Hebrews 11:1

HEBREWS 11:1 says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."  Over the Internet as well as face to face, I have been asked to prove the existence of God.  The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently conducted a survey showing one in five Americans claim not to believe in God, which is the highest percentage our nation has ever seen, having grown by 25% in the past five years.  More and more people in America and around the world are turning to evolution and science as the cause and reason for our world.

About a year and a half ago, I became interested in the topic of God's existence.  I already believed there was a God, but I had never seen or heard of any proof, so I decided to make it my mission to prove His existence.  Surprisingly enough, I was able to find a significant amount of information to support God's existence, and I began sharing it with people through the Religion and Spirituality page on Yahoo Answers, through a writing website, and through atheist friends of mine.  But much to my surprise, people still refused to believe my evidence, and I could not understand why.  I began relying too much on my evidence and found myself in a constant need to prove evolution wrong.

One day, I was reading in my Bible, and I came across a verse that addressed belief and faith.  Unfortunately, I cannot remember the exact verse I read, but it went along with the ideas expressed through Hebrews 11:1.  I came to the realization that faith and evidence are two completely different concepts.  Evidence is a tool Man uses to understand and explain natural phenomena, whereas faith is believing in something whether or not there is scientific evidence to support it.  For example, I'm sure you believe you have a brain inside your skull, but have you ever actually seen your brain?  You might have seen someone else's brain, but how is that evidence that you have one?  A doctor might tell you that you have a brain, and they could even show you pictures, but he could just as easily be lying and using false or edited pictures.  Likewise, have you ever seen space?  How do you know there really are stars and planets beyond our Earth?  When you look into the sky, you see stars, but how do you know they are really billions of miles away and not just twinkling lights within our atmosphere?  For those of us who have never been into space, which I believe is most of us, we are taking the word of the astronauts who have been to space.  We are believing them based on faith, not necessarily on evidence.  We cannot see God with our eyes, but we can learn about Him by listening to those through whom He has chosen to speak as well as through the Bible, which is somewhat like the Christian textbook, just as a science textbook might explain your brain or space.

In the end, evidence can always be disproven.  People prove and disprove evolution everyday.  People prove and disprove God everyday.  But no one can disprove faith because it is not based on evidence.  Evidence is man-made, but faith is God-made