Can we prove God exists?

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First let me say, I was glad to see Blogger increase their number of allowed pages from 10 to 20. The subject of God deserves its own page regardless of whether God exists or not. This page is the result of an ongoing debate  I am having with a close friend. Should it ever end up in a book I shall have to compensate him for it's existence.  Beyond that, God's existence is above both our abilities to control.  

This is not about God existing, it's about being able to prove God exists if in fact God does. It is my friends belief that no one can ever show God exists just  like no one can show gravity exists. I disagree.  The most uneducated person on this planet knows gravity exists even if they had to learn it the hard way. One can argue that the same holds true for God. My friend would say we can see God's work in everything.  That argument holds some merit until we introduce some chaos and mayhem into it. Logically,  a perfect God would see no purpose in some forms of chaos and none in mayhem if in fact God is perfect. Could God exist and not be perfect?  That is another debate.

There are no surprises in gravity and there are no mysteries other than undiscovered  properties. We have discovered many new things  about gravity over the last three centuries. All that we discover  never contradicts anything we already knew. When we try and use logic and science to understand God we immediately run into  serious issues with the primary one being chaos. The result, science  ignores  any real effort to prove God and of course the theologists of the world have a heyday with  the continued ignorance  and come up with all sorts of concepts that do have a common theme. That theme is controlling the lives  of us all in order to  attain the behavior they desire  from us. That alone should be enough for science to step up and take on the challenge.    

It is the underlying reason why science and religion are in a continual state of conflict. The fact is, if God exists, science will prove God exists once it has the knowledge to pursue the research. Maybe we have the knowledge already and all we lack is the resolve.  That is the reason  I write this.

To get some grasp of this issue we need to go back to the beginning. When it comes to our existence that is the beginning of our universe. I promise that I will keep this in layman's terms. I will have to take liberties with actual science  to do that but I will stay within the boundaries  of physics as we currently know them. I have no doubt I will be  challenged when  any physicist reads this and believes I  stepped out of bounds.

Up until the  mid 1800's we simply did not know a lot about our universe. There were only a  few who believed there were other galaxies beyond our own. A lot happened  in the late 1800's and early 1900's to change all that.  The list of those that contributed is long and  most of you  reading this would know the names responsible if I mentioned them. You would also know the names of the  inventions that helped them discover all they discovered.  What does get overlooked  is the fact that  from the first time scientists  started believing in the Big Bang theory until now the theory has held up. It has done more than that. Every tool we have built supports the theory and there is no sign anyone will ever  come up with another solution that  does not involve  some pieces of the Big Bang  having a role in how the universe came to be.  

Why is that important in this discussion? I shouldn't have to even ask that question. If God exists, God is in there somewhere. Theologists can argue God existed before the universe did and  there is no way to counter that argument but they cannot argue that God would not have had a major hand in the Big Bang happening. So major  that God's presence would certainly be detectable if we looked in the right places.   

With apologies to physicists everywhere,  I am going to keep the math out of this. We know a lot about the Big Bang and we are discovering more on a daily basis. One reason is we are seeing more of the universe on a daily basis but more about that later. Early observations, as we could make them, have held up and  mathematical solutions developed because we  could not see or measure everything have held up as we discovered the abilities to  measure  and analyze  what we see. That is huge.  You have to have  a lot of knowledge in the field of science to know how huge so please take my word for it, it's huge.

We have no idea what there was  down to the tiniest fraction of a second before the  Big Bang occurred beyond the fact there was no fraction of a second involved. There was no time. There was no space. What the hell was there? God is as good an answer as anything.  There is some evidence,  manufactured with equations, that parallel universes exist and ours was spawned but  where did
 the parallel universes come from?  Conjecture is the realm of theosophy and philosophy. The only science that can sit down with them is cosmology. The proof that God exists will be found in our universe so we need to look no further than that. 

So suddenly there was time and space and in the tiniest fraction of a second after space and time existed there was energy. A lot of energy. All the energy there ever will be in this universe, Maybe that energy collectively is God? How could we measure it  if that is in fact true?  That gives us a place to start.  All that energy could not stay  in one place. It had to get out of town fast or bad things would start to happen (I can see many physicists squirming with that explanation). Energy now enabled by the existence of space and time did just that. There are no limits on how fast energy  can go and it separated  rapidly. Do not compare this to an explosion. Just accept it separates. In the first  second of its existence it was already huge and it continues to expand to this day  faster than the speed of light as long as it is in energy form or a void.  It may all be energy. Some believe there is  no space and they have some proof, but for now there  is a lot of space involved.

