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 an experiment which would prove the existence of light with absolute certainty. If light was a particle with mass than it would have to be effected by gravity and the astronomer, Arthur Eddington, successfully measured such effect in 1919. Light is real, light exists.
So what could sound and light have to do with God? Nothing really, accept they provide clearly definable representations of two things humans perceive as a reality, but of which only one truly meets the qualification. Many humans perceive God to exist, but is there any basis for this perception quantifiable within the definition of the word exist. Actually there is, but it is a bit of an abstraction. During the episode of history when the Bible was written, and the concept of a monotheist God as we know it today came into existence, light was a representation of knowledge and understanding, and its counterpart darkness a representation of ignorance. Indeed, you will find many references to light and darkness, used in this contexts throughout the Bible.
Is knowledge tangible? Does knowledge exists as a true reality, or like sound, is it just the effect of neural synapse connections in the human brain? Was their knowledge before humans evolved a capacity to perceive it, and will there still be knowledge when there are no more human brains to facilitate its realization? It is an enticing quandary and one which if followed to the apex of its notions offers profound revelation.
Let us consider one small instance of knowledge, gravity. Most humans today share the knowledge that gravity exists, and we know too that it exists everywhere in the universe. We didn't invent gravity, like light it is something we perceive and have defined. Interestingly, physicist now believe that gravity has not always existed in the universe or at least there was a period of time when the gravitational effect was unsubstantial. In this respect, gravity appears to be more like sound than light, but the knowledge, that gravity or sound for that matter happens, is a permanent fixture in the universe. Even if there were know humans left to perceive gravity, the possibility that some other species might independently evolve a cognitive perception of gravity, is reason enough to conclude that knowledge of gravity will continue absent any earthly human minds to realize it.
If we consider the existence of the human form, we find that it is the result of sequences of proteins and nucleotides that define its every nuance. Likewise, human knowledge is the result of specific neural patterns, the interlocking configuration of hundreds of billions of neural synapses. What is interesting, is that the representative knowledge precedes and succeeds any given instance of human neural existence, transcending generations of its host being, and embodying characteristics of eternal existence and immortal circumstance.
Some ancient Greek fellows took notice of these ineffable qualities of knowledge, which in their vernacular was called gnosis. They believed that gnosis led to and was the very essence of logos, perfection, completeness, unity. That these concepts were assimilated into the paradigms of various religious and philosophical ideologies around the 5th century BCE, goes without question. That the monotheist theologies of the Hebrew Tanakh, the Christian Bible, and Muslim Qur'an, all incorporate these same concepts, is self evident.
There are many examples we could consider in all of these text which define precepts of God in terms of knowledge, but the first verse of the first chapter of the gospel of John perhaps provides the most insightful realization of it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (Bible, KJ) Word as it is used in this context is taken to mean knowledge, but some explanation is due here.
The oldest known papyrus remnant of a new testament gospel is a fragment from the gospel of John dated to the first decades of the second century. During the forth century, the bible was translated into Latin, but the word verbum which means word in English was substituted for the Greek word gnosis. Consider that the word word and word knowledge share synonymous implications. But this was not the reason for the substitution.
The oldest form of Christian belief was a faction of it known as Gnosticism or Unitarianism. Keep in mind, that gnosis and unity in the Greek perception are synonymous. These forms of the belief held that Jesus was a mortal human who had achieved logos and thereby immortal status, but was not the Demiurge (Greek for creator god). The other form of Christian belief, which would become dominant after the 4th century, is called Trinitarianism and is characterized by the concept that God, Jesus the man, and Jesus the spiritual being, are all one in the same. At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, the Trinitarian persuasion of Christianity successfully convinced the emperor Constantine I to decree and sanction the Trinitarian belief as the only belief, and outlaw any other forms of Christian belief, most implicitly Gnosticism. Thereafter, the word gnosis was superseded by the word verbum or word to disassociate Trinitarian Christianity from the now outlawed former Gnostic forms of the belief.
Having established in the forgoing paragraphs, that the words light, gnosis or unity, word, and knowledge, are synonymous with respect to contextual implication in the Christian Bible, and that such context is also implicitly stated with respect to the definition of God in John 1:1, the following assertions can be made. First of all, God and knowledge, as defined in the Christian Bible, are one in the same thing. Furthermore, that knowledge is a commodity of ineffable quality which can be demonstrated to exist, because it meets all requirements of the word. Therefore, if knowledge exists, and knowledge is God, then God must exist.
It is therefore, by way of the same process of of reasonable induction employed by Albert Einstein to arrive at the conclusion that light exists, that we are able here to deduce that knowledge and therefore God who is synonymous with it. must exists too. We await now, only some latter day incarnation of an Arthur Eddington, to find proof of the contention now established. It may not be the most eloquent of hypotheses, but it exceeds in every respect of reasonability, the notion of intelligent design.