Reflections on the Schema

Reflections on the Schema

of interpretations

about God, the world, mankind, and religion

Historical Note before the Reflections

I started a new vision of Christianity with this essay Schema of interpretations about God, the world, mankind, and religion; although, this was not the end, yet; I updated these ideas in other essays. Some of them are:

Faith, Grace and Supernatural is a World of Science

The Paradox of Some Christian Teachings

My Name is Existence, To Be, "I Am"

Eternal "Ideas" in God

I have to update them again in the essays:

Schema about the Nature, Attributes and Communication with God - The "Presentness" of God

Conversation with God about his presentness which complete the second Schema

Presence of God in space or his presenceness

First Part

1. The problem

1.1. Does God exist?

Does God exist? This is the most important question an intelligent human being could ask himself or herself, if he, she, does wonder at all. Some people don't wonder; they take for granted as "evident," that God exists. But is it evident? It seems that if the existence of God were evident, there wouldn't be any atheists, and there are many.

I might say, however, that atheists are right when the God they deny is the God of the Bible in some writings of the Old Testament or of some interpretations of theism: that “God” does not exist. The only God who exists is I am, the Existence per se. I wish they would know this God. Should we then reflect on the existence and nature of God? My answer is yes.

Darwin (1845-1912) with his theory of evolution, and Freud (1856-1939) with his interpretation that religion is a regression to childhood, with the need of feeling protected, both thought that they could "destroy" the idea of God and religion in a matter of years.

Perhaps some periods of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were rather incredulous; but the fact is that, at the present time (2003), there is a high respect for religion in most academies, and the majority of the people of the world, regardless of its academic level believe in God. Up to this time, the laws of evolution (Darwin's) are not able to explain their own existence, and the theory that mystical insights are a return to the experiences of infancy (Freud's) can not be proven either.

We must admit that the existence of God is not evident and can not be proven; but the absence of evidence is not proof of the non-existence. In fact, the opposite is also true: science and human knowledge can not prove that is false. The principle that only what can be proven is true, is false.

We, intelligent beings, have only two alternatives regarding the existence of God: either we believe in a God-Designer of the universe, the One for whom are all things (Hebrew 2.10); or we believe that the universe is "god" and exists by itself.

The latter would mean also that the universe started without any reason, at a specific time, not after, not before; that just by chance, precise laws that made life possible were created; and also that just by chance, repeated in order, millions and millions of times, the marvels of human beings and of the universe were produced; which is an absurdity.

Natural sciences can not explain for certain the existence of the universe; they have only theories. Natural sciences do not have the proof that God does not exist; they say only what they know. But, what about what they don't know?

1.2. The idea of God in Christian tradition

We can not be certain about anything related to God, as I'll explain in this document; we may have only reasonable hypotheses, none of which can be proven. However, we were indoctrinated, in the Christian tradition, as if we would know the being of God; as if he would be like a "physical" entity, being there, perhaps in front of us all the time, or above us, or over "there," in the skies, or in the heavens.

And when we try to think how God could be, in fact that which we think he is, he is not. God is an indescribable, unimaginable, incomprehensible being, who is beyond everything that we can understand or think. There are not appropriate words to talk about God; he doesn't fit within any of our physical perceptions or our philosophical categories.

1.3. The idea of God without preconditions

When we start thinking about God, seriously, impartially and without preconceptions, then we realize that we believe many things about God that do not have any other base or explanation than, either faith, or tradition, or myth. Then, we must create multiple hypothesis or preconceptions that can not be proven but simply accepted, believed.