Looking for answers on the question Is there a God #4

In this world where man can have lots of things and does not seem to be needy of a Creator God we can find lots of rational objections of the existence of God and people requiring those who believe that God exists to provide evidence to support their belief, or to “prove” that God exists.

Masaccio, Brancacci Chapel, Adam and Eve, detail. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the previous article I pointed already out that the hidden layer about not accepting that there is a Divine Creator God may more be of an emotional matter, them also not wanting to see Something or Some One to be more powerful than they Who would be having the right to control them and to order them what they might do or might not do. Looking at that we must see the whole ‘core-business’ of the matter, what also happened in the garden of Eden, the first man and mannin, Adam and Eve doubting the right God having more knowledge and power than they. The reason behind all rational and emotional rejections of the existence of God, or the core, is pride.

When you stop to think about it, pride is the ultimate reason for the rejection of the existence of God.
The human beings created in the image of God decided themselves to wilfully and deliberately to be preoccupied with the self.  It is about: Me, Myself, and I.

Cathédrale Saint-Lazare, Autun. Judas hangs himself (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People want to do it their way and are not pleased when others want to take control over their life. When it is an unknown source or Supreme Being that is more mighty than everything else, it is very difficult to cope with. Pride was the reason behind Adam and Eve’s rejection of God’s commandment, seeking to be like God, on their own terms. Pride is why Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus into the hands of his enemies.  Pride is the reason why so few of us will admit that we have a sin problem or should subject ourselves to That/Him or Her that is the Most Beautiful, Most High God, Most Merciful, Most High Omnipotent God.

The so called monotheist religions, Judaism, Christendom and/or Christianity and Islam make their claim about their God and the events He causes to happen on all those happenings and how people wrote about it. For those events from the distant past for which there is little forensic evidence J. Warner Wallace has a reply. He wrote the book “Cold-Case Christianity“,  which uses his nationally recognized skills as a homicide detective to look at the evidence and eyewitnesses behind Christian beliefs. You could wonder why such group of people would be of interest to know about the Divine Creator of something what happened much before that sect of followers of Christ was formed. But rabbi Jeshua, the Nazarene who did incredible things and with his words could capture many ears, talked a lot about that Supreme Being Who has a plan with this world.

A unique apologetic that speaks to readers’ intense interest in detective stories, Cold-Case Christianity inspires readers to have confidence in Christ as it prepares them to articulate the case for Christianity.

According to the retired homicide detective Jim Warner Wallace there are two different kinds of evidence: direct and indirect.

When we are faced with the unknown about the Creator God and about certain biblical figures, like Jesus Christ, we should first go to see for direct evidence, like examining if there are eyewitness who can describe an event in accordance to what he or she witnessed. Direct evidence does not require interpretation. Though we also may not forget the indirect (or circumstantial) evidence.  This includes even things like fingerprints, DNA, and blood.  Indirect evidence requires interpretation.

According to the detective circumstantial evidence count. In fact, all his cold cases are almost always constructed using 100% circumstantial evidence. We must be aware that witnesses can lie, but circumstantial evidence always tells the truth!

When it comes to the existence of God, we do not have any direct evidence.  Examining the attributes of God, we know that God is immaterial, spaceless, timeless, and can appear at more than one place at once.  Such a being cannot be examined using scientific methods.

Time presented mankind with lots of written works from people who said to know God or to be writing things down for Him or people who noticed others doing exceptional things in the name of God. Big problem is that all those people are death. Their writings are considered to be circumstantial at best.  If any case for the existence of God is to be made, it would be on the basis of circumstantial evidence.

According to Jim Warner Wallace, the standard of proof in a court of law is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.  The standard is not proven beyond a possible doubt.  In this world we can have many scenario’s and many possibilities. We can not deny certain things might be or may be possible. While all things are equally possible, not all things are equally reasonable. Philosophers like very much the way of reason and lots of them have reasoned quite a lot about the possibility of there being a God or not.

When looking at what they all wrote you may wonder if there where not certain people who just did not want to see or hear certain answers. That is the problem with the Matter God. That is perhaps also the only ‘dogma‘ which we can not put aside, because somehow it is the only and most important thing where we do have to come to by faith, believing that it is so.

