‘A superintellect has monkeyed with physics’: why scientists say it’s rational to believe in God

Jan 9, 2020 by Jill

by Will Jones, Faith and Politics:

Is belief in God rational? Can it be proved beyond reasonable doubt? The Bible seems to say yes. ‘What can be known about God is plain to people,’ writes St Paul in Romans 1.19-20, ‘because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse.’

In this the ancient philosophers agreed, with both Plato and Aristotle holding that the existence of a transcendent God is a matter of solid logical reasoning.

Modern thinkers since the 17^th and 18^th century Enlightenment have challenged this claim, arguing that God’s existence can only be known by a leap of faith, if at all. However, Bible-believing Christians have generally stuck by the classical and biblical view that the existence of God is something for which sufficient reasons are supplied by the light of nature. Hence the common use of apologetics in evangelism – reasoned efforts to convince sceptics that belief in God does not require a person to believe, like Lewis Carroll’s White Queen, ‘six impossible things before breakfast.’

Is the modern anti-rational view beginning to make inroads among believers? That’s certainly the impression you would get from UnHerd’s Christmas Day piece by Elizabeth Oldfield, director of Theos, self-described as ‘the UK’s leading Religion and Society think tank’.

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