Why I Believe: God

Photo credit: Ryan Greenburg via Flickr

So I figured if I was going to do this series on what I believe, I should probably start with the very most basic of my beliefs – God exists.  Whenever I’m questioning the reasons for my beliefs, I start back at the very most basic.  If God doesn’t exist then the rest of my belief system falls apart pretty quickly, so it’s a pretty important piece of the puzzle to establish.  Strangely enough, one of the best explanations of why I believe in God comes from Trey Parker, one of the makers of South Park.  While his body of work doesn’t appeal to me, his philosophy on religion does,

Basically … out of all the ridiculous religion stories which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous—the silliest one I’ve ever heard is, ‘Yeah … there’s this big giant universe and it’s expanding, it’s all gonna collapse on itself and we’re all just here just ’cause … just ’cause’. That, to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever.

As dumb as that may sound, that’s a big part of my testimony.  To be honest, what would make the most sense to me is that nothing ever should have existed.  My mortal mind can’t comprehend that stuff has just always existed.  At some point there had to have been a beginning, an atom, a… something that started this whole thing.  Whenever I try to comprehend the fact that things even exist my mind starts short circuiting.  The most rational thing to me was that nothing, not even nothing, not even a vacuum to contain that nothingness, just nothing, should ever have existed in the whole history of ever.  There shouldn’t even be an ever for that nothingness to exist in.  I’ve heard once a philosophy that this whole earth, and life and stuff doesn’t exist, but it’s merely a dream of another being.  But, even in that philosophy, that other being exists.  No matter how you slice it or dice it, something somewhere exists and that whole concept to me is completely mind boggling.

So, as there is existence, some great force organized this existence and created it.  Whatever else you might want to say about that power, it is an awesome power, and I consider this organizing, creative power to be God.  I believe in the power and knowledge that comes through science, but not to the exclusion of God.  In nature we observe that most all systems lead towards entropy, but somehow despite this natural order we’re supposed to believe that without an outside organizing force things were organized?  That makes no sense to me whatsoever.  I believe in God as the great organizing force that put these things in motion and I can’t imagine that any being that put that much care into organizing and putting in motion the things that make up our world and universe doesn’t care for those that he has put there.  This to me is the essence of what God is, I believe He is a being with the power to organize and create our world, and the care for the people and creations he has put thereon.  I’ll discuss in a later post more of my specific beliefs of who God is, but I think that’s a good starting point for finding common ground.

For anyone who would like some more food for thought on the theory of evolution as taught commonly I’d recommend reading through the LDS Old Testament Student Manual Chapter 2 under Points to Ponder.  Although this is of course a theological publication it had a very interesting scientific discussion on evolution that I found quite fascinating.