If we can't see God, how can we know He exists?
Stand in a courtroom and watch twelve jurors declare 'guilty' without witnessing the crime. Go into surgery trusting a medical degree you've never verified. Board a plane being flown by people you've never met, believing in air pressure laws you've never seen. Pick up your prescription trusting that the Pharmacist put in the bottle the medication you're supposed to have. You go to lunch or dinner and eat food that you trust wasn't poisoned by some guy preparing it in the back that you've never seen. Every day, you trust things in your life based on invisible evidence. Today, we're discovering why believing in God might be the most logical decision you'll ever make.
Welcome back to Word for Word, I'm Austin Duncan, and today we're tackling one of the most fundamental questions that has echoed through human history: If we can't see God, how can we know He exists?
You know, I love this question because it's so honest. It's the question that sits in the back of many minds, even among believers. It's the question your coworker asks when you mention your faith. It's the question your teenager brings home from school. And if we're really honest, it's the question that sometimes whispers to us in our own moments of doubt.
But here's what's fascinating – and what we're going to discover together today – this question actually reveals something profound about how we already navigate the world every single day. Because the truth is, we believe in countless things we cannot see, and we do it all the time.
The Nature of Unseen Trust
Let me paint you a picture. This morning, you probably woke up to an alarm on your phone. You trusted that invisible radio waves carried the signal to update the time. You turned on the lights, trusting in electrons you've never seen flowing through copper wires. You checked the weather, believing meteorologists about air pressure systems you can't observe. You took medicine, trusting in molecular interactions happening at a level far below what your eyes can detect.
R.C. Sproul put it brilliantly when he said, "I am not an expert in medicine, so I must give a certain trust to the diagnoses offered... But to trust what we do not see is not necessarily a matter of being irrational." Think about that for a moment. Every single day, you exercise faith in the unseen – not blind faith, but reasonable trust based on evidence.
And here's where it gets really interesting. The Bible never asks us to take a blind leap into the darkness. In fact, Hebrews 11 – that famous faith chapter – defines faith not as wishful thinking, but as "the evidence of things not seen." Did you catch that? Faith IS evidence. It's substantial. It has weight. It's not the absence of reason; it's reason operating in a realm beyond what our physical eyes can see.
You see, when the Bible says "without faith it is impossible to please God," it immediately adds, "because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists." God isn't playing hide and seek with us. He's not demanding we believe without evidence. Instead, He's placed evidence everywhere – evidence that speaks to our reason, not against it.
Evidence from Creation: The Universe as God's Signature
Let's start with the evidence that's literally all around us – creation itself. And I want you to think about this with fresh eyes, because we've become so familiar with the universe that we've forgotten how absolutely mind-blowing it actually is.
Paul wrote in Romans that God's invisible nature – "His eternal power and divine nature" – has been "clearly seen in the things that have been made." That's a bold claim, isn't it? That the invisible God can be clearly seen? But Paul's not confused here. He's saying that creation is God's signature, His fingerprint, His unmistakable mark on everything that exists.
Now, let me blow your mind with some numbers for a moment. The physicist Roger Penrose – not a Christian, by the way – calculated the odds of our universe starting in the incredibly low-entropy state necessary for life. You ready for this? The odds are about 1 in 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123. Let me help you understand how impossibly huge that number is. If you tried to write it out, you'd need more zeros than there are atoms in the observable universe.
And that's just the beginning!
The physicist Paul Davies notes that if you changed gravity or the weak nuclear force by just one part in 10 to the 50th power – that's a 1 with 50 zeros after it – you would "drastically" alter the universe's structure. No stars. No planets. No life. Nothing.
Walter Bradley adds that a mere 2% change in the strong nuclear force would make complex chemistry impossible. Two percent! That's like saying if you moved your thermostat two degrees, your house would explode. Except it's not your house – it's the entire universe.
Here's what I find absolutely fascinating: When scientists discover these impossibly precise calibrations, they have to come up with explanations. And you know what some of them suggest? That there must be an infinite number of universes, and we just happen to be in the one that works. Think about that logic for a second. Rather than accept that the universe appears designed, they propose an infinite number of unobservable, untestable, unseen universes. And they say we're the ones with faith!
But it's not just the big picture. Zoom in to the smallest scales of life, and the evidence becomes even more compelling. DNA – that molecule in every one of your cells – contains more information in a space smaller than a pinhead than you could fit in a stack of paperback novels reaching from here to the moon and back. Information. Code. Language. Instructions.
