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I have decided to redouble my dedication to being unplugged. In this, my first post of the post “writer’s block”, I shall attempt nothing short of proving that God exists. I know, my readers are saying: “Uh oh – unplugged just got unhinged.” This is not the case however, but rather that I think from time to time we all need to be called into discussions of far greater gravity than which instant messenger we use.

So, for those of you brave enough (or patient enough) to read on, let’s explore something that weighs on even the most skeptical of us. Be advised that discovery of such magnitude requires an open and active intellect – so some Digg users beware.

Tales of Theology and Science

I actually proved this “God” theory once before in a philosophy forum when I was in college. The professor helped me set up a quasi-scientific atmosphere, which I must say was fairly extraordinarily stringent, and essentially made the rational proof much simpler (at least to the rational human being). However, even the most profound and logical discourse cannot be played out over a landscape where even one bible thumping Southern Baptist (sorry) evangelist resides. The problem in painting portraits of the almighty is that some people’s convention about the countenance of God is equivocal to him having to look like Billy Graham in very old clothes and sandals. As we all should know by now, this is not a likelihood even though it is possible.

Proving the existence of the almighty is actually fairly simple if we adhere to certain rigid constraints in our inquiry. First, we have to agree that our conventional idea of God is not necessarily the truth about him/her/it. This is where the pea brained “good ole boy” diverged from the discussion. Secondly, we have to agree that God, as weighed by any standard, is essentially equivalent to the most powerful entity in the Universe regardless of our perception. Lastly, we all have to agree that once this “God” entity has been equated, that we will accept the probability of his/her or its existence, or at least the existence of another version bearing the same relative weight. Okay, the short version of all this is that once I prove God exists – all you get to do is agree and then manifest your own version of the truth – easy right?

Leading Questions

We must answer the following questions truthfully and logically to continue. Beware, if you cannot answer these correctly – God will have to find you because you are too obtuse to find him/she/it (unless of course divine revelation intercedes).

1. We can agree that there is a fastest human being on the planet. By fastest we can assume that this person can outrun any other person over half the time at a certain distance? True of False?
2. Regardless of how we weight it, there is a most powerful human being inhabiting the world as we read this. We can agree that this person (for the sake of the argument) is that person who exerts the most influence over the most people? True or False?
3. In a similar way, we can agree that in our solar system there is one body that surpasses all the others in magnitude, mass, energy or any other measurable quantity – this would be our star, the Sun? True of False?
4. Now, assuming that the universe is infinite (or not if you are that limited), there is in point of fact an entity that when measured by any standard of quantification is simply the most powerful? (Yes we could be talking about the most gaseous one). True of False?

Well, if you answered true to all of these, you are one step closer to proving the existence of God himself. If however you chose to answer no to any of them, then you broke the rules of inquiries and should stop reading this and go back to your IM. That entity, however measured by us humans (or any other space critter) is God. Now, we have established the existence to a degree of the God of the universe, but I know this is not the image we all want to reveal yet. Remember, we said proving the existence regardless of where it took us!

The Refinement of the God Image

Okay, okay, a little simplistic for the average soul to grasp and hold on to I know. basically, this argument conforms to some of St. Thomas Aquinas’ views on the existence of God laid out in his 5 laws. Aquinas spent a lifetime in thought and study in showing via the Quinquae viae (or the five ways) that God truly does exist from a logical rather then supernatural point of reason. These laws are expressed so:

1. The unmoved mover (Aristotle) – essentially says that everything that moves is moved by something else. Therefore there has to be one unmovable “mover” from which all movement progresses. If you think about this, that “unmoved” mover is God.
2. The first cause – here everything that is caused, is caused by something else. This is the logical next step from first law. So, there is also an “uncaused” causal element that has caused all other things into being. This causal element is God.
3. Contingency (see also -Gottfried Leibniz – Things in the universe that either exist or do not exist are called contingent beings. This thought is about eliminating the possibility (based on the other laws) that everything in the universe cannot be contingent. If everything save one thing is causal, then it can all be traced back to this one causal element – this is God.
4. The degree argument ( see - Summa Theologica) – This is about the varying degrees of perfection found in the universe. We see variants of this all around us. This degree of “perfection” assumes the existence of “perfection” itself within the context of how we quantify. The perfection implied is God him/her self.
5. Design (see -Teleology) – All objects in the universe act toward and end. The objects are not in and of themselves intelligent, but rather the actions or ends they pursue are intelligence. Therefore, there is an intelligent being that guides all the bodies in the universe toward certain ends – this being is God.

Approaching the question of God’s existence from a purely humanistic logical argument is of course somewhat fruitless other than to rationalize and to a degree quantify the possibility I suppose. Even Aquinas understood the need for what could be called “supernatural” intervention in as far as actual proof is concerned. This brings to light the paramount question that haunts us all: “Why does God not reveal himself to us?”

My own contention on this aspect pretty much sums up both what we have been taught and in a very real sense a sort of “God” logic too. What would we be doing here if we were in fact in the full knowledge of God and the essence of the universe too? Faith and its relative value, combined with an (at least) human experiential need for evolution of any kind fairly answer this question. It is sort of a “ If we were more godlike, why would we need to be human?” thing.

Argument for Chaos
Half the people who read this will either be atheists, agnostics or at least have serious doubts as to the existence of any greater power. The Greeks believed that their versions of the “gods” evolved out of pure chaos, or the void from which all being originated.

