Q&A: God
God
Question
I’ve been thinking about this lately. Our claim, as believers, is a factual claim: God exists. And some of us—for the sake of example, you and I as well—also claim to have evidence for it.
Does that make the existence of God a fact?
There will always be those who disagree. There are physicists who dispute the Big Bang (though more so in the past), there are evolutionary biologists who dispute evolution, and so on. These are just examples to convey the point that disagreement always exists.
The definition of proof is “something known or shown to be true.” We have evidence, and we claim that it proves the existence of God; that is, His existence is proven—so is His existence therefore a fact?
Answer
You are conflating different levels of discussion. The question of whether some claim is a factual claim has nothing to do with proofs, but with the content of the claim. The claim that it is now night or now day is a factual claim (the first is true and the second is false), since it asserts something about the world. If some factual claim has been proven, then it is a true factual claim. If there are those who dispute it, then there is a disagreement about that factual claim, and apparently there are those who do not accept the proof or its premises.
Discussion on Answer
A factual claim cannot be proven except on the basis of certain premises. And those can always be debated.
I understand that there will always be debate, but debate does not mean there are no facts or truth. Have you suddenly become a skeptic? I’m asking whether, by force of the proofs, the existence of God is a simple fact like the concept of causality, the Big Bang, our existence, and so on.
Are you asking whether in my opinion God exists? Yes.
We’ve already given up on certainty. We’ve already given up on 100% proof. All of that is clear to me. But that does not negate basic concepts like facts. It simply means that they too are not certain.
And back to my question.
Maybe I didn’t phrase myself well. I wasn’t conflating different levels of discussion, but connecting them. “God exists” is a factual claim (a claim about the world), and if it is proven then it is a fact.
Now, by virtue of the proofs for the existence of God, is the existence of God a fact? That’s my question.