Recently, a Facebook friend of mine posted this to me in a discussion thread.
If I claim to my friends that I have a magic table that you cannot see or feel, they would say to me, correctly, “Prove it.” You claim that there is a being that no one can see. I say, “Prove it. The burden of proof is on you.”
Let’s change this a bit to an experience that many people have had, pain.
Let’s say you have pain in your back. It is debilitating. Sometimes, you can’t move the pain is so bad. So, you go to the doctor. The doctor checks you out and says, “I can’t find anything wrong with you. Take these pills and rest for a few days.”
The first time this happens, you take the pills, and rest. It does not get better. You go back to the doctor. He does an MRI, x-ray, and blood work. All the results come back and the doctor calls you to say, “There is nothing wrong with you. It’s your imagination.”
“NO! It is not my imagination. I hurt. Something is wrong!”
You know something is wrong. Just because the doctor can’t see anything in the tests, does not mean that your pain does not have a cause. That pain is real.
Christians, at least some of us, experience God as a reality, a positive reality, not as a voice such as the product of schizophrenia, but as the presence, the comfort, the peace that fills our lives. We cannot hand that to you for you to touch. We cannot paint it with colors for you to see.
We can talk about the statistical improbability of DNA arranging itself into sentient beings, or the temperatures or force being exactly right for our universe to have come about, but you have already rejected those arguments (illogically in my opinion). All we can do is describe the presence and tell you how you can have it. We do this because we love you and want everyone to experience the inner peace that knowing God brings. To take that away from us puts the burden of proof on you.
Please read The Scandinavian Sceptic. It is rather long and some points are better than others but the good ones are good, and… he gives references.
note: This post deals only with burden of proof.
