My dad was color blind, and he hated that term. “I can see colors,” he would say, “Just not the same ones as you.”
He was one of the five percent of males with the red/green color blindness, as was his brother Bill. They couldn't tell the difference between red and green at all.
When I was small, stop signs in Illinois were yellow. Dad was mad as hell when they changed all of them to red, because the red stop sign stands out against a green background for most people, but for someone with this type of color deficiency the sign becomes practically invisible when there are green plants around.
He got a ticket for running a red light once in Arizona. For you and me, green means go, red means stop. To him, the light on the top means stop and the light on the bottom means go. They had installed the traffic light upside down! He still had to pay the ticket, even though it was the city's fault that he ran the light.
Now, imagine not color deficiency like my dad had, but a true color blindness, where a truly color blind person could see no color at all, only shades of gray.
Imagine a world where half of the people were truly color blind and could only see gray. How could you describe “red” to such a person? I don't think it's possible; one needs a referent, and there would be none.
People who could see color would know for sure that color exists, even though they couldn't explain color to someone who couldn't see color. But what would a color blind person believe? Probably half, who have half of the people they know able to see color and half who don’t telling them that color exists, and they would believe that they were lacking in this useless ability.
A very large percentage of the color blind population would believe that those who believe in color were fools or insane.
“Prove that your ‘color’ is real!”
"I can't.”
“Then it doesn't exist.”
Now, imagine that God exists. Guess what? He does. I can no more prove that He exists than I can prove that the color red exists. I can prove that the frequency 4×10^14 Hz exists, but I can't prove that I can perceive that frequency as the color red, which is what you want me to prove.
Half of us know God. We don’t just believe, we know. We can see his handiwork everywhere, feel his love. Half of us can't, so must either believe me or think I'm full of bovine excrement.
Such is the color of God.
January 23, 2016