Now, here's a question that should stop us in our tracks: When have you ever seen information come from anything other than a mind? When have you ever seen a code write itself? When has language ever emerged from chaos without intelligence behind it?
You know what's beautiful about this? The same God who fine-tuned the gravitational constant to 1 part in 10 to the 60th power also decided that ladybugs should have spots and that roses should smell sweet. The God of incomprehensible precision is also the God of unnecessary beauty. He didn't have to make sunsets paint the sky in a thousand shades of orange and pink. He didn't have to make snow crystals each unique and stunning. But He did. Because that's what artists do – they sign their work.
Think about walking through an art gallery. You don't need to see the artist to know there was one. The painting itself testifies to the painter. The sculpture points to the sculptor. And creation? Creation screams, "Creator!"
The Moral Evidence: The Law Written on Our Hearts
But let's shift gears for a moment, because there's another line of evidence that's even closer to home – literally inside us. It's the moral evidence, and this one is particularly powerful because it's universal and undeniable.
C.S. Lewis famously observed something remarkable about human nature. Even people who claim morality is relative, who insist there's no real right or wrong, will contradict themselves within minutes. Lewis wrote, "The most remarkable thing is that you will find the same man going back on it a moment later. He'll say something isn't fair."
Think about that. Have you ever met anyone – anyone at all – who didn't have some sense of fairness? Of justice? Of right and wrong? Even the person who says "there are no moral absolutes" will get upset if you cut in front of them in line. Why? Because deep down, they know that's wrong.
You can't live as if morality doesn't exist. Try it for a day. Try to go through life genuinely believing that nothing is really right or wrong, that it's all just personal preference. You can't do it. The moment someone lies to you, betrays you, or hurts someone you love, everything in you rises up and says, "That's wrong!" Not "I don't prefer that," but "That's WRONG!"
Where does this come from?
If we're just advanced animals, products of blind evolution, why do we have this sense that transcends survival? A lion feels no guilt when it kills a gazelle. A hawk doesn't struggle with the morality of taking another bird's eggs. But we humans? We wrestle with right and wrong even when doing the right thing hurts us and doing the wrong thing would help us.
Romans tells us that even those who have never heard God's law "show that the work of the law is written on their hearts; their conscience bearing witness." Your conscience – that internal moral compass that you can't shake, that you can try to ignore but never fully silence – that's evidence of God.
Think about the implications here. If there's no God, then morality is just a social construct, a useful fiction we've agreed upon. But if that's true, then justice isn't real. Human rights aren't real. Love isn't really better than hate – it's just that most of us prefer it. The Holocaust wasn't really wrong; it was just something most of us find distasteful.
But you know that's not true. You know – not just think, not just feel, but KNOW – that some things are really right and some things are really wrong. That knowledge is a finger pointing straight to God.
Personal Evidence: The Testimony of Transformed Lives
Now I want to talk about something that skeptics often dismiss but that actually provides compelling evidence – personal experience and transformed lives. And before you think, "Well, that's just subjective," hear me out, because there's more to this than you might think.
First, let's talk about consciousness itself. You are aware that you exist. You can think about thinking. You can reason about reasoning. You can even imagine things that don't exist. Where does this come from?
The materialist says it's just neurons firing, chemical reactions in your brain. But here's the problem with that: How do chemical reactions become aware of themselves? How does matter, no matter how complex, suddenly become conscious? It's like saying if you arrange Legos in just the right way, they'll suddenly become aware they're Legos. It doesn't work.
But beyond just consciousness, there's the evidence of radically transformed lives. Now, I know what the skeptic says: "People change their lives for all sorts of reasons. That doesn't prove God exists." And you know what? They're partially right. People do change for various reasons. But there's something unique about the transformation that comes through encounter with God.
Dr. Don Bierle calls this "soft evidence" – not because it's weak, but because it's personal rather than propositional. He notes that "People of every walk of life share a common testimony that their faith in following Jesus changed their life in very positive ways."
But here's what makes this evidence compelling: the nature and consistency of the change. When someone encounters the living God, specific things happen. They don't just become religious; they become new. Second Corinthians says that anyone in Christ is "a new creation." Not improved. Not reformed. New.
