Hi!
We haven't met yet, and may never, but a very interesting question seems to have brought us together for this brief time. As a Christian, I ask myself that quite a lot. I don't really bother with asking other Christians, because the answer always circles back to things like the Bible, the eyes of a baby (probably the least compelling argument), or the ever popular "There is no evidence, that's why it's faith".
That last one is true, but it's not why I'm here, and I think it's probably not why you're here either. Maybe there's something we can uncover if we temporarily withhold that conclusion.
How about this for an answer? Evidence of God is everywhere................maybe.
Yeah, I wasn't all that convinced either. Why don't we try it from a different angle? Evidence is more the language of the scientific method, so let's do some observation.
What do we know beyond any reasonable doubt? We exist. The existentialists may want to debate that one but we have to draw the line somewhere, so let's take our own experiences at face value. We exist. The world exists. And our understanding of the way the world is now fits nicely in the theory of evolution.
Cool. Is God anywhere in that? Well, right out of the gate we're open to interpretation. Assuming God exists, then the fact that the world exists would then be evidence of God's existence. But then again, God is a pretty massive concept which makes that a pretty massive assumption. And therein lies the problem. Viewing God through scientific eyes is impossible because our existence is essentially God's petri dish; the bacteria cannot observe the technician at the microscope.
I guess you could say God is a hypothesis that unfortunately can't be tested. But maybe at this point, the best question to ask is, why did this hypothesis come into being at all? If you already believe the Bible, then your answer is there, but for the sake of discussion let's remove that variable and see what's left.
Let's say you and I and some other people are sitting around a campfire in our tribal garb, and the conversation turns to the topic of death. Things die. We've seen it. It's a foregone conclusion that some day each one of us will die as well. Bummer huh? Kind of ruins the evening. A few of the younglings cry a bit. But then our tribemate Crazy Og pantomimes out "What if some part of us continues to exist in a different form after our bodies cease to be?"
Well that's a ridiculous and oddly profound question from Og, isn't it? Where would an idea like that even come from? And that, frankly, is a bizarre quirk of our existence as humans that has always baffled me. If no part of us continued to exist beyond death, why would any subspecies of ape ever have gotten it into their heads to even ask question like this? From an evolutionary standpoint, it seems to serve no real purpose.
Who knows? It's possible that all of our intellect and abstract thought is the product of a random aberration that simply is. That's a hypothesis. An alternate hypothesis is that there's something beyond our perception that we might have gotten one very brief glimpse into and it changed the course of our evolution.
For me, that's as close to an answer as I'm going to get in my life on earth. The fact that we're so passionately prone towards questions that we can't answer at least indicates to me that answers are out there; even if they continue to be unattainable. I call those answers God, because it's a convenient language I was taught; and with God as my witness, there are times I REALLY need to discuss my thoughts on the matter.
Isn't that funny? I have this need. I wonder if my dog ever ponders the mysteries of the universe.
But getting back to the original question, where is the evidence of God? And maybe what we're really asking is, are the things that we can observe evidence of anything? And if so, are we simply using 'God' as the placeholder term for whatever these things are evidence of?
I think the scientific approach pretty much has to stop here, allowing philosophy to take over. And with that, I guess I really can't end on anything other than what I personally believe. I believe that some part of us continues when we die. Some form of energy (which isn't exactly incompatible with the scientific notion of energy being neither created nor destroyed).
I believe in God. "The God of the Bible?" I pretend you ask. Yes, specifically the loving God described in the gospels. "How come?" Because God makes sense to me. The lessons in those books contain a really solid moral philosophy about compassion and tolerance and things that aren't always easy but require us to live for something beyond our natural state of self-preservation. Morality has to come from somewhere, and experience doesn't exactly lead to nature being the source. By Occam's Razor, a higher power is the simplest solution.
"Could you be wrong?" Uh...yeah. I think the universe contains endless possibilities. The odds of any of us hitting the ultimate truth on the nose is one point away from impossible.
"Then what's the point?" Fair question, and again one without a solid answer. I don't know. The best I can give you is a paraphrase of something Eleanor Powell once said. Who we are when we're born is God's gift to us. Who we are when we die is our gift to God.
Now if you don't already believe in a higher power, that might not resonate with you, but clearly part of the human experience is navigated by the questions we ask ourselves. These unanswerables change us, and give each of us a unique identity. The 'spiritual struggles' are important because they truly feel important. To us. Why not to God?
One last thing. I mentioned I'm a Christian. You may not be. My God is unconcerned with those specifics. I believe that all souls belong to whatever that higher power, whatever it prefers to be called. No matter what anyone believes in or doesn't believe in, we're all pointed in the same direction. None of us have the monopoly on truth, we're all just searching. So you, whoever you are, keep doing exactly what you're doing. You're on the right path for you.
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