• Question: Do you think there is a god? Basing it on evidence, not belief, do you think there is any evidence to support the presence or existence of a 'all powerful one'?

    Asked by anon-181141 on 8 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Haragan

      Alex Haragan answered on 8 Jun 2018:

      You would be hard pushed to provide anything that everyone would agree is actual evidence of a god. As an example – for some the bible is the Holy Word of God, for others its an ancient book with fairytales and long lists of dead people.
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      Atheists would say that this backs up their belief their is no god. (Although, the absence of proof is not proof of absence).
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      Believers would say no evidence is what faith is all about.
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      I don’t think this question is something that can be definitely answered, and I suppose thats half the point.
      From a science perspective – its difficult to imagine what would ever count as a universally agreed upon piece of evidence. Most of the time humans have difficulty agreeing on the specific colour of something, let alone proof of a powerful being!

    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 8 Jun 2018:

      Funnily enough, I actually read a book that tried to answer this question (called ‘The G.O.D. Experiments’ by Gary Schwartz). It was a very interesting book about the presence of a ‘higher being’, but some of the claims were based on pseudo-science (not ‘real’ science), which is part of the problem – people shouldn’t believe psuedo-science (a good book on this is ‘Bad Science’ by Ben Goldacre). The other part of the problem with actually testing the presence of something that does not live in our plane of existence is that we are bound by this plane – so we wouldn’t even know what to look for to conduct a robust experiment.

      I do believe there is a place in all of us for faith and science (should you wish there to be). But, as the question is can you empirically prove the existence of a God? I think it is highly unlikely – although if someone manages it, I would be incredibly impressed (and slightly dubious!).

    • Photo: Hannah Farley

      Hannah Farley answered on 10 Jun 2018:

      I don’t think there is much hard evidence really, but I think religious people would say that’s the point – it’s about having faith, not about having proof. Personally, I grew up in a religious family and went to church regularly. Now I don’t really have an overt belief in an all powerful being, but I think that there is evidence that taking time to reflect and be “spiritual” or mindful – whether that is through meditation, prayer, or just taking some time for yourself – is actually beneficial for your mental health.

    • Photo: Laura Hemming

      Laura Hemming answered on 10 Jun 2018:

      I’m afraid that I don’t have the answer to whether there is a God or not. But what I will say is that there is evidence that having some element of faith can be helpful for people and protect against adverse mental health outcomes. So my question to you, is, does it matter if there actually is a God or not?

    • Photo: Claire Donald

      Claire Donald answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      Have you heard of Pascal’s Wager? Pascal was a French philosopher who suggested that we should live as though God exists and develop a belief. If God doesn’t exist then you haven’t lost anything by believing but if he does exist then you would go to Heaven. Although, if you don’t believe in God and he does exist then you would go to Hell. This does not rely on any evidence and is based on the equal probability that he does or does not exist.

      I know many scientists who do believe in God in the absence of solid evidence so I think when it comes to religion its more about your own personal belief than something tangible.

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