If I haven't made this too complicated there should be a question bugging you right now. The question, "Uhmmm where did the energy come from?"   Answer that one and you get a Nobel prize. Was it there already? Was God there already? They both may share a common answer.   The current  thought is the energy was there first  but there is a little problem with that. If that is true there may very well be no such thing as time. All we know is once a relationship commenced that,  for the lack of a better way to say it,  made all that energy aware of its own presence, something had to happen  fast and it did.

There are a few of us who believe space and time came first but  there is not one iota of proof to back us up. No math, no particles, nothing. Our only hope is, the more we discover, the more it looks like time does not exist. That means reality is 100 percent perception and things like existentialism have to be taken seriously. Said another way, when you die your universe ceases to exist. I think it is easier to look for God then try and follow the  twisted turns  and dark alleys many who think too much and observe too little follow. In the field of mathematics, if you prove the impossible, you prove the inverse is probably true. There is a reason why  most people do not pursue a career in math and physics. You just read the reason.

The chicken and egg argument is child's play compared to this one. What happened  in those  parts of a second so infinitesimally small that it is easier to comprehend a  total universe?  We don't know. It is that simple. If you think time must be easier to understand then the universe, warp your  mind around this. The point  where time  no longer becomes a factor is  less than a trillionth of a trillionth of an attosecond. 100 attoseconds is to one second as a second is to 300 million years. Okay I lied. I had to use a little math to present a very small point. Personally I will stick  with trying to think of the universe and whether we can prove God exists.

Back to the big bang. In the beginning there was no life because there was no mass. Once the energy  got out of town, it started to slow down and particles were formed. It slowed even more and particles started combining and larger masses became a part of reality. Maybe that's when God  became part of the equation, the formation of mass. Another place to look.

Speaking of looking, that brings us to the best  thing we have for looking, the photon.  I am not going to go into particle physics here but photons are handy little things that let us see what atoms are doing  in both space and time.  Let's rewind mans evolution until  that very  first human capable of comprehension.  Was there only one  or did a lot of them happen at once? That too is an area where one can look for God.   One or many, it doesn't matter but full comprehension  didn't come along until a language did so many could share their thoughts. Some of those early conversations would  no doubt be very interesting.

Lets assume   we are living in a tribe somewhere in Kansas and we are  among the first  to be able to comprehend our environment. Other than being too damn windy, too cold in the  winter and too hot in the summer what would we know?  We would be more aware of the seasons then  the other critters out there but we would  also know  that, whatever  it was we lived on, it was flat. We would know the sun, the moon and the stars revolved around whatever it was we  lived on.  The main thing providing information to our ever growing curiosity is light.  A lot of time will pass before we know a particle of light is a photon but we will learn so many things from its properties long before we can start to understand them.  The phases of the moon will be our first clue that the earth revolves around the sun.  We will discover the stars are a way to know where you are as is the sun and we will begin to draw symbols that lead to the world of mathematics. Another place to look for proof of God could be  in the study of properties of light.

While we are in the subject of light, it is the only way we can see what we call the observable universe. The Universe is a lot bigger than we can see. Estimates vary and I am not about to step into that  debate but I do want to introduce a thought I don't often see  in the scientific papers I have read. The photons we see are the properties of mass. Not just a little mass, a lot of mass. Before I get hammered by too many astronomers  the energy  in gas clouds we can "see" using frequency measurements are not visible light. I am only talking visible light as being  part of the observable universe. We have tools that can look beyond that but even they are limited to  the speed of light in one way or another.

Things traveling away from us  at light speed or greater we will never see along with any  mass that has formed from slower moving particles.  If stars are forming  or have formed outside  our observable universe the only tool we have to determine their existence is mathematics for now. To prove their existence,  we will need star fleet and its warp drive to go where no man has gone before.  We build a thing called SETI to listen for other advanced civilizations in the cosmos and we have heard nothing. It's a big universe and getting bigger.

I would argue that all advanced lifeforms have followed a similar time line to ours and there were many billions of years when  life was not possible anywhere in the universe. Some civilizations could be well ahead of ours but it is just as likely we are ahead of most of them. I have seen studies on  how evolution could happen on a planet with a red star which is most significant  because there are one  heck of a lot more stars that are red than ones like ours and most of the ones like ours don't have habitable planets.

