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False New Age Ideas
10 False New Age Ideas About God
By Steven Bancarz
Who is
God? How can we know God?
Are the
Hindus right? What about the Christians, or the Buddhists?
And how
do we know the right answer to any of these kinds of questions?
People,
especially those involved in the New Age movement like I used to be, think
about this question quite frequently.
Things
all changed for me the minute I came into the presence of Jesus Christ and
entered into a real, personal relationship with the personal creator of the
universe.
His
spirit entered into me and authenticated to me the truth about who God really
is: The personal, transcendent, loving Creator we find revealed in
scripture and the person of Jesus.
The idea
of “God” in the New Age movement varies from person to person and teacher to
teacher, but one unfortunate thing remains the same.
Even if we
leave questions about Christianity and scripture aside, these ideas don’t hold
water for a minute on their own merits when put under philosophical scrutiny.
In fact,
we don’t even have to grant that Christianity is true in order to know that
these New Age concepts of God fail on the grounds of coherence.
This
article will read and feel more like an essay because its purpose is to be
thorough and exhaustive.
With that
being said, let’s look at 10 false New Age ideas taught by people such as
Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, and even Oprah Winfrey and see if they hold up.
1. “God
is indescribable.”
An idea
that gets passed around is that God is simply way beyond what we can think
about, and therefore any discussions about God are meaningless or futile.
.
This is usually reinforced alongside a mystical philosophy of transcending the faculties of the mind to connect with a realm of pure being that is beyond thought.
.
This is usually reinforced alongside a mystical philosophy of transcending the faculties of the mind to connect with a realm of pure being that is beyond thought.
There is
a common misunderstanding that just because the infinite nature of
God’s qualities extends beyond what we are able to fully comprehend means
that God Himself as a being cannot be apprehended.
We can
apprehend the idea of an all-knowing being. We can grab hold of this idea,
but we can’t fully fathom the infinite scope of having infinite knowledge.
Just
because we cannot grasp the scope of being all-knowing does not mean we
cannot apprehend the idea of an all-knowing being.
Just
because we can’t comprehend the scope of God being sovereign over everything
does not mean we can’t apprehend an all-powerful being.
The
difference here lies between the words “comprehension” meaning to fully grasp
with the mind, and “apprehension” which means to grasp the mere idea of
something.
We might
not be able to fully comprehend the infinite goodness, magnitude, and power of
God, but we can certainly apprehend God as having these properties.
Secondly,
it’s a fallacy to think that just because we can’t describe God fully means
that we can’t describe God at all.
Furthermore,
by calling God “indescribable” we are actually describing God!
“God is
indescribable” actually ascribes a description to God, namely that God cannot
be described. This gives us an attribute of God.
This
makes this point self-defeating, because you have to describe God in order to
establish He is indescribable.
You would
have to further describe God to explain why He is
indescribable in the first place (that he is fully transcendent,
incomprehensible in magnitude, etc).
Contrary
to being a stepping stone into Eastern Mysticism, this idea of an indescribable
God defeats itself before it can even get off the ground.
2. “God
is life force energy or prana.”
In some
Eastern philosophies, God is described as being nothing more than “life force
energy,” the aliveness that permeates our cells and flows through the energy
systems of our body and all of nature.
This has
leaked its way into the New Age movement and dominates New Age theology today.
As Eckhart Tolle writes:
“THROUGH THE PRESENT MOMENT, YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THE POWER
OF LIFE ITSELF, THAT WHICH HAS TRADITIONALLY BEEN CALLED “GOD.”
Let us
grant, for the sake of argument, that such a life force energy really does
exist. A universal life force within and without each one of us.
This
brings us to two extremely major ideas that are really important to grasp.
These are
two extremely helpful ideas in being able to distinguish between God Himself
and the false labeling of things as being God. The first one is simply
this: What makes this God?
Yes, our
cells have a certain aliveness and everything in nature has a kind of energy
field component to it’s being (whether via electromagnetism, the
electrical spin of subatomic particles, life energy, etc.), but why label this
as being God?
There has
to be some positive reasons to suggest that God is nothing more than the energy
of life, rather than simply asserting this natural force is
God.
