Proof that God exists

04.JAN.08

Editor: In St. Vincent, there are few publicly avowed atheists, yet they are among us.

I recall one individual who on a popular radio programme offered as his proof that God does not exist was that in his travels by plane, he had never seen God or Heaven in the skies. This proof was offered by a well educated person as though it could satisfy the mature intellect that thirsts for true knowledge of self, of the world and of existence itself. {{more}}So long as a person’s religious practices do not infringe upon the legitimate rights of others or conflict with the laws of the land, they should be allowed freedom of religion. This, however, does not mean that private citizens may not question and discuss each other’s beliefs in the absence of judgmental attitudes and deliberate misrepresentation. In the aforementioned spirit, I wish to present some proof for the existence of God. The proofs will draw on Theology, Science and Philosophy.

Let us begin with the Nicene Creed, which has very succinctly set out the articles of Catholic faith since 381 AD. The creed begins: “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen” (Catechism 197). The Church throughout her 2000-year history has always believed and taught that God created all that exists from nothing. A scientific mind illuminated by faith and meditating on this teaching can only extrapolate that before God’s initiation of creation there could not even have been empty space or time. Empty space has dimensions; any space has length, width and height, while time has magnitude (ten seconds or one hour for example). How could “nothing” have observable dimensions or magnitude?

On the question of the origin of the natural world, science offers the Big Bang theory. This theory, still the source of much controversy, has been widely misrepresented, and consequently largely misunderstood. It is “the event in which, according to standard modern cosmology, the Universe came into existence some 12 to 15 billion years ago. The Big Bang is sometimes described as an “explosion;” however, it is wrong to imagine that matter and energy erupted into a pre-existing space. Modern Big Bang theory holds that space and time came into being simultaneously with matter and energy”http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/Big_Bang.html). Here we see that the explanation offered by Science is in agreement with explanation offered by Theology. Both disciplines hold that an event occurred before which not even empty space or time existed. Yet, while scientists, whose proper domain is the study of the natural world, cannot attempt to explain the “Source” of the bang, theologians can. Apart from Divine revelation, how does one explain the fact the church arrived at her knowledge of origin of the universe a good 2000 years before she had the benefit of observatories, research satellites, calculus, and modern particle physics?

One philosophical proof for the existence of God holds that past time is finite. Past time is finite because by definition anything that has already been achieved is certainly finite. Only that which has yet to be achieved such as future time is infinite. Since it is established that past time is finite, then it had a beginning. This philosophical proof concurs with the theology and science of origin in that all three disciplines accept that at one point, time itself did not exist. Why and how did it suddenly come into existence, could time have decided to usher in its own existence? The only reasonable and logical conclusion is that everything seen and unseen originates from the very essence of existence, God.



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