Why Believe God Exists, Essay Example

“We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

– Albert Einstein, on the matter of God

As children, we are taught that Man was created in God’s image. It may be just as accurate to say that God was created in Man’s image. God, as Man has defined him throughout history, is a deity whose characteristics and mood and habits and behavior are constantly changing, shifting, adapting to Man’s needs at any given time. It is an easy philosophical argument to make that God does not exist, and perhaps a nearly impossible argument can be made in his favor. Yet man has always found something described as truth in God (or gods), and to this day, the majority of people in this country, for example, claim to believe in God.

Man has always sought to explain the world around him through whatever means he has had at his disposal. Until relatively recently in man’s history –in the last few hundred to few thousand years- nearly all of these man-made explanations would be considered “supernatural;” that is, “beyond nature.” And as scientific achievements have gradually supplanted supernatural explanations for the things we observe in the world around us, still God remains as “alive” today as he ever has.

The term “god” has as many meanings to many people. Generally, the term “god” is defined as a singular, omnipotent being who is responsible for the creation and continued existence of the universe. In some ways, this concept of God –labeled monotheism- is a Western construct, as the religious philosophies of the East (Buddhism, Hinduism, and the like) are considered pantheistic; that is, they see God as existing in all the elements of existence. For the purposes of this discussion, both views will be considered, in an effort to ask and answer the question of whether belief in God is justifiable.

Every culture has some sort of spiritual beliefs, different though they may be from each other. In the creation myths of the Judeo-Christian Bible, God created the Earth and the rest of the universe in the span of one week, bringing to life all life more or less as we see it today. In Buddhism, there is no specific “creation myth,” and, in fact, the Buddha cautioned against wasting too much time considering such a thing. He likened it to a wounded man who refused medical care until he knew everything about the man who had wounded him. These two ideas could not be more different, as adherence to that bit of Christian dogma is inherent to being a “true believer,” while such a belief actually stands in the way of attaining “enlightenment” in the Buddhistic tradition. Yet both belief systems posit a spiritual existence that is greater than that which we can immediately see. Can both be right? If one is right, is the other automatically wrong? Or perhaps neither view is correct.

There are a multitude of arguments for the existence of God, and just as many arguments against. It has become fashionable for believers to assert that the existence of God is proven by the existence of what is called “Intelligent Design.” In short, this theory holds that when living creatures are examined on a micro- level, the complexity of the individual parts that make up the living thing are simply too great to have happened accidentally. It is put forth as an “answer” to Darwin’s theory of evolution, wherein life gradually becomes more complex over time through the process of natural selection.

According to believers, the “irreducible complexity” of these parts (for example, the complex interaction of the sub-parts of individual cells) proves that no system of gradually-acquired functions could explain these complexities. They describe the cell as a set of small “machines;” if any one of those machines were to be removed, the cell itself would cease to function. Thus, each “machine” must have been acquired “all at once” by some sort of “creator.”

Other “proofs” of God also lay claim to the idea of “scientific validity;” the Earth, for example, is set up perfectly to sustain life. Were any of its conditions to change (say, its distance from the sun or its gravitational relationship to the moon) then life on Earth would be impossible. Of course, even if one accepts these arguments as proof of some sort of supernatural creator, they do not “prove” anything about the nature of this creator (as defined in so many different ways by so many different religions).

This “design” approach also serves as the basis for an argument against the existence of God, as the lack of perfection in life’s “designs” is considered by some to disprove the existence of a perfect creator. Another argument against the existence of God is “the destiny of the unevangelized”: what happens to those who have never heard of God, and therefore are unable to “follow” him in a manner that gains the entry into heaven. Would a “perfect” God allow that to happen to a majority of his creations? Another argument holds that inconsistencies among the tenets of various religions, as well as inconsistencies within specific religions, are proof that God does not exist.

One of the most common arguments against the existence of God is the existence of evil. If God is a perfect, omnipotent, loving being, why does he allow suffering? The argument asserts that if God is an omnipotent being, and that he wishes for evil to not exist, then he would not only know how to rid the world of evil, but would be compelled to do so. Therefore, the existence of evil is considered proof against the existence of God.

Of course, every argument for God has an opposing argument, as does every argument against God. In this case, the standard response to the question of why an omnipotent God would allow suffering is to point to the idea of “free will.” This is the idea that God has allowed his creations the power to choose their own destinies, and that they will choose between good and evil of their own accord. In order to allow the existence of free will, God must allow the existence of evil.

These are difficult questions; for every answer to one question a new question arises. What is the nature of omnipotence? If God is all-knowing, then it follows that he must already know how universal events will unfold. In that light, the question of free will is irrelevant; no matter hat we decide for ourselves, the outcomes of our decisions are already determined. But if everything is predetermined, then why would God allow suffering? An omnipotent, loving being would logically create a perfect world, free of suffering.

These questions, and others, are so called “omnipotency paradoxes,” the most well-know of which is the question “if God is all-powerful, could he create a stone so heavy that he himself could not lift it?” If an omnipotent being can create a stone that he can not lift, then he ceases to be omnipotent. And if he can not create a stone so heavy that he can not lift it, then he never was omnipotent. These paradoxes lie at the center of nearly every argument about God, religion, and the nature of spirituality.

In his book The Power of Myth, the late author Joseph Campbell explored the myths of many different cultures from throughout history, and explained the role that myth plays in society. He asserted that myths were, historically, the way that societies transmitted information from one generation to the next, through storytelling and ritual. A culture’s myths were what that culture deemed to be important about itself, and these myths provided the cultural framework of a given society. He pointed to recurring themes in different myths, and asserted that these myths contained certain universal truths, despite their contradictions. As Campbell saw it, we are in the process of emerging from an old way of seeing myth into a new paradigm, brought on by the advances of the modern age. He felt we are on the verge of creating a new mythology, one that merges these universal truths and becomes a global mythology.

Despite the millennia that man has spent asking questions about the existence of God, we are no closer to answering them than we were when they were first asked. Still, we continue to ask them. Man has always sought to explain the world around him, beginning with supernatural explanations for things he could not understand. Over the centuries, these supernatural explanations have gradually been replaced, one by one, with “natural” or scientific explanations. Yet none of these natural explanations about the natural world have diminished man’s desire to seek the supernatural. As we try to understand the world around us, maybe there will always be answers we simply can not answer. Perhaps it is this very desire to understand the universe, this drive to seek something higher than ourselves, which defines the God that is both within and outside of all of us.