NATURAL SCIENCE HAS GOT IT RIGHT HERE. IF YOU WERE TO
DETECT THE ENERGY OF THE EARTH FOR THE FIRST TIME AND TELL YOUR COLLEAGUE “THE
ENERGY COMING FROM THE EARTH IS GOD,” THEY WOULD LOOK AT YOU LIKE YOU HAVE TWO
HEADS.
Or
if detected the human energy field and told your colleague “I
detected God today, it’s my own energy field,” you would have some serious
explaining to do.
Or if you
said “God is the life force inside this water molecule,” or “I discovered today
that God is really just the sea of energy in the vacuum of space.”
Your
colleagues would rightly ask you, why in the world are you labeling this
function of nature as being God when we already know what it is?
There is
a big difference between saying God created life or upholds life
in some way, and saying that God is nothing more than the energy of life.
The
second major problem here is that this definition of God can also apply to an
atheistic universe in which nothing beyond nature exists.
We could
hypothetically be living in a world where there is nothing beyond the physical
reality and this concept of “God” as being the energy of life would not be
affected a single bit.
In fact,
the universe could have arisen out of nothing, by nothing, and life could have
formed from dead inert matter from random accident and this concept of “God”
being the energy of life would not be impacted at all.
This is
really the smoking gun of philosophical error in New Age theology.
If an
idea of God can just as equally survive in a world where there is nothing
beyond the natural physical reality, then we can be certain that what we are doing
is simply mislabeling a function of the natural world.
When
reflecting on who God is, ask yourself this question: If atheism were true and
there was no supernatural reality, would my idea of God be contradicted in any
way? Is my idea of God compatible with atheism?
If an
idea of God is compatible with an atheistic world in which there is nothing
beyond nature, it’s not really God we are talking about. It’s just a
misuse of the word “God” as a metaphor for the activities of nature.
3. “God
is space, silence, or nothingness.”
“GOD IS A METAPHOR FOR THAT WHICH TRANSCENDS ALL LEVELS OF
INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT. IT’S AS SIMPLE AS THAT.” – JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Let us
address these quickly and straightforwardly:
1. God
is not empty space. Space is a dimension of the physical universe and
had an absolutely beginning. It came into existence. Did God therefore
come into existence too?
Did God
begin to exist when space-time reality began to exist? If so, then what caused
space to come into being?
To
mislabel God as being one of the properties of the physical universe is a huge
mistake, for there was a time when not even the properties of physical universe
existed.
Once
again, we face the two issues of mislabeling a function of nature as being God
and giving God a definition that is compatible with an atheistic worldview.
2. God
is not silence. The absence of sound does not have its own positive
existence. Silence is simply what remains when there are no more sound waves
vibrating through space.
Maybe
they mean we can access God through silence because through
silence we come into a a mystical realization of God as being the substance of
reality or something like this, but that is much different than calling the
silence itself “God”.
Once
again, there is no reason to call the absence of sound waves “God,” and this
concept of God can survive in an atheistic universe where there is nothing
beyond nature.
At most,
one could argue silence is a medium to experience God, but would then need to
describe God.
And
chances are, they would describe God as being life force or one of the other
things we will look at in this article.
3. God
is not nothingness. The absence of being does not have its own
positive existence, there is no reason to label the absence of being as “God,”
and this “nothingness” could still exist in a world where nothing beyond nature
exists.
Furthermore,
this idea is self-defeating. “Nothing” means the absence of anything. It is not
its own separate “thing” that we can begin to describe and talk about as being
God. It simply means “not anything”.
So either
the ‘nothingness’ the mystic is trying to describe is really not “nothingness”
but is instead a void of space containing some kind of energy, or what the
mystic is really saying is that ‘not anything’ is God which is, of course,
atheism.
4. “God
is Source.”
There are
many problems with calling God “Source”.
Since the
word “source” means “a thing from which something else comes,” the source of
our universe could hypothetically be a computer, a mad scientist in a lab, a
level in a virtual computer game, a dream in the mind of someone in another
universe, an alien from a higher dimension, a quantum fluctuation, or even
Satan himself and the word “Source” would not lose its meaning.
