by Keith Cantrell

Created on: March 05, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

Does God exist? This is an age-old question and it is surprising that this issue still exists. We live in a world where space travel is a reality, instant global communications are mundane, technology is growing, knowledge is increasing and yet millions still cling to an archaic myth about some imaginary supreme being existing outside time and space who actually talks to us.

Let's look at some reasons why it is time to relinquish this superstition to the archives of ancient history. First, a definition of God is in order. Even this simple task is rendered quite impossible by the simple fact that God has many names in many different cultures and even the attributes of the deity are subject to individual interpretation. In ancient Hebrew, of course, God was YHWH which is an unpronouncable noun whose actual meaning remains obscure. This deity was adopted by Christianity which hijacked many of the ancient Jewish beliefs for their own and changed them just enough to include a new paradigm of religious devotion. In Islam God is called "Allah" which is supposed to mean "The One." Ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus as well as a pantheon of misbehaving deities. The Romans adopted the earlier Greek images and renamed them. In Africa there are as many names for God as there are tribes to worship him. The same goes for North and South America where the indigenous people did their best to get along with the natural world. The Hindus call the Supreme Power Brahman and the ancient Chinese have their Tao.

By now it should be evident that the confusion over God is simply a product of human nature and illustrates the problem with identifying a single cause for the phenomena we experience everyday. That brings us to the crux of the matter. Can anyone actually prove that God or any Supreme Diety really eists? No. Let me tell you why.

If God exists then by definition he must be omnipotent, omniscient and all-present. That means he controls everything and is therefore responsible for everything. The problem is that he is also responsible for evil and suffering in the world. This contradicts his loving nature and undermines the claim that he is all-powerful. If God can stop suffering and evil yet he allows it, then there are only two possiblities. Either he doesn't care and so is not loving or he us unable and so is not omnipotent which means he cannot be God.

The final blow to the existence of God is the cold hard fact that he has no substance. In other words, if God exists then he must be made of something. Since no one knows what God is made of either he is unknowable (i.e. impersonal, theoretical) or he simply doesn't exist since everything that exists has physical properties.

I welcome anyone to discuss this issue further and am open to any new evidence that points to the existence of God. After all, truth is supreme and that may be the real essence of the esoteric idea of a divine deity.

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