Question:
Haven't scientists, philosophers, and theologians proven that God exists?
Response:
There is a common belief among many theists that there are strong philosophical or theological arguments which have proven that God exists, thus rendering disbelief in God perverse at best. This is not a claim that there exist philosophical arguments that make theism reasonable or the existence of God plausible; rather it is a much stronger claim that theism is necessary and the existence of God definite. This is incorrect and it gives theists a false sense of security in their beliefs.
There are no philosophical arguments that prove that any gods do or must exist. Even the very best philosophical arguments would, at most, make the existence of some sort of god plausible or perhaps likely — and that is assuming that those arguments are strong. In reality, however, even the best arguments defending the existence of God are full of problems, holes, and logical errors. Most of the time they seem to be more about helping believers rationalize and justify beliefs they already hold rather than to provide a sound foundation for adopting a belief.
For theists under the mistaken impression that science, philosophy, or theology has proven the existence of their god, one particular problem is the fact that even the strongest of these arguments don't point to the specific god or any particular religion. They might point to the existence of a "First Cause" or a "Designer," but these share almost nothing with the gods described by various Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians. If a "First Cause" exists, it may not even be conscious or intelligent, much less a loving being that sent a son to die for our sins.
This, of course, doesn't take into account the many atheological arguments which are used to disprove the existence of gods (or at least show that belief in them is unreasonable). There are no atheological arguments which disprove the existence of absolutely all possible gods, but there are very good arguments against the existence of the sorts of gods many people believe in, focusing upon important attributes of God as believed in religious systems like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
It is because of these atheological arguments that many philosophers and theologians will point out that while theological arguments defending theism may offer some intellectual support, in the end theism must rest upon some measure of faith rather than reason. There may be philosophical and even scientific arguments in support of the existence of God, but they aren't strong enough to stand completely on their own or justify belief on their own, especially given the powerful philosophical and scientific arguments against the existence of gods.
What this means then is that there are very good reasons for a person to be an atheist: there are no philosophical or scientific arguments which render disbelief in gods nonsensical, perverse, or completely unjustified. The same is not necessarily true of theism, however, at least with certain forms of theism based upon gods with certain characteristics. There are atheological arguments which make belief in common, popular gods with particular characteristics irrational or unjustified.
It may not be that philosophers have proven that God doesn't exist, but philosophers have made it pretty clear that, when certain characteristics or combinations of characteristics are thrown into the mix, God cannot or most likely cannot exist. Removing those characteristics or seriously redefining them may salvage a possible existence for some sort of deity, but only by sacrificing much of what people think that God (in the Western, monotheistic sense) must be.
In other words, the possible existence of God is only salvaged by gutting the traditional concept of God. This is a powerful reason why many people remain atheists, regardless of what their original reasons for questioning an doubting the existence of gods might have been. Such arguments make the acceptance of theism, or at least any traditional theism, very difficult and very unlikely, because such theism simply doesn't have enough support to make it justified.