The
problem with calling God the same thing as Source is that the very definition
of “God” implies a supreme being of infinite perfection and maximal greatness,
where “Source” doesn’t even imply a being at all.
It only
refers to a general ‘source’ that is responsible for the universe existing,
which as mentioned earlier is totally ambiguous and can apply to a variety of
potential sources.
Let’s
look at another major difference between the moral nature of “God” as
understood in classical theology, and the idea of “Source” that is taught in
the New Age:
Moral
nature
God: Holy. Perfectly righteous. Pure. To be revered as the Supreme
Good. God is the paradigm of moral goodness and is source of morality
itself. Any behaviour of ours that contradicts His righteous nature is
classified as “sin” or “wrong-action,” and it separates us from God. Sin
grieves God. God is perfectly just and therefore rewards, the righteousness and
punishes wickedness.
Source: Concepts of holiness, righteousness, and moral purity don’t apply to
Source. Source is only to be revered in terms of wonder and mystical
admiration. It is morally neutral and there is no such thing as sin and
righteousness in the eyes of Source. In fact, there are no eyes of Source
because it is not watching over us. It’s just an impersonal field. There is no
reward for righteousness and no punishment for wickedness because these
concepts are simply non-existent within this paradigm.
God: Wants us to spend eternity with Him and wants a loving
relationship with us as His children. God wants us to remove everything
that prevents us from living holy lives so we can be as close to Him as
possible. God wants us to bring our pain and struggles to Him. God has a
will and a distinct purpose for each individual soul.
Spirit: Has no desires for us, other than that we experience all things for
the sake of experience. It is indifferent to our relationship to it. This
field of consciousness doesn’t care how we live or if we “tap into it.” It’s
just an impersonal source. It does not respond to our pain and
struggles. It has no will or distinct purpose for each life.
As we can
see, the concept and nature of God is nowhere near similar to the concept
and nature of Source. They are two totally distinct ideas that have almost
nothing in relation to one another.
The very
word “Source” is morally, metaphysically, and theologically empty and only
refers to a general cause that produced the universe.
The word
“God” implies a being of supreme goodness and maximal greatness, and therefore
expresses a totally different concept.
Here is a more thorough analysis of God and
“Source” as taught in New Age theology and why we should not be calling God
“Source”.
5. “God
is the universe.”
“THE UNIVERSE ITSELF IS GOD AND THE UNIVERSAL OUTPOURING OF
ITS SOUL.” – CHRYSIPPUS, CICERO, DE NATURA DEORUM, I. 15
All of
our best scientific evidence, from the expansion of the universe to the second
law of thermodynamics, tells us that the universe had an absolutely beginning a
finite time ago.
For
example, the fact that the universe is running out of usable energy tells us
that it hasn’t existed for an actually infinite amount of time or it would have
run out a very long time ago.
According
to modern science, roughly 13.4 billion years ago all of space-time reality
popped into existence in a single instant known as the Big Bang.
According
to Stephen Hawking, “almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time
itself, had a beginning at the big bang.”
Physics
professor and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts
University Alexander Vilenkin explains that scientists
“CAN NO LONGER HIDE BEHIND A PAST-ETERNAL UNIVERSE. THERE
IS NO ESCAPE, THEY HAVE TO FACE THE PROBLEM OF A COSMIC BEGINNING.”
This is
uncontroversial and can be found in any textbook on cosmology and astronomy.
So, here
is a question. How can God be the universe itself if there was a time when the
universe did not exist? Prior to the Big Bang (if we can even speak about a
prior time), our space-time reality and all matter and energy inside it did not
exist.
So, if we
know that the universe began to exist, we also know something beyond the
universe must have caused it to exist.
This
means God MUST be beyond the universe (since there had to be something beyond
the universe to bring it into being in the first place), which of course
entails that God is not the universe.
God
cannot be the universe if God must have existed prior to the universe coming
into being.
THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE IS THE SMOKING GUN THAT WE
ARE DEALING WITH A TRANSCENDENT BEING THAT EXISTS OUTSIDE OF THE UNIVERSE.
