Is there a mathematical proof of God?
Do we really need mathematical evidence of God's existence? Jack Zavada of Inspiration-for-Singles.com talks about the shocking experience of losing his hero: his father. Through his spiritual struggle in the months following his father's death, Jack discovered something even more reliable, even more convincing than mathematics, to prove that God really exists. If you fight with similar doubts about the existence of God, maybe this sneak peek at Jack's discovery will provide the proof you're looking for.
Mathematical proof of God
The death of someone you love deeply is the most devastating experience in life and none of us can avoid it. When it happens, we are often surprised at how we respond.
Although I had been a Christian all my life, my father's death in 1995 upset my faith. I continued to attend religious services, but I struggled with all my strength only to function normally. Somehow I managed to do my homework without major mistakes, but in my personal life I got lost.
My father had been my hero. As an infantryman in the Second World War, he entered a German land mine in Italy. The blast blew part of his foot away and made splinters shoot through his body. After two years of surgery and recovery in a veteran hospital, he was able to walk again, but he had to wear an orthopedic shoe to do so.
When I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 25, the example of my father's quiet courage and determination to overcome his disability gave me the strength to endure surgery and 55 grueling radiation treatments. I defeated the disease because Dad had shown me how to fight.
The worst emptiness of life
Cancer claimed my father's life when he was 71 years old. When the doctors came to a diagnosis, it was already too late. It had spread to its main organs and died in five weeks.
After the funeral and the paperwork the following week, I went back to my house, about 100 miles from my mother and brother. I felt a paralyzing void as if my world had collapsed.
For some inexplicable reason, I developed a strange night ritual. Before getting ready for bed, I went out to the back yard and stared at the night sky.
I was not looking for paradise, although my faith told me that it was where my father was. I didn't know what I was looking for. I did not get it. All I knew was that it gave me a strange sense of peace after 10 or 15 minutes looking at the stars.
This went on for months, from autumn to mid-winter. One night I got an answer, but it was an answer in the form of a question: where did all this come from?
The numbers don't lie or do they?
That question ended my nocturnal visits with the stars. Over time, God helped me accept my father's death and I went to enjoy life again. However, I still think about that annoying question from time to time. Where did he do all this?
Even in high school, I couldn't buy the Big Bang theory for creating the universe. Mathematicians and scientists seemed to ignore a simple equation familiar to all children of grammar school: 0 + 0 = 0
In order for the Big Bang theory to work, this always true equation had to be false, at least once, and if this basic equation is unreliable, so the rest of math is used to prove the Big Bang.
Dr Adrian Rogers, a pastor and Bible teacher from Memphis, TN, once challenged the Big Bang theory by putting the equation 0 + 0 = 0 in more specific terms: "How can no one be equal to anything anymore? "
How really?
Because atheists are right
If you search Amazon.com for "God + math", you will get a list of 914 books that supposedly prove the existence of God through various formulas and equations.
Atheists are not convinced. In their reviews of these books, they accuse Christians of being too stupid or naive to understand the higher mathematics of the Big Bang or chaos theory. They scrupulously point out errors in logic or probability hypotheses. They believe that all these calculations in all these books end up proving the existence of God.
Oddly, I have to agree, but not for the same reason.
The brightest mathematicians who use the world's most powerful supercomputers would not be able to solve this question for one simple reason: you cannot use equations to prove the existence of love.
This is God. This is his essence and love cannot be dissected, calculated, analyzed or measured.
An even better test than math
I am not an expert in mathematics, but for more than 40 years I have studied how people act and why they do what they do. Human nature is extraordinarily coherent, regardless of the culture or epoch of history. For me, the best proof of God depends on a cowardly fisherman.
Simon Peter, Jesus' closest friend, denied knowing Jesus three times in the hours preceding the crucifixion. If any of us had faced a possible crucifixion, we probably would have done the same thing. Peter's so-called cowardice was completely predictable. It was human nature.
But that was what happened after he made me believe. After the death of Jesus, Peter not only came out of hiding, but he also began to preach the resurrection of Christ so hard that the authorities threw him in prison and made him beat hard. But he went out and preached even more!
And Peter was not alone. All the apostles who had been huddled behind closed doors spread across Jerusalem and the surrounding area and began to insist that the Messiah had been raised from the dead. In the following years, all of Jesus' apostles (except Judah who hanged himself and John, who died of old age) were so fearless in proclaiming the gospel that they were all murdered as martyrs.
This is simply not human nature.
One thing and one thing can explain: These men had met the real, solid, corporeal Jesus Christ risen. Not a hallucination. Not mass hypnosis. Don't look into the wrong grave or any other silly excuse. Flesh and blood raised Christ.
This is what my father believed and is what I believe in. I don't have to deal with math to know that my Savior lives and, since he lives, I fully expect to see both Him and my father one day.