Hey All,
I have thought about this.
How can we explain that God exists apart from the Bible?
Creation and consciousness are the obvious two, as Paul pointed out in Romans 1.
Then you can look at the last couple of chapters of Job, as he is questioned by God.
Without telling the unbeliever where they are from, let them try to answer them.
But these are not completely apart. After consideration, let's do Romans 1 using secular terms.
Creation
Science exists because of the immateriable.
The universe follows a uniform, and measurable order. Mankind did not create the order. But we did/do observe it, and created the mathematics to measure, or define, it. We created numbers as the language of mathematics. One plus one cause two.
The universe also has physical laws. Again immaterial, but present. We did not cause the phenomenon of motion, gravity, etc.: But we can observe them, and difine them. We develop formulas, the language of physics, to explain them. Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom cause a water molecule.
Laws are not random. There is even a law for chaos.
Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.
by Edward Lorenz
From whom, or where, did these laws originate? They, the immaterial phenomena, are not man-made, just observable and definable.
Science is then, at its core, an admission that the immaterial exists.
Creation, then, in scientific terms, is observable. Definitions - theories, as to how the universe began, may vary. But the observable fact is that it did begin.
Nothing then something.
Consciousness
There is, within mankind, from ancient civilizations, to present day, a collective need to worship something. It is observable and definable. The immaterable (need to worship), needed by the material (humanity). It is cultural, and at the same time, expands culture. Aborigines, Native Americans, the Incas, all cultures appart from, and unaware of each other, shared/share this common need.
Some worship material things like money, objects, themselves, and/or others. Some worship immaterial things like lust, fame or power.
Atheists worship an empty immaterial. Agnostics acknowledge the immaterial, but leave it undefined. They worship ignorance.
Still others worship the immaterial, maybe by different names - Wakan Tanka of the Sioux tribes for example, but some type of intelligence greater than themselves.
But collectively, the need of mankind to worship exists.
Why?
Where there is a need, there is a cause for that need.
From where, or whom, does this collective need to worship come from?
If something is observable, and definable, we can theorise a cause.
Could it be that the immaterial - greater intelligence - has left its mark on the material?
Is it not the responsibility of the material - humanity - to then try to observe, and define that greater intelligence?
Keep walking everybody.
May God bless,
Taz