The
scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe also tells us that God is
not “nature,” since “nature” did not exist at one point.
Bluntly
put, nature did not create nature. The universe did not create the universe.
The universe did not bootstrap itself. It’s a created contingent being with an
absolute beginning, and therefore means that God existed without the universe.
Secondly,
“God is the universe” can also apply to an atheistic universe.
There
could be nothing beyond nature and no purpose to existence, just the random
activity of particles in motion, and God as defined as being the “universe”
would not be impacted a single bit.
This
definition of God is compatible with atheism, meaning that we are not really
talking about a supernatural reality.
6. “God is ‘all that is,’ ‘Oneness,’ or a collection of all
things in creation.”
Because
we know with a very high level of probability that the universe (and everything
in it) began to exist, we can know that God is not “Oneness,” “All, or “Unity”
because prior to 13.4 billion years ago there was nothing that existed yet that
could be unified or stand in relation to anything else.
This
definition of God requires us to believe that God didn’t existed until
everything already existed, since God on this view is just a collective
totality of all things (seen and unseen) in creation.
That would
be absurd, because God must have existed outside the creation in order to have
brought the creation into existence in the first place.
There was
a time when no thing in creation existed. Yet God must have existed prior
to creation in order to have created the universe. This means that
God is not a collection of things in creation, since there was a time when God
existed without the creation.
And since
we cannot extrapolate causes into past infinity or posit an infinite number of
dimensions or multiverses (for philosophical and scientific reasons we will
explore later), we are faced with the fact that what we are dealing with is a
transcendent creator of the universe who existed prior to the creation and
without the creation who brought all things into existence.
GOD CANNOT BE A COLLECTION OF “EVERYTHING” IF EVERY SINGLE
THING IN CREATION BEGAN TO EXIST. GOD MUST BE TRANSCENDENT, EXISTING
BEYOND AND OUTSIDE THE CREATION TO HAVE CAUSED THE CREATION TO COME INTO BEING
IN THE FIRST PLACE.
This
means that God’s existence and identity ultimately stands completely and
totally independent from the creation, since God existed timelessly into
the eternal past before the universe (and all things in it) came into
being.
The
beginning of the universe demands we consider God’s self-existence as an
independent being totally apart from all things in creation.
If God
existed without the creation, God’s nature cannot be derived from the creation
or the relationship between created things.
And also,
once again, we run into the question of why call this God? What does this have
to do with anything divine or supernatural? This idea of God being a collective
totality of all things is compatible with atheism.
7. “God
is universal consciousness.”
The
argument here is that at the basis of nature lies a field of universal
consciousness that the particles of creation emerge out of.
The
belief is that the Superstring field (as discussed in theoretical physics as
“String Theory”) is a vibrating sea of energy that is actually composed of the
substance of consciousness, and the particles that arise out of the vibrating
strings within this field have their source in a universal field of
consciousness.
This
field is sometimes called the “Source Field,” “Universal Consciousness,” “Atum”
in Egyptian traditions and in eastern traditions is called “Brahman.”
This view
holds that consciousness is a fundamental property to the universe, not an
emergent property.
Consciousness
is not a product of the brain, the brain is a product of a universal field of
consciousness lying at the deepest levels of reality that fluctuates particles
in and out of existence and acts as the substance of all creation.
“THE NEW PARADIGM POSITS INSTEAD A MONISM BASED ON THE
PRIMACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS – THAT CONSCIOUSNESS (VARIOUSLY CALLED SPIRIT, GOD,
GODHEAD, AIN SOF, TAO, BRAHMAN, ETC., IN POPULAR AND SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS), NOT
MATTER, IS THE GROUND OF ALL BEING; IT IS A MONISM BASED ON A CONSCIOUSNESS
THAT IS UNITIVE AND TRANSCENDENT BUT ONE THAT BECOMES MANY IN SENTIENT BEINGS
SUCH AS US.
