The Divine Universe

It is very difficult to explain my profound sense of the reality of God. Belief in the God of love could be wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is not a dependable source of truth. But there are benefits in wishful thinking. It is stimulating, creative, and it brings joy, serenity and hope. However, it can fog our perception of reality if we don’t recognise it for what it is. I am a wishful thinker, an optimistic dreamer, but I need to recognise the hazards and limitations of that.

I have no proof of the existence of God. There are respectable philosophical arguments but none are compelling. In the light of contemporary physics, I accept the randomness of the evolutionary process, yet one gets a strong impression of direction and purpose in what we know of cosmic history. Randomness at one level does not eliminate the possibility of order and purpose at a deeper level, a level so far not reached by physics. I also believe in free will, and that implies some kind of randomness: that I am not totally controlled by simple laws of cause and effect.

If I think of God as loving and almighty then I face problems because the world, and especially human society, looks pretty stuffed up. That is how I see it, but I am not an objective observer; there is no such thing. We each create our own world and our own God. In saying that I do not mean that there is no real world and no real God. The universe and God have both proved extremely durable concepts in the experience of humankind over many thousands of years. The sum of human experience has generated a common perception of a world that, one feels, must have some basis that is real.

The real world must be much larger and more complex than my personal world or even the shared human world. Science is revealing a universe that is beyond our comprehension. The world of science is a world of wonder, of mystery, of compelling fascination. It is the aggregate of the personal world-views of many brilliant minds, but I don’t think that it is merely the figment of fertile imaginations and powerful intellects. I believe there is a real universe even more amazing and mysterious than science presents to us.

My world is a picture of reality, painted with my senses, my brain and nervous system. My world is in my mind, and I have a big say in what it is like. Satan said in Milton’s Paradise Lost: “The mind is its own place and, in itself, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of the way we think and see things on our quality of life.

Long ago most people thought the earth was flat, but we believe that those people had a less developed picture of the real world than our generation. Not so long ago people thought that there was a common cosmic past, present and future: a universal ‘now’, and that space was fixed and rectilinear. Einstein proved that this was an illusion. Even more recently people thought of atoms and even subatomic particles as tiny balls. The discovery that matter consists of intricate oscillations of energy without any distinct shape or size is too much for most of us to grasp. Through patient and diligent study and with the aid of intellect and imagination the human picture of the real world is becoming confusingly complex.

The god’s of humankind have been of great diversity, and changed continually over time. Through the ages, our images of God have become more sophisticated, abstract, and mostly kinder and less terrifying. I make no claim that my God: the most beautiful, just and loving God that I can imagine, is objectively the Real Thing. But, as with the universe, I believe it dimly reflects a reality that is greater than the sum of all human notions.

Everyone has an inner longing for happiness and serenity. The inner experience of this longing is connected with an intricate network of chemical and electrical phenomena in the brain and nervous system, and may even go deeper to our genetic coding, but I don’t accept the proposition that that is the ultimate origin. Our genetic coding is itself the product of a causal chain that has no known beginning other than the mysterious Big Bang.

Philosopher John Hick has called religious faith ‘cosmic optimism’. Whether one is an optimist or a pessimist may depend largely on upbringing, environment, life experience and even genes perhaps, but I believe the final choice is with the individual. We choose to take an optimistic or pessimistic view of existence. We have plenty of evidence for either, and we make our own selection. My belief in God is also, ultimately, my free choice. No argument, evidence or contingent factor in my personal makeup makes this choice either inevitable or impossible.

Closely linked to faith, but not identical with it, is religion. Religion is a social phenomenon: the human response to the inner longing for happiness and security. The world is a threatening place. Fear and anxiety are our common companions. Propitiatory offerings to supernatural powers began thousands of years ago. Religion has, since then, absorbed centuries of sophisticated philosophy and mystical experience.

Religion in all its diversity has extended the range of human experience and behaviour both for good and ill. As a social phenomenon, it has motivated the noblest and the most despicable episodes in human history. Religion can make our world a heaven or a hell. So, if one accepts religion, and the transcendent reality that is its inspiration, one must choose with care. But to reject religion altogether, I feel, must make life a colder and greyer experience, even if there is a stoic nobility in the ascetic philosophy of one who refuses to look beyond the material.

Why do I believe? It is my choice. Religious faith does not make my life simpler or more comfortable, but it enriches it at every level. It is intellectually and emotionally stimulating. It expands my imagination and the scope of my speculation and intuition. It gives luminosity to my world. I believe because it is good for me to believe, but it is not entirely self-centered. My faith also constantly challenges me to love and serve the other, and it opens me to feel unbounded wonder and admiration for the universe revealed by science, and for the Source of All Being who, in my religion, is called “Father”.