Our high energy environment  could very easily accelerate our evolution well beyond that of most planets.  Maybe  here is another example of God at work.  We could be the most advanced civilization in the universe. That is a somewhat scary and depressing thought. The way we are going we may need divine intervention to get back on track. According to some religions we have had some already.  

Let's talk about evolution and  try and bring some common ground in. First of all mankind physically evolved. Our DNA is related to every living thing on our planet. That statement by itself does not deny the possibility of a creator being involved. Physical evolution  could easily be part of Gods plan whatever God's plan is. God,  if God does indeed exist, would be far more involved with the mental and spiritual evolution of an advanced life form  than God would  the physical  side. There is no doubt at all, that physical evolution for all life forms is happening  under a demanding set of  rules and regulations.  Some life forms can live in highly inhospitable situations. Human beings  will never evolve near an undersea  volcanic vent.  One can make a reasonable  assumption that, the simpler the life form, the more extreme  the environment it can adapt to. Some simple life forms are very fragile but there are ones who can withstand  extremes well beyond the capacity of any human being who is not controlling his or her immediate environment. We use space suits for a reason.

Anyone who cannot accept that mankind physically evolved is simply an idiot who refuses to accept any knowledge they feel contradicts their beliefs. So lets look at who and what we really are. The question becomes did we evolve mentally and spiritually as we evolved physically?  I think we can make a case within the  boundaries of science that says we  have evolved  mentally and spiritually and once again this is another area we can research in our quest to seek proof of God. Clues that God is involved, if God is, are there. We just have to look for them.

Take our closest relatives, the simians. If I could spin the evolutionary clock and go 100 thousand years into the future and the ecosystems  are fairly close to the ones we have today, our simian relatives  will still be living the same lives they are today. This is not the "Planet of the Apes". If we destroy ourselves or something destroys us, our species will evolve again because we are  the sum total of our current  system. I will go out on a limb and say any intelligent life form anywhere in the universe will look just like us when  their environment is similar to ours. We do not know if intelligent life can evolve in different environments  and won't until star fleet becomes a reality. If advanced lifeforms cannot evolve  on a planet orbiting a red star there are not  a lot of choices out there when it comes to habitable planets for intelligent lifeforms.  Our planet is  almost a fluke. The habitable zone our planet is in is not very big. This opens another area  one can research for proof of God.

That brings us to the actual practice of religion.  In most cases  it distances itself from the scientific method and look at what we have ended up with.  Name one thing  other than the pursuit of natural resources that has led to more wars than the practice of religion?  We talk of  spreading democracy in our current conflicts in the Middle East  but the driving factors  are natural resources one and religion two. Not a lot has  changed over the centuries.  Ultimately, we should figure out a way to share  natural resources but how do we solve religious conflicts when  the scientific method cannot be applied to understanding  God?   We have never fought a  war over  the earth being round or flat though  individuals have suffered when their knowledge contradicted what was  considered  the truth.

Science has given  warring factions  powerful weapons to kill each other with. So powerful we  no longer dare to use them after our initial tests in Japan in 1945.  Dropping  nuclear weapons on Japan at the end of World War 2 was a test. It was a threat of a Russian invasion that ended that war. Of course those two bombs were a factor but  a lot of people wanted to know how devastating the effects would be and how long it would take a society to recover after a nuclear attack.  The Japanese government and  the acquiescence of the Japanese people to that government gave the world  a chance to see what  the effects would be.  Morality can be one of the first things to go out the window when  science, religion or politics has enough motivation to take a course of action. Make no mistake, a religious war could  result in nuclear holocaust.  To think otherwise is extremely foolish. . 

Research in one area could put an end to all this conflict. There is a lot of evidence  that supports reincarnation.  What is ironic here is the religious beliefs that  accept reincarnation as a fact are  the most peaceful of all religions. One would think  that knowing one will live a physical life again would tend to make people even more aggressive than they already are. After all, what have you got to lose? Life becomes similar to all the computer games  we love to play. Dying is no big deal.  Magic  resurrects you and the worst that can happen is  its a long run back from the graveyard. For some reason accepting reincarnation makes people more compassionate. Maybe  this is another  place to look for the proof of God.  It opens two avenues of research. One discovering why people who believe in reincarnation are generally more peaceful and two does reincarnation happen?

Two of the worlds primary faith's would have to undergo  major revisions if we proved reincarnation. They are obvious but they are the Christian and Muslim faiths.  Their  heaven/hell beliefs would have to be tossed out. No great loss if  both end up more peaceful as a result.  At one time Christianity did believe in reincarnation. Maybe it needs to go back to  its roots. The other would have to adapt  to the new information. 

