| Recently on Facebook, someone asked the following question: Can someone give me ONE LOGICAL REASON to believe god exists?
This was my response:
All of you people should read "Ishmael" by Daniel
Quinn ^_^
God is sort of irrelevant when you look at the grand scheme
of laws and the beauty of not being God.
Anyway, in relation to the logical aspect of God existing, I
must stab at this from the Buddhist perspective a bit. When talking of existence at all, we must
first consider what in fact does exist.
We need a control before delving into such a complex figure as a god. We must look at the realm of the real with a
critical eye and decide on one single reality if we are to as a group determine
a logical progression which would lead to one thing either existing or not
existing without the two happening simultaneously (by means of multiple
realities). Here we see our initial
problem, the first of four, with logically deducing such a vast topic.
We are forced to agree on reality based on flawed
experiences and different perspectives by vote.
Now, if the vote is anything but unanimous, and I can be sure that I'll
vote the one opposition if need be, then there is no fully agreed reality. To say then that my vote doesn't count or
it's a majority rule would mean that for a long time the world was indeed
flat.
This is a perfect segue into the next problem which is the
problem of absolute truth. We believe,
or (better stated) must have faith in the idea, that our current science and
logic are really showing us absolute truth.
The problem here is that we are basing our control on something which is
in constant fluctuation. This is clear
in the rapidly changing aspects of quantum mechanics where we believe with
great certainty that an electron will be within its orbital roughly 90% of the
time but in reality it could be anywhere in the universe at any given
moment. This 90% is good, but hardly can
suffice to be an absolute truth. What we
have from these tactics of reason is a discussion of the "general
truth" and absolutely not an absolute truth. Even a 99.99999999999999% accuracy is still
not always right and thus while our laws exist in science as they are; they
only stand against the test of time. No
matter how long something is considered right that is wrong, it's status as
wrong does not change. So while for now
we must rely on this as a truth for perhaps even a thousand lifetimes, we can
not wisely hold it as the only truth or an absolute truth for all time (which
gods may or may not transcend).
Reason three for the trouble with logical progression to God
is that if it we use a purely logical argument, it would leave out all of the
things which are not logical that can still occur in the realm of a deity. To ignore the spontaneous and sudden
discontinuity which a god or even a human is capable, can occasionally render a
necessary leap for survival, understanding or even absolute truth. Though this may seem wordy, an explanation
Zen Buddhism uses is that when one achieves enlightenment or even a vast
understanding of any kind (Satori) it rarely comes from a purely logical
progression to that state. For example,
when learning to do a difficult physical action, let's say a hand stand, we
can't simply be told how to do it and have it work immediately. It actually takes repetition until your body
finally understands the motion and balance required. It is not a digital understanding but an analogue
accumulation of knowledge which does not have a place in logic or science. To say about A added to about B makes 35 is
an entirely flawed statement. Instead,
we must make a leap to that 35 and apply what we can in our given situation and
basically guess (an action based on logic but not necessarily the logical
answer). It is in this that we find the
application of non-logic which yields results just as well, if not better, than
logic in our assumed reality.
Finally, the most important aspect of this is that all of
our experiences (the root of our logic) are based on fundamentally flawed
concepts of the real. O.K, look at your
hands, then cross your eyes and see what happens. You see perhaps three hands, perhaps two
hands, perhaps even one hand. However,
this perception is subject to alteration and our reality is forced to change
for that period of time. This isn't to
say that only sight is flawed. The sum
of a cold feeling and a warm feeling creates the sensation of a hot feeling to
our touch, thus we cannot trust just the feeling of things. We all hear things incorrectly at times, so
where is the reliability of our ears?
Smell and taste are completely different to different people and so
while many of us love chocolate and it smells sweet and pleasant to us, we can
barely say that is the case for every person on earth. In fact the dislike of chocolate is a genetic
trait. Are these people not perceiving
reality? Are they not trying to
logically deduce one of the empirical things on which we supposedly agree? "Chocolate is sweet, I like sweet
things, thus I like chocolate," is a logical statement that can not be
applied universally to all things. Once
we get to where it would have a logical accuracy, we have to deal again with
the problem of testing every man, woman, child, animal, plant, vegetable,
fruit, mineral, molecule, atom, and subatomic particle OR we can generalize yet
again based on these analogue senses which are subject to change over time and
are different for every individual and a virtually infinite number of possible
realities.
So we have four reasons not to use logic here. That aside, as I re-read your question, I
notice that you are asking for a logical reason to BELIEVE God exists. So let's see what your sources for this can
be...
What are valid means of knowing enough to lead to a
belief? If you want something as simple
as experience, then I can give you no reason to believe in any god. However, you can give yourself that reason by
a series of experiences which validate enough for you to experience a god with
your senses in one way or another (logically speaking though the senses may be
flawed).
Next you have the option of inferring God's existence. You can say, "Well, so many things have
serendipitously occurred in my life that I have reason to believe God
exists." or even simply based on your experiences you can infer God exists
just as you can infer that a deer has been through your yard based on foot
prints in snow or mud, or that you found some fur, urine or feces which could
belong to a deer in your yard.
You could also believe the valid testimony of a trusted
source. If you trust your parents and
they say God exists, why deny their idea (nb: I don't think anyone should
indeed just trust their parents off the bat but they should in fact explore
more ideas than the one into which they happen to be born. However this is just my opinion which is
clearly only worth the price you paid for it, nothing)? If you trust the Hebrew Bible or the New
Testament or the Koran or the Vedas or the Mahayana Sutras that tell about
Bodhisattvas or the Tao Te Ching or traditional Greek and Roman stories or
hieroglyphic details of gods from Egypt or any other texts which detail
someone(s) or something greater than yourself, then go for it and believe in
god(s) and/or goddess(es). If you
believe only science and logic's testimony, then you still lack a thorough
quantitative explanation of the topic.
This isn't because the subject has yet to be tackled, but because we
lack a method or a technology to accurately quantify God as 0 or 1 or
>1.
Conclusion: While
there is no one purely logical reason I can give you to personally choose to
believe god exists, there are plenty of reasons that you have that allow you to
make the non-logical progression to the existence of something greater than
yourself. It is our dualistic thinking
that also says that God must either exist or not. We have the option of saying that God
Non-exists and that we must have faith in God as being beyond either of those
simple ideas of our so called 'reality.'
So I suggest to you that you explore the possibility of this higher
power existing all around you. Just look
at the ocean. Can you still be the
biggest, baddest, most knowing thing out there next to that vast body of water
that is far bigger than we can actually conceive? Sure you can, but to me, that sounds like a
truly arrogant position to take. We
could better use our time helping the world (not OUR world) through faith,
giving and seeking the truth, however difficult and non-logical it may be.
Thanks for reading!
~Raphael
Falkoff
B.A. in
Religion and Asian Studies
from
Temple University
Please respond to this or message me your responses. They can be either praise or critique but
either way, be kind. ^_^
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