We are
that consciousness. All the world of experience, including matter, is the
material manifestation of transcendent forms of consciousness.” Amit Goswami, Physics of the Soul: The Quantum Book of
Living, Dying, Reincarnation, and Immortality
Or as
Ph.D. theoretical physicist John Hagelin has said: “The unified field is
fundamentally a field of consciousness. The field is known as atman, meaning
‘pure consciousness,’ or ‘self,’ since the unified field constitutes the
deepest reality and hence the true identity of everything in nature…”
The term
“consciousness” is clearly distinguished from the highly individualized and
anthropocentric sense of the term common to everyday experience: it is used to
denote a completely universal field of “pure, self-interacting” consciousness —
consciousness aware of itself alone, devoid of any individualizing influence or
external objects of experience…
DUE TO ITS ESSENTIAL NATURE AS CONSCIOUSNESS, MAHARISHI
EXPLAINS, THE UNIFIED FIELD HAS THE DUAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF EXISTENCE AND INTELLIGENCE.”
God, on
this view, is a field of consciousness that lies at the basis of reality and
grounds all of being.
Aside
from the various scientific objections this view is confronted with, let’s
grant for the sake of argument that consciousness is really fundamental and
universal in the way described.
Let’s
grant that there is a field of consciousness that lies at the basis of our universe
unifying all of life. A few problems arise.
1. This doesn’t escape the need for a transcendent cause
existing beyond the universe.
Even if there
is a field of consciousness at the lowest most fundamental levels of nature,
there is a major problem present here. The universe (and all its
properties) began to exist 13.4 billion years ago.
If
consciousness was fundamentally built into the universe as a sort of substrata
to ground reality, the issue here is that the universe and its properties all
began to exist.
Space,
time, matter, energy, and universal consciousness may well all be fundamental
to our universe. Let’s grant that they are. All these properties, including
this fundamental field at the lowest level of nature, began to exist.
Whether
consciousness is somehow woven into the fabric of reality at a fundamental
level or not is irrelevant to the question of God, because reality itself had
an absolutely beginning and we therefore need to look beyond the universe and
its properties to an external cause.
This
field is an attribute and fundamental property of the universe. It’s the
primary substance of the universe. The universe, and all its properties and
substances, began to exist. Therefore, this field began to exist.
We still
need a transcendent first cause to explain the origin of the universe and all
its substances/properties, including this field of universal consciousness that
is said to lie at the basis of our physical reality.
2. This, at most, only describes the functioning of
reality at a natural level.
Even if
we grant the existence of a sort of universal field of consciousness that
unifies all things at a fundamental level, we are still only describing our
space-time universe.
This
doesn’t lead us to God as a supernatural being. In fact, it doesn’t lead
us to anything beyond the natural world.
It, at
most, leads us to a better understanding of how God, as a supernatural
transcendent being, chose to structure the physical universe.
This idea
of universal consciousness only addresses how our natural universe is built.
STRING THEORY, OR M THEORY, IS NOT A SUPERNATURAL THEORY. IT ATTEMPTS TO DESCRIBE NATURE.
NATURE BEGAN TO EXIST. EVEN IF WE ASCRIBE CONSCIOUSNESS TO THE
SUPERSTRING FIELD, WE ARE AT MOST DESCRIBING THE FUNDAMENTAL
STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE AT A NATURAL LEVEL.
Even John
Hagelin Ph.D., a major proponent of this theory of consciousness, says
in an interview that this field is “the very core of nature”,
and that this field “unites gravity with electromagnetism, with radioactivity,
with the nuclear force” as “the most concentrated field of intelligence in
nature.“
This
theory of universal consciousness was never intended to describe anything
beyond nature. It is not a theory of the supernatural. It does not point us to
anything transcendent or outside the universe, it only describes the universe
at a fundamental level.
Even if
it exists (which it plausibly doesn’t which we could show in a whole separate
article), it’s just a deeper description of the design of creation. Not
the creator.
It’s not
supernatural, it’s not divine in a literal sense, it’s not past-eternal. It’s
just another property of the created universe, just at a sub-plank sub-nuclear
level.
This idea
of “God” is also compatible with an atheistic worldview where nothing beyond
the natural world.
Consciousness
could be a fundamental unifying force at a sub-plank level of nature and this
would be perfectly compatible with atheism.
