My close friend and caregiver, who I will call Angie, corresponds through Facebook with a young woman, who I will name Bev, who she babysat years earlier.  Grown and living in Europe now, Bev underwent a crisis.  On day she came out as gay to her mother, and the next day her mother sent a very stylistically-polite text message disowning her daughter and vowing no further communication.  Angie was trying her best to console Bev.  When I heard the story, I told Angie, “Tomorrow or the next day you are going to get a message from Bev that there is no God.  Pray for her, and try to help her back to God.  If anyone needs God now it’s this poor woman.” 

Angie didn’t think I could possibly be right because Bev was a very spiritual person.  But, sure enough, Bev’s next post was a well-structured argument that there was no God and that all believers were either illogical or not looking at the physical evidence—or lack thereof—regarding the existence of God.  Science explained everything, and Christians just couldn't accept the facts, submitted Bev. Angie asked if I could think of any response that might help someone in Bev’s position hang on.  The following letter was my message in a bottle to Bev over in Europe, who I have never met.

Hi Bev,

I am a friend of Angie’s.  I am very philosophical, and Angie thought I might like to respond to the philosophical argument you presented. 

There is a tacit premise in your argument that I would like to challenge.  You require physical evidence instead of other forms of evidence to prove the existence of God.  I challenge this premise in two ways:

1)     1. We believe many facts that are not supported by physical evidence.

2)     2. You have not established criteria for what counts as physical evidence of the existence of God.  I will demonstrate that, under your criteria, you do not know that I exist either.

You have no physical evidence that my favorite artist is U2, but, if you were my friend, you would certainly chose to get me a U2 album instead of a Peter Gabriel album for a gift.  You would rely on my assertion that I love U2 as a statement of fact, even though there is little or no direct physical evidence of my assertion.  I have almost all the U2 C.D.s in my c ollection, but I also have almost all the Peter Gabriel C.D.s in my collection.  My collection is not sufficient physical evidence of my preference.  Brain imagry technology would not show significantly different responses to U2 music and Peter Gabriel music.  I smile equally when U2 comes on the radio and when Peter Gabriel comes on the radio. I have taken opportunities to see U2 and Peter Gabriel in concert. Clearly there is physical evidence that I like both U2 and Peter Gabriel, but there is not physical evidence that I like U2 better than Peter Gabriel.  The only evidence of the fact is that I am telling you so.  You would have to trust me to believe my stated preference was the truth.

Similarly, you have no physical evidence that I love my friend Angie.  She is employed by me as a personal  caregiver, so one could say—and this would make me very angry if one did say it—that I am just pretending to care about Angie and there is no physical evidence that I love Angie.  There never will be evidence that I love her, except that I listen to her and take actions to show I care.  However, a good actress could pull off the same behaviors.  The only reason you have to believe me is that you also would like to be believed when you say you love someone.  We trust a person when she or he asserts love for another.  It cannot be proven with physical evidence.  Family, community, and nation are all based on the premise of love, yet we have no physical evidence of this love; we have only physical indications of love in the form of actions and behaviors consistant with love. 

Now I will turn to the problem of setting criteria for what counts as physical evidence.  Right now you are reading a paper that I have written.  Or are you?  Could it be that Angie wrote this?  After all, you have met Angie and you have not met me.  You have physical evidence of her existence and you do not have physical evidence of mine.  She e-mailed you this paper, and the simplist explanation for this paper is that she wrote it and sent it to you, not that there is some superfluous additional party named Jenny involved. 

The only evidence you have that I am the author of this paper instead of Angie is that (1) this is not something you would expect Angie to write and (2) you have found Angie to be trustworthy in the past.  The choice of vocabulary, sentence structure, and argument style are not what Angie would choose.  Yet the most elegent, simplist theory of the authorship of this paper is that Angie wrote it and sent it to you.  I am superfluous, unless you posit that the style of this paper is not Angie’s.  You have no physical evidence that I exist, let alone that I am the author of this paper, yet I believe you and most everyone who knows Angie would agree that she is not the author of this paper and some third party is. The paper and its characteristics are the physical evidence of my existence and authorship of this paper.  Angie tells you that I exist and wrote this paper, and you believe her not because of physical evidence, but because you trust her and because there is abundant circumstantial evidence (i.e., the style of this paper) to make you believe that I authored this paper. The style of writing and your trust in Angie, in addition to the physical evidence of this paper on your computer screen, are sufficent to be physical evidence that I wrote this paper.

Similarly, you can simply believe that God is superfluous in the creation of the universe and human beings.  I submit, however, that you have as much evidence that God was not involved in creation as you do that I was not involved in the writing of this paper.  Is the fact that humans love each other, enjoy music and beauty, can do math and the physical sciences, and can invent computers and the internet sufficient evidence that the outcome of the big bang and evolution alone do not explain all of creation?  You could argue that the outcome of evolution is humans who have these characterists.  I would argue, however, that these characterisitcs of humans are not in the least bit necessary outcomes of evolution.  These human attributes all imply the existence of a creator, though I have no more evidence of God than you have that I exist.  Afterall, I am superfluous to the explanation of how you are reading this paper. God is equally superfluous to the explanation to how a person is friends with Angie, conceived of this paper, and asked Angie to send it to you via a the human inventions of computers and the internet. If you don’t take the fact that you are reading this paper as evidence of God because God is superfluous, you cannot consistently take the fact that you are reading this paper as evidence that I exist and authored it because I, too, am superfluous.

In addition, there are many people who report having the direct experience of God.  Many have reported this experience even though it cost them  their lives.  Are we to distrust every last one of these believers?  Angie has to go through far less risk to assert that I exist and she has met me, so if you believe Angie is telling the truth, why not believe martyrs who died to tell us that God exists?   

In conclusion, we accept as fact things we have no physical evidence of all the time.  However, the mere fact that we accept as true things for which we do not have physical evidence is not sufficient to prove the existence of God.  The only evidence of the existence of God is the style of the universe and human beings not being sufficiently explained through random big bang and evolutionary processes.  I submit there is as much reason to believe that the big bang and evolution alone explain creation as there is that reason to believe that Angie alone wrote this paper.  If you believe I wrote this paper, you must believe that God created me as a person with unique thoughts, emotions, tastes in music, and a style of writing.  God exists, though you have not yet met Her is the flesh any more than you have met me in the flesh.

Also, please know that not all Christians are religious fundamentalists.  I believe that the big band and evolution are the vehicles God used to create the universe and human kind.  I also believe that all people are created in God’s image and deserve to be loved accordingly.  I believe that every last one of us falls short of the behaviors commanded in the Bible, and each of us relies on Christ to make us in a healed relationship with God despite our falling short of what the Bible commands.  No one’s sins are worse than another person’s by unless the intent is worse.  For example, I person who is gay is committing a far less serious sin in following her or his nature than someone who resists their maternal nature and chooses to violate Christ’s commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.”

Sincerely,

Jenny