For ever since the creation of the universe his invisible qualities—both his eternal power and his divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they can be understood from what he has made. Therefore, they have no excuse.
Rom 1:20
Is that so? Is God visible in his creation? He is certainly visible to those who believe in him. But is he visible beyond any doubt?
Another question: is it even desirable that God is visible beyond any doubt in nature?
If God were provable, would faith still be necessary?
Take chess as an example. If a computer succeeds in constructing a compulsory winning strategy at chess, that is a sequence of moves for every possible position on the board that would necessarily lead to winning the game, then chess would no longer be a game of kings. It would be reduced to the level of tic-tac-toe, where one can only win if the opponent makes a mistake.
If God were provable, this would amount to a compulsory chess win. Only conspiracy theorists would reject it simply because they reject everything that is provably correct and much more.
That is why science will never find evidence of the existence of God. There will be more and more theories of how the world came into being without God’s intervention. By the way, in science a theory is the best explanationof some thing so far that is valid until it has been refuted. It’s not just a theory in the popular sense that may or most probably may not been true. It does not claim truth, but applicability.
Does the theory of evolution have to be correct? No. But the story of creation cannot be proven either, because there are plausible, even more rational alternatives.
There is this joke with mathematicians who say in a proof as step 2: and here a miracle happens. The professor’s answer to this: you need to be a little more precise here.
What about miracles in everyday life: the belief in the existence of God, the conviction that all good comes from God, the demand that we should be thankful for God’s work, as well as the expectation of miracles keep us seeing things that happen to us as exactly such miracles.
This ranges from the free parking space in front of the shopping center to the resurrection of the dead.
The former is an affront to many: should God care more about my not having to walk too far to indulge in my consumerism than about the hunger, persecution and war that so many face?
On the other hand, to stick with the example, there are several parking spaces near the shop door and some of them are occupied by people who do not believe in the existence of God. So either God lets his sun shine over believers and unbelievers, or the allocation of parking spaces is no miracle.
All kinds of miracles have happened to people who did not believe in God, up to and including the resurrection of the dead.
Why? Because otherwise God would be provable. An empirical investigation would find that belief in the God of Christians and only him leads to supernatural phenomena. Thus, the existence of God would not be proven, but the effectiveness of belief in him, and every reasonable person would believe.
Back to mathematics and the proof with the miracle in step 2.
Why should I even start proving? I could just as well say that the whole proof is a miracle.
Why should I even examine the observation underlying the formula? It could just be a miracle.
Why should I even ask questions? It’s just all a miracle.
Why shouldn’t every explanation be fundamentally wrong because it takes belief in miracles out of the equation?
Why shouldn’t growth and progress simply be left to the miracles of God without our searching or seeking them?
Yet God says it is his honor to hide something and ours to look for it.
It depends on the glasses we wear in this search.
If we have glasses that see God behind everything, we are in danger of not asking any more questions. We found our explanation.
If we have glasses that are impervious to God’s work, we run the risk of missing him.
So what is a productive approach to this apparent problem?
To know that God cannot be proven means to question every answer that contains the statement: and here a miracle happens.
It cannot be ruled out that God is the ordering and growing, even sustaining force behind everything that happens, and therefore we do not give up on praising the beauty of his creation.
Our search ought to be motivated by the desire to find this beauty, to benefit from this order, to participate actively and co-creatively in this growth.
So we will never stop because there is always more to discover and we will never lose awe.
But what do we do? We embark on a guerrilla war in defense of our miracles. Be it the creation of the physiosphere, be it the evolution of the biosphere, even the growth of the noosphere.
We insist that the physiosphere, the physical world, was created in six days and would like to see this anchored in the curriculum in our schools.
We insist that the biosphere, all living things, were created directly and individually by God.
And we deny that human consciousness will develop further. The so-called noosphere describes this evolution of human consciousness and its influence on history.
We are entering a time when people are aware that everything is developing. Mankind begins to consciously help shape this development. Until now we were actors, from now on we are conscious co-designers.
Not taking part in this co-creation means to not go further in God’s plan. We are called to rule with Christ. To govern and rule means to actively shape things for the benefit of all involved.
We are placed with Christ to rule. This realization is not new, but its scope is only now gradually becoming clear.
Do we take our responsibility seriously, or do we stick to the old pattern, trying to do the impossible: to prove God?