Let me fix this post.
You mean you choose to rationalize away the very limited evidence you have come across (I doubt you carefully investigated it all) and you choose to dismiss arguments for God’s existence as you, I’m guessing, (mis)understood them.
It wouldn’t surprise me. The forum has slowly become a haven for atheists where its cool to doubt God’s existence and quite fashionable to espouse non-Orthodox Christianity.
Vinnie
How do you know that you worship the correct god?
So your evidence that the voice you hear is that of God is because you perceive this voice is pure and good? Is that a reliable method of truth discovery? Isn’t it possible that when a good thought pops up in your brain, you choose to assign that thought to God, but when a bad thought pops up you assign that to Satan or yourself?
I think a better test would be this: If God really speaks to evangelical Christians, guiding them to make better life choices than the average American, shouldn’t we see this in statistical studies? What is probably the biggest life decision anyone makes? Answer: choosing a husband or wife, right? If God speaks to evangelicals, leading them to choose the “perfect” life mate, shouldn’t we see much lower divorce rates among evangelicals?
WACO, Texas (Feb. 5, 2014) – Despite their strong pro-family values, evangelical Christians have higher than average divorce rates – in fact, being more likely to be divorced than Americans who claim no religion, according to findings as cited by researchers from Baylor University.
Oops. That’s a BIG problem for your belief in the “inner witness of the Holy Spirit”, my evangelical friends.
Your post is giving me AI chatbot vibes? Can you prove to me with 100.0000% certainty you are a real human?
I am not an evangelical Christian. I entertain doubts but closest category that would define me is Catholic.
As previously noted, you are asking me to find wood with a metal detector. You are confusing physical and spiritual things. You are trying to say “God can’t be scientifically proven aha!” but you might as well be saying “astronomical data doesn’t tell us that the third draw in a shuffled deck of cards will be a jack of spades”. Okay. So what? You are not scoring the point you think you are. For me the reason science works and the world is comprehensible is due to the ordered nature of God. In fact, science strongly developed out of the order provided by monotheistic views. I would also like to point to to underlying fine-tuning of physical constants science has shown that you and the skeptical crowd throw parsimony in the trash for and literally invent an infinite number of universes to explain away. For a crowd professing scientific objectivity, the contrived nature of positing an infinite number of realities to explain away scientific data is absolutely mind blowing.
You are asking me to consider rejecting some of my beliefs that are based on a transformative and life changing experience with God, in favor of lesser standards of evidence, that are in line with what I can only presume is your tired, lazy, trite and cliched post-enlightement confusion of materialism or scientism with reality. The most important things in life are beyond scientific discourse and science only has value or meaning insofar as it pursues those things. Otherwise you are left with just a string of facts so brute and disconnected they might as well be meaningless. Without narrative we have nothing. Let me spell it out clearer: being at the ocean is better than looking at a map of the ocean. You deny the ocean exists but I’m there, toes in the sand. Let me also give you a fuller quote from Lewis:
“I ended my first book with the words ‘no answer.’ I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.”
― C. S. Lewis, [Till We Have Faces]
Your evidence is simply inferior to mine at every level. I will not lower my standards and go slumming and worship at the altar of science with you and expect my spiritual beliefs to be provable via a methodology that only accepts the material world by default. You are trying to rig the game before it starts. Science excludes the supernatural. Why are you asking for scientific evidence of what science excludes going in?
Aren’t these studies based on self-identifying evangelicals? Don’t studies show many “evangelicals” attend church one a year? How evangelical are these evangelicals? Proof text hunting un qualified data is meaningless to me. Substantiate your data. Apply your own standard to your own arguments:
Is there any way to be 100% certain that actual evangelical Christians have higher divorce rates than non-believers? This is not a “no true Scotsman” fallacy but an evangelical that goes to Church 3x a week and someone who just identifies as an evangelical politically are not the same. Nominal vs practicing believers. You just uncritically and embarrasingly quoted a link with no discussion of methodology as a sound bite. Do the leg work. Substantiate the data underlying your argument.
