by Eric Abent

Created on: October 11, 2009

Oh boy. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been asked this question in my numerous conversations with people of faith. It has never really seemed a legitimate question to me, and borders on the fringe of character assassination. The way this question is posed seems to imply that the non-believer is giving the otherwise perfect and selfless God the short end of the proverbial stick. Typically, when I am asked this question, I take that as my cue to go off on one of my anti-religion tirades, but for the sake of the debate, I will try to remain civil, and keep the stick, short end or otherwise, out of the debate. To start, lets take this question and separate it into its two parts, analyzing each one as I go.

The first part reads: "God believes in you." Now, I hate the be the person to rain on anyone's parade, but I don't find it all that difficult to believe that someone, whether they are of the flesh or something more metaphysical, would believe in me. After all, I am a tangible human being, and I have many people that will testify to the fact that I exist, that they have seen me in person and have had a face-to-face, intimate conversation with me. I take up space, I have numerous accounts that are in my name, I have a cell phone, a house address, an email address and a facebook, all of which can be used to contact me with relative haste. I have directly caused people to feel joy, anger, frustration, elation and sorrow. In short, it isn't that difficult to prove that I am, in fact, real, as the trail I've left proving that I exist somewhere isn't exactly small.

God, on the other hand, isn't quite as "out in the open," as I am with his technique, and as a matter of fact, if God wanted people to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he exists, he kind of dropped the ball in a big way. What I'm about to say is probably going to anger some people, but when it comes down to it, no one, not your parents, your pastor, your grandparents, that preacher on the street or the members of your church, can prove to that God exists. No, I'm afraid that falls solely on the shoulder's of God himself, and the big man upstairs hasn't been quick to oblige.

I know that reply to my argument is going to be, "Well, what about Jesus? God sent his only son to prove that he exists." There are a couple of problems with this question. Besides the Bible, we don't really have much proving (read: scientific proof, not religious speculation) that Jesus actually existed, and for the

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