Your Proofs

Here is my best attempt at trying to compile the list of proofs that came up during our meeting on Sunday. Not all of these would qualify as "proof." But, there are many good reflections and reasons, nonetheless.

• Things are too good and too complicated for some "God" who loves us not to have created it.
  
• Reflections from Angela's group: "for thousands of years, millions of people have believed in God, then he must exist because that many people cannot be wrong. And second, many of them [the teens] said they know God to exist through experiences in Eucharistic Adoration."
• One group provided a list of reasons: "First mover, witnesses, physical evidence in nature, personal knowledge [reflection upon experiences], gut feelings, grand scheme of the physical world, miracles.
  
• All of nature testifies to God's existence. Whether we are looking out at a mountain, hiking through a forest, or contemplating the depth of the ocean and all that is contained within it, we realize that there must be something bigger to make something so beautiful. However, we feel that above all the greatest evidence for God lies in the complexity of the human body. The power of our brains, the perfection of our body temperature, our eyes, heart, nervous system, fingernails, and even how we blush make us marvel at how it all works. And as we stand in awe of our bodies we conclude that such detail would be IMPOSSIBLE to happen by chance. And if it didn't happen by chance, it must have happened by God (like God flipped the coin).
• It's better to believe, because if He does exist and you don't believe, the outcome will not be good. But, if you believe and He doesn't exist, you are no worse off. (Playing the odds and choosing to accept can lead to belief). This group summed up Pascal's wager.
  

I meant to tell all of you that I had a Going Deeper handout for you to take home...a copy of a chapter from Peter Kreeft's book Yes or No. I will get that up on the website so you can download it. The chapter is easy to read and covers Thomas Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, which use our experience of the world, and reason to prove the existence of God. I will post some of these proofs on the blog as the week progresses. I leave all of you with the first part of Louie Giglio's "Indescribable" talk...it is pretty interesting (you can check out all 5 parts of the talk on youtube).