Does God exist? And if He does, how can I tell if God is right for me? Well, let’s look at this. If there is a God, then how can I know if He is real? And, if He is real, then how can I tell if He is good to engage with? And, if He is real and I want to engage with Him, then what do I look for in a relationship with this God?
These are good questions. Unfortunately, these questions are in the spiritual world, and that spiritual world is different from our physical world which we live in a day in and day out. However, I think these questions can be answered, but it will take some time for you to read through this paper. But we can find the answer.
If God exists, then how can we be sure of this as we sit in our physical world? Can God’s existence in a spiritual world co-mingle with us in the physical world? If you go back to the beginning, the real beginning, to what the world was at the beginning where it started, then you may see if there is a physical element of the spiritual world in us today.
Let’s look at the Big Bang. If you go back, and this is science at its best, to the inception and the beginning of the Big Bang, the energy that was produced was amazing. With this bang that occurred, all the galaxies were produced, all the planets were produced, and all the nebulous and moons were produced by one single bit of energy. This energy must have been amazing with its effect on completely empty space.
If you look at space, there is nothing there. There were no planets, there was no matter of any kind within the space. So, our space was completely empty of anything and everything. With this Big Bang came an amazing number of things that were introduced into our presence. Why our ‘presence’, without this Big Bang not only could we not exist, but there was nothing here for us to exist with. So, this Big Bang is what started us.
What do you believe? Do you believe in the Big Bang? If you don’t, then you need to explain how matter (the matter that we are made of) started in a void universe. There’s no way for matter to exist at all without the Big Bang. So not believing in the Big Bang would be for us to not believe in ourselves, and that’s problematic. Without the Big Bang, our Milky Way would not exist and the galaxies that we see would not exist at all. The Big Bang is a fundamental principle of how the world came into existence.
If we look at the Andromeda Galaxy’s we might see an oddity. In 2006, the Andromeda Galaxy’s spheroid was determined to have a higher stellar density than that of the Milky Way, and its galactic stellar disk was estimated at twice the diameter of that of the Milky Way. The total mass of the Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to be between 8×1011 M (the ‘M’ means the mass of the objects) and 1.1×1012 M. But the Andromeda Galaxy is only one of a ‘hundreds of galaxies’ that are in our space that we can ‘see’ (The image that we look at a from our ‘space telescope’. But we can only see what is in ‘front’ of us, and we can see what is outside of our visual range.). Remember, stars are items within a Galaxy, so what you see on the pictures below are all galaxies, and there are a lot of them.
11/18/2022 James Webb Telescope Spots Galaxies Near the dawn of time thrilling scientists. This is from Google.[1]
Assuming that we did have a Big Bang, and we are the same parts of the matter that were produced in the Big Bang, so yes, we are the same as stars, but how can we be sure that there is a God?
Well, it would be difficult for the energy, that created ‘hundreds of galaxies’ (I cannot tell you how many galaxies there are in this photo and this is only one part of space), that all that energy to suddenly appear out of nowhere. Nothing appears out of nowhere, ever. So, something put that energy there and this is what we see in our picture, galaxies on top of galaxies.
Looking at this deep-space photo, something put the galaxies there, and our galaxy (our Milky Way) is just one of the many galaxies that exist. So, if something has put the energy, to ready the Big Bang, and it couldn’t have been one of us (the Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, long before we came into existence), it must’ve been someone else. Who can this be? (No… it is not an alien!) This is what we call “God”.
(What is a Big Bang [2])
| Time as seen from the Big Bang |
We started out with the Big Bang that gave us our planet, and then, we became people, first as a ‘mammal’ and then as humans. The earliest known mammals were the “morganucodontids”, tiny shrew-size creatures that lived in the shadows of the dinosaurs 210 million years ago. They were one of several different mammal lineages that emerged around that time. All living mammals today, including us, descend from the one line that survived. This is who we are. Yes, there could be a difference in the species, but this is where we came from. In the earliest form of life (i.e. bacteria that started on earth) we can see that there are microscopic organisms (microbes) that left signals of their presence in rocks about 3.7 billion years old. So, we know that we are part of the world and that we are here in it. So, we started off as bacteria, and then became mammals, and then from mammals grew into humans, and are now intelligent enough to ask questions.