In fact,
worldviews such as Buddhism and Jainism are centered around this idea of an
impersonal field of consciousness, and they are regarded as being atheistic
religions! As a Buddhist scholar has said:
“…THE BUDDHA IS AN ATHEIST AND BUDDHISM IN BOTH ITS
THERAVADA AND MAHAYANA FORMS IS ATHEISTIC… IN DENYING THAT THE UNIVERSE IS A
PRODUCT OF A PERSONAL GOD, WHO CREATES IT IN TIME AND PLANS A CONSUMMATION AT
THE END OF TIME, BUDDHISM IS A FORM OF ATHEISM”
So, in
response to this claim that God is a universal field of consciousness at the
heart of creation, we can simply say that this field began to exist (as a
property, operation, level, and substance of the creation itself) and does not
escape the need for a transcendent cause.
Secondly,
it only describes the natural world at a structural level. It does nothing to
point us beyond nature to any kind of supernatural reality. At most, even if
true, it merely describes a fundamental level of the natural created universe.
In other
words, it’s not God.
Summary
so far
As we
have seen, most of the New Age descriptions of God don’t have anything to do
with anything beyond the natural world and are perfectly compatible
with an atheism.
They are,
at most, descriptions of aspects, properties, and qualities of the created
universe that are mislabeled as being “God” when they aren’t actually
describing a transcendent reality.
We have
also seen the need that there be a transcendent reality beyond
our universe since the universe began to exist.
So what
is going on here is really just a form of worshiping the creation rather than
the creator as it says in Romans 1:25.
The only
surviving chance of any kind of idea of God being something operating in nature
is if the person says:
“Ok, I see that since nature itself began to exist 13.4 billion years
ago, God must be transcendent and exist outside of space and time. I see that
these ideas of God are compatible with atheism and are just descriptions of the
natural world. I just happen to think God is both transcendent outside the
universe AND operating through nature as a universal force of some kind.”
The
problem with this is that God must be a personal, transcendent
being which completely contradicts the idea of God being an impersonal force in
the universe.
To say
God is personal means that God is a being (not a field) with rationality,
self-consciousness, and volition to act upon free will.
If God is
personal, this means that Brahman, or an impersonal universal field of
consciousness, cannot possibly be the cause of the universe.
Here are
some reasons why the cause of the universe must be personal.
8. “God
is an impersonal force.”
This is
where everything here will begin to make sense and come together. As we have
seen, most of these ideas about God are really just descriptions of the natural
creation that are mistakenly ascribed the term “God”. None of these concepts of
God point to anything beyond the universe, which our best science tells us
began to exist.
For those
who want to hold tightly to any of these ideas (especially the idea of God
being Brahman, a universal impersonal force giving rise to creation), we are
going to look at three separate arguments for why the creator of the
universe MUST be a personal being.
Here is a
great video by professional philosopher William Lane Craig going over three
reasons why God must be personal, which we will summarize below:
1. There are only two potential types of causation: scientific
or personal, and the universe doesn’t have a scientific cause.
For any
given effect, there are only two possible kinds of causes that can explain the
effect.
For
example, one could ask you the question “Why is the television
on?,” One response would be, “because the television is
plugged into the outlet in the wall providing an electrical current through the
wires to the motherboard, and the power button was engaged causing a wireless
signal to the motherboard to turn on and receive the current coming from the
electrical outlet.”
This
would be a scientific explanation in terms of physical conditions. Or you could
say “Because I wanted to watch the game tonight.”
This
would be an explanation at the level of a personal agent, simply explaining the
effect by referring to the free will of a person. Both of these are perfectly
valid yet different explanations.
Now when
it comes to the beginning of the universe, there was no scientific explanation
available because matter, space, time, energy, and the corresponding laws of
nature did not exist yet.
A
scientific explanation requires a prior physical state, but there was no
physical state prior to the universe by which we can infer a scientific
explanation.
There are
no prior physical conditions available, for nothing physical existed yet that
could serve as an explanation of the beginning of the universe at a physical
level.
The only
KIND of explanation that remains is an explanation at the level of a personal
agent who chose to bring the universe into being.
