“Show me God in a laboratory.” I have heard the challenge many times, usually delivered as though it settled the matter. So let me offer a challenge in return. Before you ask me to produce God in a lab, show me Napoleon in one.
You believe Napoleon existed. So do I. Now repeat him. Put him in an experiment, run it again, and let the results confirm the hypothesis. You cannot. Nobody can. Does that make Napoleon a myth?
The things no test tube holds
The problem gets sharper the closer to home you bring it. You believe your mother loves you. Which test tube holds that love? You believe that torturing babies is wrong, not merely distasteful but truly wrong. Which instrument on the bench measured that, and in what units?
If you are honest, you will admit that a great many things you know with complete confidence have never been near a laboratory and never could be.
Different kinds of knowing
Laboratory science is a magnificent tool for a particular job. It proves things that repeat: chemical reactions, physical forces, processes you can run on Tuesday and again on Wednesday with the same result. That is its strength, and it is a real one.
But history does not repeat on command. It is established by testimony and evidence, weighed and cross-examined. Morality is known another way. Logic is known another way still; you cannot prove the laws of logic in an experiment, because you would have to assume them to design the experiment. None of these is less real for living outside the lab. Each is simply known by the tool that fits it.
So when someone demands laboratory proof for God, he is doing something very much like demanding to weigh a Tuesday. The scale is not broken. The Tuesday is not fictional. The person has picked up the wrong instrument and then blamed the object for not fitting it. That is not skepticism. Real skepticism asks what kind of evidence a claim calls for and then goes looking for it.
The question underneath the question
Here is what the challenge misses entirely. The question was never whether God fits inside a laboratory. The question is whether the laboratory fits inside a godless universe. Where did the scientist come from, with a mind reliable enough to trust? Why are there laws of nature at all, stable enough to run an experiment on twice? The lab, the scientist, and the laws all have to be accounted for, and blind matter does not account for them.
Science is a gift for studying creation. It was never meant to be a weapon against the Creator, and when it is wielded that way it stops being science and becomes philosophy in a lab coat.
Wrong tool. Wrong question. Ask the right one, and the laboratory itself becomes a piece of evidence.
Get new articles by email
Subscribe and I will send you a short note whenever a new article is published on this site. No spam, and you can unsubscribe at any time.