I've seen hardcore addicts set free instantly – not through a program, not through willpower, but through encounter with God. I've watched bitter, angry people become fountains of forgiveness. I've witnessed selfish individuals become radically generous. And here's the key: They all describe it the same way – not as something they did, but as something that was done to them.
When Peter and John spoke boldly after Pentecost, their opponents "marveled" because they recognized "they had been with Jesus." There was something different about them, something that couldn't be explained by education or natural ability. They had been transformed by contact with the divine.
Jesus said believers should "let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father." Notice the progression there. People see the change, the good works, the transformed life, and it points them to God. The change itself becomes evidence.
Think about it this way: If Christianity were false, if there were no God, no Holy Spirit, no divine power at work, then Christians should be no different from anyone else trying to be moral. But that's not what we see. We see people overcoming addictions that should be impossible to break. We see victims forgiving unforgivable crimes. We see joy in the midst of suffering that makes no earthly sense. We see generosity that goes beyond reason. We see love for enemies that defies human nature.
You can fake religion, but you can't fake transformation. And when millions upon millions of people across every culture, every century, every continent report the same kind of radical life change through encounter with the same God, at some point you have to ask: What if they're all telling the truth?
Historical Evidence: The Footprints of God in Time
Now let's turn to evidence that's carved in stone, written on papyrus, and testified to by friends and enemies alike – the historical evidence. Because here's something crucial to understand: Christianity is not a philosophy that exists in the realm of ideas; it's a faith rooted in historical events.
Let's start with the reliability of the biblical text itself. Now, I know some of you might be thinking, "Wait, you can't use the Bible to prove God exists. That's circular reasoning." But hang on – I'm not asking you to accept the Bible as divinely inspired yet. I'm asking you to consider it as a historical document, which it undeniably is.
Here's what most people don't know: The New Testament is by far the best-attested ancient document in existence. We have over 5,500 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. The next best-attested ancient work is Homer's Iliad, with fewer than 650 manuscripts. Caesar's Gallic Wars? Ten manuscripts. Plato? Seven.
But it gets better. The earliest fragment of the New Testament dates to within 25-50 years of the original writing. For most ancient texts, we're lucky if we have anything within 500 years of the original. John A. T. Robinson, certainly not a conservative scholar, admitted that this "wealth of manuscripts makes the New Testament by far the best attested text of any ancient writing in the world."
And here's the kicker: When scholars compare all these manuscripts, the variations are incredibly minor – different spellings, word order, things like that. Not a single central doctrine of Christianity is affected by any textual variant. We can know with more confidence what the New Testament originally said than we can know what Plato or Aristotle wrote.
But the Bible doesn't stand alone. Ancient historians – many of them hostile to Christianity – confirm key facts. Tacitus, the Roman historian, confirms that Christ was executed under Pontius Pilate. Josephus, the Jewish historian, writes about Jesus and his followers. Pliny the Younger describes early Christian worship. Even the Jewish Talmud, while hostile to Jesus, never denies He existed or that He performed miracles – they just attribute His powers to sorcery rather than God.
But here's where the historical evidence becomes almost overwhelming: the fulfillment of prophecy. The mathematician Peter Stoner calculated the odds of one person fulfilling just eight of the Messianic prophecies. Ready for this number? One in 10 to the 17th power. That's 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000.
To help you grasp this, Stoner gave this illustration: Cover the entire state of Texas with silver dollars two feet deep. Mark one of them. Blindfold someone and have them wander the state and pick up one coin. The odds of them picking the marked coin on their first try are the same as one person accidentally fulfilling just eight prophecies.
But Jesus didn't fulfill eight prophecies. He fulfilled dozens. Born in Bethlehem. From the line of David. Born of a virgin. Ministered in Galilee. Betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. Crucified with criminals. Pierced but no bones broken. The list goes on and on.
You can explain away one or two coincidences, but at some point, the weight of evidence becomes undeniable.
And then there's the resurrection. Now, I know that's a huge topic worthy of its own discussion, but let me just point out a few historical facts that even skeptical scholars generally accept:
Jesus was crucified and died
His tomb was found empty
His disciples genuinely believed they saw Him risen
They were transformed from cowards to bold proclaimers
Many died rather than recant their testimony
The Harvard law professor Simon Greenleaf, one of the founders of the Harvard Law School, examined the evidence for the resurrection using the same principles of evidence used in law courts. His conclusion? The resurrection would be established as historical fact in any unbiased court of law.
