God, the Physical Evidence

This was going top be a comment on a thread on another blog, but I decided to make it a post.

In the science-faith bloghetto, there are often demands for proof of God. Now theologically we know such a thing is impossible, for John tells us in his gospel that we cannot see the kingdom of God unless we are born again. If you are not born again, you are blind, and if you are blind, you can't see the proof—which puts you in one helluva predicament. But hey, that's what grace and divine initiative are all about, and that predicament perfectly explains why we need a savior.

But is there really no physical evidence? Well, there certainly is not scientific evidence in the sense that "if you do this experiment and get a result A, that will be proof of God."

But there is prima facie for the existence of God. And the strongest such evidence is the success of godless materialism, or methodological naturalism if you prefer, or better yet let's use its common name: science.

Now the argument is quite simple. The bible tells us things like the heavens declare God's glory and that the study of creation (that would be science) leaves men without excuse. As I read it, if science leaves men without excuse, then science must be possible. That is, a prediction of the bible is that science, if is to leave us without excuse, will work.

But science could easily be a fool's errand. If the simplest physical laws were not linear differential equations, science would be dead in the water. The very fact that man's intellect can comprehend science, is capable of developing theories, and most amazingly the theories are amenable to mathematical analysis is taken more or less for granted, but it shouldn't be. When a scientist tells you that science requires no faith or presupposition, he either isn't being honest or hasn't thought it through. All of us who are scientists work under the presupposition that we at least have a good chance to be successful—that all of a sudden nature will not decide that enough of her secrets have been revealed.

A purely naturalistic view (tell me if I'm wrong) has no reason to expect that science is not as fool's errand. The mathematics could have been so hard as to have forced Newton to give up. But from the bible we get a simple prediction that science will be doable. The success of science, my friends, is prima facie physical evidence that God exist, because the only other explanation is luck.

Science should be embraced, not feared. Every advancement of science is a feather in the cap of the faith community. Don't view it as a nail in our coffin.