Looking for God in the Modern World

Has science given us adequate grounds for assuming there is no God? Can there be no God because there is nowhere for him to reside? Can there be no Heaven because there is nowhere within the universe which would match up to what religion leads us to believe? Can we talk of God as ‘Him’ when there seems no place in the universe to contain him? And if God is a ‘He’, where IS He? Where could he be, since he could hardly be part of his own creation?

Richard Dawkins argues it is illogical to assume there could be a God. But would Dawkins exist without there being a God? He thinks our world happened by chance. Yet, although he allows chance to come up with all the extraordinary coincidences that allowed for life, he does not feel there is any chance that he could believe there was a creating force behind it all. Yet even Dawkins creates worlds when he is dreaming - ‘dream worlds’ - yet they would not exist without the mind of Dawkins. Now ask yourself this. Where is the mind of Dawkins which creates those dreams? Where is your own mind?

Perhaps you think your ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ are the same things, but they are not. In my book Reality Check: Science Meets Religion, I provide ample evidence they cannot be the same thing. For example, there is ample evidence of telepathy, and if that is true, how could thoughts pass between physical brains? Consider, instead, that ‘brain’ is merely the physical representation of - or interface with - ‘mind’. Imagine it to be a bit like a radio tuner. The electrical signals within the tuner reflect what is going on in the brain, but I am suggesting the thoughts giving rise to that activity comes from a separate mind - like the transmitter which transmits radio signals. Imagine mind is something quite distinct from space and time and that your mind is just an autonomous part of a bigger conscious entity. Telepathy is then explained as transference of data between different areas of that consciousness, just like data transfer from one part of a computer’s memory to another.

As I relate in my book, I had a shared dream with my wife, confirmed when we awoke in the middle of the night and discussed the tremendous identical detail we shared. Again, I can assure you our brains never touched! Shared - or ‘reciprocal’ - dreams are further evidence of a consciousness that is separate to brain. And just like your own consciousness can create dream worlds in which everything seems real to us, so a higher mind - the Mind of God - can create the apparent reality of our universe.

Imagine this to be correct for a moment. The universe - in fact the entire space-time world - then becomes a product of that mind since the original idea came into God’s mind: at the ‘Big Bang’. Science merely seeks to understand that creation but, growing ‘understanding’ and ‘discovery’ does not exclude the forces which created it. The creating force then lies beyond space-time, which is a more logical assumption than there being a physical God within our physical world, who created our physical world. A creator cannot be part of his own creation. The Bible tells us ‘man’ was created in the ‘image of God’. If the essence of us is our minds then we are in the ‘mental’ - not ‘physical’ - image of God. That makes more sense, doesn’t it?
The more science learns about our world, the more it discovers it has yet to learn. Yet the ‘models’ science creates are no more than that: ‘models’. We might have originally imagined substance to be lumps of matter (molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles). We may now imagine ‘wave theory’ better explains it today. Or that the latest advances in thinking about multi-dimensional worlds may be nearer the truth. But, in essence, our ‘reality’ is no more than an image within our non-physical minds. That is why this ‘apparent’ world and your dream worlds seem equally real at the time you experience them.

Wonder if there is a Heaven? In theoretical physics, ‘M-theory’ is an extension of string theory which assumes there are multiple dimensions; that ‘strings’ form the visible world - and invisible worlds. So Heaven could also be an invisible world which can interpenetrate our own world. Radio waves do that, we do not see them, but our radios and TVs prove they exist. When Jesus was asked by some Pharisees when the Kingdom of Godwould come, he replied, “The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21.) Please note that Jesus used the present tense, so it already existed, and the ‘within you’ could have been a ‘tongue in cheek’ remark to also mean it interpenetrated our world - unseen. Jesus loved word-play. Heaven need not have physical limits in another realm - so plenty of room for everyone.

Our world - and potentially other worlds - are fantastically complicated, and the fact they co-exist in such stability does suggest they all stem from a single force. Indeed, the ultimate aim of science is to come up with a single ‘Theory of Everything’; so scientists even think that way. And if everything follows a single theory, it comes from a single source. And what do some people call that single force? Why, GOD, of course!
If this line of thought interests you, please visit my author website and read about my book ‘Reality Check: Science Meets Religion’. It provides both the evidence to support the theory that mind is separate to brain, and that science is merely the study of God’s creation. With this new viewpoint, science and the Bible are seen to be complimentary, not contradictory. And if you can ratify science and God in your mind, you are in a favourable position to truly believe in God and thereby find your entire life changed, if you were not a believer. And if you were a believer who found it necessary to ‘be in two minds’ in order to ratify your faith and your belief in science, this evidence could be a great relief. I believe in God AND science. I hope this short argument makes you want to discover why you can too. And if this article interested you, please tell your friends to read it too.