Who is God?

Who is God?
Part 1

Note from author: I made some recent changes to this post, so if you have read it previously, you may want to take another look. I apologize for that, but revelations are coming to me faster than I can write them, and I felt it was important to document them.


Who is God? How can I know for sure that He truly exists? I have never seen Him. I have never had an audible conversation with Him? I can't prove beyond all doubt that He exists. 


And if God exists, which God is the real one? All the religions of the world claim to believe in some form of deity.They can't all be right.


And if God is truly real, why does He keep Himself hidden? Why doesn't He reveal Himself to the masses and silence the critics?


Or, maybe the skeptics and atheists' have it right who claim that God isn't real, but just an invention of mankind in order to help us deal with our insecurities and fears of the unknown. 

Those are tough questions that philosophers and theologians have been debating for ages without resolution. So what could I possibly add to this debate? And why even make an attempt in the first place? Because there is a desire inside of me for significance.  I want to know where I came from, why I am here, and where I will go when I die. You probably feel the same way. And if we can't find meaningful answers to those questions, then we tend to  fill up our lives with trivial pursuits and medicate ourselves to suppress the emptiness.

So grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and let's have a discussion.


First, I will consider the skeptics and atheists' claim that there is no God. To believe their claims, one must assume the theory of evolution is true. Evolution is the idea that all living things in our world, and the universe itself, came into being through natural unguided processes over billions of years. For me, this theory is so full of holes and improbable events that it requires a much greater leap of faith to believe in it than believing in an invisible supernatural God. For instance, how did the first living cell come into being? If the principles of mutation and natural selection are to work, there had to be living things for them to work on. Life itself has to exist before it can begin to diversify. So where did life come from? And  consider that even the most primitive cells are amazingly complex; containing cell walls for containment, genetic DNA blueprints, an enzyme capable of copying information from the genetic blueprint in order to manufacture new proteins and enzymes, and the operations necessary to split a single cell into two to implement reproduction. I ask, which is more likely, that the original living cell came into being by spontaneous creation through random chemical processes, or it came into being through supernatural creation by an Almighty God. 

The second problem I have with evolution is with intelligent design. Everywhere you look there is amazing detail and order. Consider the human eye. Light passes through the lens where it is focused and converted into an image on the retina at the back of the eye. The retina is comprised of photoreceptor cells that are light sensitive converting the image into electrical signals that are in turn interpreted by the brain. Each eye has one million nerve fibers that electrically connect the photoreceptors to the visual cortex of the brain, which reconstructs the image in such a way as we "see it." And if that doesn't impress  you, the performance of the eye will blow you away. To simulate even 10 milliseconds of the processing of a single nerve cell would require the solution of 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations, and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Now consider that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways in each eye, so that it would take a Cray supercomputer 100 years to simulate what takes place in your eye many times a second. How does that happen by evolution?


And that is just one of millions of examples of intelligent design, with more being discovered daily. And if intelligent design is not evidence enough, then explain how human emotions; like love, reason, or conscience, evolved. Or music. Where did musical notes and harmonious chords come from? Science alone just doesn't have the answer for life's tough questions.

But, if there is a God who created everything, who is He? And who created Him? If we say that evolution makes no sense because living things can't come into being without something that caused it to exist, then why doesn't the existence of God also need a cause? And if we reason that the existence of God doesn't require a cause, then why should we require that for an explanation of the universe?

This is getting really interesting. 


If life can only exist within the finite dimensions and boundaries of our reality, then there is good reason to question the whole concept of a Living Creator God. But what if there is more? What if there is existence beyond time and space as we know it?

Let's start with the concept of existence itself. If something has a beginning, then it had to have a cause that brought it into existence. But can the same be said for something that has no beginning?

In Hebrews 7:3, God says that He has no mother or father, no genealogy, no beginning of days, nor end of life; but that He exists perpetually.

What if we think of it this way. Assume Einstein's theory of general relativity is correct. Then all matter is inseparably linked to time and space. Which means that time had to begin simultaneously with matter and space. If God, by definition, is the creator of the entire universe, then He is also the creator of time. If He created time, then He is not limited by the dimension of time, and therefore doesn't need a cause for existence. He exists beyond the dimension of time in a parallel universe. 


So what can we learn from this discussion? 


For one thing, there are a lot of opinions out there, and each person has the right of free will to believe in whatever they want. 


Some might say that they believe that this life is all there is. That since there is no God, nor heaven or hell, nor eternity, they are going to live for themselves, and try to enjoy their few short years of existence as best they can. You only go around once, so live it up!


Others might say that they sort of believe in some form of higher power, but don't like the concept of moral rules and regulations and someone telling them how to live. 


Still others believe that there is only one true God who is the author of all life. That He created all things perfectly, but something went terribly wrong causing His creation to fall under the curse of self-centeredness, death, and decay.


But a bigger question might be, why do we believe what we do? 


The truth is always the truth. One plus one equals two. It is not altered because of what we choose to believe. But if what we choose to believe does not align with the truth, then there will be consequences we have to accept. For example, if a sailor sets out to sea despite the warnings of an approaching hurricane because he doesn't believe the forecast, then he must accept the consequences if he is wrong.


So it is vitally important that we discover the truth, and not be caught off guard.


For me, I choose to believe that there is only one true God who is the author of all life. I cannot bring myself to believe that life created itself, that it came into existence out of nothing by some unexplainable process over billions of years. So the next question in my journey will be, how can I know who the one true God is? There are many religions who claim to believe in some form of deity. 


God bless you all as you travel with me on this journey to discover the truth.