There is a logical argument that, because nothing in the universe forms without a cause, that the universe itself shall have formed from a cause. The formation of time and space itself during the ‘big bang’ creates ultimate boundary conditions against direct human investigation of formation conditions.
A part of the logical argument about cause, suggests that powerful things cannot be formed by less powerful things, although it is evident that the individual contributions to a complex formation is less powerful than the final complex formation. Within the universe, it might be argued that every complex formation could only form with the energy and diverse formations that followed the formation of the whole universe. Thus, the formation of every thing, the formation of the human being, is a product of the formation conditions of the universe itself.
Nonetheless, as far as a human mind can resolve, this logic infers that there is some ‘First Cause’ that does not exist in any sense that a human mind might conceive. The ‘First Cause’ is unknowable in a greater sense than the unknowableness of the formation conditions of the universe. In keeping with the greaterness of formative powers than the formed powers, this ‘First Cause’ or ‘God’ can only be described as the Most: The Most Powerful, The Most Generous; The Most Bountiful; the Omniscient.
This logical argument, while a guiding light to the mind of possibilities, is not a proof of God. The proof of God, like all proofs, comes from the application of the reliable method.
To apply the reliable method, we must unpack the question: Is there evidence for God?
The key question that requires defining, ‘God’, must lead us to asking where this concept originated. It is popular to believe that the concept of God somehow sprung up spontaneously among populations. This idea doesn’t equate well with evidence of the development of higher order thinking, skills or technologies. It is more likely that the concept of God originated in the thinking of one outstanding member of a population, and became widespread through its success as a social development concept. The phenomenon of Baha’u’llah bears this out. Baha’u’llah not only provides us a powerfully insightful concept of God, the soul, and the inherent characteristic of the human society to form special outstanding agents who can carry a specially higher order insight, but Baha’u’llah evinces a extraordinariness of character far above those of the very intelligent philosophers, scientists, politicians, and religious leaders. Baha’u’llah, himself, demands investigation as a phenomena that might only have formed under the constraints of an agency that we may not be able to fathom, an agency of a far greater reality than we might ever be able to reach.
Nonetheless, when Baha’u’llah talks to us of God, He does not talk to us of an agency that requires human belief, but of a meagre message that we require for our own development as individual and social being. Baha’u’llah exhorts us to understand belief in God, not as some absolute concept, but as a stretching of the human mind towards that greater reality while also creating a more ready focus in Himself. And herein lies the proof of God. Not in some logical argument, but in the opening of the human mind and heart. Not a barricading of that mind within either structural categories or obsessions with sensorial acts, but a guiding of that mind to a vaster, more worthy life.
Baha’u’llah provides the method for the proof of God, training the mind for connection with the Greater Power. The method is in daily prayer and meditation, living a virtuous life, reflection for improving the virtue of our life, delving deeply into His insights, avoiding the deliberately unvirtuous and the backbiter.
This is the reliable method.
Owen's Meanderings 