There are some interesting possibilities if we consider God in all of our thoughts. By doing that, those of us who have a curious mind by nature can reach some valid conclusions that have a very good chance of being reality instead of merely outlandish possibilities. Because of what we already know by proof about space, time and light there are some inescapable conclusions that can be drawn about the nature of God that are based entirely on the present reality.
For instance, such things as black holes, "worm holes," singularities and other phenomena including the actual beginning of the universe, show us that the past, present, and future are all relative events. What is the past for one person located in one part of space may be at the same "time" the future or present for another. Stephen Hawking and others have shown the logical reasons for this if anyone cares to study up on this subject. This brings the idea of foreknowledge and predestination out of the exclusive realm of theology and into the realm of science as well. A being that is now in what we must call another dimension of space and time may know what we have done before we ourselves know it. The only problem that being would have is communicating his knowledge to us. Of course if that being is God himself he can do whatever he wants but isn’t it interesting that for thousands of years these things were written when the knowledge that we have today was not available?
The definition of God implies both an eternal being with no beginning or end, and it also implies foreknowledge and its counterpart, predestination. In this instance the old arguments of the atheist were valid because he often argued (and still may) that all things are predestined and inevitable. He argues this on purely natural grounds of course but let’s look at this from a more realistic perspective instead of making the initial absurd assumption that there is no God. Our beginning and our end is already known by our creator. In fact the beginning and end of human history is entirely known by him. He has the option of intervening at will anywhere he chooses. We, on the other hand do not know what lies ahead so we are free to act out our little drama here without actually being puppets on a string. The often argued subject of predestination and free will really has a simple answer. Both sides are right. Therefore God is entirely justified in judging us for the actions that we take of our own free will while at the same time he is not restricted in controlling the universe and our actions as he sees fit.
The control is implied by his options at creation even if one does not assume that he intervenes later. With foreknowledge of what would happen in one act of creation or another God went ahead and created that which he full well knew would turn out the way it has. This is not a very pleasant thought for most of us because it implies that God himself is ultimately responsible for all of this evil on earth. There is also another implication and that is that God knows the future and can write down not what might happen but what has already happened. That is why false prophets are so easily exposed in time. God is not supposing anything. He has already seen what happened. The old time Calvinists had at least one thing right and that was the predestination of man. Isn’t it interesting that they knew by faith what we now know now by scientific logic? Which leads me to the next point. God is certainly not limited in revealing his foreknowledge to anyone he pleases.
The evil then that God obviously allows here on earth is foreknown by God as well as the good. The only way out of the otherwise logical conclusion that God himself is evil, is in the concept of time and eternity. Some will argue here that, no, the fact of our own will frees him from that charge. Well it certainly frees him of responsibility for our own specific actions that we take as moral agents but that does not touch the problem of his options at creation to prevent the whole mess from happening to begin with. Unless of course, one does not believe that God does know what he is doing. Then it would be accurate to describe him as a poor misunderstood being that is trying to be nice but he just doesn’t have the power to do it. What we have here then in that case is a creation out of the control of its creator. That makes that particular imagined god rather pathetic don’t you think?
There is no escaping the conclusion however that there were some created, in the beginning with the full knowledge of God, to be evil persons. I am sorry but there is really no logical way out of this conclusion. Biblically speaking, there is no way out of it either (See Romans 9). These "evil" people have the option of being good like the "good" people have the option of being bad, but in the eyes of eternity and in the foreknowledge of God they are just plain evil. No, I am not talking about atheists here. The entire creation was apparently set up as a battle field. All of the life processes are opposed by destructive forces. There is no place on this earth where the pure and good creation of God is not attacked in some way or another. There is no other option but the foreordained existence of evil if one accepts the idea of an all powerful and all knowing God. Let’s face up to reality. If God is all powerful then he did just what I described. He ordained a struggle between the forces of good and evil in his initial acts of creation because he knew what would happen as a result and he went ahead and did it anyway. Free will does not enter into the initial options that only God had when he decided to exercise one option of creation instead of another. The only free will that is involved in the act of creation is God’s.
Where free will comes in is down here on earth. No one is pulled on strings like a puppet except in the instances where God chooses to intervene. Even then his options of intervention may simply be to allow people to go about their business as usual. He cannot be charged then for the offenses that the individuals commit because they did it freely themselves. God did not force them to do it. What’s more, the so-called good people could be the source of a particular evil circumstance. No one is perfect. The will of mankind is allowed to play its role in determining the exact result that God ordained in the beginning. Of course that final result is not seen by us.
