The Logical Concept of God
Zachary Gleason
June 28, 2009
Can God logically exist? Does it seem like a fairy tale that there is a person who can read our minds, control the elements, and watch over billions of people simultaneously in an individual way.
It is commonly accepted that the average person only uses a very small percentage of the minds capability. Modern day savants give us a small glimpse of the untapped power of the mind. Compare the mind to a computer and think of the storage capabilities it would take for a computer to remember all of the sights, sounds, movements, emotions, smells, and feelings we have experienced. Even a modern day super computer is not capable of storing that much information let alone producing the creative products of a human mind; that said, we wonder how a higher power can listen and respond to the needs of so many people? We do not find it surprising that a very basic internet server can simultaneously respond to the unique requests of hundreds of thousands of different people in almost real time. We go to Google, type in a request and find the information we are seeking in a matter of seconds, all while millions upon millions of other people are going through the same process. If Google can perform this function with man made servers and software then it is not a far stretch of the imagination to say that a person who has tapped 100% of the minds capabilities could do something similar.
Could a higher power really read our minds and influence our thoughts? Modern sensors can now be placed on a person's head, read the impulses and blood flow patterns of the mind and control simple robotics. Companies like Honda are advancing this technology with their Asimo robots. For a decade now video camera's have been connected to the human brain, giving limited but functional sight to blind people in the Dobelle Artificial Vision System. If humans, with their relatively crude technology can read thoughts, as well as put images into the mind, then why not someone who is infinitely more advanced?
How could someone live so long? Modern science has shown that the human body is literally programmed to age and die. The sequence of aging is currently part of our DNA, however, many advances are being made that already reduce and even reverse the aging process. Stem cell technology promises the ability to make replacement organs and tissues as needed. Nanotechnology has the potential to eradicate the most common diseases. It is not unrealistic to think that over the next number of decades humans will find the ability to extend life by double, triple, or even more. Imagine a person who already understands the technology of the human body perfectly. If this person understood aging and the processes of life perfectly, then it is easy to imagine how this person would have the ability to live forever.
Why do trends exist to discount the existence of a higher power? Humans have a natural desire to understand the world around them. To know why things move, react, and interact in the ways they do and human nature inclines us to say we have the answers and there are few if any gaps in our thinking. The scientific process is amazing, and often humorous. It is not far off to say that each new generation of scientific theory scraps 80% of the theories of the generation before. They realize they had it all wrong. This pattern is especially revealing in astronomy. The humorous and amazing aspect of this pattern is that each new generation confidently declares, "they had it wrong, and look, we figured it all out" only to be out "figured out" by the proceeding generations. We like to think we understand the world around us, yet there are basic elements of the world around us that we still don't know anything about. For example, gravity; we feel it, we measure the effects of it, we can predict it's effects quite well because it is so consistent, we even use it to our advantage, yet we sill have absolutely no idea why gravity exists. We say gravity is the attraction of two bodies of mass, we know that the more mass the greater the pull, but why? Why are two bodies of mass pulled together? What element, what energy is it that is actually pulling the mass together? We take things like gravity for granted because we experience them every day; yet, like the ancients of Earth knew that the sun would come up each morning, they really had no idea why, just that it was consistent.
Imagine that the ocean represents all the truth about everything including all knowledge about every single element, how each element interacts to each other in every way, and how each element, or combination of elements interact with heat, energy, light, sound, or any other atomic or non-atomic force. This ocean of knowledge would include all truth about every atom, photon, quark, or any other piece of microscopic mass. Additionally, it would include all truth regarding every aspect of every living thing. I personally believe it would be quite generous to say that we have discovered even a gallon when compared to the ocean, but let's just say we know 5%. No one in their right mind would think that human kind has discovered more than 1/20th of all knowledge. If you disagree then you have no hope. If you agree that we still have at least 20 times more knowledge to gain, if not millions of times more knowledge, then is it really safe to say that we have discovered enough to discount the existence of a God. It is absurd to think that the scientific community can take the microscopic knowledge we have, and extrapolate it so far that they deduce there must be no God. The idea that we have enough information to say, "there is no God because we know so much," is not founded and is not logical. One could say there MIGHT not be a God, but would definitely not be able to say there is no God. Assuming that the people reading this will accept that we can not denounce the concept of a higher power based on our fractional knowledge, let's address the concept of there might be and there might not be a God.
Let's take the concept that there might not be a God and that our existence was not intelligently designed. Without a "design" for life as we know it means you and I and all living things are the direct products of random chance and the spontaneous generation of life. We agree that to our finite minds the world we live in is unbelievably complex. The human body, it's ability to move, think, act, and regenerate goes beyond anything we are able to duplicate from scratch, yet life continues to flourish and evolve.
Think about a deck of cards and stack it up in your mind. The deck of cards doesn't seem that complex right? Now toss the deck of cards into the wind and let "random chance" restack the deck. Unless you are imagining some very interesting wind patterns at this point you have probably realized the cards will never restack. Some might say that given enough time they will restack; well, fast forward a trillion years to see if the cards have possibly restacked. You probably realized that after floating further and further apart for years the cards ultimately disintegrated into dust and they didn't even stand a chance of restacking. Now, a deficiency in the analogy exists in the fact that the example uses only one deck of cards to demonstrate the possibility of order randomly coming from chaos. To address this deficiency, take a billion decks and stir them together over billions of years and a properly stacked deck of cards may randomly form in the mountains of cards; however, keep stirring. The once in a million millennia moment when a properly stacked deck of cards would randomly form is now gone. Now compare the stirring mountains of cards to the random generation of the human body over time. Imagine that given enough time the deck of cards did restack, if you add a lot of glue to your imagery you might even convince yourself that the deck stacks properly and stays together indefinitely. With the glue and gazillions of cards that never disintegrate in the elements you might get a deck of cards that stacks and stays stacked. So if the cards could do it then couldn't human life spontaneously generate over billions and billions of years? It is safe to say that the deck of cards is slightly less complex than a human body. Let's make the equation slightly more relevant by adding just a hint of complexity. Imagine that over time the other cards spontaneously generate a box and cellophane wrapper for the cards and spontaneously put the cards in the box. Given billions and billions and billions and trillions of years is this ever going to happen, let alone finding the nice little designs on the box like we see on bicycle playing cards. No. This will never happen no matter how much time the pile of cards is given. Even if you throw millions of high resolution photo printers into the mix it still won't happen. One might argue that it was human creativity that put those designs on the box so it's not really applicable; then we ask what is easier to spontaneously generate over an infinite amount of time, a nicely packaged deck of cards, or human creativity. In case the example is not clear, a deck of cards is far less complex than human creativity. If a deck of cards can't randomly be generated, how likely is it that the human body and mind would be spontaneously generated, let alone go on to spontaneously generate the deck of cards? Not very likely.
Follow the logic, 1) life spontaneously generates, 2) out of life human creativity spontaneously generates, 3) human creativity spontaneously generates the spontaneous idea that human life was spontaneously generated. Sounds ridiculous? It is!
So the concept in question is, God may or may not exist. Logic tells us that spontaneous generation of complex life forms might seem a little far fetched. My question is, how could we exist among the chaos of the cosmos without some intelligent power out there to promote and ensure our existence. I don't think we could exist without that power. I personally believe it is the same power that gives a seed the ability to grow, a child the mind to laugh, a father the power to love, a mother the will to sacrifice, the Earth it's orbit, the moon it's place, the sun its setting and rising, and the stars their perfect movement along the night sky. Where you go with the concept of who or what this higher power is, is up to you, but one thing is clear, there is a higher power that influences all of our lives in infinite ways.
