Can One Prove that God Exists?

David J. Conklin
(preliminary thoughts; dconklin58@yahoo.com)
This is one of those neat questions where the answer is, yes and no. In
attempting to prove, or disprove, that God exists (and this is true for all debates on any
subject), one runs into three basic problems:
First Problem: presenting the available evidence
The very first problem one runs into in ALL debates is that the proponents (either
for or against) fail (whether deliberately and/or through ignorance of the subject) to
present to their audience, ALL of the available evidence. Two examples: in the case of
Anselms argument for the existence of God, I have run into people who have claimed
that Anselm defined God into existence. That is precisely what he did NOT do. The
second example has to do with the question of which English translation of the Bible
should those of who speak English be using? What they dont tell you is that the
current English translations are based on less than 10% of the available mss. Very
rarely will they tell you that while we have over 5,000 mss, some are smaller than a
thumbnail or postage stamp! In ALL arguments, or debates, over ANY given subject,
neither side can be trusted to telling you the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Second Problem: willingness
If person A wants you to prove to them that God exists, one must first know if
person A is even willing to accept the conclusion that God could, or m ight, exist.1 If
they aren't, then it is no use even starting. They have already made up their mind and
you don't have to waste any time and energy on the subject with themthis same rule
applies to all arguments, care to try assisted suicide? If they immediately tell you that it
is okay, or wrong, then dont even bother asking them to look at the evidence. In this
sense then, Anselm was wrong when he said if I did not want to believe that You [God]
existed, I should nevertheless be unable to understand it [that You exist].2 He didnt
realize that he was subconsciously still looking at the argument from his belief that God
exists. It is more like the line from Amazing Grace: I once was blind, but now I see.

See also C. Stephen Evans, The Quest for Faith: Reason & Mystery as Pointers to God.
(IVP, 1986): 21.
2

For a differing translation: I so understand that even if I did not want to believe that
You exist, I could not fail to understand [that You exist]. This is from Proslogion (in Anselm
of Canterbury, i, ed. and trans. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert W. Richardson, (London: SCM
Press, 1974, 95)

Without the proper vision one cannot see, much less understand, the argument. This
explains why the critics are all over the map when they try to show the so-called fatal
flaw in the argument. This can also be seen when a field in science develops two
competing sub-disciplines, each with its own vocabulary (sometimes just the meaning
of individual terms has become differentiated) and over time they become unable to
clearly communicate and understand each other. 3 The same thing happens when
theists and atheists try to communicate with each other. Each side cannot understand
why the other side cant understand what they are saying. They are using the same
words with different meanings attached to them. On a personal note, an atheist
claimed that he simply believed in one less God than you do. I dont believe in a god
... I have forgotten what he said, but I was able to respond, that I didnt believe in that
God, either!
However! As Williams has noted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
article on Anselm:4
Other philosophers have noted that faith seeking understanding begins with
faith, not with doubt or suspension of belief. Hence, they argue, the theistic
arguments proposed by faith seeking understanding are not really meant to
convince unbelievers; they are intended solely for the edification of those who
already believe. This too is a misreading of Anselm's motto. For although the
theistic proofs are borne of an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of
the beloved, the proofs themselves are intended to be convincing even to
unbelievers. Thus Anselm opens the Monologion with these words:
If anyone does not know, either because he has not heard or because he
does not believe, that there is one nature, supreme among all existing
things, who alone is self-sufficient in his eternal happiness, who through
his omnipotent goodness grants and brings it about that all other things
exist or have any sort of well-being, and a great many other things that we
must believe about God or his creation, I think he could at least convince
himself of most of these things by reason alone, if he is even moderately
intelligent. (M 1)
I suspect that he is still looking at the question from the perspective of one who

See Ian Hackings Introductory Essay to Thomas S. Kuhns The Structure of

Scientific Revolutions, Fourth Edition, pages xxxii-xxxiii.
4

Williams, Thomas, "Saint Anselm", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring

2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/anselm/>.

already believes.
Third Problem: epistemology (theory of knowing)
If Person A's epistemology is based on the senses (as Immanual Kant's were)
then they cannot understand, nor say anything meaningful or constructive about any
metaphysical beings, etc.. In fact, in looking at the mind, they cannot say anything
about thoughts, or thinking, because they are not subject to the senses. Likewise, they
can't say anything about our feelings, the affairs of the heart, or even beauty (that lies in
the eye of the beholder--the best that Person A could do would be to test how beautiful
you may see others, or things, and then rank them.)
The kicker here is that everyone has an epistemology. They might have to sit
and think for awhile about how they know things. What is your epistemology like?
The Bible notes: 1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned.
Fourth Problem: what constitutes as evidence for them
If you are moved by the mathematical formulas that can be found in nature (such
as that found in chaos theory), then for you any such formula could be a convincing
argument that an intelligent being created what we see in nature. But, if Person A is
convinced by such things as beauty or the interrelationship between the various plant,
animals and insects, then the math that excites you, would bore them to death, and
vice-versa.
Im sitting on a chair, in front of a desk, typing this into a laptop computer. These
items can be subjected to empirical investigation. They can, for example, be measured
and weighed. What we cannot do is measure and weigh our perceptions of these
objects. We also cannot weigh or measure our thoughts of these objects. And yet in
order to know that these objects are real we had to perceive them with our senses and
register those perceptions in our minds.
OTOH, we can either prove in a positive sense, that God exists, or we don't have
to:
First Way: Without going into all the details about it, presuppositional
apologetics says that we don't have to prove that God exists. The critics already know
it and are fighting against it--thats not healthy for ones psyche. Note how many
websites question or attack the idea that God exists. Now see how many do the same

against leprechauns, or Pegasus, or unicorns.5

One also needs to question the intellectual honesty of the critics. On one web
site (named Project Reason, no less) they had claimed that there was an error in the
30th verse of a certain chapter in the Bible. Even though it had been pointed out to
them that there were only 14 or 16 (I forget the exact number) verses in the chapter,
they didn't fix it. Then I pointed it out on Quora--now it got fixed! In another case, I
dealt with a Bible critic about his claim that Bible writers believed that turtles had a voice
(SOS 2:12). After six email exchanges I gave up. Then a couple years later I noted it
on a forum. A poster immediately jumped down my throat and claimed that it has
already been admitted to be an error on the critics part. W hen I looked at the web
page we were pointed to, I found that the critic I was dealing with, had admitted he was
wrong. But, then he had the gall to claim that he was still light years ahead of his
critics! I went back to the forum and pointed out that I was the critic who enlightened
him on this subject. That web page then disappeared! To date, I have yet to meet a
reasonable, rational, intelligent, and honest critic.
Second Way: Anselm's ontological argument is a proof that God exists.
Third Way: except for the most obtuse and deliberately stupid, I would suggest
that we can not only prove that God exists, but that He also loves us. AND, we can do
this with one word! Three letters even!
Fourth Way: [LOST IT! Didnt write it down!]
Fifth Way: The alleged problem of evil. In order for the critic to even bring up
this argument, they have to be appealing to an objective outside source that is superior
to individual judgement, otherwise we have a free-for-all.

At one time I would have suggested that with what we know today about DNA
sequencing and gene splicing we could probably make a unicorn. I have since been told that we
arent there yet.