In 4.5 billion years of history, life as we know it arose just once. Every living thing on our planet shares the same chemistry. For life to have gotten started, there must have been a genetic molecule, something like DNA or RNA, capable of passing along blueprints for making proteins, the workhorse molecules of life. But modern cells can’t copy DNA and RNA without the help of proteins themselves. Life has no chance to form again because there is no free substrate for it to form on. The circumstances needed for it are no longer available, and will never be, as long as there is a single organism capable of reproduction. Many scientists believe that RNA[3], or something similar to RNA, was the first molecule on Earth to self-replicate and begin the process of evolution that led to more advanced forms of life, including us, as human beings.
Here you have two real elements, the Big Bang, and our existence, as ‘life’ on this planet, which can only start once. If God crossed the plains from a spiritual place to our physical universe, to provide us with the Big Bang. What crossed? The energy is what crossed and our RNA started. This was a lot of energy and we can see the matter that it produced.
But this is only one thing that has crossed, others could also have crossed that we are unsure of.
The plains from spiritual to physical can be crossed, and this is how the Big Bang came into existence. Remember, you cannot make something from nothing, and the Big Bang was a huge amount of energy that started our gigantic universe. So, this is where we started, but we started as a set of mammals, living on the earth. But now we are advanced to the point that we can think for ourselves. So, we ask “Is there a God”? Yes, God created us and the world we live in, and we are here because of it.
The next real question is, “Is God right for me?”
Let’s look at philosophy. Why philosophy? Quite literally, the term “philosophy” means, “love of wisdom.” In a broad sense, philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other. So, using philosophy, we see that God is described as a “perfect being”, a being that possesses all possible perfections so that it is all-powerful, eternal, all-knowing, immutable, and perfectly good. Where did they get this from? Why would a philosopher want a person smarter than him? Firstly, a philosopher does not understand the world around them, and so, they want someone who does. Secondly, a philosopher is once somebody smarter than they are, and again, capable of understanding the world around them, for example, in science, in languages, and in culture[4].
A philosopher knows that he might not be as smart as someone else, and there could be somebody much smarter than him, so he agrees that there could be someone else. But there is one person who is the smartest, but this person is just an idea. This God is smarter than all of us. Here, I mean that He is smarter than Einstein[5] or William James Sidis[6], Leonardo Da Vinci[7] and Marilyn vos Savant[8]. Now, He is much smarter than we can ever imagine.
Let’s look at an example. If we ran a ruler on the ground and put marks in the ruler with how smart we were, Einstein would be a lot smarter than me. And then you could argue if Leonardo da Vinci was smarter than Einstein. But, if we look at the ruler, then we would know. This ruler is a long and there’s a mark for all of us (the people of this world) on that ruler. If you understand who God is and the beauty that has been created in this world and the imagination that it took to create all the galaxies, then you must say that God is really smart, and far ahead of us on the ruler. God is so far up the ruler from us that we have no idea how long this ruler goes. From that perspective, we understand that God is much smarter than all of us put together.
However, our philosophers, argued that reality is always better than an idea[9]. Therefore, we understand that a real God is better and smarter than all of us. Yes, we know that God exists, and now we know that this God is smarter than we are. Sometimes, in our amazing days, we forget how smart God is, and we don’t really truly understand what He is to us. If this is problematic for you, consider this: if God were as smart as we are could He have placed energy into a void universe to create hundreds of galaxies and us as well? Therefore, I believe that God is way smarter than I am incapable of doing things that I can’t even imagine. With this understanding, I cannot believe that I can understand the different components of what a God could be, because I can’t imagine any of them.
Can you imagine a God that is evil? Defining an evil God is complicated by its numerous, often ambiguous common usages. Here, evil is used to describe the whole range of suffering, including that caused by nature, and it is also used to describe the full range of immorality from the “evil of genocide to the evil of malicious gossip”.
