Proving God is Real

  • Thread starter Thread starter FaithHopeCharity
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
F

FaithHopeCharity

Guest
Hello everyone. I have created this topic because I’m persuuing a goal I have made for myself. I am 16 years of age, and I’m trying to prove Gods existence.

I have recently encountered a big and humiliating situation that has led me to do something about it. My peers at school dont seem to believe in God and batter me with insulting comments but also very intruiging yet smart facts that seem to disprove my whole faith. And the embarrassing part is that I didnt know what to say. I’m a extremely devout Catholic person. I pray the rosary once and sometimes twice a day. I go to confessions weekly. I go to mass every Sunday. But the one thing I dont do or dont know is my faith. Of course I read the bible, I read one verse everyday, but this is only to learn what it teaches and apply it to my life. Not necessarily equip it to my long term memory so I can talk about the faith in detail.

So I’d like to ask for any tips any sources. Specifically, I’d like to ask for any books you may know of that may have something to prove Gods existence. I just like reading books. Thank you for any time you give to this topic I have created and God bless you:)))
 
Have you tried entering their “intriguing and smart facts” into the Catholic Answers search box? As reasonable as most assaults on our faith may sounds, very rarely are they original. The church has been dealing with this for over 2000 years. Stand firm and keep the faith. If you have specific, unresolved questions, I’m sure that there are plenty of devout catholics here on CAF willing to answer them!
 
Last edited:
They say there is no proof that jesus resurrected. I’m currently doing research on that topic right now
 

Can start at 8:00 and run it for about 8 min, as he describes the unliklyhood of the Apostles’ convictions without the truth on their side.
FaithHopeCharity said:
They say there is no proof that jesus resurrected
Click to expand...
If nothing else, absence of proof is not proof of absence. I thought you said their claims were smart? In any case, definitive “proof” is a bit of a holy grail. Why we rely on faith. Pray on it, and the graces received will become proof in it of themselves 🙂 ✝️
 
Last edited:
I meant they were smart claims as in I had no answer. But yeah! I’ll definitely look into the sources you have given. And of course… prayer is the best possible thing to do in these cases:slightly_smiling_face:✝️
 
Thank you so much for the source! I will definitely look into it! God bless you!🙂 ✝️
 
FaithHopeCharity said:
They say there is no proof that jesus resurrected. I’m currently doing research on that topic right now
Click to expand...
I fear that you are going about this in the wrong way. There isn’t really any proof that Jesus rose from the dead. It’s something that we believe because we have faith that he did. It’s going to be a hard claim to sell to people who don’t have faith: as a rule, the dead don’t rise, so why are people who don’t have faith going to be convinced that Jesus did? The only “evidence” for the resurrection is what’s written in the New Testament. People who don’t have faith are unlikely to be persuaded that the New Testament is a reliable historical account of somebody rising from the dead.

Now, I am not saying that I do not personally believe that Jesus rose from the dead. However, I am saying that I don’t think that it is something that one can prove. Put it like this: many, perhaps most, Muslims probably believe that it is both plausible and a verifiable historical fact that Mohammed undertook a round trip of over 1,500 miles on a winged equine over the course of a single night. Just as you are asking how you can prove that the resurrection took place, there will be Muslims asking, “How can I prove to my Christian friends that in one night Mohammed traveled from Mecca to Jerusalem and back again on the Burāq?” The answer is that they can’t prove it.

Bringing people to faith in Christ is rarely, if ever, achieved through the deployment of verifiable facts and irrefutable philosophical reasoning. Conversion is a process. It is not usually something that happens to somebody all of a sudden. The most effective way of bringing people to Jesus is to bear witness in your daily life, to share your beliefs rather than trying to disprove their beliefs, and to make your faith known by its fruits.
 
do_justly_love_mercy said:
Put it like this: many, perhaps most, Muslims probably believe that it is both plausible and a verifiable historical fact that Mohammed undertook a round trip of over 1,500 miles on a winged equine over the course of a single night. Just as you are asking how you can prove that the resurrection took place, there will be Muslims asking, “How can I prove to my Christian friends that in one night Mohammed traveled from Mecca to Jerusalem and back again on the Burāq?” The answer is that they can’t prove it.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure about that analogy.
 
