Why believe in God

Why believe in God? Belief in a loving God is supported by our need to love and be loved without measure. The existence of an afterlife is supported by irrefutable Near Death Experiences. Physics, mathematics, and logic lead to God. Atheistic materialism is irrational and fruitless. Suffering can be transformed into joy and Evil is an absence of Good.

“Happiness” may be defined as the fulfillment of a desire (and “unhappiness” as the non-fulfillment of desire). Thus, if there are four kinds of desire, there will also be four kinds of happiness.

The first is the desire for externally stimulated or physical pleasures and possessions (a new Mercedes).

The second is an ego-gratification desire: increases in status, admiration, achievement, power, control, winning, and generally entails a comparative advantage, which can lead to fixation with self-satisfaction.

The third is the desire to make an optimal positive difference to the world without expectation of return.

The forth is the desire for the ultimate, unconditional, or perfect in truth, love, goodness, beauty, and being.

As one moves up the four levels of desire, one attains more pervasive, enduring, and deep purpose in life.

 “For Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” (Saint Augustine)

The journey of detachment brings sanity, peace, and eternal Love. The most effective way is through God’s grace, and the most effective way of allowing God’s grace to affect us is through prayer and contemplation.

People who have had Near-Death Experiences know what happiness is. Patients reporting a Near-Death Experience all experienced some of the following ten characteristics.

(1) Awareness of being dead

(2) Positive emotions

(3) Out of body experience

(4) Moving through a tunnel

(5) Communication with light

(6) Observation of colors

(7) Observation of a celestial landscape

(8) Meeting with deceased persons

(9) Life review

(10) Less fear of death

Patients seem to have been transformed by the experience. This is particularly evident in children. 

These experiences were not produced by narcotics, mind-altering drugs, oxygen-deprivation states, or stressed psychological states and are not attributable to hallucinations.

Near-Death Experiences of the Blind

It is significant that sighted patients are able to report sensorial data that occurred while they were unconscious with great accuracy. It is more significant that blind patients are also able to describe their surroundings and occurrences while they were unconscious.

How could a clear consciousness outside the body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?  Near-Death Experience pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation. Patients that were clinically dead (flat EEG, showing no electrical activity in the cortex and loss of brain stem function evidenced by fixed dilated pupils and absence of the gag reflex) report a clear consciousness, in which cognitive functioning, emotion, sense of identity, or memory from early childhood occurred, as well as perceptions from a position out and above their ‘dead’ body.

In every instance of an encounter with the “being of light” patients reported the experience to be one of intense love. "I became very weak, and I fell down. I began to feel a sort of drifting, a movement of my real being in and out of my body, and to hear beautiful music. I floated on down the hall and out the door onto the screened-in porch. There, it almost seemed that clouds, a pink mist really, began to gather around me, and then I floated right straight on through the screen, just as though it weren’t there, and up into this pure crystal clear light, an illuminating white light. It was beautiful and so bright, so radiant, but it didn’t hurt my eyes. It’s not any kind of light you can describe on earth. I didn’t actually see a person in this light, and yet it has a special identity, it definitely does. It is a light of perfect understanding and perfect love…. And all during this time, I felt as though I were surrounded by an overwhelming love and compassion."

Materialism: If we reduce humanity to mere materiality, artificial intelligence, and animal consciousness, we will have to ignore Gödel’s proof for non-restricted human intelligence. We will have to deny the presence of all the transcendental desires within ourselves. It would mean condemning ourselves to ignore everything that matters – truth, love, goodness/justice, beauty, all for the cause of defending atheistic materialism. 

Physics and God: When the evidence for a beginning of our universe approximately 13.7 billion years ago is combined with the exceedingly high improbability that precise scientific conditions necessary for life continuously occur simultaneously, a super intellect is the most reasonable and responsible explanation because it avoids all the problems of hypothetical imaginings that cannot be supported by empirical evidence. 

Evolution and the Bible

(1) The bible is not a scientific document, but rather, a theological one. 

(2) Evolution is compatible with both the bible and Church teaching.

Divine inspiration is not divine dictation. When God inspires a biblical author, he does so through the biblical author’s human powers, capacities, and categories. This means that when God inspired the author of Genesis 1:1 ff, He would have used categories familiar to a person about 2,800 years ago. These categories were decidedly not scientific. Empirical, mathematical Science was initiated by around the late 16th century by Francis Bacon and others and has developed since that time. The formal mathematics that we use in contemporary physics

(calculus in particular) was developed by Newton and others after that time. This means that God could not have meaningfully given a scientific account of the creation or the development of the natural world to the biblical author, and therefore, we cannot try to make the biblical account be scientific in the strict sense.