There are two main types of evil: Moral evil – This covers the willful acts of human beings, or other characters (such as murder, rape, pillage, etc.), or Natural evil – This refers to natural disasters (such as famines, floods, pestilence, etc.) As we consider an evil God, we must think of Moral evil as what we understand the horridness of the evil we see, but also knowing that Natural evil could easily be a part of the Moral evil we experience. As we consider this evil, we must look at the world around us. If we see “evil” that is done in one part of the world, do we see this evil in all parts of the world? No, if a horrible storm comes up and deluges a single place, are other places still beautiful and unaffected by the storm? If this is true, then the storm is evil, and all other places are good, then our world must be good because we look at the evil in the world and it is contrary to our original assumptions of goodness. Because we think of “goodness” in our lives, therefore evil is something that we hide from. So, is God good or evil? God must be good because an evil God would destroy us and our God wants us to endure. Perhaps, some of the world is evil and we don’t really want to be part of that, but we are good, or we pretend to be good, so we can live in a better world.
Part of what we talked about was a “perfect being”. As we understand our question of “is God right for me”, we may want to understand “who is God”, and why this is important.
So, let’s look at all of the understandings of who God is, so we have a better picture of who we are talking about.
All-powerful – God created the energy that started our universe. In contrast, cosmologists believe the Big Bang flung energy in all directions at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second, a million times faster than the H-bomb)[10] and estimate that the temperature of the entire universe was 1000 trillion degrees Celsius at just a tiny fraction of a second after the explosion. The Big Bang of the universe released approximately 10 to 68 joules and we suppose that the mass of a single star on average is 4.00 times 10 to 30 kilograms. To be honest, we really don’t know what the amount of energy took to produce this group of galaxies that is so huge that we don’t even know how big it actually is. Therefore, the energy that was created was truly amazing. This energy that was released into nothing, created all of the galaxies that are visible in the image above (and more of them as well in all of space), which is also amazing. From this perspective, yes, God can traverse the physical boundaries of our universe, and provide energy to create things within the universe. Is God all-powerful? Yes, He is all-powerful and can do amazing things.
Eternal – God exists independently of ‘time’, but this is to say that we see ‘God’ in our ‘time’, and therefore, ‘everlasting’, because we cannot move away from ‘time’. Therefore, this is the same God that started our ‘world’ that we see now. When we say God is eternal, we are saying that God is self-existent, that He has no beginning. He derives His existence or His being from no other source, rather, He has the power to be in and of Himself. He’s not dependent upon anything outside Himself for His own life or being. There is no point at which God began. An example we could use is wind and sand. If the wind is blowing from our back moving to our front and past us (looking at the wind as ‘time’), and if we throw the sand into the air, the sand disperses as a cloud away from our hand, and if we can ignore gravity just for a minute, the sand moves away from us with the wind as a cloud moving with the wind. If we look at this example as part of our life, even though our life is only a millisecond within the dust that has been created from within the cloud (the Big Bang), we (the person who through the sand) are gods. God is internal because He started the Big Bang and it is expanding around us. So, for Him, this experiment may be quick, but for us, it is eternal. And, therefore, God is eternal, always.
Immutable – The immutability of God refers to His unchanging existence, perfections, and purposes (and the promises He provides). While God causes change in His creation, and while He responds differently to different situations, He nonetheless experiences no change within Himself. He is what He is always, now and forever. Again, we can use the experiment of wind and sand. We are the same person who through the sand, and for the same person, within the time that we understand (a few seconds from start to end), then we are the same person as the cloud disperses. Therefore, our God is the same God today, tomorrow, and forever.
All-knowing – God is all-knowing in the sense that he is aware of the past, present, and future. Nothing takes him by surprise, because He can see all of us, from beginning to end, in one vision. If we use the ‘ruler idea’, that we had earlier, then we know that God is much smarter than all of us. And because he can see our beginnings and ends in one site, he is not only smarter He can see it all.
