In the last post, I asked whether you, dear reader, might even want God to exist. And I tried to provide some reasons for maybe why that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I’d like to shift gears a little bit and get philosophical.
According Boston College professor Peter Kreeft, the only truly formidable argument against God’s existence is the so-called “Problem of Evil.”[1] I’m going to spend at least the next post addressing it. But before we get into that, can we agree agree to put aside two common but unnecessary obstacles to thinking on this question?
1. Relativism. This is the idea that what is true for you isn’t necessarily what’s true for me. While helpful when arguing over vanilla versus chocolate, the idea is utter nonsense when you’re talking about whether a thing exists. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say: “It may be true for you that the Sun is up there in sky, but it’s not true for me.” The Sun is either there or it isn’t. Same with God: He either exists or He doesn’t, whether we want Him to or not.
2. Science has disproved God’s existence. If God exists, He’s by definition outside the created order — and therefore not detectable via the Scientific Method. One would only find the idea palatable by bringing to the question an a priori assumption that He doesn’t exist. Which kinda makes intelligent conversation on the subject difficult.
[1] Peter Kreeft, A Shorter Summa (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 53.