The Endless Pursuit to Prove the Existence of God

By: Feston Konzani

Yesterday, I was called by my colleague to meet me at the office because there were several things we needed to discuss. Strangely enough he told me this after telling me that it was a holiday on 2^nd May which was Monday, but he himself said we should meet at the office.

My mind began playing thoughts inside me between what we think is true, what we have been told to be true and more importantly what is INDEED true. I sat down looking at my work’s laptop computer thinking to myself of these three different ways of knowing. Needless to say that this is not a psychological or Epistemological approach to this complex subject.

But of recent times, people from many sectors branding themselves ‘Freethinkers, ’ another pseudonym for ‘Atheists’ have garnered up intense arguments on the Empirical evidence for the Existence of God. If anyone is expecting for me to talk about morality, then Ravi Zacharias will do a better job than I possibly can in a thousand or more years.

What I am looking at is a simple explanation that truth is based on faith.  For the so-called freethinkers to say that they now know the truth, it took faith first for them to believe that what they knew was not the truth and out of it, they started a search for what they now believe to be the truth. 

Let me begin by asking a very simple question as to how we know that Monday was a holiday? Simple, someone told us and we believed it.  Our belief in what we were told is what makes the existence of such a holiday real.  If we did not believe or do not believe what is/was said then there will be significance to the reality of the existence of something.

As The Malawi Star reported yesterday, for those in Continental Bakery in Mzuzu, it actually wasn’t a holiday, but did they know the difference, being locked inside all day?  If it wasn’t a holiday for them, was it really a holiday, or was it just a day off of work for some people?  Does the fact that they didn’t have a holiday cease to make it a holiday?  If I personally can’t prove the existence of God, does He cease to exist?

Empirical evidence is not actually the main proof of the truth.  Such evidence can prove something but not the truth because the Truth is not a ‘thing’, it is ‘an entity, a person’.  Empirically proving a person is more impossible of a task than proving a fact.  Facts can easily be empirically proven but a person is more complicated to be fully empirically proven.

Equally, a person who spends his or her life trying to prove themselves is likely to spend their entire life doing nothing else but the same and when all is said and done they will not have proved anything to anyone. God is not in the business of proving Himself to anyone but those who want or chooses to know HIM, they will be surely found by HIM.

What we think we know is based on what we have been told and when we turn that information into faith, soon after that information becomes our course of action. When Professor Richard Dawkins first discovered Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species,’ it was information that had already been presented and he (Dawkins) saw what was there out of which he deduced the truthfulness of the claims BUT NOT BEFORE BELIEVING IT FIRST.

In John 14:6,  Jesus said, “I AM the way, THE TRUTH and the life.” He did not say that the truth is a thing, or something, but rather HE (A Person) was the TRUTH. To know the truth is to know the person, not to have mere facts.

What the so-called freethinkers have are facts, but they do not know the Person called The TRUTH. He is the source and the ONLY TRUTH.  He cannot be empirically verified because HE is beyond Empirical Evidence. He created the universe and all that it contains and for us, as finite creatures in this infinite universe to ask for empirical evidence of the creation is no more absurd than for a hypothetical pot asking the potter how it was made the way it was made.

The pot cannot prove the potter’s existence by any empirical evidence or otherwise.  Its very existence is enough for the pot to realise that there is but a potter, demanding anything more is asking for something beyond the pot’s understanding because if the pot can understand how it was made then the pot itself ceases from being creation to being a creator. It is as simple as that.

In Malawi, we are facing many challenges as a nation, and it begs the question of why these freethinkers who spend their lives trying to prove or disprove the existence of God don’t rather turn these brilliant minds of theirs into something profitable for the furtherance of humanity.  The person who hasn’t eaten today is more concerned with how to eat tomorrow than they are with whether or not we can PROVE anything.  

Whether proven or not, the TRUTH will always stand.