Comparing Evidence for God vs. Werewolves

About this sermon

For some reason lately, my kids have become preoccupied with werewolves. Whenever there’s a full moon, they all start to on and on about it, I think, so as to be reassured that there is no real danger. My youngest daughter came into my room this morning looking for some confident reassurance and so I again, began explaining that werewolves don’t exist and as I did so, I found myself talking and reasoning in a way that reminded me of many popular contemporary atheists. Because after all, I can’t prove that there is no such thing as a werewolf and the fact that I’ve never seen one isn’t enough to prove the point either. There are plenty of things that I haven’t seen that, apparently exist. I’ve never seen a black hole, but I’m told they are there. I’ve never seen Australia, but as unlikely as such a strange place is, it also, apparently exists. And like I said, many contemporary popular atheists like Richard Dawkins use this kind of reasoning when asked to justify they’re atheism. They’ll say that you can’t prove that something doesn’t exist and since they haven’t seen any evidence for God’s existence, just like I haven’t seen any evidence for the existence of a werewolf, then they are withholding their belief. So, since I can sympathize with this line of reasoning in so far as werewolves are concerned, I thought I’d consider the question of whether this same approach works for the question of God.