2. The cause of the universe must be beyond space and time,
and therefore immaterial, space-less, formless, unchanging, and uncaused. The
only two kinds of entities that fit these descriptions are unembodied minds and
abstract numbers.
A cause
that transcends the universe must transcend the properties of the universe.
This is obvious, for the cause of space could not have already been operating
within space.
The cause
of matter couldn’t have already been material, for there was no existing matter
yet by which the cause could be composed.
What this
tells us is that we are dealing with a cause beyond matter, space, time, and
energy and is therefore immaterial, space-less, timeless, unchanging, and
uncaused.
These are
the properties the first cause of the universe must have, and we can deduce
these properties by simply unpacking and analyzing what it would mean for
something to be the cause of the universe.
Only two
different types of entities we can think of fit these descriptions:
Abstracts
objects (such as numbers, sets, etc.), or unembodied minds.
Since
numbers lack causal powers and can’t cause anything to come into being, it
follows that the only entity that could fit such a description is an unembodied
mind.
Therefore,
we are within our rational rights to believe the cause of the universe is a
personal agent.
3. A personal creator is the only way we can explain the
origin of the universe from necessary and sufficient conditions that are
permanently and timelessly present.
This may
get a little complex but this is the best argument we have for the personal
nature of the cause of the universe. Necessary and sufficient conditions refer
to the conditions that are required and adequate in order to produce an effect.
Since we
know that the cause of the universe must be timeless and eternally existing
(since time itself began to exist at the moment of creation), we know that the
cause contained all of the conditions permanently and timelessly that are
required to produce the universe.
This
means that all of the necessary and sufficient conditions needed to produce the
universe were permanently present within the cause before the universe existed.
But if
all the conditions required to cause the universe were timelessly and
permanently present, we should expect to see the effect also existing
eternally and timelessly.
If all
the necessary and sufficient conditions needed to produce the universe have
always been timelessly and permanently present, we should see an eternally
existing universe that has always been present (since all conditions needed to
produce it have always been present.)
If all
everything needed to produce the effect was always present, why hasn’t the
effect always been present? Everything needed to produce the universe has
always been within the cause which means the effect should be there for as long
as the conditions required to produce it were present.
The
beginning of the universe is the origin of a temporal effect with a
beginning from a cause which has all of its conditions permanently and timelessly
present. How can we explain this?
If
everything needed to produce an effect has always been present, we should see
observe that the effect has always been present too. But the problem here
is, the universe had a beginning!
The only
way we can explain the creation of the universe with an absolute beginning from
a set of permanently present necessary and sufficient conditions is to infer
what is caused agent causation.
A
personal agent with free will chose to spontaneously create a new effect
without any prior determining conditions, which is the only we can explain how
the universe had an absolute beginning from a permanently and timelessly
present set of necessary and sufficient conditions.
If
everything needed to produce the universe always existed, we would see a
universe that has always existed.
Since we
don’t see a universe that has always existed, there needs to be an explanation
for how a new temporal effect can be brought about out of permanently present
sufficient conditions.
The
answer is agent causation. God is a free being who has his own will,
rationality, and consciousness who made a choice to bring the universe into
being from eternity-past simply as an act of free will, which is how we can
explain the beginning of the origin of the universe 13.4 billion years ago from
permanently and timelessly present necessary/sufficient conditions.
9. Not all religions point to this personal transcendent God.
So, we
have just seen why God is must be a personal, transcendent being who exists
beyond the universe.
God is
not an impersonal force, a universal field, the unity between all things, empty
space, or the energy of nature.
God is a
personal, transcendent being who exists eternally beyond the universe.
Do all
religions point to this God in some way? Do all religions ultimately lead us to
the same creator who has expressed himself in different ways through various
religions? The answer is no.
It is
impossible for them to all lead to the same God because they all contradict
each other on a fundamental structural level.
For
example, in Christianity Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world and
rose from the grave so that we can be reconciled back to God through faith in
him.
