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Thought exercise for atheists

Posted October 22, 2022 by Mark Anderson Leave a comment

Thought exercise for atheists

Posted October 22, 2022 by Mark Anderson Leave a comment

Here’s a simple exercise for anyone denying God’s existence. Many atheists do this by arguing that there’s no scientific proof for God’s existence. But by its very nature, science can’t prove or disprove God’s existence experimentally. Both belief in and denial of God’s existence fall outside the realm of science since they’re untestable by scientific means. That in no way discounts the value of science. It only observes that science too has its limits.

The exercise proposed here does not prove God’s existence. It merely seeks to help anyone hypothesizing God’s nonexistence to reflect on the limits of their knowledge by following three simple steps:

  1. Contemplate the size of the universe. A very average-sized galaxy, the Milky Way has a total of 200 billion stars and planets in it. And there are 200 billion galaxies in the known universe. Thus, there are altogether some 40 trillion stars and planets in the universe. That’s 40,000,000,000,000.[1]
  2. With that awesome immensity in mind, take a blank sheet of paper and draw something on it representing how much you know in relation to all there is to know in the universe.
  3. Now, considering how much of the paper you’ve left blank—outside the scope of your knowledge—answer the following question: In view of the limits of your knowledge, do you think there might at least be a possibility that God exists?

With that in mind, I think it’s well worth considering why belief in God is more logical than atheism, as well as what led one leading scientist to believe in God.

[1] Photo credit: “Pillars of Creation” captured in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infared view. The pillars are filled with dust and gas, the longest of the pillars being about 4 light years (approx. 37.84 trillion kilometers or 23.52 trillion miles) in length.

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There are far, far better things ahead than anything we leave behind
—C.S. Lewis