I Know, Therefore God Exists
Photo: Engin Akyurt
Many Christian apologists fail to deal in absolutes, which is unfortunate because the Bible definitely does. These apologists like to talk about “evidence” for the existence of God, and say the evidence for His existence is so overwhelming it makes the probability of His existence extremely high. By contrast, the Bible doesn’t talk about the “probability” of God’s existence. It talks about Him as though He actually, certainly exists.
Following is an apologetic argument (not original to me, but expressed in my own way) that doesn’t pull its punches. If it’s true, it’s not an evidence for God’s existence. It’s proof of His existence.
The argument:
In order for us to know anything, God must exist.
We know things.
Therefore, God exists.
Let me explain.
In order for us to know anything, God must exist.
How do you know anything? — If you were to tell me you know something, and I asked you, “How do you know that?,” you would respond by telling me, “Because of such and such.” If I then asked you, “How do you know that?,” you would say, “Because of (another) such and such.” And I could ask again, “How do you know that?”
So on and so forth, all of our knowledge is based on other things we know. But if we follow that chain of knowledge, where does it end?
If it never ends—if it’s an infinite regress—and there’s no ultimate foundation, then all of our claims to knowledge are based firmly in midair. We don’t actually know anything, we just pretend to. All of our “knowledge” is mere convention. And in fact, for all we know, what we think we know could potentially be proven false by things we don’t know.
For that reason, the only way we could actually know anything with certainty is if we know everything—or, if there’s an ultimate foundation that knows everything, and that somehow bestows some of that knowledge on us.
What could this benevolent, ultimate foundation that knows everything be? God, of course. He’s the One who knows everything.
Someone might imagine that it’s not God but rather a powerful impersonal being. Let’s say, some kind of cosmic supercomputer. But an impersonal being could not be all-knowing because impersonal beings are by definition limited from some knowledge—specifically, about personhood. Think of artificial intelligence (AI), for example. At best, it can imitate human behavior, but it can’t know what it’s like to be human. Human experience undergirds AI, not the other way around. So, AI couldn’t be the foundation of human knowledge or experience.
Likewise, more broadly, an impersonal being couldn’t be the foundation of knowledge for personal beings. An impersonal being simply isn’t the kind of being that can have all the kind of knowledge that personal beings can have. A God who created humans in His own image, however, is perfectly capable of knowing everything about them—more than even they themselves know.
Another point: the all-knowing, personal foundation must be distinct from us. Otherwise, we too would know everything. If someone were to argue—as I suppose some Eastern religions might—that we do know everything, but we just don’t know that we do, I would point out that that’s a self-defeating statement. If you don’t know that you know everything, then you don’t know everything. So, this all-knowing, personal being must be distinct from us.
We’re definitely talking about God. So yes, in order for us to know anything, God must exist. The next logical question is, “Well ok, but do we know things?”
We know things.
Could you be wrong about everything you think you know? If you would say yes, then I would ask: could you be wrong about that?
Do you see the absurdity? If you say you could be wrong about everything, that statement itself is a claim to be right about something. Or, in other words, if you claim you know nothing for certain, that statement itself is a claim to know something. It’s self-defeating.
“Well,” you might say, “I don’t even know whether I know nothing.” Ok, I would say, do you know that you don’t know that? If you know it, then you know something.
The point is this: it’s impossible to know nothing. A claim to know nothing is a claim to know something. It’s absurd. We do know things, by logical necessity.
So, we’ve seen that God must exist in order for us to know things, and that we do in fact know things. That means:
Therefore, God exists.
The logic is inescapable (notwithstanding clumsy explanations of it!). But here’s another thing that’s inescapable: there’s only one God that fits the bill as the personal, distinct, all-knowing foundation of knowledge that bestows some of that knowledge on us.
The Bible teaches that God is the foundation of knowledge. It says Christ is the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). It says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7), and “the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding…” (Proverbs 2:6). As Hannah prays, “the LORD is a God of knowledge” (1 Samuel 2:3), and as David tells God in poetic terms, “in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9).
The Bible also clearly teaches that God bestows some knowledge upon all humans:
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19-20)
So, there is some knowledge that God gives to everyone—the knowledge that is necessary to know about Him. But that’s not the only knowledge He gives us. As one psalmist says, God is “He who teaches man knowledge” (Psalm 94:10). Implication: everything we know, we only know because God taught it to us.
So yes, it’s the God of the Bible who is emphatically the foundation of our knowledge. When logic necessitates the existence of this Being, and He presents Himself to us through Scriptures that tell us about Him, there is only one right response: believe Him.
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Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.