#STRask - What Is the Difference Between Believing and Knowing?

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Questions about the difference between believing and knowing from a biblical perspective, why it’s considered bad manners to ask for testable, repeatable evidence for the existence of gods, and why Christians don’t prove God exists by asking him to change carbon dioxide into hydrogen.   How would you understand the difference between believing and knowing from a biblically informed Christian perspective, with knowing from a secular perspective being that which one can see, smell, touch, or demonstrate empirically? Why is it considered very bad manners to ask for testable, repeatable, consistent evidence that gods and goddesses do exist? What prayer can anyone say over a small amount of baking soda so that when vinegar is poured onto it, the bubbles test positive for hydrogen instead of carbon dioxide, thereby giving evidence that the supernatural being to whom the prayer is offered does exist?

Well, welcome back. In the last episode, we were talking about having proof for God. We were responding to a request for proof for God. So, in this, we're going to go a little bit deeper into that whole topic now. And this first question comes from Alan. How would you understand the difference between believing and knowing from a biblically informed Christian perspective? With knowing in the secular perspective being that which one can see, smell, touch, or demonstrate imperative. How is knowing understood with much of the Christian worldview being that which we come to believe? Well, this notion of knowing even on a secular basis is controversial. That particular way of understanding knowledge is called verificationism, and that means that group of people, and this was very popular in the early part of the 20th century and ended up falling out of favor for obvious reasons. I'll share it in a moment. But the verificationism is that a statement is not even meaningful if it can't be verified in an empirical fashion. Okay, like the way scientific things are characteristically verified.

But the fact is almost nothing we know. Just take an inventory, write 10 things down that you think you know. And virtually none of those things do you know in virtue of, a verificationist kind of view, an empirical and thus. Even that there are atoms, you know, that are what the electrons go around the nucleus of the atom. Well, that's science. That's empirically tested. Yeah, but that's not how you know it.

You know it because somebody else told you. So you're knowing that by authority, not by empirical method. So this is one of the reasons that empiricism or verificationism, which are synonymous and for our purposes right here, fail is because they can't satisfy their own demand. Think of the statement. Any statement that is not verifiable in that way is a nonsense statement. That's verificationism. Yeah, but that statement itself purports to be true and can't be verified by the scientific method

or any kind of appeal to cause an effect in a physical world. So it's self-refuting, right? out of the gate. And this is the problem with all of these views. They turn out to be self-refuting. So the Christian perspective of knowledge is just a broader human perspective, in a sense. I don't think there's like a special Christian epistemology. Now, some of the atheists have argued that faith is a new epistemology, and they put that on us, and then they tear it apart. Like, faith is a way of knowing. Faith is not a way of knowing.

It's a way of responding to what you think you know. So any act of trust doesn't create knowledge. It is a response, and that's what faith is, an act of trust. It's a response to what you think is so. So I got in my truck this morning at 720 in the morning and spent two hours on the freeway to come here. Why? Because I had this conviction that I'd meet Amy and we'd do a bunch of radio shows, all right? So I was trusting that information, to be true.

Amy's smirking right now because she was a little late this morning. But I wasn't going to play that note, Amy. And then we just started chuckling. I figured I'd let people know what's going on here. But the point I'm making is I had reason to believe that something was true, and I acted in light of that. My trust is not the reason I thought it was true. So there's no epistemology in faith. It's a way of distorting the Christian approach.

The Christian epistemology is just human epistemology. How do we know what we know? There's a lot of different ways we know that. Sometimes we trust an authority. Sometimes we have a direct experience with something. Sometimes it's reflective. Two is the square root of four. Yeah.

What's the proof for that? There's no proof for that. You just reflect on it and you can see it's true. All it takes is a moment of reflection to see that it's true. Nothing more. And so there's a multitude of ways. This is like when J.P. Moreland say that he's more certain that it's wrong to torture babies for fun than these scientific facts.

