Proof of God Never Stands Still

What makes the best 'case for God' to a skeptic or non-believer, an open-minded seeker, and to a person of faith and Why?

The Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton remarked that God is always a step ahead of the seeker, having just departed wherever the seeker arrives. That's true for anyone who seeks proof of God. The debate is constantly changing its ground. But it wouldn't be true of personal experience, which is the most convincing proof to any individual, an immediate sense that God's presence is here and now (although much less convincing to friends and family who stand by as spectators).

The Bible contains almost no intellectual arguments for God's existence, being entirely filled with direct experience. Jehovah talks to the prophets: Jesus performs supernatural miracles. In modern times the reverse is true. We hunger for objective evidence of all things, even things that cannot help but be subjective, such as beauty or for that matter, thinking itself.

The essential question isn't which type of proof is convincing but whether any proof is possible. Science has steadily eroded religion by saying, in essence, that there is no proof that satisfies experimental inquiry. In the eighteenth century most people would have accepted the argument from design, a rational proposition which pointed to the intricacy of Nature and declared that there must be a Creator behind it. Although such an argument can be updated, not through the creationism of Intelligent Design but by a rigorous argument against randomness, that has proven to be too great a leap for people inculcated to believe that randomness is, in fact, the basis of the universe since the Big Bang.

I'd offer that convincing arguments for God depend upon several factors:

• Getting rid of the notion that God is a person.
• Throwing out all dogma and religious conditioning.
• Looking into the nature of consciousness, which links the observer to reality.
• Taking seriously the concept of an intelligent universe, which implies self-awareness as primary in Nature, not a chance development in human beings.

There are now countless books by a diverse range of thinkers to support all these avenues of exploration. But ultimately, without an understanding of consciousness one can't possibly explain God or the numinous, or expand from personal awareness to divine awareness. Perception changes with the perceiver, including perception of God. Such an ever-elusive deity cannot be the real thing, only a mirror of our own restless awareness. Therefore, to be fully real, God must be perceived at a level of consciousness that isn't personal or shifting. In the East such changeless consciousness is available in a state known as enlightenment, the Christian equivalent of grace. In a secular society such a state of consciousness has yet to be defined and widely accepted (although millions of people meditate or pray, hoping to meet the divine face to face).

Theology has lagged far behind in helping us explore God personally or define the state of God consciousness, unfortunately, being occupied with side issues like defending one faith against another or trying to lure believers back into the church or synagogue. Scientists have done a far better job, ironically, by dismantling outworn notions about reality, but it's rare to find a scientist who is professionally interested in either God or consciousness. God is considered so unscientific to begin with that few researchers consider this a valid field, except for the purposes of a debunker a la Richard Dawkins, who does nothing more than repeat the tired clichés of skeptical materialism. Telling us all the reasons that finding God is impossible, attempts to prove a negative and is useless in explaining the great thinkers, sages, and saints who assure us that God is real.

So where do we stand now? On our own two feet -- seekers must find proof that satisfies them, one person at a time. It's not an easy journey, but it never was, except to those who preferred blind faith over personal exploration. The reason that the Kingdom of Heaven is within is that God is a state of consciousness; there is nowhere to look but within. The deity may be infinite, all-pervasive, and ever-present, but proof of God is on the move, shifting as fast as our own perceptions.

Published in the Washington Post OnFaith

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Comments

[commetor]

Our consciousness is "intelligence" and that is God?

I can park that Idea and meaning for now until the scientists come up with a better explanation and at that time, I'll change my mind and my definition of God.

:)

[minimalist syntax]

In the Eastern Christianity tradition, theology is not something that only some learned scholars do. Instead, theology is the very praxis of faith. My favorite theologian says the following: "Whatever else we may be called
[e.g. homo sapiens, homo faber], we are first and foremost homo adorans.
The first, the basic definition of [hu-]man is that [s/]he is the priest. {S-]He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his[/her] act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God — and by filling the world with this eucharist, [s-]he transforms his[/her] life, the one that [s-]he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him."

[Landon Ross - Huffpost Blogger]

Will this thinking never cease? One wouldn't need to make up supernatural, fantastical stories, if one only learned how vastly more transcendent and amazing reality is. Far greater than any ancient imagination.

[minimalist syntax]

Hello Landon! I absolutely agree with you that Reality is amazing and transcendent.

[minimalist syntax]

One Christian method of prayer is to cease being the observer and to become the observed.T­his is called prayer of the heart.

[PlaceboStudman]

If I understand this, basically what you are saying is that we should throw out God, The Bible, The Church, and see god as nothing more than contemplating our relationship with a universe that is very clearly well organized and has a structure that does reflect some kind of calculatable processes?

Yeah I can live with that.

