Is there a 'God'?

by Tim McEvitt

Here are some points in favour of the existence of a powerful original being.

(1) Intelligent Design

Compare your body to a computer. A computer is a complex system. And your body is a complex system, in many ways more complicated then the computer. For example, two humans can reproduce and make a baby. Two Dells or two AppleMacs in a room won't make a little Dell or a little Mac. Now, a computer was designed and put together by intelligent beings, from the extraction of raw materials from the Earth until the point when it was rolling down the final assembly line. If it wasn't for intelligent people doing the work, there would have been no computer.

In any span of time, a normal person can not imagine a computer self-creating itself. Imagine an empty field and you have a trillion years. Will the petroleum extract itself from the Earth? Will it heat and combine and make plastic, by itself? Will the various metals extract themselves from the Earth, and again combine with each other in the necessary order and fashion? And will all the inert components work out how they all come together to create a functioning computer, on their own?

No, they won't. One needs an intelligent being or beings to make a computer.

And yet we find ourselves occupying a body which is also an extremely complex system. If we consider this analogy, the logical explanation is that our bodies are the work of intelligent beings or an intelligent being. And if you bring the aliens coming from space into it, you still go back to where did they come from... Deeply considering these points, one looks at the world in a new light.

If you want to investigate this point further, you can visit:

www.intelligentdesign.org

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(2) Acceptance of Authority

We all accept various authorities. We hear of a devastating earthquake somewhere in the world on the news, and we accept that this is what has happened. We accept the authority of the RTE or BBC news information system. The American, Russian, or Chinese (or whatever) governments may be involved in various international tensions on some occasions. The news that we get may be true sometimes or may not be true sometimes.

When someone says something and we either believe them, don't believe them, or partially believe them.

When Pope John Paul II was asked about the existence of God, his reply was that we see God by accepting the authority of great saints. Now, it is true that there may not be many saintly people out there. In fact, it may be that the vast majority of people who are regarded as saintly or spiritual, actually have quite a limited relationship or level of knowledge about God. But if you do find a saint, and you then analyse his or her character, you can then decide how much to trust in their opinions.

Here is a rough example using people from the Western world, if one compares the character of St. Therese of Lisieux and modern biologist Richard Dawkins, one may make a character assessment of Therese and decide that she is humble, gentle, saintly and pure-hearted. One may see in Richard's character smugness, arrogance, pride and fanaticism. And then one may consider, 'Well I believe what Therese says more than I believe what Richard says'. In a sense, one has accepted Therese's authority over that of Richard. You're basically thinking: "well I'm not sure myself, but if St. Therese promotes love of God, I think I'm inclined to go along with her". The author of this piece of writing knows little about St. Therese of Lisieux - he's using her achievements to illustrate a point.

'Accepting authority' is closely related to 'being influenced by'. We are all being influenced by things or people that we keep or have kept association with, whether it is the marketing techniques of companies or emotional relationships with others from our childhood, etc. etc. In it the opinion of the author that to discover God, one has to choose ones association very carefully.

People closely associated with ISKCON accept the authority of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He points out that the Bhagavata Purana (Srimad Bhagavatam) itself explains that in it's 18,000 verses are the essence of all Vedic knowledge and the essence of spiritual life.

All the text and commentaries of Srimad Bhagavatam may be found here:

www.srimadbhagavatam.com

Recommendations: (1) the printed version is easier to read, (2) most people won't understand the book unless they study it in the association of people who have practised bhakti-yoga for many years. We recommend Tulasi Priya Das, who often gives the talk at 6.30pm on Thursdays at Govindas Kirtan Centre.

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