Rethinking The Significance Of A Lack Of Proof Of God.

I would like to argue the following:

1. There is no logical or empirical proof of God. A proof would be something that gave you complete certainty.
2. However, the lack of a proof of God is understandable even if God exists. God might not provide an absolute logical or empirical proof for several reasons:

• a. If humans are unsure whether God exists, their actions will be more genuine, because they will not act merely to please God.
• b. Uncertainty about the universe might make us more appreciative and curious. We realize how complex life and the universe are, and how long they took to become what they are. It also makes us more humble.
• c. The uncertainty and ambiguity is actually the best case scenario for humans. Death is scary, but it isn't as scary as the possibility of eternal suffering, and even the thought of eternal life of any sort seems terrifying to me. If God exists we have zero control, at all. Maybe God would be capable of completely reassuring us of his/her benevolence, but I fear we might lose our freedom of thought that way. I would prefer living in a world where death seems to be the likely result but there is always the possibility of some unknowable afterlife rather than simply waking up (of course you would have already been there forever) in a life that you know with certainty to be eternal (inescapable).

Of course I haven't offered any proof of God. I do think there seem to be paradoxical things about the universe that make me wonder about God's existence. But if my basic idea is correct that God would choose not to give us any absolute proofs, it makes sense that God might try more to communicate with us through mystical experiences and things of that sort, suggestions rather than proofs. So one might argue that an implication of my thesis is that if one takes the possibility of God's existence seriously, then one should take the possibility of mystical experiences more seriously, and focus less on absolute proofs.

Another possible implication of this idea is that one might take the fact that we are in the "best case scenario" world in terms of simply not truly knowing with certainty what will happen to us after we die, and then use this as evidence that God is good (whatever that means exactly). Of course this would need a lot of work, but it could be part of a larger argument.

-sender21