Article
Does God exist?
A short map of whether God exists, and why the next sentence should follow the objection you were actually given.
On this page
A starting point for conversation, not a full case. Open the passages below in context. Do not treat this page as a proof.
The question
“Does God exist?” is several questions wearing one coat. One person means “Is there a mind behind the world?” Another means “Why trust the church?” Another means “I have prayed and heard nothing.” Answer the one in the room.
A fair statement of the doubt
A careful atheist is not claiming to know a hidden drawer in the universe where God would have been found. They are saying the public evidence — the physical world, suffering, the history of religion, their own experience — does not justify belief in the God Christians describe. Some add that “God” is a name people give to a gap, and that gaps have a habit of closing.
That is a real position. Do not replace it with a cartoon (“you just want to sin”). Ask what, if it were so, would count in favor of God, and what is doing the heaviest work against God for them.
A Christian starting point
Christians do not think God is an object inside the universe, competing with physics for a slot. The claim is that everything that exists depends on a God who is not one more thing. Arguments from contingency, from the moral life, and from the life of Jesus are attempts to say why that claim is more than a mood. None of them is a machine that forces a conclusion. Romans 1 speaks of what may be known of God through what has been made. That is an appeal to look, not a lab report.
In a conversation, pick one path and stay on it. If the person is already talking about evil, go to the problem of evil. If they are talking about Jesus as a legend, go to the resurrection. A tour of every argument in one evening helps no one.
Scripture to open together
- Romans 1:19–20 — the claim that the created world says something about God.
- Acts 17:24–28 — Paul in Athens, including the line that God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything.
- Psalm 19:1–4 — the older poetic form of “the heavens declare.”
Read them as claims, then let the other person say what they find unconvincing.
Keep reading
References
- Letter to the Romans, 1:19–20. King James Version
- Acts of the Apostles, 17:24–28. King James Version
- Book of Psalms, 19:1–4. King James Version
See also
- The problem of evil — How to hear the argument from suffering without minimizing pain, and where Christians actually begin.
- The Trinity — The Christian confession that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, stated without pretending it is a puzzle to win.
- The deity of Christ — Why Christians confess Jesus as truly God and truly human, and how that confession is heard in different conversations.
- The resurrection of Jesus — The Christian claim that Jesus was crucified, buried, and raised, and the main ways that claim is doubted.