mythology. He alone created the universe; he alone rules it. Humans and devils and lowercase-g “gods” might stand against him from time to time, but there’s absolutely no contest as to who’s right, who’s mightiest, and who’s gonna win.

So why do most theology books have to start with a chapter on God’s existence? We never have to convince fellow Christians of such a thing; Christians already know he exists.

Well… okay, fair, there are some Christians who have their doubts about God’s existence. They’re not as rare as they oughta be; I’ve met plenty. They’re usually children or teenagers, or new believers, or longtime Christians who never bothered to take Jesus seriously until recently. The reason they’re Christian is someone told ’em about Jesus, and they believed that evangelist. But they have yet to experience God for themselves. Haven’t seen a miracle. Haven’t heard the Holy Spirit talk to them. Might not even know there is a Holy Spirit; they go to one of those cessationist churches which swap out the Holy Spirit for the Holy Bible, and worship that instead. Those folks claim God turned off the miracles—and tell these poor newbies they can’t have any God-experiences till Jesus comes to get ’em, either in the rapture or when they die. In the meanwhile, the newbies gotta take God’s existence on faith. Well, they’re not wholly sure they have that much faith!

I suspect those initial theology-book chapters on God’s existence are written for such doubters, to remind ’em, “No really; as Christians we gotta believe in God. Makes no sense to call Jesus ‘the son of God,’ or ‘God incarnate,’ if there’s no God!” When you look at cessationist churches, and look at the effects of their assumption God won’t interact with humanity till the End Times, it’s so disturbingly hollow, fruitless, and hypocritical. We got plenty enough of those problems in continuationist churches, but at least we acknowledge the Spirit’s among us to correct us, and we might actually heed his corrections! They don’t, and when he tries, they’re apt to reject him as a devilish trick. Yikes.

But I digress. Ordinarily we don’t have to prove God’s existence to fellow Christians. It’s a given that Jesus is God and comes from God. It’s as silly as going to a physician who doesn’t believe in science, or using the GPS in your car when you believe in a flat earth. God’s a foundational belief, and you can’t very well built a house without a foundation.

Yet Christian apologists insist we should start every theology discussion, every theology class, every theology textbook, with an obligatory lesson on what a God is, and how we know such a being exists. The better-written books do as I did, and point out the scriptures take God’s existence for granted, with no preliminary explanation. And tell us how we know he exists: Special revelation. People throughout history, including today, have God-experiences. He talks to people and performs the occasional miracle, and many of us Christians have witnessed this for ourselves. He may be invisible, but his presence among believing Christians is so blatantly obvious, we never had to deduce him from nature or logic.

So why do apologists persist on using logical deduction to prove God’s existence? Well… they’ve been convinced they really oughta learn how to. By whom? By the sucky Christians I described a few paragraphs ago. Despite the scriptures repeatedly talking about personal experiences with God, and encouraging us to do likewise, 1Jn 1.1-3 they claim we can’t have any such personal experiences; we gotta depend on reason. They don’t believe they can have an interactive relationship with God (or, bluntly, don’t actually want one), and have adopted a belief system which justifies an absent God. Really, logical deduction is all they have left.

You wanna prove God’s existence? It’s super easy when you can point to God-experiences. And I still find it bonkers when I meet a Christian who claims they’ve had God-experiences… yet whenever they talk to skeptics about God’s existence, the very first thing they turn to are apologetics arguments based on logical deduction.

Dude, you could simply give them a word of knowledge, like Jesus did to Nathanael!

John 1.47-50 NASB

47Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit!” 48Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel!” 50Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.”

Didn’t take Jesus three hours in a coffeehouse to at least convince Nathanael he was somebody worth listening to. It took Jesus two statements which peered directly into Nathanael’s soul, and the lad believed. Beat that with a stick.

But I digress. You wanna know about the logical arguments for God’s existence? Fine. Let’s talk.

The usual arguments, in summary.

For thousands of years, philosophers came up with ways which claim to deduce God’s existence. Ways which sounded reasonable to them, anyway. They won’t always to us. First time I heard St. Anselm’s ontological argument, my first response is, “Wait… that sounds stupid.” The rest sounded kinda reasonable, but that one sounded to me like, “God has to exist, because I really really wish he existed.”