That can change that. Yeah, he does make that point because that's a self-presenting property. This is where we're just aware of something being true, and it's so obvious. It isn't like we need, hey, can we have a show of hands here? Because I just want to be confident about that. So what I'm saying here is there's a whole host of ways that we know things. And there are appeals in scripture to a host of ways of knowing. Here are the eyewitnesses. You know, this Jesus whom you crucified, God raised from the dead, and we are witnesses of this thing, Peter on Pentecost Sunday. We have, you know, taste and see if the Lord is good. I mean, what's that?

That's an experiential kind of thing. There are arguments that Jesus offers, like he says, a house divided against itself, cannot stand. I mean, the famous line that then Lincoln picked up in his second inaugural. And, I mean, this is a rationale. Jesus is, like it if, if Satan can. casts out Satan, then Satan's going to fall. Your claim that I'm working to cast out demons by the power of Satan, this makes no sense. So there's an argument that's given there, and you can draw a conclusion.

So I think there are a host of different ways that are just human, that are means of justification for things we think are true. And the reason verificationism or empiricism as a strict rule of knowing, fail is not for biblical reasons, but for human reasons, so to speak. It's just obviously false. The fact is we, as human beings, apart from the Bible, we are equipped to know things in a number of different ways. And we mentioned, I think, in the prior show about inference to the best explanation.

That's called the abductive type of reasoning. You have deductive. You have abductive. So there are different means that we use to draw conclusions that we think are just. justified. So it isn't, it isn't just that Christians are saying there are other ways to know things besides empiricism, because this sounds like a secular perspective is that's the only way to know things, but that's not, that's not the way we live. Look at all these books on history. People talk about what's happened in the past. We made reference to 9-11. You don't know that by empirical things.

I wasn't there. I didn't see it happen. All of this was reported to me. And there were eyewitness testimonies. So that's eyewitness testimony or maybe authorities, you know, authoritative word or something like that. You know, these are all means. Now, each of them have certain liabilities associated with them, but they're not useless because they have liabilities. We can work around those. So what, if any, distinction would you make between believing something and knowing something? Believing, this is very, this is, in a sense of very serious. simple distinction. To believe something is to hold that it's actually so. When you believe something is so, you are holding that it is the case, that it is true, that this is a fact.

Now, knowing that about what you believe, that's a different step. And that requires justification. So the way philosophers try to, you know, kind of parse this out is this knowledge is justified true belief. In other words, it's something you believe that is true and you have good reasons to believe it. Now, that doesn't mean, well, sometimes you're mistaken in the whole process, but then your belief is not true, so you can't strictly be called knowledge. I mean, think about it. Lots of things people thought they knew to be the case. they learned, they were mistaken, and then they replaced that with something else that they have good reason to think of so, and they call knowledge.

It's interesting, the language that Peter uses in Acts chapter one in the Pentecost Sunday sermon, he says, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, whom you crucified. He uses this very strong language, no for certain. But if you back up a little bit in the message, what he has done throughout that is he's given a whole list of evidences, manifest evidences or reasons. First, you have this commotion that the spirit causes there and the whirling the sound and the tongues of fire. And people are wondering, what was that? And Jesus, I mean, sorry, Peter says, that which you see in here. This is the Holy Spirit.

And we're not drunk. It's only nine in the morning. This is the spirit. And it's a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel. I will pour out my spirit at all mankind. So notice there's a couple of – one is empirical. They see in here. The other one is prophetic.

And then he says that Jesus rose from the dead and we are witnesses. So that's a high witness testimony. And here are these guys boldly speaking when they were hiding before. I mean, there were all of the, this amazes the crowd and many were convinced. But Peter makes the appeal that this, all this evidence rises to the level, not just of knowledge, but of certain knowledge. You can know for certain. So I think that's the kind of dynamic that we have here. Now, there will be going to be people to say, well, that doesn't convince me.

Okay. Well, then it doesn't. But this is how that process works, is the point I'm making. And you can see God doing this throughout. the history, he'll say, so that you know this, I will do this. I will give evidence so that you will know. Think of the Exodus so that you'll know that there's a God in Israel. By the way, between Exodus, what, four and 14, those 10 chapters, that includes the 10 plagues, he makes that statement at least 10 times so that you will know that there's a God in Israel. So this is miraculous events, are bona fide,

legitimate evidences of the truth of the claims that they need to support. God created us, and he knew that we would have to have evidence in order to know things to be true. He made us as rational beings. Yeah. By the way, if he didn't, there's only one other alternative to that process for our survival. If we didn't have that, we wouldn't survive because we'd have no way to adjudicate any fact about the world. the only other alternative is instinct. An instinct are highly sophisticated, organized behaviors that are not done with thought in mind.