Representation of consciousness from the seventeenth century

In Jim’s book, God’s Crime Scene, he examines the evidence inside the universe and describes eight conclusions from examining the evidence.  They are the following:

1. Beginning of the universe
2. Fine tuning of the universe
3. Origins of life in the universe
4. Appearance of design in biology
5. Existence of consciousness
6. Existence of free will
7. Existence of transcendental morals
8. Persistence of evil and injustice

What we can notice is that lots of people prefer spending much more time in reading works of great writers, like Augustine of Hippo, Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jung, Tillich, Bultmann, the two Niebuhrs, Barth, Kung, Rahner, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Adorno, Lonergan, Merton, Hick, Cupitt, Schillebeeckx, Bonhoeffer, and many others, instead of reading the Words which are said to be provided by the Creator Himself, namely the Bible or Holy Scriptures.

You should know that you do not have to have read all those masters their writings. You also do not have to have gone to a theologian college or university. God did not reserve His Words and knowledge about Him, only for scholars. Everybody can come to know about The Only One True God. The only thing God requires is that there is the right intention to know Him.

It may sound ridiculous, but I am convinced that when you allow yourself to examine the truth and when you are willing to get to know the Maker God, for sure He shall be willing to allow to come to know Him.

The Omnipotent Creator God, as Maker of everything, wants man to come to know and to love Him. Therefore He also provided enough material to come to know Him. That guide for getting to the essence of God and the essence of us being here on earth may be found in the Bible or Holy Scriptures.

Prideful man has to be willing to put his own pride aside and has to come to put aside all those human doctrines which have mounted up by time. There are lots of church doctrines which make our mind trouble and can make us blind for finding God. A big problem with mankind is that they so much like their church doctrines. As such they may look at one that says

“Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking…. God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God–“the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable”–with our human representations.  Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church Part 1 Section 1: iv 40,42). {At Tau Zero, God}

We can not escape the fact that our thinking is very limited, but that would not have to mean that the One Who created us in His image would not have given it in us to come to know Him. The first human beings by their pride having wanted more than they already had and wanting to be like God, busted the bubble by having got the ‘knowledge of good and evil‘. Making that evil also so attractive and wanting to put God aside of all this.

In several religions there were people who doubted the God-head’s Power. Also in Islam we can find such writer who could not imagine such much higher being than man’s positive qualities.  Ma‘mar b. Abbad as-Sulam writing

“Hence the attributes of God cannot be such as the positive qualities which exist in man, but only the negation of those which are distinctively human and dependent: we can only say that he is infinite, meaning unlimited in space, or eternal as unlimited in time, or other like terms negative of the known things which can be predicated of man.” {At Tau Zero, God}

Some also foudn that they had God in them, like for example

The execution of Mansur Al-Hallaj (manuscript illustration from Mughal India, circa 1600)

Mansoor al hallaj is the example of this concept, claiming as to have within him nothing but God.
iv. Shi’ites: the breakaway sect, Nasserites believe that Ali (ra) is the manifestation of Allah. Another breakaway sect, Druze, believe that the last Fatimid Caliph, al-Hakim bi Amrillah, was the last incarnation of God among mankind.
v. Ibn Arabee, a sufi, made his followers to pray to themselves as he believed that God is inside man. {Transcendency.}

We even can find it in our contemporary history

I. Elijah Muhammad: who claimed that he met with God incarnate, who was his teacher, Fard Muhammad, and he sent him as his messenger to black Americans.
II. George Baker: Father Divine: appeared in the depression of 1920’s. He captured the innocents by opening restaurants and told them he was God incarnated, and his wife, Mother Divine.
III. Jim Jones: founder of Peoples Temple: claimed himself to be God incarnated and made over 900 people do suicide with him in 1979*. {Transcendency.} (*editorial note: Guyana 1978)

If we must believe certain Christians who claim Jesus to be God because according to them he said so (which Jesus never did), and should take that as a proof of god’s existence than we should also take the sayings of Sun Myung Moon, George Baker (the African American spiritual leader), Jim Jones and many others to be that god.

In the previous chapters I showed that God is above time element, time being a way for man to put everything in perspective. Allah or God is the Existence and Time in Himself or in Itself, or is everything in Itself, He /She/It therefore declaring to be “The Being of the being”.

Exodus 3:14 The Scriptures 1998+  (14)  And Elohim said to Mosheh, “I am that which I am.”1 And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Yisra’ĕl, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” Footnote: 1The Heḇrew text reads: ’eyeh ’asher ’eyeh, the word ’eyeh being derived from hayah which means to be, to exist, but the Aramaic text here in v. 14 reads: ayah ashar ayah. This is not His Name, but it is an explanation that leads up to the revelation of His Name in v. 15, namely: יהוה.

