God

'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

God Moves in a Mysterious Way
by William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

An agnostic dyslexic insomniac is someone who stays awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.

God, the center and focus of religious faith, a holy being or ultimate reality to whom worship and prayer are addressed. Especially in monotheistic religions, God is considered the creator or source of everything that exists and is spoken of in terms of perfect attributes—for instance, infinitude, immutability, eternity, goodness, knowledge (omniscience), and power (omnipotence). Most religions traditionally ascribe to God certain human characteristics that can be understood either literally or metaphorically, such as will, love, anger, and forgiveness.

Is it significant that a back-to-front dog becomes God, while a slightly more contorted cat becomes act (probably with a small 'a')?? Must have a word with Sirius (which reminds me, on behalf of all cats, why is there no cat-star?)

Once or twice--well, no, not a god, actually, but a responsive spider. 1. sitting on the ground with her (then)lover, Ted, in some afternoon-filtered sunshine. Late late autumn in a part of the world where winter barely arrives --the sun is still strong on on skin and clothes are still light weight. Ted is leaving soon and they are uncertain of when they will see each other again. Ted sees a tiny spider walking on the leg of his jeans. He says to the spider, »Tie me to Belle--c'mon, I'll give you a quarter.«
Immediately, like a close up slo-motion sequence from a PBS science special: the spider launches a gossamer web thread into the air, with a kind of shower of crystal almost-sparks, the thread sails across the gap between the lovers and connects at Belle's knee. The spider walks across.

Ummm...no, I don't believe God is out there to perform miracles or cure the sick and needy. I used to think he did when I was a little girl because everyone always said he did. But then I grew up and started thinking for myself and learning things people tend to just not tell you. Like the fact that there have been dozens more religions before Christianity or Catholisism and whatnot. I believe there is a supreme entity out there but for the most part »God« is just someone made up by government for control or by the people to feel better just like in all the other religions. Not that people don't need God, even if he is fake, though. If people all knew that there was no God then complete chaos would probably take control. People would panic. But if there was a God I would want to sent a big »Fuck You« out there for creating a planet and then just giving up on it or never even caring. For all I know we could just be some science experiment gone bad. God must be a sadistic fuck if he is really true. To create such a place of pain, agony, torture, misery, sadness, a place with so many wars and starving children. God isn't there, if he is he sure as hell isn't going to help anyone. When little kids are raped and murdered, that's when you know there is no God out there to help you.

You're talking about creation, but didn't evolution disprove that?
Let's leave evolution for later, if you don't mind. We're not talking about how all things got to their present form; we're only talking about how the material universe came into existence in the first place. In that sense, yes, we're talking about creation.

This isn't contrary to the idea of evolution, and it isn't contrary to science. One of the leading astronomers of our age, for instance, Robert Jastrow, says that scientific research about the universe has led to one extremely important conclusion: "... I am an agnostic in religious matters. However, I am fascinated by some strange developments going on in astronomy‑partly because of their religious implications and partly because of the peculiar reactions of my colleagues.


"The essence of the strange developments is that the Universe had, in some sense, a beginning—that it began at a certain moment in time ... for the astronomical evidence proves that the Universe was created ... in a fiery explosion...


»Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind—supposedly, a very objective mind-when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist or we paper it over with meaningless phrases. « (Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, New York: Warner Books, 1984, pp. 11-16.)

Okay, so we know the universe had a beginning. And we know there must be at least one non-material thing that created it. What else do we know about non-material things?

We know for instance that whatever created the universe has more power than all the power in the universe and that it is intelligent, capable of thinking on levels infinitely beyond our own abilities.

How do we know those things?

It's not difficult. We know that whatever force produces an effect must be sufficient to account for all the force within the effect; an effect cannot be greater than its cause. If an effect were greater than its cause, then there would be some part of the effect that was uncaused‑that would have come from nothing. But since nothing comes from nothing, an effect cannot be greater than its cause.

Now for intelligence. Matter and energy are not capable of ordering themselves. Left to themselves they tend toward maximum disorder. It takes intelligence to bring about order in our material world. When you see a powerful computer, you don't suppose it just happened by accident, you ask who designed it, who built all its parts, who put those parts together. When that computer functions, you don't assume it does that by accident, either; you ask who wrote the program that guides it.


The universe has much more design than any computer in it (the computer is, after all, part of the universe, and the part cannot be greater than the whole). Human brains are thousands of times more complex than any computer. The scientific mind will ask the same questions about the order in the universe that it asks about the computer: who designed It, who gave it the program by which it processes so much information, who built its parts? If it didn't design itself, then its designer must be non‑material and must have intelligence greater than that in the universe.


Okay, but that doesn't prove that God exists.

You're right. We Christians believe much more about God than that He is more powerful and has more intelligence than the universe. But tell me-what would God have to do to prove to you that He exists?

