THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Without referring to the word ‘God’, they were believers in some higher power. For example, the German philosopher, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) called it the “world spirit”. So was the case of other philosophers, although they gave it different names. For the philosophers, it was difficult to believe in a personal God. They were believers of God as a pervading spirit, and not as an independent being. This philosophical theology is called idealism in history. It was this philosophical theory that was accepted by theologians in the name of Monism. These theologians believed in God, but not in terms of a personal God. Instead, they believed in God in terms of a spirit pervading throughout the cosmos. Scientific studies of the modern era were not related directly to the question of God, but they influenced the belief system indirectly. In fact, modern science started a new intellectual process in the divine field. Now this process has reached the extent where science and theology seem like a single discipline although with two different names. In the realm of the physical sciences, we have had three major paradigm shifts in the last four centuries. The first is attributed to Isaac Newton (1643–1727). Here we have the Newtonian hypothesis that matter was the basic building block of the universe. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Albert Einstein (1879–1955) developed the Einsteinian paradigm of energy being the basic building block. Currently, research in quantum physics has shown a relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness with scientists like David Bohm (1917–1992) and many others accepting consciousness to be the basic building block of the universe. These shifts have had inevitable consequences for the new age philosophy, which has moved away from the philosophy of crass materialism to that of spirituality. Perhaps this is the final word of science, but the final word of science has only opened the door to another realm or discipline, and that is religion or theology. If the building block of the world is consciousness then what is the difference between consciousness and God? God is If we deny the Creator, we will have to also deny the existence of the universe, which is not viable. We cannot deny the existence of the universe; therefore, we have to accept the existence of a Creator as irrefutable logic.