Exodus 6:2-3 The Scriptures 1998+  (2)  And Elohim spoke to Mosheh and said to him, “I am יהוה.
(3)  “And I appeared to Aḇraham, to Yitsḥaq, and to Yaʽaqoḇ, as Ěl Shaddai. And by My Name, יהוה, was I not known to them?

059.022 هُوَ اللَّهُ الَّذِي لا إِلَهَ إِلا هُوَ عَالِمُ الْغَيْبِ وَالشَّهَادَةِ هُوَ الرَّحْمَنُ الرَّحِيمُ
059.022 Allah is He, than Whom there is no other god;- Who knows (all things) both secret and open; He, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

059.023 هُوَ اللَّهُ الَّذِي لا إِلَهَ إِلا هُوَ الْمَلِكُ الْقُدُّوسُ السَّلامُ الْمُؤْمِنُ الْمُهَيْمِنُ الْعَزِيزُ الْجَبَّارُ الْمُتَكَبِّرُ سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ
059.023 Allah is He, than Whom there is no other god;- the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Source of Peace (and Perfection),  the Guardian of Faith, the Preserver of Safety,  the Exalted in Might, the Irresistible, the Supreme: Glory to Allah! (High is He) above the partners they attribute to Him.

059.024 هُوَ اللَّهُ الْخَالِقُ الْبَارِئُ الْمُصَوِّرُ لَهُ الأسْمَاءُ الْحُسْنَى يُسَبِّحُ لَهُ مَا فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالأرْضِ وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ
059.024 He is Allah, the Creator, the Evolver, the Bestower of Forms (or Colours). To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names: whatever is in the heavens and on earth, doth declare His Praises and Glory: and He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise.

Al-Qur’an, 059.022-024 (Al-Hashr [Exile, Banishment]) {Text Copied from Divine Islam’s Qur’an Viewer software v2.913

052.036 أَمْ خَلَقُوا السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالأرْضَ بَل لا يُوقِنُونَ
052.036 Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Nay, they have no firm belief.

Al-Qur’an, 052.036 (At-Tur [The Mount]) {Text Copied from DivineIslam’s Qur’an Viewer software v2.913}

112.001 قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ
112.001 Say: He is Allah, the One and Only;
112.002 اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ
112.002 Allah, the Eternal, Absolute;
112.003 لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ
112.003 He begetteth not, nor is He begotten;
112.004 وَلَمْ يَكُنْ لَهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ
112.004 And there is none like unto Him.

Al-Qur’an, 112.001-003 (Al-Ikhlas [Sincerity]) {Text Copied from Divine Islam’s Qur’an Viewer software v2.913}

002.117 بَدِيعُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالأرْضِ وَإِذَا قَضَى أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُ كُنْ فَيَكُونُ
002.117 To Him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth: When He decreeth a matter, He saith to it: “Be,” and it is.

Al-Qur’an, 002.117 (Al-Baqara [The Cow]) {Text Copied from Divine Islam’s Qur’an Viewer software v2.913}

030.011 اللَّهُ يَبْدَأُ الْخَلْقَ ثُمَّ يُعِيدُهُ ثُمَّ إِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ
030.011 It is Allah Who begins (the process of) creation; then repeats it; then shall ye be brought back to Him.

Al-Qur’an, 030.011 (Ar-Room [The Romans, The Byzantines]) {Text Copied from Divine Islam’s Qur’an Viewer software v2.913}

It is in That One Who informs the world that He has created everything from nothing, and made man in His image that people should come to believe. Though humans have limited intellect. God has given them enough wisdom to come to know Him, even if they still have to produce many hypothesises and theories concerning ecological systems and theological matters.

Without The Creator our existence cannot be explained, because one would then have to resort to one or either of two rationally unacceptable explanations.

When we look around us we can see the universe and all that is within as proofs of The Divine Creator His existence. In later chapters we shall see that He is on His Own, having no partner, rival or equal, but that all things are in need of Him, while He stands in need of none of His creatures. Him not being begotten, nor does He beget. Though man thinks omnipotence isn’t possible, it could be in a higher dimension where the laws of science as we know them are altered or even nonexistent. If everything is contingent, then at some point in time everything must have ceased to exist, which is absurd because we are here. Therefore, there must be a necessary per se being – God. In case we are crated in the image of God all have elements of that God, so when you put those elements all together, having some people and some things better than others, therefore, these creations must be coming from a perfect being whom excellences proceed from – God.