The question is, how many Christians can you get to live with that definition? Because until the majority of people who identify as religious believers accept your definition of God, there will always be Religion

[minimalist syntax]

Christianity was meant to be the end of religion. Under Judaism, the One True Universal God was a god of a particular location. That is why in the OT God repeatedly identifies himself as the One True Universal God by referring to the place where He was manifested. Christianity was meant to be an end to this split between the mundane and the secular and instead make consciousness an integrated whole.

[PlaceboStudman]

Ah, don't ya just love to see the difference between theory and practice? That may have been Christianity's intent, but Humanity seems to have had other plans for the faith

[LifeChangeStartsNow]

Christianity was not meant to be the end of religion. Why would you think that? The person in the bible cited as Jesus, the embodiment of the son of God, came to set an example of the way to live and be in the world. Your statement seems to be based on a misconception somewhere along the line.

[Michael Schiavo]

Just read Emerson's ESSAYS. It's all there.

[khanti]

Let them be Chopra.

[Norm]

In junior high school, my (advanced) math teacher posited 1=1 as fact. We all assume that without challenging it. An obnoxious child, however, I queried, "How do we know that?" The response was, "One does not necessarily equal one, but you are way beyond us". We are all born within the limitations of the knowledge of our society,history, and world, and no matter how brilliant, we all are necessarily circumscribed by our limited intelligence and and a slew of basic assumptions, like 1=1.
In a thousand years, our science and our religious beliefs may be perceived as laughable.

In another (college) course, during a discourse on Spinoza,I pictured a tree outside the window as vibrant with energy, life. I was filled with wonder and pleasure. When I view the planet this way I still feel delight and peace. This is one of my truths. May you find one as pleasurable.

[elmerfude]

I am adding you to my fan list.

[TheIndependenceParty]

That we would even consider such "facts" as other than absolute, makes us, as Dr. Wayne Dyer calls us, "Scurvy Elephants". (from his recollection as a child when he overheard his teacher refer to him as a 'disturbing element' in the classroom).

When we imagine that two things which appear to be the same, ... whether separate numerals (of equivalent value) in an equation, ... a person at different moments in her life, or even now, ... and "now", moments indistinguishable, but distinct, ... we can believe them to be the same, but indeed they can not actually be so. The "fact" is a concept, based upon a lie, ... taught to us, in direct contradiction to what we see, and know.

If there is a concept that is absolute, it might well be that the pursuit of the understanding of "God" is, and must be, non-collaborative, and solely experiential on our individual level.

Perceived that way, descriptions of faith, and all the enlightened teachers who have been among us, are simply here to serve as examples of that inward seeking. Proselytizing the examples and stigmatizing those who seek individual paths instead of following examples placed before them, have constituted the sources of some of the greatest misery in Human history.

[OtayPanky]

Deepak: The Bible contains almost no intellectual arguments for God's existence, being entirely filled with direct experience. Jehovah talks to the prophets: Jesus performs supernatural miracles.

===

I like this one the best:

"When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them."

Good times!

[JohnFromCensornati]

LOL. Yeah, direct experience like turning into a pillar of salt.

[elmerfude]

Yeah there are a lot of examples of this type of juvenile behavior on the part of the Old Testament God. This is why the Bible is not sufficient within itself to reveal the nature of god. The poet Rilke is much more useful as one example.

[kwinter]

"Yeah there are a lot of examples of this type of juvenile behavior on the part of the Old Testament God."

Don't all gods people have dreamed up (not just the Old Testament God) exhibit "juvenile behavior" ..........­.. isn't playing 'hide and seek' a little juvenile?

[JohnMayer]

Well, I am a skeptic who HAS had a transformative experience (I won’t call it a spiritual experience because I’m not sure what that means). More than once. They weren’t VERY transformative, but they were compelling enough for me to remember them fondly. But they don’t prove anything “spiritual” about the world if, in fact, by spiritual you mean supernatural. I have studied Zen as best I could with only books to guide me. I was attracted to this religion as it neither requires nor forbids a belief in the supernatural. Also, because there is a current of humor in its teachings.

One seeks enlightenment or satori, largely through meditation, and I’ve gotten a whiff of it a time or two. I found it to be a persuasive sense of oneness with the universe, a sense that all was as it should be and life and death were just alright with me. Such an experience can help a person thereafter take some comfort in that remembered awareness, and that, I think, is good enough. It proves nothing, nor does it need to. I suspect a similar enlightenment might also be obtained through drugs, biofeedback machines, perhaps other agencies. I think it just might be the same as, or very similar to, the aesthetic experience when one hears a great piece of music, is moved by a painting or is stunned by a line of poetry.

[JohnMayer]

So I can accept that sort of a personal, transcendental experience as a meaningful and real phenomenon. But it doesn’t help to advance at all our understanding of astrophysics or bring us any closer to a cure for psoriasis.