A ridiculous idea you say? Consider this   Energy in our universe has been here since our Universe was created or came into existence. It will be here for eternity or until the Universe ends if it is finite. If God exists, no one will argue that God,  like the energy in this universe,  is any  different. Maybe God is finite at least  in relationship to this universe. We don't know and it will probably be a long time before we do.

There is no reason for  anyone of us to be any different. If we have a spirit that goes on beyond our physical body, and most people believe that, then the energy  that is our spirit existed before  we  were born into our  current physical body. That is what the laws of physics tell us. If that is not the case where did the energy  that is our spirit come from? Does that hold true for all living things? I believe it does but not all living things attain individuality. That takes a spirit or a soul if your prefer.   Researching  whether reincarnation happens is the best place to look for the proof of God. I do believe we have the tools to determine reincarnation. All it takes is the will to start using them.

How do we prove God Exists?


Another way to word this is, "Can we prove God Exists?" To answer  this question we need to look back over the last two centuries. There are basically three approaches to the unknown. We study it and try and  make the unknown the known.  If we do not have the tools or the science to study it, we have to wait until we do.  In the cases of  purpose and fate, our species wants answers now so we adopt a third option, we fabricate knowledge however we can. Those who are the best at fabricating knowledge and selling it, we idolize, and religions are born. We call it faith.

Here is the dilemma. Until God's existence is proven or dis-proven, there is nothing to say anyone's religious belief is wrong. Current religious beliefs  have narrowed the concept of God down to a single God. Similarities exist but theologists  will quickly tell you the differences between beliefs are profound. Obviously fabrication  does not lead to the truth but can we apply the scientific method to proving God exists?   The answer to that question is a resounding no for most of humankind's existence on this planet. Scientific discoveries in the last century now make the search for God possible.

The first thing that needs to be done is to look in the right place for the answer. We had no way to do that until Einstein discovered relativity and we developed tools to look at this universe we live in.  Relativity opened the door to tons of research at the micro level along with proving time and space can be warped. Studying the  big picture ended up  in the hands of cosmologists and astronomers.  If we were not sending craft into space. neither would  receive  much funding. It is only recently we started mapping and watching for objects in space that could destroy this planet. The funds  made available in the search for extraterrestrial life are a joke.

Very few people have any real desire to prove God exists. Rather odd when you consider the extremes society has gone to to fabricate God's existence.   No one is ready to invest in the research for a variety of reasons. We really don't want to know the truth. Any scientist who follows the precepts of science knows  that trying to prove God exists could easily end up proving God does not exist. That is the risk we take as a species and it is a huge risk. It would change the very foundation of society. The first reaction would of course be denial but the proof would inspire others to do the research which would ultimately lead to the knowledge of what God is and how God fits in with the laws of physics.

With no God there is no heaven or hell. Reward and punishment for how one lives their life  is gone. Morality would be based solely on the golden rule but would that be enough? Once again we have to look back at our history. For most of our existence on this planet the answer would have to be no. We have barely survived the ordeals with  reward and punishment  firmly set in the fabric of our society. Have we evolved to a point we can control our behavior without a sense of reward or reprisal? I like to think we have though it would be a rocky transition but the ability to annihilate ourselves will hopefully maintain our species sanity.

Now the laws of physics exist. Our knowledge of them changes but all the energy in our universe is controlled by the laws of physics. If there were no physical laws, all would be chaos. So where is the right place to look for God? 

We know a lot more about this universe than we used to.  We know there are thing we  have not been able to observe or easily explain. The phenomena at the head of the line is black holes. Mathematically, every galaxy should not have a black hole but all that we can observe do. What is amazing is black holes perform a vital role in the chaos that can go on inside any galaxy. Sheer distance between the stars is the  prime factor but black holes remove chaos rather than creating it. Every galaxy has one, There is no mathematical reason for  a galaxy to have a black hole at its center.  There are very small galaxies that may not have a black hole but the odds are they don't have a sun that can support life capable of evolving  to the point we have.    


Here is something to contemplate. What if we discover galaxies with black holes are the only ones capable of sustaining a star with a  planetary system similar to ours?  The case for the existence of God enters a whole new dimension.


Another issue  may be reincarnation.  There may or may not be evidence to support it. It needs to be studied a lot more than it is along with phenomena like three year olds who can play Beethoven. Reincarnation gives a purpose to existence. The concept of heaven does not. It also violates the laws of physics.