Many atheists speak about a black hole or a big-bang, and as such would also agree that things did not just come into being by chance. Looking at all things we must see that there is a sort of order or ends (telos) in things in the world.

“It is clear that it is not by chance, but by design, that they attain the end.” Just like an arrow being directed by an archer. Thus, there must be an intelligent being that directs all natural things that are ordered to an end – God. {God exists — Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways}

When we use our mind and reason well, but also let our heart speak, although known by our desires for fulfilment and happiness, can be rationally demonstrated that God must exist.

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Preceding

2nd question: What or where is the beginning

3rd question: Does there exist a Divine Creator

Looking for answers on the question Is there a God #1 Many gods

Looking for answers on the question Is there a God #2 Pantheon of gods and celebrations

Looking for answers on the question Is there a God #3 Transcendence or Surpassing other gods and man

Nature Is A Reflection Of God

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Additional reading

1. Is faith rational?
2. Faith antithesis of rationality
3. Bill Maher proves atheism does not guarantee rational thinking
4. To find ways of Godly understanding
5. Is God behind all suffering here on earth
6. Why think there’s a God? (1): Something from Nothing
7. Why think there is a God? (2) Goldilocks Effect
8. Why Think There Is a God? (3): Why Is It Wrong?
9. Why think there is a God? (4): and the rest …
10. Pluralis Majestatis in the Holy Scriptures
11. Can you question the existence of God
12. Before and after the big-bang
13. The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #1 Beginning of everything
14. The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #2 Beginning of mankind
15. Philosophy hand in hand with spirituality
16. Sharing thoughts and philosophical writings
17. Being Religious and Spiritual 4 Philosophical, religious and spiritual people
18. Self inflicted misery #8 Pruning to strengthen us
19. Pascal’s Possibility
20. Epicurus’ Problem of Evil
21. Preparedness to change
22. Faith is a pipeline
23. Disscusion Questions
24. Places of interest to get more knowledge about God 5
25. Places of interest to get more knowledge about God 6
26. We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace
27. I Only hope we find GOD again before it is too late !

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Further reading

1. Why People Reject God
2. Quest for God 1
3. Addressing the God Paradoxes
4. Does God Exist?
5. Does God Exist? The Moral Argument, Part 1
6. “If God Exists”
7. Convince Me There’s A God – Archaeology 35
8. The Question of the ages by Jeff Wingo
9. Who Created God and What Existed Before Him?
10. Is there anything God can’t do?
11. Christianity – Nature of God
12. What is God Like? Attributes of God
13. Ontological Argument For God’s Existence: Anselm of Canterbury
14. Theism Is Ill-Defined
15. Steve Fuller on Proofs for God’s Existence: An Interview, Eugene Loginov
16. Is it Reasonable to Believe that God Created the Universe? Higher Model Answer
17. National 5: Is it reasonable to believe that God is the uncaused cause of the universe? (8 marks) Model Answer
18. How the Universe Proves God’s Existence
19. Aquinas and the Cosmological Arguments: Crash Course Philosophy #10
20. Be aware when compare
21. Rational and Irrational
22. Intuitive -vs- Rational Mind
23. Why People Are Irrational
24. earthly reason
25. On Intuition
26. Humans Evolve in Response to Need
27. Video – When the Feelings Are the Facts
28. The Meaning of Faith
29. Rational Faith
30. Making Rational & Irrational Decisions
31. Recall vs Reason- a powerful technique to avoid silly mistakes
32. Fear of Muslims is Irrational: Refuting General Flynn’s Bigoted Bullsh*t.
33. Rational & Irrational parts of the soul
34. The Heart Wants What It Wants, and It Wants to Listen to My Head
35. The whole problem with the world
36. How Monotheism Fostered Science
37. Proverbs 8:13
38. 2 Corinthians 10:17-18
39. Pride sucks 
40. Imitate
41. When Your Opinion is Unpopular
42. Mommy Confessions VII – Knee Deep in Pride
43. Being the Church: Pride and Shame
44. Feeling Disconnected?
45. There is a Way
46. Whatsoever is born of God overcomes!
47. Everything Happens for a Reason
48. But That’s Just My Opinion
49. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, By Dan Ariely, Read by Simon Jones by HarperAudio
50. Live on Your Own Terms
51. Level of Awareness
52. The Principles of Critical Thought
53. Why the Excuse?
54. Why Catholic?: The Little Encounters
55. Hope For America’s Youth – Ratio Christi Regions
56. Taking Counsel

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