Last edited:
Check out the book Five Proofs of the Existence of God by Edward Feser.
 
do_justly_love_mercy said:
Bringing people to faith in Christ is rarely, if ever, achieved through the deployment of verifiable facts and irrefutable philosophical reasoning.
Click to expand...
While this is completely true, it is my experience that many atheists who attack various “weak” points of the Faith have a preconceived notion that all religious people are “brainwashed”, or just have never questioned their beliefs. Their purpose with the discussion is to sort of “liberate” us from what they see as a flawed philosophy. Thus, having reasonable and intelligent answers to their questions can open their minds a little, because even if they don’t agree or get converted straight away, they do realize that the main quarrel they have with religion, namely that it is “un-intellectual”, is based on false assumptions.

Also, such discussions can lead to conversion in many different indirect ways, even if the direct way is not that common. I, for one, converted as a result of researching what the Bible and Christianity actually taught, which I did to win an argument.
 
FaithHopeCharity said:
Thank you so much for the source! I will definitely look into it! God bless you!
Click to expand...
One suggestion, don’t just read a list or a rebuttal, also investigate what the response to that is. Basically go down the rabbit hole until you seem to reach an actual impasse or other such obstacle. As others said these are discussions that have been happening for many millennia and there’s very little new under the sun. So don’t just return with the ‘next step’ of the discussion, try to anticipate what their response might be as well.
 
Note that study of proofs of God’s existence may take some years before you’re comfortable enough with them to be able to defend them thoroughly from skeptics. You would need to firmly understand the philosophy that is used to argue them. I like Aristotlean and Thomist philosophy (meaning Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas), but that’s not all there is out there.

There is no one perfect book to learning this stuff, and I don’t want to tell someone to buy a library. But for an introduction to Thomism I can recommend W. Norris Clarke’s The One and the Many.

Remember also you don’t need to be an expert philosopher to be a good Catholic. Living a loving life is more important.
 
Last edited:
I would say you can’t prove there is or there is not a God. You can find evidence for either side however. It will be easier to find reasons to say God exists than to say Jesus was God etc etc. Anyway if they don’t believe in God trying to prove Christianity does nothing. Om the resurrection there is no way to prove it. The only argument I heard is that there were many witnesses so therefore it must be true yet they have no sources documenting those witnesses other than maybe the acts of the apostles and the gospels which should not be taken to be entirely historically accurate
 
FaithHopeCharity said:
Hello everyone. I have created this topic because I’m persuuing a goal I have made for myself. I am 16 years of age, and I’m trying to prove Gods existence.
Click to expand...
Since Knowing God sits upon FAITH… .seeking Proof might be an impossible task…

Why?

FAITH and what’s commonly understood as “Proof” are akin to mutually non-compatible realities…

_
 
Theban said:
it is my experience that many atheists who attack various “weak” points of the Faith have a preconceived notion that all religious people are “brainwashed”, or just have never questioned their beliefs.
Click to expand...
Yes, I think that is true. And I think you are right that, although atheists are rarely, if ever, convinced by our arguments in one sitting, as it were, it does help to be able to show them that our beliefs are something that we have thought about and questioned.

With regard to the arguments for the existence of God, I remain convinced that there is no single argument that has the power to persuade somebody who truly does not believe. They can all be refuted along the lines of, “Why does there have to be an uncaused cause or an unmoved mover?”, “Why does everything have to have been designed?”, “Why does there have to be a being than which no greater can be conceived?” However, you would probably be right to suggest that the arguments for God’s existence, and the fact that they are given serious philosophical consideration, does perhaps at least persuade non-believers that this is something that we have given serious consideration.
ThomasMT said:
I’m not sure about that analogy.
Click to expand...
It’s not a precise analogy, and it can’t be, because the nature of the evidence for historical claims about Mohammed is different from the nature of the evidence for historical claims about Jesus, but I think my overall point is reasonable. Religious believers will almost always tell you that the claims of their religion are true (there will always be a small number of scholars and/or very liberal religious people who will say that it’s all mythological or metaphorical). A Muslim almost certainly thinks that certain historical claims about Mohammed are true. For example, that Mohammed received the words of the Koran from the archangel Gabriel. Or their belief that Jesus was not crucified. I have personally met Muslims who think that they will be able to persuade me to become a Muslim by setting out what they consider to be reliably sourced historical facts and irrefutable rational proofs. They never succeed, because they always proceed from the premise that a Christian will regard Islamic scriptures and Islamic scholarship as reliable sources of information about religious claims.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top