by John Traveler

Created on: May 13, 2009

There are those who will tell you that they know God exists, because it says so in the Bible. There are others who might suggest that the existence of God is apparent to them because God communicates with them on a personal basis. Even others may contend that God exists, simply because we can come up with no better explanation of how the universe, and we in it, came to be. The fundamental premises of all of these and many other perceptions of Godly existence, are based on subjective beliefs and hearsay, hardly anything substantial enough to be considered in terms of certainty. But with careful analysis it is possible to find more objective proof of Gods existence.

In the interest of objectivity, consider for a moment the word exist itself. What does it mean to exist? A connotation provided in the New World Dictionary defines the word exist: to have reality or actual being; to occur or be present; to continue being. The word reality in the definition, imposes a necessity, that for something to exist it must have tangible physical form or effect. Can we describe God's existence with conforming adherence to this definition?

Consider next and instance of something we perceive to exist, but which does not meet the criteria of the definition for existence, as stated above. You are likely familiar with the paradoxical adage, if a tree falls in the forest and there is know one there to hear it, does it make a sound. The answer to this riddle is no, it doesn't make a sound because sound is a human perception not a physical existence. Sound has a beginning and an end, it does not continue being. Sound in itself is not a tangible physical entity, only the propagation of a movement; molecules bumping into each other in exactly the same way a pebble dropped in the water causes ripples to radiate out in all directions. The water is real and permanent, but the ripple is just a temporary arrangement of the water molecules.

Not so long ago, scientists thought that light was an intangible effect just like sound. Albert Einstein, after an intense study of lights properties, came to the conclusion that light was tangible, it was a physical entity, it existed. Ironically, Einstein could provide no intrinsic evidence in support of his contention, but just the same, he invented a particle of matter he called the photon as a representation of light. To this day, no one has ever measured a photon, its proportions are minuscule and theoretical at best, but Albert Einstein proposed

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