Sure. I can make mistakes. But I don’t give Satan that much power. I do not subscribe to dualism and if the devil exists, he is not omnipresent. It’s also possible you are Satan or an atheist chat bot trying to sow doubt on a Christian message board. Many things are within the realm of logical possibility. You may have mashed potatoes with your forehead today as well–assuming you are not an AI chatbot and have one. That is within the realm of logical possibility is it not? Goodness is philosophically tied to God who can be shown to exist through metaphysical arguments. You just tossing out possibilities is just trying to sow doubt. That is how conspiracy theory nonsense works.
We might not get everything right but there is and can only be one God. This is metaphysically demonstrable. Did you mean to ask how do we know our Christian faith gets God more correct than other faiths?
Vinnie
Unless we agree on certain core concepts our conversation will go nowhere. For instance, you haven’t proven that the spiritual world exists. Yes, preferences exist. Emotions exist. But you cannot prove that preferences and emotions are not biological in origin.
I didn’t know I was supposed to??? This is a Christian discussion board. I saw an unknown poster ask if there is 100% scientific proof the spirit of God dwells inside us. I answered the specific question. I was not addressing the issue of whether God or a spiritual world exists. I was discussing whether or not God’s spirit dwells in believers which is actually a theological issue. Maybe you should just ask the questions you want to talk about instead of dishonesty trying to rig the discussion beforehand and asking for scientific evidence for something scientific methodology rules out by default going in. Or educate yourself on how science actually works and what its limitations are. And there are a number of proofs of God’s existence. I think modern formulations of Aristotles prime mover are actually quite solid as are several others. Your failure to accept them has no bearing on their validity in my mind. Spiritual forces and sin naturally cloud our judgment and most people tend to already have beliefs on what the truth is before actually evaluating arguments.
I am not a nihilist. I think humans have value and meaning being made in God’s image. I’m sure your completely fictious and made up reason for why humans have value and meaning is suitable to you. But I would never even try disconnect a human from the material realm. That is an intrinsic part of our makeup. But to define the totality of a human as completely material object is laughable to be me. And you certainly cannot prove that all thought, truth, morality and the essence of what makes humans truly human, is purely reducible to strictly material things. The most important things in life are not scientific issues.
I never denied the existence of a creator.
Is this forum only for believers? If so, I will leave.
This is an open forum. it is run by Christians who are trying to show that science is not an issue or enemy of faith.
Having said that there are strong Christians here with a multitude of variations of both experience, faith and scientific integration.
What we do not appreciate is the implication or suggestion that our faith has no objectivity or reality. The term “blind Faith” is not appreciated. Neither is the demand that God or our faith must be empiracally(scientifically) proven. Most of us have more than one reason to beleive what we do. My reasons for faith cannot be just trandferred or accepted because they involve personal expereinces which can niether be proven or repeated. And “evidence” or “proof” is second hand at best and will not stand the scrutiny of science or be able to be duplicated and verified. As such faith cannot be assessed sientifically. If you only proof or reason for faith must be scientific or subject to the sceintific method then you wil be disappointed. You will not find those answers of confirmation here.
You are obviously welcome to talk and discuss, but please keep the judgements about not being scientific to yourself. We understand scinece, but are not bound by it.
Richard
No - any voices can contribute here - ‘contribute’ being key. If all you’re here to do is to promote anti-theism (or even just atheism) to believers here who have already considered that and want to go deeper within their own existing Christian faith context, then probably your offerings won’t be considered much of any kind of contribution. As others have shared with you already, very few here have interest in trying to prove things as if faith (or even science) could ever be properly considered a matter of proof in the same way that air-tight mathematical deductive logic is. So if your agenda is to promote doubt about God’s existence - yeah, this forum is probably not a good fit for you. But there are atheistic voices here who are willing to grant (or at least ‘set aside’) such basic presuppositions that most Christians have embraced and choose to build on, and they are willing to ‘enter in’ to that world - for the purposes of hypothetical engagement at least - in order to offer helpful and needed critique about the many ways that professed Christians turn away from their own creeds and teachings and from truth generally. Some of those voices have been among the great contributors to forum dialogue, helping Christians become better Christians and better scientific thinkers. Those voices are definitely welcome! If in doubt, just visit the forum guidelines about gracious dialogue. (sorry if you’ve been pointed there many times already.)
