CFS-WB-CH04

Conclusion
Notice that all these proofs for God’s existence — and the many others
we did not discuss here — only conclude that God exists and that he is
unique, uncaused, unrestrictedly intelligent and a creator. They tell us
what God is — the Creator, the unique uncaused reality existing through
itself, unrestricted in intelligibility and in intelligence — but they are limited
in what they can tell us about who God is. For example, we could
never discover the Father revealed to us by Jesus in the Parable of the
Prodigal Son. Logical proofs and scientific evidence are powerless to
probe the heart of the unrestrictedly intelligent God.
While it is unlikely that one single philosophical proof will be wholly
convincing to a non-believer, many proofs and sets of scientific evidence
taken together do provide intriguing demonstrations of evidence
for God’s existence difficult to deny. Yet there are still many
unanswered questions. Does this God love us, or is He indifferent to us
(as Aristotle and Einstein thought)? Is there a Heaven or a Hell? Are we
a special creation of God? Reason and science cannot give us the answers
to these questions. To know these things, God will have to reveal
Himself to us — and so we will have to seek not only the evidence from
reason and science, but also that of God’s self-revelation — specifically,
the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Ancient philosophers used
reason to arrive at the
existence of God, but were
left with many unanswered
questions about who He is.
The Death of Socrates, by Jacques Louis David.
80 Apologetics I: The Catholic Faith and Science
© Magis Center