Demonstrable proof

Somebody said on a discussion forum today that what it would take for them to believe in God would be demonstrable proof. It got me to thinking.

In physics, there are theoretical physicists and experimental physicists. Theoretical physicists crunch numbers and manipulate equations and form hypotheses that hopefully make some prediction that is testable. Then an experimental physicist will design some experiment in which they can test the prediction. Once it is tested and the prediction is actually observed, then you have something like "demonstrable proof." An example of this is how the standard model of quantum mechanics predicted the existence of the Higgs Boson. It wasn't until the Higgs Boson was actually observed at CERN that we had demonstrable proof of its existence.

But before we had demonstrable proof of the Higgs Boson, we still have very good reason to believe it existed. The standard model already had a lot of experimental evidence backing it up, and it predicted the Higgs Boson. It seems to me that belief in the Higgs Boson was well justified even before we had demonstrable proof.

So when people say they need demonstrable proof of God, I take that to mean they want to see direct evidence of God. They want to see God himself or at least observe something that seems to be the direct effect of God, like writing in the sky or a voice from heaven or something.

What we have are philosophical arguments for God. These arguments predict the existence of God. That is, if the reasoning is sound, then we should expect there to be a God. So they are similar to hypotheses in physics that are backed up by reasons but for which we lack demonstrable proof. We'd like to verify them or falsify them by testing them, but there doesn't seem to be any way to test them unless God himself decides to make his presence known. We can't make him do that.

Hypotheses in physics and philosophical arguments for God have two things in common--they rely on previously existing evidence and some kind of reasoning from that evidence to the conclusion. For example, cosmological and teleological arguments rely both on observations in nature as well as reasoning from those observations. Even string theory, which a lot of people criticize because it's not testable (yet), is based on observation and reasoning. Some physicists think string theory is true because they think the observations and reasoning that lead to it are sound.

So is it ever reasonable to believe a hypothesis before it has been demonstrated to be true? Sure! Granted, we'd have greater warrant if we had demonstrable proof, but short of demonstrable proof, arguments can give us sufficient warrant for believing in God in the same way that arguments can give us sufficient warrant for believing a scientific hypothesis before they have been tested.

Think about it. There'd be no reason to bother testing a hypothesis unless you first had some initial reason to think it was true. Hypotheses that are worth testing aren't arbitrary. Some have greater warrant than others, too, depend on what evidence or line of reasoning that lead to them. Physicists were pretty sure the Higgs Boson existed before we ever had demonstrable proof. So whether we can be pretty sure God exists apart from God making his presence known in some demonstrable way depends on how good the philosophical arguments for his existence are. But they shouldn't be dismissed merely because we lack demonstrable proof or because they can't be tested.