Is There a Mathematical Proof of God?

Do we really need mathematical proof of God's existence? Jack Zavada of Inspiration-for-Singles.com talks about the faith-shattering experience of losing his hero—his dad. Through his spiritual struggle in the months following his father's death, Jack discovered something even more reliable, even more convincing than math, to prove that God indeed exists. If you wrestle with similar doubts about God's existence, perhaps this peek at Jack's discovery will provide the proof you seek.

Mathematical Proof of God

The death of someone you love deeply is life’s most devastating experience, and none of us can avoid it. When it occurs we’re often surprised at how we respond.

Although I had been a lifelong Christian, the death of my father in 1995 shattered my faith. I continued to attend church services, but I struggled with all my might just to function normally. Somehow I managed to do my duties at work without any major mistakes, but in my personal life, I was lost.

My father had been my hero. As a combat infantryman in World War II, he stepped on a German land mine in Italy. The explosion blew off part of his foot and sent shrapnel through his body. After two years of surgery and recuperation in a veterans’ hospital, he was able to walk again but had to wear a built-up, orthopedic shoe to do it.

When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 25, the example of my father’s quiet courage and determination in overcoming his disability gave me the strength to endure surgery and 55 grueling radiation treatments. I beat the disease because Dad had shown me how to fight.

Life’s Worst Emptiness

Cancer claimed my father’s life when he was 71 years old. By the time the doctors arrived at a diagnosis, it was already too late. It had spread to his major organs and he died within five weeks.

After the funeral and the paperwork the following week, I returned to my home, about 100 miles away from my mother and brother. I felt a numbing emptiness as if my world had caved in.

For some unexplainable reason, I developed a strange nightly ritual. Before getting ready for bed, I walked out in the back yard and just stared up into the night sky.

I wasn't looking for heaven, although my faith told me that’s where my father was. I didn't know what I was looking for. I didn't understand it. All I knew was that it gave me an odd sense of peace after 10 or 15 minutes of looking up at the stars.

This went on for months, from autumn into mid-winter. One night an answer came to me, but it was an answer in the form of a question: Where did all this come from?

Numbers Don’t Lie—or Do They?

That question ended my nightly visits with the stars. Over time, God helped me accept my father’s death, and I moved on to enjoy life again. However, I still think about that nagging question from time to time. Where did all this come from?

Even in high school, I couldn't buy the Big Bang Theory for the creation of the universe. Mathematicians and scientists seemed to ignore a simple equation familiar to all grammar school children: 0 + 0 = 0

For the Big Bang Theory to work, this always true equation had to be false—at least once—and if this basic equation is unreliable, so is the rest of the math used to prove the Big Bang.

Dr. Adrian Rogers, a pastor and Bible teacher from Memphis, TN, once challenged the Big Bang Theory by putting the 0 + 0 = 0 equation into more specific terms: "How can nobody plus nothing equals everything?"

How indeed?

Why Atheists Have a Point

If you do a search at Amazon.com on "God +mathematics", you get a list of 914 books that supposedly prove the existence of God through various formulas and equations.

Atheists remain unconvinced. In their reviews of these books, they accuse Christians of being too stupid or naïve to understand the higher math of the Big Bang or Chaos Theory. They painstakingly point out mistakes in logic or probability assumptions. They believe that all these calculations in all these books come up short in proving the existence of God.

Oddly, I have to agree, but not for the same reason.

The most brilliant mathematicians using the most powerful supercomputers in the world would fail to settle this question for one simple reason: You can’t use equations to prove the existence of love.

That’s what God is. That is His essence, and love can’t be dissected, calculated, analyzed or measured.

A Proof Even Better Than Math

I’m no math expert, but for more than 40 years I have studied how people act and why they do what they do. Human nature is remarkably consistent, regardless of the culture or era in history. For me, the best proof of God depends on one cowardly fisherman.

Simon Peter, Jesus’ closest friend, denied knowing Jesus three times in the hours before the crucifixion. If any of us had faced possible crucifixion, we probably would have done the same thing. Peter’s so-called cowardice was completely predictable. It was human nature.

But it was what happened later that causes me to believe. Not only did Peter come out of hiding after Jesus’ death, but he also began preaching the resurrection of Christ so loudly that the authorities threw him in jail and had him severely beaten. But he got out and preached all the more!

And Peter wasn't alone. All the apostles who had been cowering behind locked doors spread out across Jerusalem and the surrounding area and began insisting that the Messiah had been raised from the dead. In the following years, all of Jesus’ apostles (except Judas who hanged himself and John, who died of old age) were so fearless in proclaiming the gospel that they were all murdered as martyrs.

That is simply not human nature.

One thing and one thing only can explain it: These men had encountered the real, solid, bodily resurrected Jesus Christ. Not a hallucination. Not mass hypnosis. Not looking in the wrong tomb or any other silly excuse. The flesh and blood risen Christ.

That’s what my father believed and that’s what I believe. I don’t have to do the math to know that my Savior lives, and because He lives, I fully expect to see both Him and my father again someday.