Does God exist?
Surely, on the head of every theist, and I am a theist in every regard, rests a burden – to produce proof of God’s existence – but, when did the burden turn into a noose around their neck?
So, what is proof? Is proof only valid through sight? Surely then infrared rays don’t exist. Or dark energy, the mystery which pervades the entire universe. Is it smell? Is it taste?
Or is it science? Will atheists accept God after a machine quantifies his attributes?
What counts as proof? The atheist argument boils down to the absurd notion of an omnipotent, omniscient, moral God. And the underlying assumption that the absence of proof is proof of absence. But proof is not absent. Not for God’s existence.
Here, I will use a quote by an Islamic mystic to argue against a scientific proof of God:
He cannot be protected by something above Him nor supported by something below Him. He cannot be defined by something that preceded Him, no togetherness can appear next to Him, no behindness can follow Him, no in-frontness can grasp Him, no beforeness can prevail over Him, no afterness can annihilate Him. No term can comprehensively define Him, no becoming can add existence onto Him, no absence can cause Him to disappear. There is no description of Him whatsoever; His actions have no cause; His existence has no end. He is far removed from the characteristics of His creatures, nor does He mix with them; His actions require no intermediary. He is distinct from His creatures through His eternity, while they are distinct from His through their origination in time.
If you ask “When?”, His being preceded all time. If you ask “Where?”, His existence was there before any place. The letters are but His signs; His existence is the confirmation of Him; His knowledge is the knowledge of His oneness; and the knowledge of His oneness is what makes Him distinct from His creatures. Whatever the imagination might fathom regarding Him, He will be different from it. How can anything that originated from Him dwell in Him? How can anything that He produced try to join Him? The eyes cannot contemplate Him nor can thought grasp Him. Closeness to Him is [a sign of] His beneficence; remoteness from Him is [a sign of] His neglect; His elevation takes place without climbing up; His descent occurs without stepping down. He is “the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden”, the Close and the Remote, “like Him there is naught; He is the Hearing, the Seeing”.