The hardest tests have not been what I expected - death of beloved family members, friends dying of cancer, friends losing a child, unfulfilled desires, major disappointments, surgery, and major illness - although I have endured all of these, and I don't recommend any of them.

The hardest tests are those that I put faith through before being willing to accept that Christian faith was reasonable.

I used to be a staunch atheist, in part because of living fourteen years in the South, in the so-called "Bible belt." I assumed that those who believed in a God had thrown reason to the wind. I could look around and see all kinds of uneducated people who were believers, and I thought the two went hand in hand. I believed religion was a creation of man, contrived by people who weren't strong enough to handle death. I assumed that faith was not intellectual or based on evidence, that religious people were not real thinkers, and that if they only thought hard enough, then they would see that their religion was unnecessary, invented to help themselves cope better. I thought my way, without any "God," was the truth, was scientific, and was therefore the best way.

The crux of my "hardest test", in deciding to believe in a God, was (and remains) pride. I never liked "religious people," still abhor religiosity, and did not want to be associated with such people or their beliefs, with any religious beliefs. It is easy to look around and see examples of people who are religious hypocrites, real religious bozos, who give religion a bad name. The media is great about finding these examples and holding them up for all to see. Particulary egregious examples claim "God made me do it," when it is something horrible, giving religion an especially rotten image. Who wants to be a part of that? Why would anyone want to even be associated with religion?

I remember being annoyed when I learned that my atheism was also a "religion," and that there is really no such thing as not being religious, unless perhaps you're inanimate or turn off your brain totally when it comes to the great questions in life. Take the question of the existence of God. How could I confidently deny it, declare God couldn't exist, unless I was omniscient? But only God, if God exists, is omniscient. (See definition of God.) So, if I claim God does not exist, then I am claiming to be omniscient, and then I am making myself into God. This is a problem. Denying God's existence is not rational.

The non-existence of God cannot be proven. If God is indeed Author of the whole universe, including time and space, science, reason, and experience, then all of our abilities fall short when trying to comprehend God.

This leaves open either agnosticism or belief in God.

The rest of what was so hard for me is a longer story, which includes a recognition that there is a huge amount of historical and intellectual evidence for Christianity and for Judaism, e.g., see a 15-min talk on this topic that I gave spring 1995. Note, for example, the Judeo-Christian God is the only deity that is revealed as transcending both time and space. As a student of physics, this seems to be a pretty important property for a deity.

My change from an Atheist to a Christian is not to deny that there is also a lot of crap associated with religion, including with many ways fallible humans practice Christianity. I'm certainly not always the best example of Christian behavior (understatement). But it is unwise to throw out the baby with the bathwater, even if the baby barfs or poops in the bath and you are tired and upset with the baby. I have 3 sons and speak from experience. Better to hold on to that precious baby, and find a way to deal with the mess. Likewise, while we Christians have often made a mess of the revelation in the Bible, the revelation should not be thrown out.

In brief, the hardest trials have been those of confronting my own pride, and my unwillingness to examine anything other then the materialist assumptions made (unthinkingly) by so many of us.

Many of the assumptions, such as that there is no God, are not scientific, and have no way of being proven scientifically. Turning to Science as the only way to know things does not work, because Science presupposes that there is only "natural" stuff in the world. Science does not even have a way to test if that assumption is true or not.

Science is powerful, but it is not all-powerful. Science cannot, for example, validate one-time historical events that are not under our control to repeat. A different kind of methodology is needed to validate historical events. Evidence must be gathered using the most reliable methods, and that is not always just with science. Think about the role of eye-witness testimony as one example. Even science is subject to the experience of those who witness experimental results.

For those who do not know me: I am not bashing science. I am a hard-core scientist; I chose to earn my doctorate in Science, not in Philosophy. I like to prove and test things. At the same time, it is a blunder to think that Science can prove all things. Science is a great tool, but it is not the only tool.

In denying God's existence, I realized I was making assumptions that were based on no deeper truths than those I sought to discredit. Nonetheless, the appearance of much of religion still made it very hard for me to want to investigate religious faith.

It wasn't until I met a number of impressive thinkers who were intelligent in their faith and defied my stereotypes of religious people that I began to open my mind to really consider what was there. I met well-educated thinking engineers, mathematicians, scientists, writers, artists, athletes, and leaders who thought more deeply about these things than I had. (I have started a partial list of famous Christian mathematicians, artists, and scientists. Sorry, I just included dead ones.)

Having thought nothing but ill of believers-in-God for so many years, you can imagine the tests I put faith to before I was willing to finally change my views. I'm not ready to list them all here, they were many many many things, small and large. I did not "become a Christian" overnight, and I remain on a continuous path of learning.

Have you thought deeply about whether or not God exists? What is your answer? How do you know what you believe is true? What if you are wrong? How do your beliefs change your life? Think.