I wonder what Alda would consider to be admissible and adequate evidence for God? Perhaps first-hand sight of a miracle or a personal experience of hearing God’s audible voice? The reality, however, is that Alda has come across multiple evidence for God in the course of his life. The problem is not a lack of evidence but that he is supressing the overwhelming evidence that is right before his eyes.

I have always enjoyed the work of Alan Alda. Over the years he has often played humane and attractive characters. I was one of the 106m people who watched the last ever episode of M*A*S*H. If Arnold Vinick, the presidential candidate he played in The West Wing, were standing in the election, he’d get my vote!

Last week he spoke to the Guardian about his new film Marriage Story. In the course of the interview he made these comments about religion:

Alda relinquished the religion in which he was raised long ago. “I’m not any kind of Catholic,” he says. “I haven’t come across any evidence for God.” Instead, he says he finds the beauty and wonder of the universe sublime enough. Asked whether he thinks death is the end, he riffs on the ubiquity of microbes and how they made the world inhabitable for all living things, before adding that it is extraordinary “that we’re gonna die and it’s so amazing that most of us live as if that’s not gonna happen”.

The two claims he makes are both worthy of response:

“I haven’t come across any evidence for God”

I wonder what Alda would consider to be admissible and adequate evidence for God? Perhaps first-hand sight of a miracle or a personal experience of hearing God’s audible voice? The reality, however, is that Alda has come across multiple evidence for God in the course of his life. The problem is not a lack of evidence but that he is supressing the overwhelming evidence that is right before his eyes.

In the first place there is the creation itself. The very fact of the existence of our universe is evidence for the existence of a creator. The idea that the universe spontaneously emerged out of nothing is far less plausible and believable than that there was a creator, but it is convenient for those who want to resist the claims of God on their lives. The existence of an eternal all-powerful non-material being is a far more likely explanation for the existence of matter. Psalm 19v1 tells us that “the heavens declare the glory of God” and that there is no place one earth where their voice is not heard. Romans 1v19-23 remind us that “since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have bene clearly seen, being understood form what has been made so that people are without excuse.”

It is somewhat ironic that Alda appears to recognise the sublime beauty of the universe, and the amazing way that even the microbes make life possible, and yet fails to see any evidence for a creator. Why is a purposeless universe that is nothing more than the result of chance beautiful? How improbable that it is so fine-tuned as to support life and enable it to flourish. The evidence is staring him in the face.

Secondly there is the evidence of our human nature. As human beings we have been created in the image of God (Genesis 1v27). He has put eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3v11), and we have an innate moral sense that recognises the realities of good and evil (Romans 2v14-15). We are by nature worshipping creatures. These “religious” faculties have been distorted by our fall from grace, but they have not been completely erased and a vestige remains. To be human is to live with constant evidence for the existence of God – evidence that we deny to evade our moral accountability to him.

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