They don't have to think about it. It's just done. They're not machines, but at the same time, this is programmed to behavior that they don't have complete control over. This is just what they do. animals, you know, are that. We have some of those, I suspect, but we at the same time, we are rational creatures, as you pointed out, that have to adjudicate. And this puts us in a position above the rest of the animals to be able to be in a special friendship with God. We are the kinds of creatures that can have this kind of friendship with God that the rest of the creatures can't have.

This is an idea developed in the story of reality. So I have a couple questions from Mike, and they go along with this, and I think he's coming from an atheistic perspective here. But I'm going to read both of them because I think they give kind of an overall idea of where he's coming from. Both from Mike? They're both from Mike. And it follows on from what we've saying. So a lot of what we've said will apply to this, but we're just going to apply it to his particular questions. Incidentally, if you're an atheist listening to this, we welcome your questions. We're glad for people to offer questions, challenges, whatever. It doesn't bother us at all. It is helpful for us to think through things and maybe give you something to think about to. Put a stone in your share. Okay. So here's his first one, and I'll go through both of them. Why is it considered very bad manners to ask for testable, repeatable, consistent evidence that gods and goddesses do exist? The Bible says to test all things isn't exist.

a rather important thing. Before Jesus walked the earth, ancient Greek sailors caught in storms, prayed to Poseidon to get them home alive. I don't believe in Poseidon, but I wonder how so many prayers were so perfectly answered since so many of them did get home alive. Okay, so that's the first one. I don't know if you want to respond to that first one. I would like to respond to that. Notice, please read the beginning, because there's something in the wording here that's very important for you to catch. Why is it considered very bad manners to ask for testable, repeatable, consistent evidence that gods and goddesses do exist? Okay, there's two things there. Why is it considered bad manners? I don't consider it bad manners. You don't. I do not know anyone. Of course, we're in a kind of rarefied environment with apologists, et cetera, and theologians, but I don't know of anyone who considers this bad manners. This happens, I think, on some levels, you know, on local.

churches that especially when they are somewhat anti-intellectual and or have no idea how to answer the challenge, and so don't want to hear the challenge. And what they do is they opt for, you just got to believe, kind of language. And this is, we discourage this approach because it's damaging. It's damaging to Christians. And plus, it's not helpful to those offerings. So this is not, we don't, this is in our view, obviously. And I think it's a mistake to paint it as characteristic of Christianity.

It's not characteristic of Christianity. It may be characteristic of a lot of Christians, but there is no sense where this is true of Christianity. No one has ever, you know, chastised for asking for reasons in the text. We have places like Acts chapter 1 who Jesus appeared with many convincing proofs, for example, We have Paul going to the Ariopagus and speaking to the pagans there, also speaking to Jews from Scripture. John? Giving reasons for their view, reasoning with them and some were persuaded. John.

So John says these things are written so that you may know that he's the Christ. Yeah, the miracles that John records there. That's in John chapter 20. And so that characterization does not apply to Christianity. It applies to some Christians. So we're just going to, with that clarification, I'm going to set that aside. Well, I want to say one more thing about that because what he might be saying here is that people object to saying you have to do scientific experiments to prove God exists. Oh, okay.

That's the next phrase. Yeah. And that's the second liability with the way this question is raised. This is why, by the way, it is so important to look at a challenge in its pieces and ask questions about the pieces. Like, what do you mean by that? What's going on here? Is this the way Christianity? No, that's not true.

Oh, now you're saying we have to do this empirically. So are you saying that I have to have a test to experiment that is repeatability, that is repeatable, to show that God exists? That is what he's saying. Well, that's good to find out, you know, how acids and salts work together, or acids and basic things work together. But it's a whole bunch of other things. But this isn't how we learn most of the things we know. Okay. So this is actually a category error where you're asking for something that is not appropriate to the category.

