Unreasonable Demands

Why do atheists continue to demand physical evidence for spiritual phenomena? I’m mystified by this total lack of understanding of the spiritual realm. God is a Spirit, and no one has seen Him, but atheists persist in asking for demonstrable confirmation, as if we humans can conjure up something physical for that which is not physical.

This makes no sense.

Expecting physical evidence of the spiritual is unreasonable.

The two realms—the physical and the spiritual—operate on separate planes, and any mathematician can tell you that parallel planes do not intersect. That’s DO NOT INTERSECT.

The fact that God, exercising His omnipotence, has on occasion stepped into the physical realm or allowed His spiritual messengers to do so, demonstrates the existence of the spiritual, as well as His sovereignty over both realms. But clearly there can be no study using the scientific method of that which is anomalous. After all, the supernatural is not natural.

What don’t atheists understand about this?

Because of the unreasonable demands for physical evidence of that which is not physical, these same individuals conclude that anything beyond the physical must not actually exist. But of course “the physical” is defined by what the human senses can detect.

Obviously, atoms must not have existed for thousands of years, and only came into existence when humans gained the ability to see them through the use of microscopes. For that matter, other universes didn’t exist either, until humans developed telescopes powerful enough to see them. My point is, just because the human senses can’t always detect the existence of a thing—even physical things—this lack on our part is not evidence that things beyond our awareness do not exist.

To limit the world to what humans can see and know is narrow thinking.

For instance, dogs and dolphins and whales can hear sounds that are beyond the range which the human ear can detect. Are those sounds just myth or pretend or fabrications? Well, no. Because sound is detected by a physical property, humans have developed technology that allows us to study sounds we can’t actually hear. But if we only accept what we can detect by our physical senses, we ought not believe in sounds, or colors for that matter, that are beyond us.

How odd that what we once could not see or hear and did not know existed, is now readily accepted. But spiritual things that people have known for centuries do exist have come under attack and under the unreasonable demands of unbelieving people who want to limit knowledge to their approved list.

Because, it seems, these naturalists who limit themselves to what can be detected by the human senses, hedge themselves with the idea that what we know now can change at any moment. And that’s OK. So today we can rule out the multiverse, but tomorrow we might “discover” evidence for the very thing we deny today.

If that’s so, then how can any living, thinking person rule out the existence of God?

Might not He once again sovereignly enter the physical plane in a “demonstrable” way so that all those atheists who have limited themselves to the physical can see the existence of the spiritual world?

It’s going to happen.

Christ will one day return in such a way that every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that He is Lord. His return will be something sudden, dramatic, universal. Meaning that nobody will miss it or doubt it or mistake what’s happening.

What’s sad to me is that atheists won’t know sooner. I mean, in truth, God sovereignly enters this world moment by moment through His Holy Spirit. Every believer has the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life. That’s a spiritual happening, an ongoing Presence, an unexplained supernatural Being who resides in the heart of every follower of Christ.

Those of us who have experienced His guidance or comfort or peace or conviction or joy know it’s something beyond our capacity to manufacture. It’s supernatural, not natural.

One day the veil that blinds the eyes of those who don’t believe, will be lifted. Then, just like the stars we could not see without powerful telescopes and the particles of atoms we could not see without powerful microscopes, the spiritual world that exists beyond the physical will become clear to us all.

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About this image: In 2015 NASA and ESA celebrated “the Hubble Space Telescope’s silver anniversary of 25 years in space by unveiling some of nature’s own fireworks — a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides inside a vibrant stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. . . . The largest stars are unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light and hurricane-force winds that etch away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud. This creates a fantasy celestial landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys.” Available at WikiMedia Commons and is a public domain photo.