-Merv
Which you deny.
That proves you do not either read or understand what I write.
Richard
That proves that you do not understand that I understand what you write without understanding.
Thank you for the clarification, Mervin. I will attempt to limit my discussion to this issue as stated by Richard above:
“This is an open forum. it is run by Christians who are trying to show that science is not an issue or enemy of faith.”
Religious belief (faith) is obviously not incompatible with science because the majority of scientists across the world are theists. No supernatural belief or superstition is incompatible with science if one believes that two separate realities exist in our universe: the natural world governed by the laws of physics and the supernatural (spiritual) world governed by gods and devils. But is belief in this duality of realities justified? I would argue that if proponents of the spiritual world insist that the spiritual has intervened in the natural world, then they are obligated to prove this by investigative methods consistent with the laws of the natural world.
Evangelicals insist that the spirit living inside them performs wish requests for them and even laws of physics defying miracles. They use these alleged events as “evidence” that a first century corpse reanimated and returned to life. So why should these claims be off limits to scientific investigation?
Gary, I think your comments about Evangelicals and the resurrection run into several basic problems.
1. A category error.
“Evangelical” isn’t a single, uniform bloc. The word can refer to (a) a sociological subculture, (b) a historical revival movement, or (c) a broad theological family identified by David Bebbington’s four traits: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. Without saying which of these you mean, your argument treats “Evangelicals” as one indistinct mass, which is simply inaccurate.
2. A straw man.
Your quasi-definition — that Evangelicals “insist that the spirit living inside them performs wish requests and laws-of-physics-defying miracles” — caricatures a fringe, not the mainstream. Many evangelicals would reject that description outright. It’s a rhetorical convenience, not a fair representation.
3. Missing groundwork.
If you want to critique a group fairly, you need to establish clear terms and scope. Are you talking about American evangelicals, global evangelicals, or a subset such as Pentecostals? What percentage of them actually claim the experiences you describe? Without that groundwork, you’re attacking an abstraction, not a real community. [Kind of like attacking scientists for believing in astrology, when there may actually be a few who do.]
4. A double standard of precision.
You demand scientific precision from believers, yet your own critique relies on sociological imprecision and an undefined notion of what a “resurrection” is. The resurrection of Jesus, in Christian theology, isn’t the same as any of the temporary restorations to life mentioned in the Old or New Testaments (e.g., Lazarus or Jairus’ daughter). The distinction between resuscitation (NDEs) and resurrection is fundamental — the former bodies are reanimated after apparent death, the latter involves a transformation into a body that can walk through a wall and relocate fairly quickly.
If you want to challenge Christian claims seriously, those distinctions matter. Otherwise, you’re critiquing something many, if not most,Christians don’t actually believe, especially in Biologos.
No doubt lots of Christians (including many here I suppose) would accept your “two worlds” categories - and can refer to much New Testament material that appears to support that, at least on the surface. There are some of us who question that neat dichotomy and sense perhaps more than a whiff of gnostic heresy in it and might insist on seeing this as one created reality that just has spiritual significance to it. Science does a good job helping us understand physical realities. It isn’t much help providing context or significance or meaning to anything. But to the extent that any religious person wants to claim that they prayed or something ‘supernatural’ happened, of course science can see anything measurable. What it can’t see or measure is divine purpose or agency (claims of intelligent design proponents notwithstanding). At least that’s how many of us science-oriented believers tend to think of things. If there was a global flood in the last few thousands of years, science would see it (it doesn’t - but that is definitely in scientific domain). But if somebody claim God sent a hurricane to hit some hapless island as judgment and punishment, well - science can’t speak to that. It can tell us about meteorological phenomena, but cannot rule (either way) on any claimed teleology about it. We believers rely on scriptures and Christ’s teachings to refute the nonsense about God smiting sinners with hurricanes. As far as we believers could possibly know or are told in scriptures, this (very good) physical creation seems to be the main theatre and stage where we are to see God’s kingdom taking shape, not as the world sees kingdoms and power, but in those Divinely subversive ways that turns traditional power-worship on its head. Not in some other “dimension” but here and now in this ravaged world. It isn’t something ushered in by any philosophical proof or brilliant argument. It’s brought in by one changed heart at a time as we re-orient ourselves around love. Tiny remnants of Christians can still be found that follow Christ’s command and example to do this - even here in the U.S! You have to look for them though. You won’t find them so much among the loud cultural warriors that only use Jesus as a mascot and are allergic to his actual teachings. But you’ll recognize them by their fruit - how they treat and think about others, especially vulnerable and disenfranchised people. [sorry - that was a bit of a tangent there - and answering considerably more than what you asked about, while probably leaving your original challenges necessarily untouched.]
