{"id":134,"date":"2005-06-09T10:24:53","date_gmt":"2005-06-09T09:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=134"},"modified":"2005-06-09T10:26:40","modified_gmt":"2005-06-09T09:26:40","slug":"evidence-and-proof-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"Evidence and Proof II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regarding “Evidence and Proof”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I always simply thought that, if there was ‘proof’ of God, then it would no longer be a choice of whether to follow Him or not – instead we would be compelled to follow Him, which isn’t much use in a free will world.<\/p>\n

It’s a bit like 1+1=2. Am I ever going to believe that is wrong? No. Will I act on the fact that 1+1=2? Yes, I do so every time I pay for something with cash, every time I wait a minute for someone. So surely if God was proven then I would have to believe and<\/strong> I would have to act on it. Just like believing in 1+1=2 isn’t my free choice, believing in God would not be free choice but would be mandatory.<\/p>\n

I always figured free choice is important in our relationships. The thing about people in general is that you can believe that they exist, but you don’t have to believe what they say. If God was proven then you would have to believe what he ‘said’ – because it is proven that he is God (God being the all powerful, etc. – that’s the point of the term ‘God’). If it wasn’t proven that you had to believe what he said then it wouldn’t be proven that he was God.<\/p>\n

So I guess that’s why I think God is being perfectly reasonable in not proving his existence to us, at least scientifically! Faith, though, is an entirely different proof type of thing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regarding “Evidence and Proof”: I always simply thought that, if there was ‘proof’ of God, then it would no longer be a choice of whether to follow Him or not – instead we would be compelled to follow Him, which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mission","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}