How much does the color blue weigh? Well, colors don't have weight, so you can't, this nonsense question. And so why don't we prove God through repeatable experiments? We don't do that. Now, here's what we can do. We can use science to see evidence for an agent. And by the way, we do this in psychology. We do this in forensic pathology, you know, did the guy die of natural causes or foul play?

Well, you use science, CSI stuff, to determine if an agent was involved. That's certainly applicable here. And this is what the cosmological argument and the teleological argument, at least nowadays in the last 100 years, 150 years almost now, those arguments have been abetted by the scientific evidence that we've been able to uncover. that more and more secures the confidence that a creator does exist. And Stephen Meyer's recent book comes to mind. Was it the rebirth of the God hypothesis? Is that what it is? Oh, now I can't think.

I think you're the return of the God hypothesis. Yes. You're confusing his book with Justin Breyer. On the way back home last night, I was listening to an interview with Justin and Stephen on this issue. No wonder I got a busy. But they're both good books. books. And one trades on the other because Justin is looking at the amazing move towards theism, and part of it is because of the things that Stephen talks about in his book

that science has produced. So science can play a part in this. So now, when he, Alan, or make that mic, is asking, well, doesn't the scripture say to test all things, well, we have to deal with that in context. We find that in first. Thessalonians 5, and it says, do not despise prophetic utterance, but examine everything carefully. Now, curious, or test it carefully, however, what translation, but curiously, you don't test prophecy by putting it in a test tube. Repeatable experiments kind of deal. That's not a test that applies there. And, in fact, it is appropriate for us, not just with prophetic words to attest or assess, but we test other things too. And this is consistent with the

biblical record that we are testing and assessing, whatever. And what sign will you give that you're the Messiah? The only sign that's given will be the sign of Noah, to which he is referring the resurrection. So there's, you know, there's a testing and a sign that's entailed there. Oh, Jonah. Jonah. When I say Noah? Yeah.

Oh, there's both water guys. Boat guys and water guys. Okay. Yeah. So we do see this testing motif going on, but we have to keep. in mind, what you shared, was it earlier this show or the one before, I think it was one the last show, about how different things are tested in different ways. And we cannot confuse those. This challenge by Mike, unfortunately, falls prey to a straw man fallacy

the way it's worded. Now, we can repair that by changing the wording and making the challenge appropriate to Christianity and the kinds of things that Christianity holds to be true. As it is right now, it is a challenge that fits a mischaracterization of Christianity in a number of levels, and therefore it doesn't survive as a real challenge. Yes, we have to test things in a number of different ways. We don't test most of the things we know in a test tube, as it were. So, you know, you can't ask that of us here. There is a question about answered prayer in this.

Do you want to address that? Well, I just wanted to say quickly just a couple points with this. To just reiterate, science does point to God because it does point to design, fine-tuning, all these things, to the existence of an agent, that sort of thing. That's right. But when it comes to things like prayer, you cannot test prayer. You can't test anything that an agent does who's not a person. force, a force you can test because if you give them a certain input, you get the same thing, output the same every time. Repeatable.

But with a human being, you can see this with any parent. Just because they don't give you what you ask them for, that doesn't mean they don't exist. So prayer cannot be tested in some sort of empirical way. I mean, in general, in general, I don't see how you could do that. Well, there's one thought I have about that. But he mentions Poseidon and people praying to Poseidon for a safe trip. Well, people have safe trips. Forget about prayer.

Sometimes their trips are safe. Sometimes they're not. And so they can put up prayers to all kinds of false gods and get different things happen. And they say, well, the gods answered us this. They're favorable or they're unfavorable. It doesn't tell you anything, really. Now, Christians, they pray, and sometimes they get what they ask for, and sometimes they don't. you're asking a person, it's not a mechanical process. So in a certain sense, there's a

similarity with the other. However, the difference is that the abundance of evidence that we have of the existence of the God to whom we pray. It's not just whether or not they answer prayers. I mean, what evidence does anybody ever give for Poseidon? I'm actually curious about that. So they have this belief. What are the reasons? Well, I don't know. But, And I don't, as far as I can tell, there's no apologetics for these guys. But for Yahweh, there is. And there's a whole, there's a great number of lines of evidence, not just for a personal God, but for Yahweh that one could appeal to.