Jesus is
the only way back to the Father, because he is the only
solution to the dilemma of human sin:
“CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE
SCRIPTURES, THAT HE WAS BURIED, THAT HE WAS RAISED ON THE THIRD
DAY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES,” – 1 CORINTHIANS 15:3-4
The truth
of the Christian faith rests upon Jesus dying on the cross and being
resurrected on the third day. The Quran teaches that:
“THAT THEY SAID (IN BOAST): ‘WE KILLED CHRIST JESUS
THE SON OF MARY, THE MESSENGER OF ALLAH.’ BUT THEY KILLED HIM NOT,
NOR CRUCIFIED HIM, BUT SO IT WAS MADE TO APPEAR TO THEM, AND THOSE WHO
DIFFER THEREIN ARE FULL OF DOUBTS, WITH NO (CERTAIN) KNOWLEDGE, BUT ONLY
CONJUNCTION TO FOLLOW, FOR OF A SURETY THEY KILLED HIM NOT.” –
QURAN 4:156-158
Jesus
either died on the cross for our sins so to lead us to God, or he didn’t. If he
did, Christianity is true.
If he
didn’t, maybe Islam or some other religion is true.
But Islam
and Christianity can’t both lead us to God if they contradict each other in
telling us how to get there.
The differences
between Buddhism and Christianity are even more extreme where there is no
personal God, Saviour, or concept of sin in Buddhism, all of which are
absolutely central to the Christian faith.
Here is a more thorough article going
through the differences between the major world religions, and why pointing to
similar moral virtues is not enough to establish that they all lead back to
God.
10. “God is mysterious, mystical, and unknowable.”
God is a
personal being who loves you in a personal way. You can know Him personally and
have a direct relationship with Him.
Meditation,
psychedelics, chanting, contemplation, intelligence, or special esoteric
knowledge has no bearing on your relationship with God because God is an
approachable person.
If I was
sitting across from you and wanted to get to know you, I would speak to you and
address you as a person.
I would
not try to alter my consciousness, brainwaves, or enter into a state of
self-transcendence in order to communicate to you.
Likewise,
God doesn’t require any of these things from us. In fact, these things lead us
farther away from God by perverting the simplicity of who He is.
As we are
exploring on this site, God has revealed Himself in the person of Jesus who
claimed to be the
- was
raised on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4), and
- we are
made righteous (Romans 3:22) and
And we
have a whole wealth of evidence to back this up, which we are exploring on this
site.
We have
seen evidence for a personal God in this article, and when we combine this with
the arguments of natural theology, the evidence for the resurrection and other
evidences of Jesus’ divinity, we have a cumulative case for Christianity.
But most
importantly, we can come to know this in a personal intimate way through the
inner witness of the Holy Spirit, the personal presence of the Lord who bears
Himself in our spirits when we believe on Jesus in our hearts.
This
inner personal presence is a self-authenticating self-verifying spirit who
confirms to us that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Through
Jesus, we have direct access to God because our sin is no longer keeping us
severed from his presence. And this is the wonderful, amazing, and simple
truth of the cross.
That we
are loved and known by a personal God who sent Jesus to be sacrificed and
judged on our behalf so that we could come into relationship with God and spend
eternity with Him.
He is a
Heavenly Father who loves you, cares for you, and wants you to know Him
intimately.
Steven Bancarz is the former founder
of "Spirit Science & Metaphysics" and was a full time writer for
spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com, which was one of the largest New Age websites
in the world. He was also a guest author on thespiritscience.net. He had an
encounter with Jesus Christ and quit his job as a New Age writer back in 2015,
giving his life fully to the Lord. Steven has since been in full-time ministry
after exposing the deception of the New Age movement, founding Reasons for
Jesus as an apologetics website. He is the co-author of the best-selling book The
Second Coming of the New Age, and has been featured on programs like the 700
Club, Sid Roth's It's Supernatural, 100 Huntley Street, and SkywatchTV. He is
also a content creator on YouTube.
Reasons
for Jesus is an apologetics-based website dedicated to providing justification
for a Biblical worldview and a rational defense for faith in Jesus Christ. On
this site we will be looking at answers to questions, responses to objections,
and positive reasons for why Jesus is exactly who he claimed to be: The Son of
God and only means of salvation.
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