On proof and absence... And God.

I have frequently been asked how I can believe in God when there is so much hardship and struggle in the world, and even when this hardship is evidenced in my own life.

My response is how could I possibly survive if I did not believe in a God who cares, sustains, and love me through such struggles?

Life is not easy - that is a truth that religious and non-religious persons agree upon. There are unexplained and difficult events, experiences and realities, that each of us will encounter in the course of our lives.

However, it is not sensible to say that one does not believe in God, yet one somehow manages to make the illogical step of blaming these bad things upon the God in which one does not believe... Alternatively, since I do believe in God I do believe that God cares for us and sustains us face the bad things that are a part of life.

Without wanting to get too philosophical about this line of argumentation, let me make a point about the notion of 'proof' of God's goodness, or alternatively 'proof' that God does not exist since bad things happen in the world.

Some say that if God existed bad things would not happen in the world. Thus, since bad things do happen it is proof that God does not exist. We'll call this argument the Argument of the proof of absence. Bad things happen, this proves a good God does not exist - God is proved to be absent by the presence of 'bad things'.

However, the mistake that is made in this line of argumentation is that it equates the proof of absence with the absence of proof.

The Argument for the absence of proof is quite different. It says simply because there is no proof of a particular event, or state, at a particular moment or place in time, does not rule out the existence of such an event or state. Let me illustrate the relationship between these two arguments with a silly example.

I am writing this post on my Apple MacBook computer. As I write it there is no Windows computer in the room. The proof of absence argument would say, since there is no Windows computer in the room it can be argued that Windows computers do not exist. The absence of proof argument would more accurately conclude that simply because there is no Windows computer in my office as I write this post cannot be taken as proof that Windows computers do not exist. In fact they could exist elsewhere in the office building, or might not be present since they are not suitable to the task at hand... The absence of proof is a more plausible conclusion than the proof of absence.

Of course my belief in God is based not so much on a dry philosophical argument as real life experience of God's sustaining love. But, it is always interesting to get behind the ideas that shape our beliefs and choices.