Why There is No Proof of God

Interestingly Sheol has nothing to do with reward or punishment and doesn’t seem like the sort of place where one can go on being oneself. More like a place of dissolution, an end to walking in the light. The only thing worse would be never having walked in the light at all. Consciousness is great but like a battery or a light bulb they must eventually be replaced.

Bokonism, the made up religion in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, seemingly promotes a similar belief. Life for a human is being the kind of sitting-up mud that gets to see and love what there is and even express it in words. And death for a human is lying back down and rejoining the mud, grateful for the opportunity. Does there need to be more?

This is the Bokonist creation myth from Cat’s Cradle:

“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

I will definitely take exception to that. God’s motivation in creating the universe was not loneliness.This is something I frequently post to YECs with regard to animal death and their demand that ‘very good’ is synonymous to ‘perfect’:
 

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You may be right but after having been exposed briefly to Christianity through a Methodist church early on, that is exactly how I imagined God in my naive child’s mind before I decided against belief in the supernatural. But honestly I think the only safe way to handle God conceptually is as a mystery. Everything some dumb kid dreams up or which is written in a holy book or explicated by a scholar is necessarily speculation. Some of it will accumulate more popularity than the rest but then you have to evaluate the epistemic reliability of popularity as a metric for truth. I recommend asking the mystery what it thinks.

If the answer was explicit God would reveal Himself. Perhaps we are supposed to work it out for ourselves? Hmm, the secret of life (or living)…

Perhaps it was termed a secret for a reason?

However some do claim to have the answer.

Richard

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Yes, his relationship to time is wonderfully mysterious (I don’t subscribe to Molinism), and the Bible says that he is inscrutable – certainly in some respects, anyway.

That was premature. You seemed to have forgotten my earlier post about his interventionism in his people’s lives – and mine in particular – termed ‘God’s providence’, or simply ‘Providence’ (but I find that less personal).

It is good that life has given you that opportunity. But I think you underestimate the capacity of the natural world to account for what you experienced. I find plenty of room for soul and meaning and being a child of God without resort to a magical realm.

Maybe the answer not being explicit only means we shouldn’t expect a once and final version. Maybe the answer is living and requires we not cease from listening.

He has told me fairly articulately, in reality as well as in text, that he delights in me (as a loving Father does a beloved child who loves him back).

In text:

For the LORD takes delight in his people…

In reality:

Here is a sweet example of God’s providence, one among a boatload, his sovereign, immanent, personal and interventionist activity into my life:

    Request and Articulate Reply

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I think you underestimate the magnitude of the number of co-instants in my life and in his people’s lives over the last two millennia and in scripture.

All of which were experienced right here in this world, correct? That you had such instants or that they had great significance to you is not in question, at least by me. It is only the source that is in dispute between us. I remain adverse to creating alternative to this unimaginably vast cosmos for what takes place in our private experience. I think for you, to give it a natural footing feels like a demotion. But that isn’t how I feel about making sense of the instants which I’ve experienced. A natural footing changes nothing except the thoughts in our head.

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I have to leave for a bit… bbl.

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I think you underestimate the capacity of God, to act not only in individual instances, but in sets or series of otherwise unrelated events that taken one at a time may not seem compelling, but taken collectively impart unmistakable meaning, way beyond believability as mere naturally occurring random ‘coincidences’.

A notable present day example would be that of Rich Stearns and the events that led to his resigning as CEO of Lenox Corporation, maker of high-end dinnerware and other luxurious merchandise, to become the president of World Vision, a large Christian NGO serving to promote the welfare of children around the globe. He elucidates them in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, winner of the ECPA 2010 Christian Book of the Year Award.

There are a lot more details about how Stearns resisted and his reflections on scripture and introspections on who he was, but finally he agreed to fly to Seattle to do some more investigation, “a series of fact-finding meetings and discussions before I made a final decision.”

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There were a series of a dozen or so surrounding my giving up my job and going to med. school (at the age of 43 :flushed: :slightly_smiling_face:) and then leaving and being handed a new job in a set of events with remarkable timing and placing that demonstrate God’s sovereignty over time and space. I’ve written up a couple in more readable form than my Co-instants Log entries.

Then there’s the way I chased my wife-to-be around the country for several years, unbeknownst to and unplanned by either of us, from Philadelphia to Nebraska to Chicago, back to Philadelphia and then to Connecticut where we finally landed in the same place for an extended period of about eight months. My romantic saying: “It must have been God – I wouldn’t have thought of it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I don’t mean to be dismissive after you’ve shared such a personal account. But honestly these kinds of stories, though they have such significance for ourselves, rarely convey that significance to others. I have my own stories and those are the ones which impact my values and to some degree my beliefs. But I don’t regard their significance as evidence in favor of following any particular tradition of belief. Instead those experiences were a spur to make make sense of what it is that gives rise to and supports God belief of every stripe.

You need to know that God is sovereign over time and place, timing and placing, whether or not you think so now. God frequently uses events with miraculous timing that break no natural laws to accomplish his purposes, and the history of Christianity is replete with them, not to mention those in scripture, both OT and NT. He uses them to get the attention of those who will become his children, as well. Would that you were one of them.

That is a grave error in view of the totality of all of reality. Christianity stands apart from the rest from the beginning to the end, including the reason for the existence of the earth. The fires in California hopefully give pause to some who have read the book of Revelation, and I would not be surprised if the incidence of megacryometeors increased during what remains of my years. The Shepherd from Galilee has spoken to climate change as well.

Are they accounts of sets or series of multiple independent ‘coincidences’ that individually may get our attention, but that collectively infuse a cohesive larger meaning?

Lets leave it there. I don’t accept your authority for these assertions of yours:

And most shockingly …

What ‘assertions’? That God is sovereign, or are my accounts ‘assertions’?

Ah, edited to add. :slightly_smiling_face:

Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our status quo. :slightly_smiling_face: Eternity is at stake.

According to you at least. Surely you realize I don’t share that view. I’m afraid your efforts at persuasion are brash, unsupported and offensive. This isn’t a conversation I’m willing to have with you.

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