Now let’s see where all of this speculation "that may exist only in the mind" comes from. We have explored the biological realm and based our conclusion that God must exist on existing law. We did not find it necessary at all to speculate in our minds as to what may be reality in certain contrived situations. We simply based our factual conclusion that God must exist on empirical evidence. It is therefore a fundamental law of the universe that there is a God. We reached that conclusion without the aid of fantastic speculation. The notion that space men were really the "mental source" that created life only moves the problem back further but the conclusion is the same.
The place for God, if you will, has already been determined to be a necessity somewhere within the molecules of life because they needed to be interjected with information at least once.
Making DNA and throwing it in the dirt is not enough to make a living thing. There must be the active use of that information within life’s machinery. The machinery of our body is made to function as it is fed information from our brains. That information often has an external source such as a suggestion from another that we choose to form into a certain activity. The principle of the invisible insertion of information to control results is already established therefore. If that were not the case then the advertising industry would certainly be wasting their time.
The idea then, based on the simplest solution is that God or a force from God is in the universe, and his presence solves all of the problems that would otherwise require unnecessary fictional speculation. And he is in life itself because the biological universe is a part of the entire universe. This solution is what I call The Grandest Unifying Theory that ties all things together in the entire universe. It is based upon present known reality including known laws of nature and the known existence of God, the known requirement of information, and the known place of uncertainty that exist in the entire universe. For some reason today’s so called "Grand Unifying Theories" exclude the consideration of gravity. So how does that make them grand and how can they be taken seriously if they ignore forces and information that obviously exist? And how can any theory be taken seriously if it ignores the reality of a creator or intelligent mental force that is already proved a necessity for life to exist?
There are several ways to disprove my theory:
1. Show that mathematically it is possible to unify life and it’s associated requirement for information with the structure of the universe.
2. Devise a simpler solution based on the laws of nature.
3. Discover a new law which overrules the lesser ones and ties in life and the universe.
4. Prove that it is already unified without the need to theorize anything.
The advantage of my theory is that it is simple. It violates no known laws. It solves the mysteries of gravity, the uncertainty principle, relativity, light, time and eternity, free will, predestination, information, the beginning of life, the beginning of the universe and time, and the end of the universe and time. I believe it was Einstein who said that the best theories were the simplest ones that encompassed the most. If that is the case then mine is the best. Of course I cannot take credit for it because it was already written before I wrote this: "In the beginning God..."
Some would say that my interjection of God into the solution is in itself an added complication that opposes the logic presented by Occam, because God himself is an extremely complicated being. However he is known already to be a relevant factor in our existence. Therefore he is not a factor that can be ignored. If he exists then there must be a place for him. If he is in everything then the universe makes sense. Because it is already necessary that he has interjected himself into life it is not an added complication to consider his presence in the universe, it is simply a logical deduction that is based upon the current available evidence.
Removing a known factor from a problem further complicates it regardless of the complication of that particular factor. Like the man who removes the complication of gravity when he designs a bridge misuses Occam’s razor so is it misused if the already proved necessity of a mental source within the invisible atomic structure of life is seen as an added complication. The result of misusing Occam’s razor like the bridge designer did is a complicated pile of rubble! His entire structure collapses. Again: Propose a simpler solution that adds up and you can prove that I am wrong in assuming that God is in the invisible structure of the entire universe. Until then, the only way that my theory cannot be taken seriously is if one resorts again to modern evolutionary pseudo science which hides its head in the sand and pretends that God does not exit.
So let’s stick to the known facts and build our theories upon a true basis instead of the absurd assumption that there is no God. Stephen Hawking was entirely justified in forming his elaborate models of the theoretical beginning of the universe, black holes etc. because he based those models on known laws and evidence for the most part. In light of today’s knowledge and evidence the concept of time is far too intertwined with eternity to make much of a distinction except in our little world down here.
Some are willing to relegate God to a distant first cause and leave him there somewhere outside of our universe twiddling his thumbs or something. It would seem however that he is vitally needed in the gaps. Yes, I used that word. The gap however that must be filled is probably more accurately described as a gaping hole that exists in every area of the universe. Putting God in this uncertainty that must forever remain an uncertainty otherwise seems to solve all of the problems that have plagued science for ages, especially this information age. Putting God "in his place" in the entire universe as well as outside of it also solves mysteries that are more of an immediate nature with practical application in the here and now.
Eternal life is now a valid concept and not just a faith based one. Eternal death, or eternal punishment is also within the realm of possibility without resorting only to theological arguments. Miracles, visions, prophecies and all sorts of supernatural activities can now be explained simply by putting the creator in his creation. Also, things like altruism, human emotions and delusion can be explained logically. This of course does not limit God to this one place in everything because he can still be outside of our known universe in an entirely unknown world. Now let’s face facts here. If intelligent intervention is necessary for the beginning of life then that intervention must have been supernatural. It was an invisible force with intelligence. It is no great leap then to assume that he is still there. The observation that the universe is expanding cannot be reconciled with the amount of matter that is in the universe that is needed to support the various forces of nature that are known to exist (weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, gravity, electromagnetic force). We can either theorize new forces or dimensions or we can assume that an existing force that has not yet been considered is in the place of the missing matter.
