If anyone should say thus: “I will not lead the spiritual life under the Blessed One until the Blessed One declares to me 'The world is eternal'...or 'after death a Tathagata [Buddha] neither exists nor does not exist,'” that would still remain undeclared by the Tathagata and meanwhile that person would die. Suppose Malunkyaputta, a man were wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends ...brought a surgeon to treat him. The man would say: “I will not let the surgeon pull out the arrow until I know whether the man who wounded me was a khattiya, a brahmin, a merchant, or a worker.”

There are many people in the world who will proudly say: “I will believe in God when he proves to me that he exists.” This is no different than a person who would lay dying on the ground and ask the doctor who arrived to treat him to show his credentials first.