The biblical author’s use of “seven days” is to be taken as a theological context for the story and not as an attempt by God to suggest scientific fact. The same holds true for the age of the universe  which physics has very well established to be at least 13.7 billion years old. One cannot assert as scientific fact that the universe is a little over 5,000 years old (by summing the generations in the bible as if the creation of human beings is coincident with the creation of the universe itself), because the creation of human beings on the seventh day is part of the theological context of the story. This was never meant to be a scientific fact, and it should not be treated as one. The human soul is not a product of mere material evolution. Certain features of the human body may have evolved from other less developed species, but the human soul is not matter, and it could not have arisen from a merely material process.

Conclusion: Is the biblical account of creation diametrically opposed to the scientific account of creation? It is not. We would not want to force the biblical author (writing 2800 years ago) to be giving a scientific account.

Logic and God: Everything in reality must be a conditioned (dependent) reality except the one unconditioned (independent) Reality itself (the Creator of reality).

 In all reality (the universe), realities must be either conditioned (caused) or unconditioned (uncaused) we can find a cause for everything in the universe except the cause of the universe itself because the cause of the universe must be outside the universe. The universe could not have created itself. 

There can be only one unconditioned Reality itself in “all reality” (Unconditioned = all powerful= most powerful. By definition of “most” only one can be most powerful)

It follows that all other realities in “all reality” must be conditioned realities.

Conditioned realities cannot have their conditions ultimately fulfilled by conditioned realities alone.

For any conditioned reality X, there must always be a most fundamental (last) condition to be fulfilled.

This most fundamental (last) condition must be fulfilled by the one unconditioned Reality . There must be a last condition, and this last condition must always be fulfilled by an unconditioned reality. There can only be one unconditioned Reality, and everything else must be a conditioned reality, the one unconditioned Reality must be the Creator (the source of the ultimate fulfillment of conditions) of all else that is real.

The Creator Must Continuously Create all else that is real. This is not in conflict with “creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing),” it simply includes the possibility of the Creator continuously fulfilling conditions ultimately, and “holding or conserving” conditioned realities in being.

No conditioned reality can ever become unconditioned, because there can be only one unconditioned Reality. Every conditioned reality must be dependent on the one unconditioned Reality for the ultimate fulfillment of its conditions at every moment.

If the one unconditioned Reality does not ultimately fulfill the conditions of every conditioned reality at every moment, they would cease to be real. The Creator (the one, absolutely simple, unrestricted, unconditioned Reality) must be a continuous Creator (source of the ultimate fulfillment of conditions) of all else that is real at every moment. If the Creator stopped “thinking” about us, we would literally lapse into nothingness.

Conclusion: The “one, absolutely simple, unrestricted, unconditioned Reality which is the continuous Creator of all else that is” must exist. This Reality corresponds to what is generally thought to be “God.” God, as defined, must exist.

The denial of the existence of God would entail the denial of one’s own existence, or arguing a most fundamental contradiction. If these alternatives are considered to be unreasonable and/or irresponsible, the existence of God should be considered rationally affirmed.

Mathematics and God: Mathematical formulas dealing with reality must have a starting point. The hypothesis “infinite past time.” is invalid: There will have to be a beginning (and a creator) of past time wherever past time exists or history would be fraught with irresolvable contradictions. History and time must be finite, and if finite, must have a beginning.  A beginning of time implies a Creator. This Creator would have to be timeless.

First Cause: “Everything must have a cause” is false. A first cause of past time had to exist because the hypothesis of infinite past time contradicts the constitutive nature of time necessary to prevent contradictions in history. (If there is no starting point then there cannot be a before and after the starting point) Thus, a first uncaused cause that transcends temporality is necessary for time to have intelligibility. There must be at least one uncaused cause. There can only be one uncaused cause (uncaused = first, by definition of “first” there can be only one first). Everything else besides the one uncaused cause, must be caused.

The problem of evil:  If God were to disallow all human evil, then God would have to disallow the free choice to act in an evil way; and if God disallowed the free choice to act in an evil way, our good actions would not be self-initiated. God would essentially have programmed us for good behaviors, but not allowed us to choose good behaviors over and against the option of choosing evil ones. He would have foreclosed the possibility of our good actions being self-initiated and being our own.

Evil elicits vengeance, and vengeance begets vengeance, unless a free agent intervenes and lets go of the just offense in a recognizable act of compassion. This act not only stops the cycle of vengeance begetting vengeance, but also calls collective human consciousness to a higher ideal, a higher sense of collective self, which is at once intrinsically beautiful, while allowing the real possibility of peace. Ironically, this greatest of human choices can be induced by evil.

Evil occurs when a free agent chooses to ignore the capacity for love. Evil actions could have angry feelings embedded in them, but these feelings are not identifiable with evil itself; they are the result of evil. Destructive behaviors may come from this free agent, but these behaviors are also not identifiable with evil itself; they are the result of a free agent’s choice to ignore the capacity for love. The occurrence of evil is not something which exists in itself; rather, it is the result of a free agent’s choice to ignore the capacity for affection, empathy, compassion – love.

For more details:

http://magisgodwiki.org/index.php?title=Why_Believe_in_God%3F

http://magischristwiki.org/index.php?title=Why_Believe_in_Jesus?