Melinda
comments on proving God's existence
The essential problem with proving God's existence is that it has
already been done, fairly exhaustively, by such intellectual titans as
St. Thomas Aquinas – however, very few people realize this, or, when
confronted with it, care. In fact, these proofs are least likely to be
effective with the intellectuals upon whom they are, presumably,
expected to have some effect. The problem is that intellectuals who are
also atheists will retreat into any sort of semi-rational absurdity in
order to avoid the humbling experience of changing their position.
Logic, science, causality, free will and even existence are all freely
sacrificed upon the altar of intellectual pride, opening wide the abyss
of post-modern nihilism in which the possibility of proving anything
simply does not exist.
What is necessary, therefore, is not a universal but a personal proof
of God's existence. For each person, until they are eternally ground
upon the teeth of Hell's philosophical machinery, there will be some
non-negotiable to which they have sworn fealty, and which they will not
easily abandon into the devil's snares. It may be absolute truth, human
freedom, or the validity of reason; or it may be some less intellectual
loyalty, such as a devotion to beauty or a profound sense of the
dignity of human life. Countering this will be some equally personal
(and usually consciously unadmitted) reason for disbelieving in God,
the nature of which is unlikely to be quite so intellectual as the
fortress of rationalization protecting it is meant to suggest. It may
take the form of enslavement to some particular sexual sin, of
resentment towards a Pharisaical parent, or of anger at God for some
prayer which seemed to go unanswered.
It is from these personal bases that any successful campaign on behalf
of God must be launched. The real reasons behind atheistic abstractions
must be addressed, and the battle must be waged upon whatever square of
solid ground still remains amidst a sea of shifting rationalizations.
Only if this is done – if God is made appealing to this particular soul
on terms that it is able to understand; and if the real source of
temptation to atheism is unmasked for the irrational psychological
complication that it is – will the soul be ready to abandon its
self-aggrandizing denials of a higher power and place itself in humble
submission to Truth.
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