If there is a god, and if he wants us as humans to pray to him, to worship him, build churches for him and generally take notice of him, why did he not prove he exists?  It's all very well to say that he is testing our faith but why did he then also give us intelligence and the ability to reason?  Perhaps he wanted us to use our talents to prove his existence using science.  Well he sure made it hard.  Courtesy of Victor Stenger and his book God, the Failed Hypothesis, here is a list of eleven things he could have done to convince us that he exists.

1. Purely natural processes might have been proved incapable of producing the universe, as we know it, from nothing. For example, the measured mass density of the universe might not have turned out to be exactly what is required for the universe to have begun from a state of zero energy, which we assume is the energy of nothing. This would have implied that a miracle, the violation of energy conservation, was required to produce the universe.
2. Purely natural processes might have been proved incapable of producing the order of the universe. For example, suppose the universe were not expanding but rather turned out to be a firmament (as the Bible says it is). The second law of thermodynamics would require that the universe always had total entropy less than maximum in the past. Thus, if the universe had a beginning, that beginning would have to be one of order imposed from the outside. If the universe had no beginning but extended indefinitely into the past, then we still would need to account for the source of the ever-increasing order as we go back in time.
3. Purely natural processes might have proved incapable of producing the complex structure of the world. For example, the age of Earth might have turned out to be too short for evolution [we know it's age precisely using a study of isotopes]. Simple processes might not have been able to produce complex structure.
4. Evidence was found that falsified evolution. Fossils might have been found that were inexplicably out of sequence. Life-forms might not have all been based on the same genetic scheme. Transitional species might not have been observed.
5. Human memories and thoughts might have provided evidence that cannot be plausibly accounted for by known physical processes. Science might have confirmed exceptional powers of the mind that it could not plausibly explain physically. Science might have uncovered convincing evidence for an afterlife. For example, a person who has been declared dead by every means known to science might return to life with detailed stories of an afterlife containing information he could not possibly have known and is later verified as factual, such as the location of the nearest planet with life.
6. A nonphysical channel of communication might have been empirically confirmed by revelations that could not have already in the head of the person reporting the revelation. For example, someone in a religious trance might learn the exact date of the end of the world, which then happens on schedule.
7. Physical and historical evidence might have been found for the miraculous events and the important narratives of the scriptures. For example, Roman records might have been found of an earthquake in Judea at the time of a crucifixion ordered by Pontius Pilate. Campsites might have been found in the Sinai Desert.
8. The void might have been found to be absolutely stable, requiring some action to bring something rather than nothing into existence.
9. The universe might have been found to be so congenial to human life that it must have been created with human life in mind. Humans might have been able to move from planet to planet, just as easily as they now move from continent to continent, and be able to survive on every planet without life support.
10. Natural events might follow some moral law, rather than morally neutral mathematical laws. For example, lightning might strike mostly wicked people; people who behave badly might fall sick more often; nuns would always survive plane crashes.
11. Believers might have had a higher moral sense than nonbelievers and other measurably superior qualities. For example, the jails might be filled with atheists while all believers live happy, prosperous, contented lives surrounded by loving families and pets.

Note that if one imagines a god who created but does not do anything more to interface with his creation, then there would no need for him to prove he exists.  There would also be no need for us to even think about such a being - if there is no observable effect, that's equivalent to not existing.

Now the absence of these things does not prove that there is no god - but it does show that if there is a god, he really does not want to make it easy to believe.   In fact, he's going out of his way to make it difficult. So we are supposed to believe that we will be punished for not believing when the only source of information is a group of clerics who don't give any reason why they should know better than the greatest philosophers and scientists that have lived over the centuries.

This suggests that maybe god deliberately hides himself from us.  But if he is perfectly loving as taught by the major religions (this is the big IF), then he would not deny knowledge of his existence to any human who is not resistant to that knowledge.  But there are many humans who are open to knowledge of god and we still do not believe. The only conclusion can be that such a god does not exist.   And as I've said elsewhere, if god is not perfectly loving, we are all screwed anyway.

See also the earlier article "Gods who cannot exist- that's all of them" - also based on an extract from the same book.

Victor Stenger Web site

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