God Vs. Evidence Pt.2: Testimony

This is part 2 of a 2-parter. There was also a part one.

God Vs. Evidence Pt. 2: Testimony. "What About Miracles?"

This is a very straight-forward point, and it's basically just Occam's Razor. If I tell you I am going to perform a miracle and then I do it - let's say I tell you I will strike a nearby tree with lightning from a clear sky - not a thunderhead within 500 miles. And flash, crash, bang, it happens: the tree is a charred stump with smoking limbs scattered in a radial pattern. How many inexplicable beings do you have evidence of?

That's right: you have evidence of one. You have a human being who can seemingly either cause or predict lightning.

We'll try it again with a variant. Same thing happens. The tree is burnt toast. But this time I tell you the lightning is from God. I didn't cause it, I just collaborated with God on a faith-based meteorological demonstration. Now how many inexplicable beings do you have evidence of? Two? Me and God?

Well, if you're counting my testimony as evidence, you might say two. But why accept the existence of two inexplicable beings when one will do? Really you just still have evidence of one: a human being who can predict or cause lightning, but who happens to attribute the lightning to God.

Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that there is no such thing as a miracle. I'm simply making a point about what miracles prove. I'm not saying that throughout history, there have been people with paranormal abilities, and that they have tended to honestly and innocently attribute their own abilities, which they did not understand, to faith and God. No. That sounds like a bad sci-fic cable series pitch with pseudotheological overtones. No reasonable skeptic would resort to such stretchers to explain away miracles, not when they could simply point out that the miracles in question never seem to leave anything more lasting than testimony behind. And the testimony is the problem. The testimony is invariably human. Who saw what? It isn't about trusting words - it's about trusting eyes. Starting with your own.

If someone witnesses a miracle, or if someone witnesses a UFO abduction, I keep my mind open. I'm willing to believe they might be telling the truth as best they can. I'm even willing to concede it is possible that what they're describing means what they think it means. However, even if I saw it with my own eyes, I'd still keep a little room in my mind that what I just saw, that blew my mind open, might have had a bit more to it than what I think it means. Or that my interpretation of what it was, might be entirely wrong. If I witness an event that is astounding and inexplicable, and then I decide to advance an explanation, my explanation and the event itself are two different things that may or may not coincide. And when the explanation you advance involves aliens or infinite beings, the phrase "How else would you explain it?" - doesn't really do a thing to help your pet theory. Sorry: miracles don't prove much.

Miracles certainly don't prove there is a God. But the reactions people have to miracles do prove that people want to believe in God. Which is far closer to what God wants. God doesn't want to shove proof down your throat, but God does want you to want to believe. To be open to whatever unexplained good and uplift and inspiration comes into your life. To accept a miracle, if you're lucky enough to see one, as another piece of that love and uplift. Because if you'd rather seize it and stop the presses and turn it into some big piece of evidence, it's going to look pretty unimpressive by the time you're done dissecting it. That wasn't what it was for.

My point with God Vs. Evidence is this: God has nothing to prove to you. If God needed to prove Godself to the world, it would take God infinitely less than ten seconds to do so: conclusively. If God chooses to perform a miracle, hey, I have no problem with that - that sounds like exactly the sort of thing God would pull! But a miracle is not done to prove God's existence to us. If God lays down a miracle, it's because something needed to get done.

Proving God's existence to you - or to anyone else - is not something God needs to get done.

Some people, for some reason, claim they believe in God but they want to advance various sorts of evidence or proof. They want to believe in God because. I say that ultimately, if you believe in God because, you're not a God-worshipper at all. You're a because-worshipper. And when it comes to every supposed proof of God, every evidence construed to prove God's existence - not one single one of those becauses holds much if any water. What are they for? What do you need them for? Do you imagine God needs them? Do you imagine God needs to be proved?

Step away from the because.

ON NEXT WEEK'S GOD BLOG SUNDAY: God Vs. The Smog Monster