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One way to answer that question is by asking, "Well, do you
believe in gravity?" You'll get a pretty puzzled
look, but you can explain your answer this way: It simply
doesn't matter whether or not you 'believe in' gravity, because it is an
observable phenomenon. Everybody knows it exists. But, gravity can't be
'proven' in any scientific way. Scientist have never been able to detect a
gravity particle or a gravity wave. They don't know how or why it works. It
just does.
All living creatures have an energy within them that makes
them appear to be alive. The most commonly accepted word for that energy is
spirit. One can observe that living creatures possess spirit,
and dead creatures don't. It's pretty clear that spirit enters a new
creature some time after it is conceived and before it is born into the
world. Exactly when that happens isn't terribly important to know, just that
it does happen.
When a creature's body is no longer able to host the
spirit, that energy leaves the body and returns to its source, wherever
that is. Again, we don't have to know where the spiritual energy of
living things comes from and goes to, just that does.
It is likely and rational that spiritual energy
obeys the natural laws of the universe. Like other forms of energy,
spiritual energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only
transformed from one state to another. Since we can, indeed, observe the
coming and going of spiritual energy, it is reasonable to conclude that a reservoir of
that energy (probably in some transformed state) exists elsewhere.
Bingo! We choose to call that reservoir of spiritual
energy the Universal Spirit. It is the collected and connected
spiritual energy of all things that have lived or are living. Another name
we sometimes use for that entity is God.
So, do we believe in God? No, we choose not to 'believe
in' it, because we don't have enough information and, besides that, we don't
need to believe in it. Rather, we have observed and concluded there
must be a large source and repository of spiritual energy somewhere, and we
choose to call that entity God.
We don't believe in God. We accept there
must be a 'God' about which we know very little, and about which religions
teach us even less. |