For many of us, Catholics, this question may not be very important because the existence of God is something we take for granted. Having grown up in a religious environment, the concept of God is part and parcel of our day-to-day lives. However, there are people who genuinely find it hard to believe in God’s existence. We commonly call these people atheists, agnostics or skeptics etc. They simply cannot find enough reasons to believe in a supernatural Being or God. Therefore, in this blog we are going to see if we can come to know the existence of God through a purely rational and logical approach.
First of all, what do we mean by “God”? Does this word God mean exactly the same to all of us? We need to consider the fact that each of us has a slightly different image or concept of God depending on our cultural and religious background, personal experiences and so on. And so, to know if God exists or not, first and foremost we need to clarify what exactly we mean by “God”. But unlike other words like tree or book or smartphone, we cannot pinpoint God in space and time, within this created reality. Yet, the created reality or the space-time continuum, to use a scientific term, is a sure way that leads us to know God. “Ever since the creation of the world God’s invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” (Rom 1:20) This means that we can know and speak about God based on our experience of the created reality.
What we call Reality is a vast and almost infinite system spanning all forms of life from plants, trees, birds, fish, animals to human beings, stretching across distant galaxies and mysterious dimensions of space to the tiniest atoms that make up our bodies. We come to know about this reality primarily through our sense experience – at any given moment, we are presented with some sensory experience like sound, light or colors, or even an internal experience like a thought or a feeling. Whatever be the object of our experience, the fact is, we are always experiencing something. This something that we are constantly experiencing is called as reality.
As human beings endowed with intelligence, we do not merely experience this reality passively. Rather, we look for patterns and explanations in this reality. For instance, when we see a tree, we naturally think of the various causes that make this tree a reality. We could think of causes such as the seed from which this tree emerged, the fruit in which that seed itself was contained previously, the tree which bore that particular fruit and so on endlessly into the past. Similarly, there are other factors like a good soil, water, sunlight etc. which are, in a sense, causes that make this tree a reality. The reality of the tree also depends on the absence of say, termites or forest fires or other natural calamities. And so, we cannot explain the reality of the tree without involving various other realities, such as seed, soil, sunlight etc. And these things, in their turn, cannot be explained unless we bring in several other things. For example, the explanation of sunlight involves the functioning of the galaxies and our solar system, characteristics of Hydrogen atoms, operations of light waves in space and so on.
The reality in which we find ourselves, which includes absolutely everything - from trees, animals, rivers, fire, electricity, books, airplanes, sky, sun and stars to human societies, works of art, relationships, even one’s inmost thoughts and feelings – this reality is basically an inter-woven, inter-dependent system.
In this system, each thing depends on many other things or processes for its existence. In other words, this reality is contingent. That is, nothing in this universe can exist on its own. The existence of a thing can be explained only in terms of the existence of many other things. So, if no single thing can exist on its own, then how can this entire reality, that contains every possible experience and every possible form of being, come into existence on its own? From where exactly do all these many things come from? How does the whole reality itself come into being?
Now, that ultimate Source from which this whole of Reality receives its existence is, what we call, God. What is being referred to as God is the primary Cause of all forms of existence. God is that which causes the existence of the whole of Reality. Everything that exists now, everything that had existed in the past, and everything that is going to exist – all of it receives its existence from a single Ultimate Source. And, that primary Source which causes everything into existence out of nothingness is God. Therefore, to say that there is no God, is to say that there is no Ultimate origin for the universe or Reality. This would lead us to explain and interpret reality in terms of intermediary causes, such as big bang or atoms or laws of physics, and get caught up in an interminable chain of explanations after explanations. Because any factor of reality that is used to explain the entire reality requires several other factors to explain its own existence.
But when we see that the reality in which we live and move receives its existence here and now, directly from God, then we will be able to understand the words of St. Paul, “In Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col 1:16,17).
Comments