You Can’t Prove Religion! (Beyond the Meme)

You can’t prove religion! Maybe you’ve had someone tell you this and you didn’t know how to respond. That is the subject of our meme that we will be evaluating today. Here it is:

This is another one of those memes that someone might put out there as a conversation-stopper. The idea is that because you can’t prove any religion, then none are true. But because we’re trying to go beyond the meme, let’s consider three questions that will help us understand the shallow thinking behind it.

1. If no religion can be proved, does it really mean none are true?

Something does not have to be proved for it to be true. How many crimes happen that end up permanently stuck in the “unsolved” file cabinet? Just because detectives can’t figure out who did it, are we supposed to assume that it never happened? When we can’t prove who kidnapped a child, does that mean the child was never kidnapped? Every once in a while I receive an anonymous letter criticizing me. Since I am not always able to prove who wrote it, I guess I’m just supposed to assume that it wrote itself.

That’s nonsense. I’m not even arguing here for whether we can prove any religion, just that this is a non sequitur. It doesn’t follow that no religions are true just because we have a difficult time proving any of them.

It would be a lifelong endeavor to even begin attempting to prove or disprove every religion in the world. I seriously doubt that whoever came up with this meme has dedicated their lives to that project. It’s a whole lot easier to just say, “Well, you can’t prove any of them” than to actually see if that statement is true.

Now, here’s the second question.

2. What kind of proof would be sufficient?

If you want proof, what kind of proof would convince you?

Let’s take religion, the Bible, and even God out of the picture for a minute. What kind of proof do you need to believe anything? How do you know you didn’t just come into existence 5 seconds ago with a full set of memories of a life you didn’t live? Even our court systems operate on “beyond a reasonable doubt” rather than “beyond any possibility of a doubt.” People get sent to jail or the electric chair based on reasonable evidence as determined by a jury, and sometimes they even get it wrong.

There are few, if any, areas of our lives where we require rock-solid proof, but then we refuse to believe God without absolute proof. That’s inconsistent. But even so, God gave us plenty of reasons to believe.

We could start with the universe. How did it get here? I find it a whole lot easier to accept that it was caused by someone or something that is greater than nature, and therefore supernatural. That being would, by definition, be God. It makes sense that that God would reveal Himself to us, which is consistent with what we read in the Bible. Add to that an overabundance of archaeological and textual finds, and we can make a pretty good case.

When Jesus was on earth, He did miracles to prove His identity. There was no question they were miracles, yet people still rejected Him. Maybe sometimes the issue isn’t intellectual, but volitional. Maybe some folks just don’t want to believe.

And now for number three: If you won’t accept religion because it can’t be proved, can you prove your religion?

3. Can you prove your religion?

You might say, “I don’t have a religion.” OK, fine. Let’s exchange the word “religion” with “philosophy,” because in a sense, that’s what religion is. Every person has a philosophy of life. For me, I believe that God created the universe and the ultimate purpose is to glorify Him. If you don’t believe that, then you believe something else. Maybe you have a hard time believing in God, so you believe that the universe has always existed. How is that possible? Can you prove it? Maybe you believe that the universe did begin to exist, but it all started with singularity, which expanded in a big bang billions of years ago and evolved into what we have today. But can you prove that? You might say that you can because of things like the Cosmic Microwave Background, but that doesn’t prove that everything expanded out of a tiny dot (especially because inflation had to be added to the equation to make it work), and even more importantly, it doesn’t explain where singularity came from. So if you can’t accept a supernatural God who created the natural, you surely can’t accept that nature created itself.

So, you’re still left with the question: If not God, then what?

If you want to convince me to reject God, you’ll have to offer me some kind of proof of whatever it is you believe. And don’t forget, you’ll also have to account for things like morality, intellect, purpose, design, and the mind.

Something has to be true. If you want to convince me that what I believe is not true, you’ll have to give me good reasons to believe something else, and not just denounce Christianity or theism with superficial memes.

If you have some good arguments for or against the idea of God, put them in the comments. Or, if you have a meme that you think I would be interested in, send that to me also.

And, don’t forget, whatever you believe, always think beyond the meme.