[elmerfude]

Of course transformative experience does not help us understand astrophysics although many scientists first get their ideas from that pool before they apply the rigors of the scientific method. I am reminded of Einstein imaging he was riding a beam of light. But transformative experience can help us be more compassionate, equitable, tolerant and humane if given a chance. First we must rescue Jesus from religion. Atheists need a little work also. I went to an atheist group for several months after I left religion. Ironically they met on Sunday morning. The only difference between that and Sunday school class--the dogma was different and they didn't pass a collection plate.

[JohnMayer]

“Richard Dawkins ... does nothing more than repeat the tired clichés of skeptical materialis­m.” Right. And I’m also tired of the tired clichés of calculus and geometry. Dawkins explains why the scientific method of reason and focusing on explanations that are subject to falsifiability may be tiring to believers who are unable to refute them except by appealing to blind faith and “transformative” experience. I doubt there is much new to be said about that, just a constant effort by writers like Dawkins to couch those “tired clichés” in new ways that might be easier for those not fully locked into a supernatural world view. I must say, I DO wish, though, that he and skeptical materialists would come up with some fresh, new clichés.

[elmerfude]

There might be folks who are not locked into either a "supernatural" world view or a rational world view. Maybe there are some folks who are not locked into a dualistic, materialistic, deconstructive world view but rather a more organic, integrated and holistic world view don't you think? Maybe there are those who understand and know science including its limitations while also understanding that there are dimensions of beauty, paradox and mystery that can only be approached by the mystical mind.

[Norm]

Oh, SO fanned!

[minimalist syntax]

This integration, this destruction of the separation between the mundane and the sacred was what Christ's death and resurrection was meant to bring: a newly created world.

[ranchero42]

On a different thread one guy suggested the theofascists would try to jail anybody who refused to show up in church. Somebody (you'll never guess who) put forth the surmise that this wouldn't last long because each service would turn into one great long (and embarrassing for the righties) question-and-answer session.

It would be quite a spectacle for the children, watching all these adults in spirited debate about whether or not God ever really existed; not to mention suicide advisories for those inevitable addicted personalities who always maintain they wouldn't want to live in a world without Jesus.

See you in church.

[JohnFromCensornati]

I do like to ask questions.

[JohnMayer]

You may think you’re exaggerating, but, if you don’t happen to be aware of them, look up the Dominionists and the Reconstructionists who DO believe that certain irreligious acts, adultery, homosexuality, etc., should be dealt with biblically, that is, by the death penalty. Their numbers are – so far – relatively small, but their voices are loud, and they influence much larger, more mainstream fundamentalist groups. And those related religious doctrines underpin the Eliminationist movement (even though the Eliminationist who shot up my church was not, himself, religious, his avowed inspirational figures like Hannity and Coulter are. Or claim to be).

[jrjones529]

I think Dawkins deserves more credit for doing more good for advancing religion into the 21st century than most other believers and modern day theologians. Whether you disagree with the premise of his argument, or his method of delivery, the man is a genius and deserves more respect as such rather than all the hate he seems to get from many religious progressives.

[elmerfude]

I have read all the books by Dawkins and the other secular fundamentalists. After a while they become very boring and sterile--like black holes sucking out the soul. I would rather spend an afternoon with Mary Oliver, Terry Tempest Williams, Annie Dillard, Chet Raymo, Pablo Neruda, Ann Morrow Lindbergh or the poet Rilke any day of the week.

[ranchero42]

You don't have to read that many to get the point. Your life belongs to YOU, not some unseen shaman in the sky.

If you need an invisible pal telling you what to do; it'll be a dam.n sight better calling anything that starts: 1-900...

[minimalist syntax]

Dawkins' thinking about the spiritual is immature and boring.

[S-]

This is an excellent video on the subject of open-mindedness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI

And if it doesn't get moderated out again for some unknown reason, you might want to take a look at it.

[jrjones529]

Great video!

[Merlin7]

Good Lord, if you will pardon the expression. This article is a perfect example of circular reasoning: Chopra is saying, "If you disagree with me about the existence of God, it simply means you are unfamiliar with experiencing God through non-logical means." In other words, Chopra is putting his hands over his ears and loudly proclaiming, "I insist that God exists and if you disagree with me, you are wrong -- so there!" And that, of course, is what makes religion such nonsense.

[Norm]

Those who possess a rigid belief in the absoluteness of science do exactly the same thing. Nothing is absolute. Not all is known. We must all quest our own truths; those that satisfy us, but that we do not foist on the world as perfect knowledge.

[HeevenSteven]

straw-man alert. Who says science has absoluteness and perfect knowledge?

