That's the great question
[how] do we know there's a gun why do we believe in God at all that's the foundation for the whole spiritual life and
The Great Theologians and spiritual teachers have used different approaches this question over the centuries
One of my favorites is the approach that begins with desire
We human beings desire the truth our minds seek the truth and we get it sometimes
But no matter how much truth we get out of this world
It's never enough the mind remains unsatisfied [I]
Will seek the good and they find it a lot of ways in this world
But no matter how many goods we attain were never really satisfied
We seek Justice in all kinds of ways
And [we] achieve it sometimes to a remarkable degree
think of in our own time [a] civil rights movement the end to apartheid the
Breakdown of the soviet Union all those were wonderful things that [were] attainment of justice
But no matter how much justice we attain we never have enough
There's something in us this desire for the good the true the just that pushes us Beyond this world
This approach is called the argument from Desire
You can't desire what you don't know
Therefore if we're desiring something that transcends anything in this world in
Some way we must already know it
Therefore [we] do know
the truth itself
We do know the good itself. We do know justice itself, and that's who God is
God is not one of the true things in the world
But God is the truth itself which has seized the mind of any scientist any philosopher any seeker after the truth
God is not one more good thing in the world
But God is goodness itself which has seized anybody when he's living the moral life or seeking the ethically good
God is not one more just thing in the world
But God is justice itself which has seized the will
Of the lawyer or the judge or anyone seeking justice
the Bible talks about
the primacy of God
When you're seeking God the most important to realize is
You've already been found by God
Remember the Russian cosmonauts went up into space and they kind of sarcastically radioed back to Earth
Well, we're up in the heavens, and we haven't found God
Of course any biblical person would know he'll never find. God that way of course not you don't find God
Anywhere in the cosmos he's made, but God is the creative source of all that exists in the cosmos
So that's one approach to God beginning [with] our own deep desire
Here's a second approach and it comes from our present pope who wrote a great book in 1968 called introduction to Christianity in
[that] book he formulates this argument and what I like about it. Is it shows the link between
Religion and science because very often those two were seen as enemies. He says [know]
At their depth religion and science come together here's why?
What does every scientist assume?
Whether you're a physicist [a] chemist biologist
[psychologist], whatever you are you assume that?
being is
intelligible
That means that the world can be known look even though even the name
psychology
you know
Designates logos word the scientist goes out to meet a world that's imbued with meaning
Well, how do you explain [that] how do you explain the universality of [the] meaningfulness of the world?
Rotzinger said it's because it's been thought into being
in other words the world is not just dumbly they're
Rather the world is filled with lagos. It's filled with reason with mine. Which is why when we?
Understand the truth. We say we recognize it. He says right you
Recognize it you think it again because it's already been thought into being by God
so he argues from the
objective intelligibility of the world
to the existence of a great
Intelligence which has thought the world into being here's a third approach the philosophers and theologians have used
It's called the argument from contingency. It's a fancy way of saying that the world as we know it
Exists, but doesn't have to exist
You and I are here, but we don't have to be here. There's nothing
Necessary about our being and it's true the world. We know it is fleeting. It's passing
Therefore we have to go outside the world
to God
God who does exist through himself and who therefore?
Grounds and creates the whole of the world that we know
relatedly
dorothy day
When she was in the process of coming to the church she was going through a process of conversion. She had a child and
One day when [she] was on the porch of her house and she was she was holding her child
She said I felt a gratitude that was so enormous
That I knew it would correspond to nothing in this world. There was nothing nobody in this world. She could possibly thank
That would correspond to the gratitude. She was feeling. That's it. That's exactly it what she was sensing was God
This world myself my child none of it has to be here yet. It's here and the proper responses
Thank you to the person who made
you