Southern Baptists are the largest group of evangelicals in the United States, so I guess I will limit my comments to Southern Baptist evangelicals. AI answers your objections:
Southern Baptists perceive the inner witness of the Holy Spirit as a divine testimony within a believer that confirms the truth of Christianity and their salvation, distinct from but supported by the Bible and Christian community. This inner witness is an immediate, personal experience of God’s presence that provides assurance and guides believers through intuition, prompting, or restraint, leading them to trust in Christ, recognize their identity as God’s children, and obey Scripture. It’s understood as a subjective experience that is nevertheless considered an objective reality, which is why believers can hold to their faith even without being able to answer every external objection.
Key aspects of the inner witness
Confirmation of salvation: The Holy Spirit’s inner testimony convinces believers of their status as children of God, confirming their salvation and relationship with Him.
Authority and reliability: While the inner witness is subjective, it is considered an objective reality provided by God, not just a psychological feeling. It provides a basis for faith that is not blind but grounded in God’s own witness.
Relationship with Scripture: The inner witness works in harmony with the Word of God, affirming its truth and enabling believers to understand it. It is not a replacement for Scripture, but a personal confirmation of its message.
Guidance and discernment: It provides a form of spiritual guidance, which can be perceived as intuition, a prompting to act, or a sense of restraint.
Empowerment: The inner witness is part of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work, which includes sealing believers, helping them cultivate Christian character, and empowering them in worship, evangelism, and service.
Personal responsibility: Ultimately, believers are responsible for judging what is true based on the Spirit’s witness, even as they are influenced by the Christian community, teachers, and the Bible.
Gary; “It’s understood as a subjective experience that is nevertheless considered an objective reality, which is why believers can hold to their faith even without being able to answer every external objection.” This statement confirms my assertion that most evangelicals (in the United States, at least) believe the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit is objective evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus.
To me concrete proof is the type of evidence I’m looking forms something that can be demonstrated with the scientific method or proven beyond reasonable doubt by something tangible. Like how we prove a murder charge in court for the most part. With that criteria I don’t see anything that’s solid proof for anything supernatural. There is no biological martial that points towards a supernatural cosmic being of any sort. Not even ghostly plasma. Nothing for any of them. There is nothing in the natural world that demands the supernatural. Everything has a natural explanation or is just a gap that is closing everyday. No videos. No solid proof of prayer changing anything definite like no one’s arm has grown back, or someone dead and buried for a few days from blood loss crawl back up, or levitate or whatever. So without evidence I just choose to believe and rely on faith. It’s more than good enough for me.
That has to be completely respected without caveat. I want that. I can’t have it.
There are only two choices, and only one has raised anyone from the Dead --specifically Himself.
False dichotomy – no “separate realities” are needed., any more than I must posit two separate realities for the motion of an electric model train (wheels and electricity).
That would only hold true if you could demonstrate such intervention on demand so that it could be tested properly. Besides which, tools/methods “consistent with the laws of the natural world” are not and cannot be suitable for detecting the spiritual – for that you need a “spiritometer” or “dviniometer”.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.