Dying Without God

At our weekly RCIA meet, Daniel, the seminarian at our church, spoke about three ways that we may be able to experience God:

1. Reasoning. With reasoning, logic is applied to deduce that God must exist. e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas argued that since science suggests that for every effect there must be a cause, and everything must begin with a cause, therefore the first cause must be God.

2. Experience. Some people have personal and close experience that they attribute to God.

3. Faith. With faith, you simply choose to believe in God, regardless of your own experience or logical reasoning.

Daniel said that reasoning is perhaps the hardest factor in experiencing God. I agree with him. Sometimes, with good reasoning, it is indeed close to possible to argue about the existence of God. The difficulties with reasoning, I feel, is that everything about or attributed to God must then be totally and logically proved, and not just piece meal reasoning. If a single reasoning is weak, it then tears down the whole reasoning process. e.g., I have yet to see a reasoned and logical argument for all knowing God vs free willing mankind.

Experience would be a really good candidate to feel the existence of God. Many people have experienced something divine which can not be explained logically. We have heard of miraculous cures of incurable disease after intercessionary prayers. We have also heard of out of body experiences by some people in the non physical realm. If I need to be harsh with this, I could say that it does not prove the existence of God, although it proves there is something that is supernatural.

Faith is perhaps the best way to experience God. Anyone with sufficient faith can accept the existence of God. However, faith is not limited to Christian experience alone. Followers of other faiths may also experience their own supernatural being or God in the same way as Christians do.

Ultimately, it is your own decision if you want to believe in God, or not. Perhaps the best quote I have heard with regards to a faith or belief is this by an unknown author:

I would rather live believing in God and to die finding that He does not exist, than to live not believing in God and to die finding that He exists.