If I Can’t See God, How Do I Know He Is Real? SeanMcDowell.org

DESCRIPTION: Why can't God just make Himself visible? How can I trust God is real if I can't see Him with my eyes? Sean briefly responds to these questions with proof for the existence of God.

[cnault]

"If I Can’t See God, How Do I Know He Is Real? "

You can't see magnetism, but I can demonstrate it exists.
You can't see gravity, but I can demonstrate it exists.

You can't see your god? No problem, just demonstrate that it exists.

( cue the crickets and tumbleweeds)

[inquisitorbacon]

See, I know gravity is real because I feel it's effects on me, pulling me back down to earth. I don't know or care if god exists because I have no evidence of any effects on me and I have no evidence to support the claim that he does, I just have to take it on faith. I guess god will just have to prove himself to me.

[nmnac]

You can't se gravity but it's existence can be scientifically proven! But there's no way you can prove the existantce of God!

[R_o_o_k_i_n_g_t_o_n]

I know this is an older video but honestly when I see videos of Sean talking about shit like this it makes me lose just a bit more respect for him each time. I'm just going to start buy flat out saying that the only time I have heard any atheists say anything like this it's always been them pointing out the fact that there is no method so far that can actually allow us to detect 'God' in any meaningful way that's that's if we cannot even detect it then there's absolutely no way science can do anything to study such an entity as science relies on us being able to make at least some form of observation about something that we can link to whatever it is we are trying to investigate and not in a "this thing over here that we can observe is something that I feel like is addressing the same thing I'm addressing so therefore I'm going to say that as my thing that I'm claiming that causes it" because that's literally just taking the observations out there and forcing your conclusion about those observations on to them rather than letting the evidence you have point you to what into most likely case

[dannyvalastro]

You should not have too struggle too find out if God is real for God should show us he is real in reality and not gamble with our souls

[rossmerritt]

This bit is one big equivocation fallacy with the word "see." A person asking the question about believing without seeing is asking about verification, an epistemological framework provides evidence for the existence of something. We can "see" subatomic particles with appropriate equipment, we can test and verify the exist of gravity and "see" it through expirements that work regardless of faith or perspective. Its fallacious to conflate not seeing those with the naked eye with not seeing God.

You earned a doctorate yet you commit such easy errors? Its almost like your arguments are just to reassure the choir, rather than overcome serious objections.

[righty-o]

Oh, and not believing in God because God can't be seen, is not an atheist argument. I have never heard an atheist use that argument, and I doubt you have either.

[mikebrownbassist]

The musical note C is a vibrating frequency that can be measured

[Tiny_and_Reese]

Gonna be quick. Sorry if any of it comes off as rude.

"Bringing truth to a new generation."
I personally hate the use of the term "the truth". Strikes me as arrogant. Like "don't believe those other guys who say they have the truth. I have the real truth". Just remember, if someone says they have "the truth" they're probably just unduly confident at best, and you should not apportion your believe to how confidently they present themselves.

"If I can't see God, how do I know that he is real?"
Well it's not just about seeing. It's more about him being completely undetectable by any of our senses and the people who say they can sense him resort to vagueries of emotion, logical fallacies, or guilt tripping/ insults. "Wow you're so ungrateful. He sent his only son to die for you." or "You atheists just want to sin". You could only make these kinds of arguments if you were deluded enough in you having "the truth" that you thought you know more about what's going on in other people's heads than licensed psychologists.

"There's many thing we believe in, that we can't see."
But can we detect them in other ways? Yes.

"Subatomic particles."
Nope, we can detect those. We've measured the weights of the subatomic particles of the entire periodic table, SAPs have a charge that we can detect, we use electrons in electron microscopes. To say they don't exist would be to deny fundamental parts of the world that can be experienced.

"Gravity."
I can feel that every time I try and get out of bed.

"The laws of logic."
We.. made those. They don't exist like gravity or electrons do, but they're concepts and as such aren't analogous to a God that you say exists in some way. Unless this is an admission that we made God up too, this is your own category error.

"That we lived our lives based upon and we can't escape."
Pfft. No. Not everyone lives their lives based on logic.

"We can't see them but we know they're real."
Real as a concept, not as a force or a material like you're claiming God is.

"By definition God can't be seen."
You should tell the old testament that when he walked through the Garden of Eden, talked to Moses, performed miracles, etc.

"God is spirit."
Then what is that? And if we can't detect it in any way and it doesn't seem to have any affect on our day to day lives except when coming from the mouths of hate preachers who say gays cause hurricanes, what does it even mean to say that it exists?

"By definition God is not physical."
Then I am justified in not believing him. If he takes up no place in space time and he hasn't personally come to me and the only people who are telling me about him are fallible people who sometimes have a vested interest in collecting my tithing, I mean, converting me, I mean, helping me see "the truth" why should I believe you over the several people who are telling me to believe their specific "the truth" that contradicts yours.

