You Can’t Prove God Doesn’t Exist?

In the iconic film God’s Not Dead, the main character Josh Wheaton begins his defense of God by making this statement: “You can’t prove God exists.” When I first heard this, I chuckled and thought, “Ok. I guess the film is over then.” But of course, I knew it wasn’t. We still had another hour and a half of head-spinning arguments and negative caricatures of non-Christians to sit through.

But Josh’s admission is oddly uncontroversial among Christians. They are generally happy to grant the non-provability of God. And this admission is almost always followed by a second claim: “But neither can you disprove his existence.” This is invariably presented as a kind of equalization. As if, since you can’t either prove or disprove, that leaves us in neutral philosophical ground, so to speak.

But while this claim slips easily off the tongue and also has the virtue of softening conflict over the question of God (“hey, come on guys, let’s not argue about this since you can’t tell one way or another anyway”), the claim that you can’t disprove God is not  actually very useful. Because not being able to disprove something doesn’t get us any closer to confirming its existence.

The biggest problem is that there are many more things in our minds than there are in the world. Unicorns seem to be a go-to example in this context. But the list is vast. Let’s just go with things which everyone aside from children under the age of 10 knows are not real:

• Griffins
• Centaurs
• Gnomes
• Elves
• Trolls
• Sherlock Holmes
• The Yeti
• The Tooth Fairy
• Jack Frost
• Vampires
• Don Quixote
• Atlantis
• Luminiferous ether
• The starship Enterprise
• Middle Earth
• and Narnia

The imaginary world is a crowded space, and so it’s no surprise that imaginary entities sometimes bump into each other, resulting in awkward situations, like when the Tooth Fairy and Ratoncito Perez have to fight for our children’s teeth. Or the leprechaun’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow blocks the entrance to the Bifrost of Norse mythology.

I’ve purposely used non-controversial imaginary entities to make my point. Because if I can get you to admit that there is a vast number of obviously imaginary entities, then perhaps I can also persuade you that many of our most cherished beliefs might also involve imaginary entities. As soon as we depart from the world of solid things that we bump into every day, like trees and houses and large stones, we are confronted with this question: how do we know that the entities which are in our minds also exist in the world that is outside of our minds?

Once the question is framed like this, the problem with “you can’t disprove it” becomes obvious. You can’t disprove Jack Frost, Atlantis, and unicorns. Does this mean they are real entities? Does that give us any extra insight in the question of their existence? Does it give a ten-year-old any extra ammunition in their quest to affirm the reality of these entities? Of course not. Our inability to disprove them does not add one scintilla of credibility to an attempt to treat them as real. Many things which are not real are also not disprovable. So to say that the entity called “God” is not disprovable does not in any way support the notion that he is real.

Another problem here is that “proof” is a bit of a technical term. Although we use it all the time, most of us probably don’t have any clarity about what standards we must meet in order to prove something. And this may be a convenient arrangement. By keeping the standard for proof vague, we get some wiggle room. But let’s think for a moment about what satisfies us as proof versus disproof in real life situations.

• You have to pay bills, but you aren’t sure if you have enough money in the bank. What is the most reasonable next step: “prove” how much money you have by logging in to your bank account or saying to yourself, “I can’t disprove that I have enough money, so I’ll just go ahead and write the checks.” I think we all know what your spouse, parent, or financial advisor would say.
• You suspect your spouse is cheating on you. What is the reasonable next step? Questioning them, following them, or hiring a PI to investigate will provide more information and insight than just saying to yourself, “I can’t disprove that they are faithful, so I’ll just keep believing that.” Many of us have learned the hard way how poorly the second option performs in the real world.
• A college student who wakes up in the middle of the night with the panicked thought that they missed an important deadline might get up and check the schedule; or they might comfort themselves with the thought that if they can’t disprove the deadline is still in the future, they can safely go back to sleep. Which option would you recommend?

The point here is, of course, that in the real world, not being able to disprove something doesn’t prove anything. It’s not useful in any context other than the confusing and perhaps deliberately confused realm of arguments for the existence of God.