But perhaps the most powerful historical evidence is the very existence and spread of Christianity itself. A small group of frightened, uneducated fishermen and tax collectors claimed their leader rose from the dead. Within a generation, this message had spread throughout the Roman Empire. Within three centuries, it had conquered the empire that crucified its founder.
People don't die for what they know is a lie. The apostles didn't gain wealth, power, or prestige from their testimony. They gained persecution, suffering, and death. Yet not one of them ever recanted. Not one ever said, "Okay, we made it up." They went to their deaths proclaiming what they had seen with their own eyes.
The Convergence of Evidence: Where All Roads Lead
Now, here's where this gets really powerful. Any one of these lines of evidence alone might not convince you. You might be able to explain away the fine-tuning of the universe. You might rationalize the moral law. You might dismiss personal testimonies. You might find alternative explanations for the historical evidence.
But when you put them all together? When you see that every avenue of investigation – scientific, moral, personal, historical – all point to the same conclusion? That's what we call convergent evidence, and it's incredibly powerful.
It's like a detective investigating a case. One piece of evidence might not convict, but when the fingerprints, the DNA, the eyewitness testimony, the surveillance footage, and the forensic evidence all point to the same person, the case becomes overwhelming.
Think about what the atheist has to maintain:
The universe, with its incomprehensible fine-tuning, just happened
Life, with its information-rich DNA, arose from non-life by chance
Consciousness emerged from unconscious matter for no reason
The moral law that everyone experiences is just a useful illusion
The millions who testify to transformed lives are all deluded
The historical evidence for Jesus and the resurrection can all be explained away
The prophecies fulfilled were all coincidences
At a certain point, doesn't it take more faith to reject God than to believe in Him? As the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal noted, "The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know." But in this case, both heart and reason point to the same truth.
Responding to Common Objections
Now, I know some of you are thinking, "Okay, but what about..." So let's address some common objections.
"If God exists, why doesn't He just show Himself?"
But He has! That's what we've been talking about. The evidence is everywhere. The problem isn't lack of evidence; it's that we want God on our terms. We want Him to appear on demand, like a genie from a lamp. But God isn't at our beck and call. He's revealed Himself in ways that require us to seek, to think, to choose. Because God isn't interested in compelling robots; He's inviting relationship.
"But I can't see Him!"
You can't see gravity either, but you don't doubt it exists. You can't see love, but you know when you experience it. You can't see thoughts, but you're having them right now. Some of the most real things in our experience are invisible. Why should God be any different?
"Science will eventually explain everything without God."
Really? Science is fantastic at telling us how things work, but it can't tell us why there's something rather than nothing. It can't tell us why the universe follows rational laws that we can understand. It can't tell us why we should be moral. It can't explain consciousness, free will, or the human experience of beauty, meaning, and purpose. Science is a wonderful tool for understanding the physical world, but using science to disprove God is like using a metal detector to find love – you're using the wrong instrument.
"But there are so many religions. How can you know Christianity is true?"
That's a great question, and it deserves a full discussion. But for now, consider this: The existence of counterfeits doesn't disprove the genuine article. If anything, it confirms it. You don't counterfeit monopoly money; you counterfeit real currency. The fact that humans throughout history have sought God, have sensed His existence, actually supports the idea that He's real and we're designed to know Him.
Building Faith: From Evidence to Trust
So where does all this leave us? If the evidence is so strong, why doesn't everyone believe?
Here's the truth: Evidence can point you to the door, but you still have to choose to walk through it. And that choice involves more than just your intellect. It involves your will, your emotions, your whole being.
You see, the question "Does God exist?" isn't like "Does Jupiter have moons?" It's more like "Does my spouse love me?" It's a question that, once answered, demands response. If God exists, that changes everything about how we live, what we value, what we hope for.
Some people don't want to believe because they don't want to change. They don't want to submit to anyone or anything beyond themselves. As Aldous Huxley honestly admitted, "I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none... For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation."
But here's what I want you to understand: Faith isn't about intellectual suicide; it's about intellectual honesty. It's about following the evidence where it leads, even when that challenges our autonomy, our pride, our desire to be our own gods.
R.C. Sproul put it beautifully: "We do not take a blind leap into darkness. Rather, we take a leap out of the darkness and into the light."