"It commits a category fallacy."
A category error, but yeah, if we were only saying things like I have to see him to believe but the spirit of the question is "Why can't I detect him in any way?"

"Even if we can't see God, there's very good reason to believe God is real."
Well here's where I pull the rug out from under you. Reason... doesn't always bring us to the right answer. To err is man.

"The beginning of the universe has a beginner."
Prove it? This is typically argued from the point of view that something can't come from nothing (Higgs Boson is evidence against that notion) or an argument from complexity mixed with special pleading for their complex thing. "The universe is so complex so it needed something even more complex to make it and that complex thing is self existing because I defined it that way."

"The fine-tuning points to a finer-tuner."
Again prove it. If the universe is fine tuned for anything it's fine-tuned for blackholes, not us. We can't exist but in 0.000... ...001% of the universe. How is that a universe finely tuned for us if your God can do anything?

"The origin of life and information point to an author of life."
Prove it again. I won't say that these aren't... compelling reasons as long as you don't think about them, but you don't get to pack it up and go home by just putting them out there. The correct answer so far for the origin of life is we don't know with a reasonably strong leaning towards abiogenesis as evidenced by the Miller-Urey and all subsequently alike experiments.

"Origins of consciousness points to a cosmic consciousness."
Does the existence of crap point to a universal crap giver? This is all God of the Gaps stuff, man. "We don't know what began the universe... God. We don't know why the universe is like it is, God. Where'd life come from? We don't know... oh wait we do, God." It's the same argument given the thin auspices of difference.

"A moral law points to a moral law giver."
Which is why moral laws more complex than don't kill and don't steal mostly lie along cultural borders and don't come from a single source like we would expect if it all came from one source... wait.

"The historical evidence for Jesus and the Scriptures."
The Bible is not a history book, unless you think donkey's can talk.

"We have very good reason to believe that it's true and that God does exist."
Honestly believe what you like if it makes you happy. I hope you're well and do good things with it. What I don't like is you sabatoging teenagers into thinking differently than they might otherwise by converting them into believing like you do. If your religion was harmless, I wouldn't mind, and usually it isn't when you treat it as your own source of salvation without caring if anyone else follows you. But that's not the religion you have and if you use it to harm people or convert them into your way of thinking at an early age, expect backlash.

[julzyboy]

It's not so much about what we can see, it's more about what we can *observe* in the scientific sense, that is to use any way of gathering information from the world around us eg: To use your senses, to use instruments/machines to detect things that we otherwise couldn't detect with our senses alone, to see the influence of things that we can't observe directly on the things around them (such as black holes, gravity or even tornados) and to observe things in the world around us that are a sort of "footprint" left behind of things that happened in the past.

We cannot seem to do anything like this with God, which is why the Christians say that he is supernatural, but this is pointless because the supernatural cannot be distinguished from that which is unknown, it's only when you can prove something with evidence can you then believe it rationally, but at that point it becomes natural, otherwise their is no scientific reason to believe it.

To claim you *know* God exists means that you have *knowledge* of God's existence, and that knowledge must be demonstrated in an objectively verifiable manner, and not simply asserted. And if you cannot demonstrate that knowledge then your claim is dismissed.
If we did not follow this rule then we wouldn't have a rational reason for differentiating between what is real and not real.

Because of all this I cannot believe in God, but that does not mean I believe God doesn't exist, maybe some kind of being like a god does exist somehow, but I cannot demonstrate any evidence for it so I simply do not know.

And if you want to say that the Bible is evidence for God then how do you know that the Bible is true and not just a fictional story like all the other religions? Which religion is true? And why have faith if you claim there is evidence?
Faith is not an accurate way of determining whether something is true or not. Every religion has faith and yet they all reach completely different contradictory conclusions!

[lme]

We also can’t see ultraviolet light but we can detect it.
The same cannot be said nor applied to your god claim.

[mikebrownbassist]

For those other points, correlation does not imply causation

[mikebrownbassist]

The laws of nature and subatomic particles can be tested and measured.

[scottgodlewski]

Isn't he all-powerful? Why can't he make himself seen? And didn't characters in the Bible meet god?

[aesthetewithoutacause]

I was gonna point out the hideous logical fallacy that seems to be the encompassing theme of this video, but seeing all of the near-essays already in the comments, I don't think that would be necessary.

[SwolllenGoat]

one would think that the most important being to ever exist wouldnt be hard to

[anthonymitchell]

I don't know what this guy's doctorate is but I know it wasn't science or philosophy because he completely misrepresents both.

[northernmama]

Would you entertain the biblical doctrine that Christ is in us, thus the visible expression of God in the world is the Church, the believer?

[righty-o]

You didn't explain HOW any of your points prove the existence. You just claim that they do.

[juliebabygirl]

If Santa Claus is real, then clearly he is real, and everything we know about him is also very likely true. Conclusion: Santa Claus is real!