Aristotle modified this type thinking in pointing out that nothing can be moved or made to exist without some “mover” to act upon it. It is funny how we are 3000 years or more extent to this “chaos” theory and people still cannot grasp the simple logic that suggests that “God”, however defined, must exist. If chaos is the law of the universe then something had to set order upon it. Scientists might argue that the “big bang theory” set in motion a kind of “projectile order of velocity” I suppose, but what caused the big bang? What set of variables were set upon matter to force it to explode? Where did the matter come from in the first place, was it made from “littler bangs” over time?

Divine Inspiration and Feeling

I suppose it can be said that all beauty, art, engineering or any human endeavor comes about out of inspiration from previous iterations of similar magnitude. An anthropologist might argue that the Venus of Willendorf or some cave painting from 40,000 years ago inspired Michelangelo’s creazione adamo. I suppose this could be stretched into a truth of sorts, but I wonder at that Neolithic artist’s inspiration? What was he or she inspired by? Spending countless hours hammering away on a representation of the “Earth Mother” out of inspiration from a cave painting of some prehistoric wildebeest seems a stretch too far for me.
All this fuzzy and nebulous discourse cannot of course incontrovertibly prove the existence of our divine creator. If we could prove that we would be either God or an angel so close as to have Polaroids of him. This is the point to a large degree in that being able to identify the divine or even the scope of the universe is beyond our capability. There is circumstantial proof that is indicative of our partial capacity or connection to the divine however. Take for example the simple precept of good an evil.
A psychologist or even a sociologist would argue that this concept is either a function of conditioned conscious response or an environmental norm set about by society. Within each of us however, resides something much more personal and in a very acute way – buried deep within a structure of self virtually indescribable by science. Intense feelings of hope, charity, and tenderness, right, wrong and other substantive quantifications of good versus evil go far beyond what our environmental conditioning can explain.

Did you ever wonder why it is that when the hero prevails in a movie, everyone in the theater cheers? Who do people identify with and why? I remember sitting in the theater seeing Gladiator for the first time. When Maximus B-slaps Commodus and then kills him with his own dagger – everyone in the theater rejoiced at the justice handed out. Similarly, when Maximus dies, there is a humbling silence and sobs at his demise. Again, some would say we are conditioned to react similarly in these situations, but is that realistic? Who ever told us to cry or bemoan a fictional character’s demise? At least who conditioned 800 people in a theater, from different backgrounds and sensibilities to respond so congruently?
Joseph Campbell in his seminal work “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” deals with this monomyth that has survived for thousands of years. Campbell deals with this archetypal “hero” in rather Freudian and even Jungian terms, but the point is that there is something very old and perhaps even supernaturally ingrained into the human spirit or psyche that is tied to, well – God. However we classify or equate God, the need for such a hero or monumental proportions is as old as man. God being beyond here is rather simple to prove given the hierarchical structures mankind builds.

As in Aquinas’ arguments, there has to be something atop the totem pole and in all reality this figure is God. Our problem has been in arguing over the exactitude of what he/she or it looks like and what we call it. Outside of doctrine designed to sway and control the masses, we are confronted with various figures across religious barriers arguing for the existence of the same entity.

From the Mouths of Babes
Do you ever remember your parents demanding that you love puppies? At what point in your classical conditioning were you instructed to be heart warmed by the innocent goodness of a newborn’s smile? Did you learn as a baby to love baby sweetness, or does this come from somewhere else? Conversely, how are we taught to be aghast at the deprivation of innocence and is anything more disastrous? No, these intense feelings do not come about out of our own instant rationalizations when we witness these things. No mind acts that quickly and inside – deep inside where the source of true feelings reside – you know there is something more, much more.

Six Coronas to Epiphany
Most of my contemporaries, on reading this, are going to say: “Phil had one too many beers!” they will not be half wrong in that I started thinking about his last night while gazing up at the moon after a few. There is something to be said for heightened or accentuated senses of things brought about by an induced relaxed state, perhaps this is why the ancients worshiped Dionysus. It is obviously not my job to prove anything with regard to people’s belief system, and this has not been the purpose of this dissertation. I simply felt like opening minds to possibility. This is of course all any of us can really do outside of holding an inquisition. I think that if we all take the evidence we have in our own hearts (and throw out most of what we were taught) then it should be readily apparent that God is the least of what we have to prove.

I suggest we all ponder exactly how far removed we might be from the truth about divinity and explore how we can approach it differently. Right and wrong may seem to be gray and nebulous, but in reality we all know what is and is not good. One thing is certain, at least for me, and that is that what I know is miniscule compared to what I do not.All this mumbo jumbo should only lead the reader to do one thing – think introspectively. If we examine within ourselves those places that are not subject to so much outside interference, then it should be simple to understand the nature of God that is within each of us.

It just Happens

Just look into the face of a child or lover, perhaps gaze upon a masterpiece or even natural beauty and ask yourself: “Did anything this lovely come about as a result of pure chance?” If everything in your life is not some cosmic BS brought about because of some gas exploding billions of years ago, then it is likely that some design far beyond our understanding is at play. Regardless of how we want to envision God or even some supernova millions of light years away – the fact that either exist is unarguable.I choose to believe that the universe is limitless. Discover what your God looks like and don#t be angry if mine looks different - an all powerful entity can change clothes at least .

Chance or Design?