Perfectly good – We had this discussion before. We know that God is good, and therefore all He produces is good. However, we have “free will”. Because of our “free wills”, we might not do what God wants us to do, and because of this, we find ourselves in trouble.
Now that we really understand who our good God is, and we know that our God is a “perfect being”, according to philosophers, with all-powerful, eternal, immutable, all-knowing, and perfectly good, we still need to ask ourselves some particular questions about who this God is to us, and what we do about it? Let’s look at this example, if we have a good God that has created the world, and us along with it, then why can’t I talk to it? Why is He foreign to me and is unseen? And if this God is unseen, then can this God give me anything that I’m looking for? If we answer these questions, then we will know if God is “right for me”, or, “for you”.
One of the issues that we have as humans, is what do we do about questions that we have, and who do you trust to answer these questions for you, or with you. The questions that we have are really complicated. Let’s look at a few:
- Where should I go from here? In other words:
- Everyone has a job that is good for them, but how do I pick one out of all the jobs that are available for me?
- I don’t like what I am doing now, should I change what I am doing and head in a new direction, or should I stay where I am, and why?
- I got fired from my job, what do I do now and where do I go and what do I tell others?
- I love what I am doing, but they want to change it all on me, what should I do with the politics of my workplace, and I don’t want to get fired?
- I am in a world of hurt! What do I do now! For example:
- I’m really sick and I don’t know what to do?
- I think my partner is cheating on us, how can I help to fix this?
- I am so lonely, where should I go? Aimed at looking for:
- I am looking for a partner, but I don’t know who or where?
- I am looking for a friend and I need companionship?
- I am really feeling helpless, where can I go and what can I do?
These questions are deeply personal, and they have each of us in them. There are times in our lives when we all feel like one or more of these questions, and at times in our lives that we shudder from all of what these questions mean. Is this something that we want to talk to people about? Some say ‘yes’, but many others say ‘no’.
As we answer these questions, we must consider what God would want us to do. But how do we know what God wants us to do? If we know that there was a Big Bang and God instrumented us to be here, then there must be a way for us to ask Him what we can do. The problem with this question is that it is a “faith” question. Without a faith, there’s no way to answer the question at all.
Faith can mean a lot of things, to a lot of people. But we all have faith. Even the people who don’t believe in God still have faith in the decision that they have made, and because of that decision that they have made that they don’t believe in God, this is still faith, it’s just faith from the other side. And so thought requires us to believe in ourselves, and therefore, have faith in something. The question is, what do you have faith in?
From a dictionary perspective, and agnostic, or an atheist, is somebody who cannot believe in the existence of a God, or they don’t believe in anything spiritual in nature. But here we see that there is a God, because otherwise the Big Bang could not have occurred. If the Big Bang didn’t occur, then we cannot explain the energy that started the Bang. And without the Big Bang, we cannot explain how ‘matter’ was formed in the world around us. There are several things, that beg to be answered if we don’t believe in the Big Bang. Therefore, the Big Bang must’ve occurred. And if the Big Bang did occur, then how can we be agnostic, or an atheist? These ideas really don’t fit in to our existence of understanding.
Let’s return to the questions we had earlier (this would be the three questions we posed above). These questions were about faith, and you can decide whether or not you have faith or not, but still, these are faith questions. But why are they faith questions? Each of these questions ask us about who we are, and where do we want to go, and why we want to get there, even though we don’t want our world to change dramatically. This is very hard for the average person to answer. If there is a God, you’d want your God to understand who you are and why you’re here, so that your God can help you along the way.
This is where religious faith comes into being. Without religious faith it would be hard to understand who God is and why God is important to the individual. With of religious faith in hand, you can understand what God truly is in that faith. Again, we all have faith, even if we don’t want to have faith in God, we still have ‘faith’ in something. And so, the question is, what do we have faith in, and why is that faith important to us?