[wondering]

So much to debunk, so few words allowed.

This first : "... great thinkers, sages, and saints who assure us that God is real."

OK, are they great thinkers BECAUSE they believe in god, or does some other quality define them as great thinkers and god-belief is an add-on? Just who are you referencing? How do they assure us god is real? Isn't a "saint" (by definition) going to claim that god exists?

You often attack science by tossing out wholly unsupported propositions, and just assuming that the truth of these is self-evident. Of course, for someone who rejects science, that must seem a plausible argument.

How convenient to define god as a moveable goal-line : "God is always a step ahead of the seeker, having just departed wherever the seeker arrives." Don't you see the irrationality in that? ANY crazy notion can be said to have that same indefinable quality : dragons, fairies, UFOs, bigfeet. Open the door to one notion of the supernatural, and all others rush in. Whether you believe in the uber-mind, god as being, or that we are all figments of a cosmic dream, they are all equally valid explanations by your "reasoning". The problem with rejecting science is that you then have no means to test your assertions or to judge between conflicting viewpoints. What a Tower of Babel.
.

[jrjones529]

My dog chases his tail but will never catch it. Funny thing is, his tail exists, so maybe Deepak is onto something?

[wondering]

Your dog can see its own tail and wag its own tail. Your dog can also see (and sniff) tails on other dogs. The existence of tails is empirically determined. Is god?

The human mind is a wondrous thing - but also primitive in its way. We suffer from a wide range of mental illnesses, irrational beliefs, and emotional roller-coaster rides. Is it so implausible that we invent invisible men (or women) as filler - i.e., mental caulk. We see intention where there is none because we are wired to be a highly social species.
.

[HeevenSteven]

My dog catches his tail.

[rogerpaige]

That would be Bigfoots, not bigfeet. Or Bigfootses.

[mbaty]

Thank you, Deepak. You help all of us rational people explain that "God" doesn't have to mean The God of any particular religion, or even an actual personality.
And religion is just an interface.
Evolution is the linear progression.
Quantum physics lets us know things aren't so linear.
Fibunacci spirals abound and other mathmatical perfections within nature.
Chaos is a matter of perspective, randomness appears when the synchronicity is not percieved.
Physicality percieves physicality, not absolute reality. How are we going to detect spiritual forces with three-dimensional things? How are we going to put quantum formulas into a linear order?
The questions are sometimes more important than the answers anyway.

[wondering]

Hmm ... not mathetician, I see.

The Fibonacci sequence occurs in any process that experiences an initial delay. If idealized pairs of rabbits cannot reproduce until their second month, but then reproduce every month after that, the population will look like a Fibonacci sequence over time. Nothing mystical about it.

Mathematical chaos is merely the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. Chaotic systems are determistic. Such systems may appear random to observers who cannot see the initial conditions (or when round-off errors creep in), but in truth they are not, and two observers experiencing two occurences of a chaotic system over the same time frame (and with the same initial conditions) will observe the exact same phenomena. I.e., chaos is effected by initial conditions, not by perspective. Randomness merely implies a stochastic system - one for which a range of possible outcomes (some more probable than others) can result from any given set of initial conditions. Interestingly, there are tests to determine whether a set of data is chaotic or random. Again, no mystery.

I fail to understand how Chopra's god-concept squares with most of the items on your list. Is Chopra's subjective pseudo-logic equivalent to quantum physics or the theory of evolution? Scientific concepts are testable, an amorphous god thingy is not.
.

[elmerfude]

Why does the "amorphous god thingy" have to be testable? Folks who have been transformed by spiritual experience don't really care whether it is testable or not or whether it follows your rules of logic or whether you are satisfied with it or not or whether you understand it or not. The only reason I push back on this is the blogosphere is I get really tired of the arrogance of fundamentalists whether they be logical fundamentalists or religious fundamentalists. You both make the same mistakes and diminish my enjoyment of the creation because you both desacralize nature and thereby end up being agents of its destruction. The spiritual thingy is beyond you, beyond rules and certainly beyond the person experiencing it as well. There are realms of mystery, paradox and transformative experience that are not in the logical realm. Just because you cannot perceive these mysteries, paradoxes and experiences; doesn't mean they don't exist.

[minimalist syntax]

Wondering, for me, that is the most interesting thing that you have ever written. Does that mean that in any component of human development , provided it is a system that belongs to the biological world, will emerge in ways that manifests the Fibonacci sequence? Or will the emerged system necessarily manifest the Fibonacci sequence? And how does the fact that there is an upper limit (e.g. there is a critical period for the emerging property-- say cutoff by puberty) affect the Fibonacci sequence?

[minimalist syntax]

And if Fibonacci is a particular relation between generation n and generation n+1, why does an initial delay affect the sequence and where can I read more about this?