Christian apologists try these arguments out on nontheists all the time. Lemme warn you ahead of time: They won’t work on them. Imagine someome tried to argue with you that the Easter Bunny is real, and claimed they were being logical and reasonable and scientific. Would you accept their reasoning, or would you figure there’s gotta be something haywire in their thinking at its core, and dismiss the whole thing out of hand? Well, that’s how nontheists think. For that matter, a number of them have learned the counter-arguments to all these arguments, and will just let you spin your wheels till they can sic their counter-argument on you, and “win.”

I learned this the hard way. When I was a kid, I made the mistake of debating arguments. That’s where I learned all their rebuttals. So in any articles I write about proving God’s existence, I’ll include those rebuttals. I don’t want you to be blindsided by them like I was.

So here’s the list.

• THE UNMOVED MOVER. Everything in the universe can be traced back, through cause and effect, to a first cause, and that’d be God.
• INTELLIGENT DESIGN. The universe is way too complicated to have happened without a designer, and God’s the designer.
• CONSCIOUSNESS. Brain activity doesn’t entirely explain human consciousness, which strongly implies we have an immaterial nature and a soul. This indirectly proves immaterial beings like God— especially if he created the soul.
• MORALITY’S ORIGIN. C.S. Lewis’s favorite argument: Every human culture has independently came up with pretty much the same moral social order. How’d this happen? A designer built a conscience into us, i.e. God.
• THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. St. Anselm’s idea that the fact humanity even has a God-concept, implies there’s a God as the underlying basis for the idea.
• THE TRANCENDENTAL ARGUMENT. If nothing is absolute, and everything is relative, how can we know there are absolute truths? We can’t. Unless there’s a God, who can serve as our one fixed point.
• HUMAN DIGINITY. Immanuel Kant’s idea that humans have an intrinsic dignity, and the only explanation for this dignity is we were made in God’s image.
• CAN’T PROVE A NEGATIVE. Unless you have infinite comprehensive knowledge of the universe, it’s impossible to state something isn’t in the universe. Ergo atheists can’t prove, nor realistically claim, there’s no God. (It doesn’t really prove there is God; it only proves there’s not not God. It’s kinda lame.)

And yes there are others, which I may add as I write about ’em.

Subjective arguments work way better.

If we can’t simply prove God’s existence with objective, rational arguments, what are we left with? Simple: We have subjective personal experiences.

I know there’s a God ’cause I’ve met him. I know plenty of other people who’ve likewise met him. I’ve witnessed miracles; so have they. I’ve been given prophecies; so have they. God’s had a positive impact on my life, and many a Christian can say so too.

When you crack a bible, you’ll notice the scriptures usually point to testimonies. Jews still point to God’s rescue of the Hebrews in Exodus. Christians point to Jesus’s resurrection, where the first apostles discovered Jesus is alive—and they went to their deaths, sometimes painful and nasty deaths, proclaiming and believing it. Centuries of followers thereafter have also experienced Jesus for ourselves, and let him change our lives. We may not be able to fight for God’s existence through clever reasoning, but we surely know what we’ve seen and heard and felt.

So the best way to bypass logical arguments is to stick to our testimonies. Share your God-experiences! I tend to stick to my most recent interactions with God. “How do you know there’s a God?” is pretty easily answered, “We spoke this morning.”

When people believe in God just a little, and are actively seeking him, this tends to have a powerful impact on them: Hey, here’s someone who might get me in contact with God!

And when they want nothing to do with God whatsoever, their response is typically some condescending variation of, “I give up; I’m not wasting my time on madmen. For your sake, I’m glad you’ve had what you think is an experience with God, and find it comforting. Good for you. I think it’s all rubbish. Enjoy your rubbish. Hope it works out for you.” And they leave, angry and frustrated. Mostly ’cause they learned some really great atheist apologetics, and were hoping to try some of it out on me, and I spoiled all their fun. They’re not prepared at all to debate personal experiences.

These are far more decisive and effective results than spending a few hours arguing over why it’s reasonable to believe God exists. It’s why I tell everyone to stick to testimonies. And, if the Spirit permits you, blow their minds with a prophecy or two. Way more fun than arguing.