I don't know in any strict philosophical sense of "knowing" that God exists, but I do know that if there is no Crucifixion, or something like it, there should be no God. Only a God who has experienced something of a life like one of the worst possible for finite flawed creatures like us from the perspective of such creatures-- with omniscience somehow set aside-- would be able to obtain the requisite moral knowledge for making a decision to allow a world like ours to exist. Purely notional or virtual knowledge would not do.
It has taken the human race a long time to understand the almost inestimable worth of people. The theistic traditions have contributed to the growth of this understanding. But for a very long time such notions were largely only paid lip service. But without such a robust notion of human worth, it is impossible to understand the true meaning of the doctrine of the atonement. So we have the paradox that the central doctrine of Christianity could be scarcely understood by the majority of people of the time of the advent of Christianity and for many years after. One must understand the horrible injustice of the loss of a single human life (any sentient life), before one can understand why God would have a moral obligation to test the waters by living a finite suffering existence from the limited perspective of such beings, before allowing a finite and imperfect world to come into existence. But until fairly recently the tendency has been for people to believe that human beings are essentially worthless and unworthy, especially in comparison to the vision of the perfect God.
This vision of God's perfection easily led to a self-critical and the essentially grovelling attitude, which made it difficult for people to understand the atonement. Why would God have to die for pieces of shit like us? And what force could demand/require such a sacrifice of God? Faced with this paradox, early Christians came up with theories of atonement like the substitution theory, so that God's act of sacrifice in living the life of Jesus became an unwarranted act of God satisfying a bizarre requirement of honor that punishment, if not to be born by perpetrators themselves (us), must be born by someone (God himself). But slowly over the centuries these early understandings of the atonement helped foster cultures that did begin to nurture the belief that human beings might actually have value--After all, even God had felt compelled to sacrifice him/herself for us!
I'm not denying we are shit. We are pretty shitty beings, as we can see by how we are treating the planet and our fellow creatures at the moment. If there is a God, he/she is undoubtedly trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. We will probably taste that vintage very soon. But we do finally understand that despite such intense failings, human beings have value, almost infinite value, and therefore are deserving of absolute efforts of care and the preserving of our dignity even when we don't deserve it. The pathetic liberal pronouncements of children's television programming really are true (I'm important and you're important)! The power that compels God's sacrifice is the power of God's own sense of moral responsibility to discern whether it is acceptable to allow flawed beings of potentially inestimable worth like us to exist. And to verify that such is the case, even in the face of the great suffering we can both cause and undergo, God would have to live a life-- somehow and sometime-- like ours.
God, if you exist, as I hope you do, thank you.
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