If we look at the questions above. The 1st questions ask “where should I go”, and the 2nd question asks “why do I hurt so much?”. The 3rd question is one of the most difficult questions to answer which is “why am I lonely?” These questions are not about places or opportunities or diction, these questions are about who we are and why we are the way we are. These questions are not about somebody else, they are about us and really about who we are.
It is most difficult to find somebody you can trust that you can ask these questions to, because we work better in teams rather than alone. However, if you had a team to look at this, one or more people, you would be exposed and vulnerable to other people’s comments, and that’s not something most people would want. So, here we have a dilemma: do we solve our problems by asking others, or do we think about it for ourselves? Most people would think about it for themselves; however, it is much more difficult to think of all the ramifications for a single question all by yourself.
This is where a God can help. If you have a faith and that faith believes in a God, and this God really understands who you are, then you can actually pray about these questions. If you pray with grief in your heart, which is not that uncommon, about what these questions mean to you, then you can hope for resolution with each of the questions. This is where God is truly wonderful. We don’t have to go to others, although, a God might put others with us to help us. But we can get these aspects of our life understood by ourselves. This is why God is important to people. Yes, he is omnipotent: yes, he is loving (some God’s are not loving, so you may want to pick one that is – the Christian God, for example, is wonderful for you and for all), but more importantly a God knows who you are and is willing to help. This is what you want, and this is why you want that help.
Although there are thousands of religions that are out there, there’s only one that will help you, and you should consider that one.
If I believe in a God that can help me, and we have a good God that has created the world, and us along with it, then why can’t I talk to it? Why is He foreign to me and is unseen? And if this God is unseen, then can this God give me anything that I’m looking for?
Why would a God want to stay hidden from you? Think this through, if God was not hidden, would He be out in the “general public” and open for everybody? But, if He was hidden from you and everyone else, then people would have to find Him. But how do I find a hidden God? Through prayer. If you pray for something, like the questions we have reviewed above, then you can find resolution for each of them (you can ask the author about a ‘Prayer Guide’ that instructs you on what to do about prayer), and with prayer you can talk to this God. Prayer is simple and you don’t need to have any understanding of it in order to may it work. So, through prayer you can talk to your God, and many people talk to Him all the time.
So, with all this in mind, we know there was a Big Bang, and we understand what the Big Bang meant to our life, and we know about who God is, and we know about what God is to be with each of us, and we know that, through prayer, we can talk to this God at any time, and we know about the questions of faith, and what they mean to each of us. Yes, there is a God, and this God is the God that we want, and so, it is up to us, if we believe, that this God will be our God.
[1] Google, Google information, Alphabet Google, 2024, https://www.google.com.mx/ pickers of galaxy’s
[2] Google, Google information, Alphabet Google, 2024, https://www.google.com.mx/ What is a Big Bang
[3] Google, Google information, Alphabet Google, 2024, https://www.google.com.mx/ there is no free
substrate for Life can’t exist
[4] Google, Google information, Alphabet Google, 2024, https://www.google.com.mx/ What is a philosopher?
[5] Albert Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics, and was thus a central figure in the revolutionary reshaping of the scientific understanding of nature that modern physics.
[6] William James Sidis wrote in The Animate and the Inanimate (1925), Sidis predicted the existence of regions of space where the second law of thermodynamics operates in the reverse temporal direction of our local area.
[7] Leonardo da Vinci though he is best known for his dramatic and expressive artwork, Leonardo also conducted dozens of carefully thought-out experiments and created futuristic inventions that were groundbreaking for the time. His keen eye and quick mind led him to make important scientific discoveries, yet he never published his ideas.
[8] Marilyn vos Savant Since 1986, she has written “Ask Marilyn”, a Parade magazine Sunday column wherein she solves puzzles and answers questions on various subjects, and which popularized the Monty Hall problem in 1990.
[9] Google, Google information, Alphabet Google, 2024, https://www.google.com.mx/ Pado argued that
reality is always better than ideas
[10] Google, Google information, Alphabet Google, 2024, https://www.google.com.mx/ Big Bang energy