That puts it in a separate category, okay? But the way you can test prayer, and J.P. Morland has mentioned this, is you offer prayers that are irreducibly complex. or prayers that have, what's the other phrase, not irreducibly complex. That's the wrong one. I mean, it's specified complexity. Specified complexity. So when you say, okay, God, I'm moving to Kansas, and I need a house in Topeka

that costs $20,000. I'm looking for a four-bedroom, blah, blah, blah. You get all these details. Can you provide, that's what I need. I can't afford it anymore, but we got it. blah, blah, blah. And then it turns out when you get there, somebody knocks on your door on a real estate agent, and I hear you're interested in a house. I got one down the street, and it turns out to be precisely what you prayed for. Now, those kinds of prayers that are answered, I think that's

evidential because of the complexity that's specified to a certain end. It's a complex prayer, Bob, A, B, C, D, E, and F, and the details are meant to match something that it fits in the answer. So there is a way you can test prayer in that fashion. Prayers that are really general, I don't think any other test of the efficacy of prayer, and I know there's some-called scientific ones, I don't think any of those are useful because they don't take into consideration the particular God that we're praying too. Well, I'm going to read a second question. Probably you're just going to do a quick comment on it because you've probably already responded.

But here's his second question. What prayer can anyone say over a small amount of baking soda so that when vinegar is poured onto it, the bubbles test positive for hydrogen instead of the usual carbon dioxide, thereby giving evidence that the supernatural being to whom the prayer is offered does exist with power to affect the physical world? Because without evidence, you're just peddling legends, rumors, guesses, and wishes. thinking, same as the pagans did or still did. Okay, I agree with the second statement, but what he's demanding is a certain type of response. If God doesn't jump through this hoop that I'm specifying, then I'm not justified in believing him. This is just, this is silly. Really? This is silly. If God doesn't write my name in the clouds, you know, God's not a circus animal. We've been talking for a long time and do consistently for years

and years and years about the solid substantial evidence, reasons that this God that we're talking about actually exists. If you think that's not adequate evidence, that's up to you. But it's not evidentially appropriate to say that if God doesn't jump through this hoop of mine, I have no good reason to believe he exists. There is a famous anecdote. It might be, it might be, it might might be, might not be true. But it's about a professor who says, if God exists, then I... Yeah, I don't think this is true. This is the chalk thing.

But whatever. If God exists, then he got to catch this piece of chalk, yeah. And the guy drops the chalk, and it hits the floor, and it shatters. He said, therefore, God doesn't exist. Now, of course, the response to that is... I'm going to hold this chalk up professor, and if you don't catch it, you don't exist. Boom, and I drop it and it crashes to the floor. You know, it proves nothing.

It proves absolutely nothing. I don't mean to disparage Mike, but Mike, you probably think this is very clever what you said, but it doesn't take anybody anywhere. It's a useless challenge. You can, I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, you can't ignore all of the evidence that's there and then say, if this one thing God doesn't do for me right now. Like he said it, like a performer, just to, I think about Herod wanting to, wanting Jesus,

wasn't Herod that came and wanted to see Jesus do miracles? Am I thinking of the right? During his trial? Oh, yeah, yeah, right. He doesn't do it. He's not a circus animal. And, yeah. All right.

Even if Jesus said, even if somebody rises from the dead, people aren't going to believe, you know. I could ask, Mike, if you, if that actually happened, would you bend your knee and bow to the God who really exists? No, if that actually happened, they say, this is a trick. You just tricked me. What is you, slate of hand, whatever? I know it's not real. It couldn't be. Why couldn't it be?

Because it doesn't fit as presuppositions. Well, thank you so much, Alan and Mike. And you can send us your question on X with the hashtag SDR ask, or you can go to our website at STR.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kogel for Stan to read. reason.