Many peo­ple are look­ing for sci­en­tif­ic proofs for the exis­tence of God. If we speak about God we have to con­sid­er the dif­fer­ences between the nature of things in the mate­r­i­al world and the nature of the One whose exis­tence is beyond it. Sci­ence is able to inves­ti­gate and draw con­clu­sions only from those sub­jects of human inter­est which are with­in the frame of the exist­ing uni­verse around us or in us. The right use of the term “God” pre­sup­pos­es Him as being the source of all kind of exis­tence. We can­not place Him among the lim­its of our world because He is the one who cre­at­ed it hav­ing deter­mined its lim­its. That is why those peo­ple who look for the answer for the ques­tion of God’s exis­tence only through sci­ence can nev­er find a defin­i­tive answer to their ques­tion, although sci­ence can sup­port the­ism (belief in God) rather than mate­ri­al­ism.

The opin­ion is wide­spread that sci­ence and faith are incom­pat­i­ble, or that sci­ence has proven that God does not exist. It is com­mon­ly held that God is an inven­tion peo­ple use in order to explain every­thing that they can­not oth­er­wise explain, and that this all-pow­er­ful, invis­i­ble being has been used by the “spir­i­tu­al” author­i­ties as a means of gain­ing pow­er and keep­ing it.

Here, we do not want to deny that such things have tak­en place, or indeed still exist, and yet it is dar­ing and arro­gant to dis­miss every expe­ri­ence of God that peo­ple have had as false­hood or decep­tion. Rather, it is much more nec­es­sary to rec­og­nize the role and lim­its of sci­ence, and to approach the ques­tions of faith in the appro­pri­ate man­ner.

It is, of course, quite cor­rect not to include God in sci­en­tif­ic research meth­ods, i.e., to for­bid that gaps in our knowl­edge of the things that can be inves­ti­gat­ed, are explained with mir­a­cles or divine inter­ven­tion. In this point, all seri­ous sci­en­tists are in agree­ment. This approach is in no way an argu­ment against God’s exis­tence. Rather, it should pre­vent any­one from using an argu­ment in sci­ence which is impos­si­ble to prove, or which can be fal­si­fied.

With this approach, sci­en­tists such as Kepler, New­ton, Fara­day, Pas­teur und Planck, to name just a few, had a last­ing effect on physics and tech­nol­o­gy with their ground­break­ing dis­cov­er­ies. Their method was “athe­is­tic” although they were con­vinced the­ists.

They believed, as does every researcher, in a Uni­verse with a log­i­cal con­struc­tion and laws that can be inves­ti­gat­ed and under­stood. Fur­ther­more, they acknowl­edged that God can­not be an object of research, because, as the cre­ator of all things – includ­ing the laws of nature – he must be beyond the hori­zon of our sci­en­tif­ic enquiry. God’s exis­tence and cre­ative pow­er can be nei­ther proven nor dis­proven with sci­en­tif­ic means.

Who­ev­er, on the basis of their own sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge or rea­son, pre­sumes that God does not exist, has long since over­stepped the bound­aries of his field. With this, they have become equal­ly as pseu­do-sci­en­tif­ic as those who think they can prove God’s exis­tence with the help of sci­en­tif­ic research.

This inabil­i­ty to sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly prove God’s exis­tence does not mean that we can­not know any­thing about God. It is indeed per­mis­si­ble, and even rea­son­able, to con­clude from the laws of nature, a law-giv­er, and from the pur­pose­ful nature of many phe­nom­e­na, a plan­ner. Who­ev­er stops think­ing at this point, does not, strict­ly speak­ing, act unsci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, but con­scious­ly choos­es not to draw log­i­cal con­clu­sions which are nor­mal in dai­ly life, and enable us to under­stand many things. It is self-evi­dent that a com­put­er pro­gram that we use has been planned and pro­grammed by one or more pro­gram­mers, and that they had some­thing in mind with each and every detail. The sup­po­si­tion that there was no plan­ner could not be tak­en seri­ous­ly. The “build­ing plans” for even the small­est liv­ing crea­ture are incom­pa­ra­bly more com­plex and com­pre­hen­sive, and yet they are light­ly dis­missed as the prod­uct of per­fect­ly ran­dom, aim­less and chaot­ic events. This con­clu­sion is not log­i­cal, and is not the result of sci­en­tif­ic study.

Every athe­ist should there­fore be aware of the fact that their opin­ion that there is no God is noth­ing more than an unprov­able, not to men­tion illog­i­cal, sup­po­si­tion, with the fol­low­ing fun­da­men­tal “beliefs”:

• All things came to exist by chance with­out rea­son or aim
• Laws were formed with­out plan or pur­pose
• Mat­ter alone pro­duces life – even struc­tures such as DNA and the brain
• The mind, con­science and free will came into exis­tence with­out plan or pur­pose

Even if some athe­ists are not aware of it, behind their beliefs lies the mes­sage that there is no eter­nal life, and there­fore no mean­ing to life at all.

For a believ­er, faith means the belief in God as Cre­ator, and as the absolute­ly good and right­eous judge, to whom they can entrust their entire lives, and from whom they derive the cer­tain­ty that our exis­tence has its ori­gin and aim in him. It is not about the expla­na­tion of prob­lems of physics, but rather about the mean­ing of life.

These brief thoughts should help those who have avoid­ed the ques­tion of God due to their sci­en­tif­ic back­ground, to under­stand that nat­ur­al sci­ence can make no con­tri­bu­tion to this mat­ter. Fur­ther­more, God is hid­den from those who do not seek him – and vice ver­sa – as in the words of Jesus: “Seek and you will find … for he who seeks, shall find”… (see Ser­mon on the Mount, Gospel of Matthew Chap­ter 5–7)

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