The evidence for God's existence isn't just academic; it's an invitation. Every star in the sky, every beat of your heart, every twinge of conscience, every moment of beauty, every act of love – they're all whispers from a God who wants to be known.
Living in Light of the Evidence
So how do we apply all this? How do we move from evidence to experience, from knowledge to relationship?
First, cultivate wonder. Stop taking the universe for granted. The next time you see a sunset, don't just notice it – marvel at it. The next time you hold a baby, consider the miracle of life. The next time your conscience speaks, listen to what it's really saying. G.K. Chesterton said, "The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder."
Second, develop informed faith. Don't be afraid of questions. Don't be afraid of doubt. God is big enough for your questions. Study. Read. Think. Discuss. The more you learn about the universe, biology, history, philosophy, the more evidence you'll find. Truth isn't fragile; it can stand up to investigation.
Third, respond to what you know. Faith isn't just intellectual assent; it's trust that leads to action. If God exists – and the evidence overwhelmingly says He does – then the appropriate response isn't just to believe He's there, but to seek Him, to know Him, to respond to His invitation.
Fourth, share the hope. When people ask you about your faith, don't be defensive or preachy. Share the evidence that convinces you. Tell your story of transformation. Point to the design in creation, the moral law in our hearts, the historical reality of Jesus. Remember, you're not trying to win an argument; you're sharing good news.
Finally, live the evidence. Let your transformed life be part of the proof. When people see unexplainable joy, irrational forgiveness, impossible love, they're seeing evidence of God. Your life can be a signpost pointing others to Him.
The Ultimate Evidence: An Invitation to Experience
You know, we could spend hours more examining evidence. We could dive deeper into cosmology, biology, archaeology, philosophy, and history. The evidence is vast and growing. But at some point, investigation must give way to decision.
Here's what I find beautiful about God: He provides enough evidence for those who want to believe, but not so much that He overwhelms those who don't. He respects our freedom. He invites rather than compels.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that "without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him." Notice the promise there – He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. This isn't about blind faith; it's about responsive faith. It's about taking the evidence seriously enough to act on it.
If you're watching this as a skeptic, I want to challenge you: What if you're wrong? What if the evidence is pointing to truth? What if millions of believers throughout history aren't deluded but have actually encountered the living God? What if your very resistance to belief is evidence that you know, deep down, that He's real and that acknowledging Him would change everything?
And if you're watching as a believer who sometimes struggles with doubt, let me encourage you: Your faith isn't built on wishful thinking. It's built on solid ground. The evidence is strong, multilayered, and growing stronger as we learn more about our universe. When doubt whispers, let evidence shout back.
Conclusion: The Most Logical Decision
So we return to where we started. Every day, you trust in things you cannot see. You trust in gravity, in atoms, in radio waves, in the honesty of strangers preparing your food. You trust because the evidence warrants trust.
The evidence for God is stronger than the evidence for many things you believe without question. The fine-tuning of the universe, the information in DNA, the moral law in your heart, the testimony of transformed lives, the historical reality of Jesus, the fulfillment of prophecy – they all point to the same conclusion.
Believing in God isn't a leap in the dark; it's a step into the light. It's not intellectual suicide; it's intellectual honesty. It's not wishful thinking; it's careful thinking that leads to an inevitable conclusion.
You can't see God with your physical eyes. But you can see His fingerprints everywhere. You can see His signature in creation. You can feel His law in your conscience. You can witness His power in transformed lives. You can trace His footsteps through history.
The question isn't really "How can we know God exists?" The evidence for that is overwhelming. The real question is: "What will you do with what you know?"
Because here's the beautiful truth that takes this beyond mere philosophy: The God whose existence we can deduce from evidence is also the God who stepped into history in the person of Jesus Christ. He's not just the Prime Mover or the First Cause or the Ground of Being. He's the God who knows your name, who counts the hairs on your head, who loved you enough to die for you.
The evidence doesn't just point to a generic deity; it points to a personal God who wants to be known, who has made Himself knowable, and who invites you into relationship with Him.
And that is why believing in God truly is the most logical decision you'll ever make. Not just because the evidence demands it, but because everything in you – your reason, your conscience, your longing for meaning, your desire for love – was designed to find its fulfillment in Him.
As Augustine said over 1,600 years ago, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."
The evidence is there. The invitation stands. What will you do with it?