Now doesn’t that make sense?
Although the first cause argument is still valid as far as we are concerned because we had a beginning that was caused it is not necessary to consider it in light of the eternal nature of things and God himself. The natural elements that make up our bodies do not just dissolve into nothing. They are used again to make more dirt from which we were created. That dirt or worm food is recycled into the universe that is composed of space and matter - and God. Because God inhabits all of the universe it is no great thing for the concept of eternal life to exist, or eternal death, or eternal torment. All of those possibilities are among the options of God. Another option that he has is that of delusion. The will of man does not have to remain free. It can be given to another or God can just take it. God has no necessary mandate as creator to keep his hands off our will.
This creates the possibility that any one of us may be deluded at any time.
Morality itself and its source can now be understood if we assume that God is in his creation. The universal conscience of all mankind is easily explained. The nature of judges, chiefs, or various types of authority figures in all societies is now seen as a reflection of the law of God. When I use the word law here I am referring to the natural or moral standards of God that are inherent in his being. Some will say here that I am only proving that the nature of God is corrupt because many societies have some weird ideas of justice and morality. But finding polluted water downstream does not prove that the source is polluted. It is still water regardless of how it is misused later. Love, hate, compassion, grief, sorrow can now all be assumed to have originated from a common source and not the result of some "selfish gene" that miraculously came into being and "thinks" it can survive better if it is full of these emotions. Trying to produce any kind of morality from pure selfishness is on its face absurd. All of those roads invariably lead to a pack of wolves who devour lambs at will.
Morality is entirely subjective if it is based upon animal instincts and the reasoning of man. Any new form of morality or immorality can arise at any time without limitation. This contradicts the basis of all of science and that is law. If there is no law that governs morality then we are inherently free to do as we please without the need to answer to anyone. Trying to restrain anyone who does anything "wrong" in those circumstances is absurd. That same individual that gains power can just as easily restrain you on the same basis - of lawlessness. There can ultimately be no standard except the one that is set by those currently in power. The law then becomes exactly what was predicted - power is moral. Or, He who has the gold makes the rules.
A supreme being on the other hand sets his own moral standards whether they be acceptable to us or not. Of course the moral standard set by Jesus Christ is good. How can you argue with "love your neighbor as yourself" or "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? This moral standard is fortunate for us. Another God could have just as easily said, "kill the weak and innocent and claw your way to the top." Incidently, that is exactly the moral standard that is implied in Darwinism’s survival of the fittest or the concept of "selfish genes." Our creator is a law that is based upon his own nature. He is the law. Some will say here that God himself commanded the destruction of the weak. That is true, he did. But what are you going to do about it? Whether his eternal purpose, our own corrupt nature, the nature of sin or any other factor enters into God’s decision to command the destruction of an entire culture including the children what is anyone going to do about it - pretend that he does not exist? My experience is that God resists the proud but gives grace to the despised and rejected members of society. Death is a transition and suffering is a teaching tool in God’s eyes so I do not question the death of anyone.
Regardless of what is right or wrong in our eyes, reality is what it is. The moral standards are set by God whether we like them or not. The creator is answerable to no one. It seems obvious to me that God ordained a struggle between the forces of good and evil. In the eyes of God was Adolf Hitler evil even when he was a child? I really don’t know. The point is that it is foolish to resist God regardless. The nice thing about the Bible is that it tells plainly about the good and the evil. There is no attempt to pretend it is all one big wonderful world. In fact it plainly says that this world is cursed and corrupt and in rebellion against its creator. In one place God said that the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The God of the Bible plainly cursed the earth. It would seem to me that all of these factors add up to confirm the present reality of evil, pain, sorrow and for many, a virtual hell on earth.
I believe in the God of the Bible because the other supposed gods do not measure up to the present reality and the reality of history. Some would rather live a lie than face up to the truth as it really is. It does not surprise me in the least that a man like Jesus would be killed for doing good. The amazing thing about that act of injustice is that it was ordained by God and written down before it happened. I have no problem believing that the supreme evil can be turned to the ultimate good. The Savior of the world was sent into this struggle between good and evil before it began. The end was known by God at the beginning. The Bible speaks of the "goodness and severity of God." All of recorded history testifies of that fact. It also testifies of the inhumanity of man toward his fellow man. The fall of man and the resulting corruption seems to me to be the perfect explanation for reality as it is.