Instead of going on to the next topic in my Controversies series, I am going to post what would have been a reply to a comment but instead is big enough to warrant a separate posting.

So, here is the continuation of my original posting on the existence and nature of God. If you are new to this series, please read the Introduction and then catch up.

Becky brings up a good point that I did not properly expand upon the why, exactly, I came through experiences and logic to deduce that a god must exist, so I thought it a useful exercise to write it out, both for my readers as well as to concretize it within my own mind.

My original journey into the existence of God took a path very similar to Descartes’ own reduction, insomuch as I proceeded from what I thought I knew about God and proceeding to doubt that knowledge, and all proceeding foundations of that knowledge, down until I reached the point of saying that God did not, in fact, logically exist.

And here I began; wandering for hours lost as a freshman in college, seeing nothing but darkness before me and lies behind me. It was not, as I recall, one of my shining moments in my personal life. There were other factors at play during that time, of course; it was a formative year or two in my life when many things collided — friends, women, and schooling — but losing the religion that had governed and soaked my life for so long was extremely depressing and confusing for a long time.

So, having arrived at the point where there was no god whatsoever, I proceeded to think about this and decide what made logical sense, as that was the only tool left in my bag. I knew that during my life there had been various events that clued me into there being something beyond the standard physical world.

Visions of things that weren’t supposed to be there, or didn’t make sense given the circumstances (and no, I wasn’t under the influence), events of such extreme serendipity or otherwise impossible circumstances (items appearing where they weren’t a minute ago, certain events unfolding in a way that just wouldn’t happen randomly, etc.) — these and other things led me to conclude that there must be something behind this, and it must be outside of the defined world as we know it which, for all intents and purposes, is pretty much what we term the, “spiritual world”, whether or not it truly involves “spirits” or simply corporeal beings of a higher dimension. For now, it’s a useful term.

With the idea that there was something in the spiritual world propagating, as far as I could tell, random, small events of non-logical possibilities, it made me think further. If there are one or more higher-dimensional beings, then it is reasonable to say that they embody certain properties given their dimensional status — just as we are able to look at a sheet of paper and tell exactly what is happening to all 2-dimensional things upon it, so could a forth-or-higher being tell, simply by the nature of it, what’s going on in the 3^rd dimension. This gives both omnipresence and omniscience to this person (or persons).

Omnipotence comes in the form of being able to manipulate anything within a lower dimension. Much as we can draw a line on a sheet of paper, thus altering their reality, so could a higher-D being manipulate the 3^rd dimension without much trouble.

Omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence — if those three features don’t designate a god-figure as existing, I don’t know what does.

Moving on brings the argument for or against a monotheistic arrangement. While this is a bit of a leap, logically, it did seem as though the various events and happenings in my life that I would term, “spiritual”, were somehow coordinated. This may be only my perception, of course, but it seems logical for now to say that if they were indeed all synchronized that a single mind would be behind it. Hence, a single god.

That being said, I don’t think that it necessarily eliminates a polytheistic viewpoint nor do I think that should be eliminated. I don’t have a solid enough argument against it as yet. There is also the idea that perhaps, for simplistic reasons, it behooves us to group all of such beings into one category because they either think of like mind or the events appear coordinated simply because they are all viewing the same reality as each other.

So, that basically establishes the nature of god insomuch as I can argue it. Is it a foolproof argument? No. I’d even go so far as to say it’s kind of weak. Am I, as they say, seeing nails because I happen to hold a hammer? Maybe; it’s entirely possible that I’m unable to let go of the idea that God exists and therefore am trying overly hard to make one appear. I’ve thought about it a lot, and this doubt always corrodes my inner confidence that what I think is correct and true. At the moment, I simply don’t have a way to determine exactly what is going on with that except to simply say it might be a factor.

As always, your comments and reflections are appreciated.