Proving God

I studied in a typical methodist primary school when I was young, even though none of my parents are Christians. They sent me to the school because it was one of the "ang moh" primary schools around at that time and thought it would be beneficial for me to be in an English-speaking environment since I spoke only Chinese at home. Along with the rest of my classmates, I had to pray every morning during assembly. There would be a reverend leading the prayer over the PA system and all the students will bow their heads and follow. Being young and impressionable, I remember thinking it was cool to pray since every other classmate was doing the same. I badly wanted to fit in so I followed suit. There was no consideration on whether I wanted to be a Christian or if I believed in Christ. It was just something everyone did and I followed. To be fair, I was only an 8-year old.

Later in life, I didn't really get any more direct opportunities or motivation to further pursue Christianity. It gradually faded away from my life. In fact, probably to my education or experiences etc, religion was never really a subject I thought much about. I was way more interested in the sciences. Physics, mathematics, economics or even philosophy appealed to me more. Gradually, it became a choice for me. I would believe in either science or religion, not both. I was convinced somehow that the two fields are opposites and thus cannot coexist naturally. Maybe its due to age or wisdom, I do not really think that anymore. At least not in such absolute terms. I do not consider myself an atheist. I think I am more of a pagan, a go-between a believer and a skeptic. I believe there exist a supernatural power, an almighty consciousness . However I do not believe there necessarily needs to be formalized rituals or established institutions to worship that power. Certainly not a standardized textbook to decipher the meaning and purpose of that consciousness!?!

This rather succintly describes what I view religion to be. An institution or system that tries to rationalize and explain something we should not be capable of understanding anyway. However I do not deny the existence of that supernatural power. Some call it Jesus, some call it Allah, other say it's God. To me, they are one and the same, just different names for the same almighty consciousness. We cannot fully explain God with science or logic. The very idea of divinity suggests that we cannot cognitively decipher its origin or purpose. If we were to, God would be reduced to a more mortal dimension and thus "undivine".

A dear friend once tried to prove the existence of God from a biological point of view. He tells me that from our study of entropy and evolution, we will conclude that all systems have the tendency to move towards a less energetic, more lethargic and stable state of being. Matter will seek lose their internal energy and try to reach an equilibrium state. We learned it as our typical high school science textbook cliche, "everything reaches equilibrium, eventually". However for the evolution from single-cell amoebas billions of years ago to humans today to be possible, matter have to behave contrary to this universal law of nature. There definitely exist the possibility for uninitiated random events that excite the systems out of its slumber and spark increases in entropy and activity, but such coincidences should logically be far and few between. To kickstart and propogate the process of evolution, such coincidences have to happen billions and billions of times, over millions and millions of years for our world to be where it is now. Logically and statistically, the sheer improbability of such coincidences should make it impossible but yet, Earth is teeming with life. Surely it cannot be just dumb luck? His explanation? The existence of God.

I know of another similar phenomenon within physics. In classical Newtonian theory of physics, all things are determinate. We can predict a future state of our world with absolute certainty since we can accurately calculate the position, speed, energy etc. of every particle in our universe, as long as we know the initial state it is in. Future is not longer an uncertainty but instead a definite result governed by established theorems and laws. The difficulty lies in harnessing enough computing power to harvest the data needed and compute the necessary calculations. However that is strictly a logistical issue which does not refute the fact that we can theoretically calculate and project the future. However there is another physical theory that fundamentally refutes the Newtonian view of our world, Quantum Physics. A core characteristic of quantum mechanics is the lack of deterministic causality and that at subatomic levels, a particle can exists in different states and space at the same time. Quantum physics suggests there is an inexplicable randomness lying at the heart of all things in this universe and we cannot perfectly anticipate an outcome due to the existence of this randomness. Many think that behind these 2 paradoxical views of the world, lies the divine. God is hiding behind the fabric of the institution which we call science.

While we cannot sufficiently prove the existence of God through science, we also cannot explain everything (ie. the randomness) in our world by science. When we tear down our understanding of the world to the very basics, there are fundamental building blocks that do not have a reason of being. They just are. The simplicity and inexplicabilty of these fundamentals is God. We cannot attempt to explain or rationalize this. It's as if we can never hope to understand the purpose of these proverbial building blocks. Similarly 'God' does not care about any religious worship or rationalization of the higher designs of the divine because they are but constructs of man and represents man's need to place himself at the centre of the universe. This is part I of a 2-blog entry regarding religion. This is my attempt of a logical explanation of the existence of God. I will continue to expound on this issue on the next entry.