I don't really know what it would take to convince me that God exists. But I'm willing to listen to any reasons you have.

That's great. Now, one more question: If God proved to you that He exists, would you trust Him?

I'm not sure I'd be willing to trust God, but perhaps I would. You'd have to give me some good reasons to do it. How can we know that God exists?
There are three basic ways we know things: reason, experience, and authority-and we Christians add a fourth, revelation, which is really another kind of authority.

Pure reason-logic and mathematics-affords absolute or 100% proof of things. Experience and authority only afford approximate proof. But we don't denigrate experience and authority simply because they don't give absolute proofs. We still trust them a great deal-sometimes we trust them 100% even though they don't give us 100% proof.


For instance, experience might tell you it's safe to cross the street. But you don't have absolute proof. Still when you cross the street you take 100% of yourself across; you trust yourself 100% to the answer experience gives to the question, "Is it safe for me to cross the street now?” Every day we make decisions like that trusting ourselves 100% to things we cannot know with 100% certitude but that we can know with varying degrees of certitude.


Sometimes we trust ourselves completely to something even when there is a fairly high degree of certitude that the thing will turn out to fail us. If we can only see two options, and one of them will almost certainly bring us disaster and the other has even a very low degree of certainty of saving us, we might well trust ourselves—100%—to that highly uncertain option that could mean deliverance.


Imagine, for instance, that you are standing in a sixth floor room of a burning building. You're convinced that if you stay there you will burn to death. You're also pretty sure that if you jump, you'll break your leg or kill yourself, or at least knock yourself out and die when the building collapses on top of you and burns you. What will you do? Quite probably you w1l1jump despite the danger, because you consider the slight chance of your survival by that means to be more attractive than the high chance of death if you stay in the building.


You would never have jumped had the building not been burning and had there been no other life-threatening situation leading you to make that decision. The stakes involved in a decision, then, can justify our trusting some things on little evidence that we would not ordinarily trust even on much greater evidence.


When we approach the question, »How can you prove that God exists?« we're dealing with a question that cannot be answered by pure reason alone-mathematics and logic. It must be answered by some combination of reason, experience, and authority. The evidence given must always fall short of absolute proof, but it is not insufficient for commitment. As with any other question of this sort, we must make our decisions based on degrees of probability. Naturally our decisions will be affected in part by the stakes in the matter.

All this is fine, and I can go along with it. But you still haven't given me any reasons to believe God exists. Are there any?

Yes, I think so. First, experience and reason have led us to believe that the universe was created/Christianity says that the Creator is God. Second, experience and reason have led man to believe that the universe must have been designed by some intelligent being; Christianity says that the Designer is God. Third, Christians say we believe God exists because He has told us so‑that's »revelation,« that special kind of authority I mentioned. Fourth, Christians believe God exists because we believe He appeared in human flesh, He became a man in Jesus Christ.

Wait a minute! Why should I believe all these things?!

You've already agreed to the first two. I'm just telling you that from the Christian point of view, when we say »God« we're referring to that non‑material Creator/Designer. After all, we might as well use some term to designate the Creator/Designer, and throughout history philosophers have used the term »God.«

Suppose the universe does have a creator. Where did that creator come from?

In any chain of cause and effect, there either is or is not a first cause‑a cause uncaused by any other cause. The chain of cause and effect cannot be circular, because then each effect would have to be both before and after its cause.

Nothing tells us that the universe's cause cannot itself be an effect-nothing in reason and experience alone, that is, though Christians believe God tells us so by revelation. But something does tell us that there must be some cause that is not an effect at all.


We're talking about the principle of contingency, i.e., that effects do not explain themselves, do not give the reasons for their own existence. If everything were contingent then nothing would be explained at all. But we know there must be a reason for the existence of the universe, since once it did not exist and later it did. If there is a reason for anything to exist, then something must not be contingent. Something must be uncaused.


No matter how many links we might think are in the chain of cause and effect, there either is a beginning to the chain, or there is no chain at all. But we believe there is a chain, so we must believe there is a beginning to it. This beginning is what the great philosophers, like Aristotle and Plato, called the »uncaused Cause.« When we Christians speak of God, we mean the »uncaused Cause«‑though we mean much more than that: that the uncaused Cause is persona intelligent, loving, good, just, and other such things.

Okay, so there's an uncaused Cause that's powerful and intelligent. But what about your two other reasons for believing God exists?

At this point we're really asking not whether God exists, but what God is like. Fair enough?

Yes.

We know what God is like because He has told us by revelation and because He became a man in Jesus Christ to demonstrate to us what He is like. So if we really want to know what God is like, the best way is to meet Jesus. The Bible tells us about Him.

A dyslexic agnostic insomniac is someone who stays awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.