There is nothing short of a visit from the man himself that would make me buy into such a deception. But would that even convince me? Would we even accept that we had just been visited by the almighty? Would we shake it off as a bad dream? Would we tell ourselves to lay off the weed?
What if we have already been visited by him?
Could God even prove himself? He could have presented himself in any form he wished and you may have written him off as a random bum, a religious zealot, or a kind face on the subway. Before this turns into a Joan Osbourne song, let me get to the point. Would God’s inability to prove himself lend to a lack of omnipotence? Some might say that faith cannot exist with proof. God sure didn’t have a problem revealing himself to the people of the Old Testament. Of course, those stories were written by the very people who he revealed himself to, which might mean they have some sort of bias. If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission produced a report about how amazing nuclear energy was, we might be a little skeptical.
The following excerpt from The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy pretty much sums up the story.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
The homeless you pass without a second glance. The atheists whose rhetoric you scoff. The gays you treat like second-class citizens. Any of these could be your God in disguise administering your final exam on the teachings of his son. Jesus Christ, the teacher of forgiveness, acceptance, and brotherly love did not give exceptions. Why should you? Think about that the next time you spit on an atheist’s backpack. Because if God doesn’t kick your ass, I sure as hell will.
This reminds me of a discussion that Andrea and I got into a while ago about faith.
If faith is the belief in something that cannot be proven, then would it be right to say that we have faith that there is no God? I mean, we can’t really prove it right? Can you have just as much faith in the nonexistence of something than in the existence of it? If this is true, then when people come up to us and say we have no faith, we can promptly reply with “Actually, I have faith that everything you are preaching is a load of horse shit.”
But nothing I believe requires proof. When you claim there is a man watching over my every move, the onus is on you.
I do have faith in those around me though. I believe in the ability of my friends to do good things even without having to see proof of such.
I have faith, just not in conjunction with any religious/non-religious beliefs.
“…would it be right to say that we have faith that there is no God?”
Yes, if you think of faith and proof as a sort of continuum where you can have varying amounts of each (Faith + Proof = 100%). Think about it this way: I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. Why? Well, I have over 23 years of firsthand evidence that the sun rises on a daily basis. In fact, in all of recorded history it has never failed to do so. I’d say that’s a pretty good track record. So logic (plus a basic knowledge of physics and astronomy) tells me that it’s likely to rise again tomorrow. I don’t have absolute proof that this will be the case, in the sense that I’m not psychic, but I have about 99.9% solid evidence. So I only need about 0.01% faith that nothing astronomical will happen before tomorrow’s regularly scheduled sunrise.
Now, if I were to assert that tomorrow we’d all wake up to a giant glowing purple bunny looming over the horizon, or that the earth would suddenly go careening off its axis into another galaxy, I’d be seriously lacking in either evidence or logic to support those claims. I would need a whole lot of faith to replace the big gaping hole in my proof. (Sound familiar?)
So since I firmly believe that god does NOT exist, yet I have no absolute proof, you could say that some “faith” is required in the sense you describe it. But my beliefs require a lot less faith than a theist’s. So to answer your second question…
“Can you have just as much faith in the nonexistence of [god] than in the existence of it?”
No.