One of the most basic questions to answer whenever you express a belief in something you can't see, can't hear, can't touch, can't smell, and can't taste is "Why do you believe in this?"  And, in my opinion, that's a fair question.

First of all, let me say that if you're one of those folks who has to have complete, concrete, incontrovertible evidence, you won't find it here.  You also won't be able to provide the counter-evidence to such a standard, either, but will arrive, as I have, at something you feel is a reasonable conclusion.  Guess what - that's called "faith," and even though you don't think you have it, or use it, you do.  It's simply a question of where - or in who - you place it.

You can't be a Christian - or a Muslim or a Jew, for that matter - without believing in God - in his existence.  So obviously, I believe in God.  But why?

Consider the universe, and the laws of chemistry, physics, etc. that govern it.  Mankind has come up with equations and laws and postulates to try to understand it.  We have things like Newton's Law or Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  And, miracle of miracles, they work!  They're demonstratable.

What you're seeing is that things occur according to some sort of physical law.  In other words - TO ME - this means that there is a sense of order underlying everything.  And, to me, order is the first sign of INTELLIGENT DESIGN.

I work with computers.  I see directory structures that just fall into place because people dropped files there, and I see others that were built carefully, and organized.  I see the difference between a room organized by my Mom, and a room where I just throw things.  And I see an ORGANIZED DESIGN in the basic building blocks of the universe.

Chaos theorists will point out that the reason these laws work the way they work is because things wouldn't exist if they didn't work this way.  If you had billions and billions of chances occurring, surely, somewhere, one could have hit the exact combination to make everything work out right.

A line I'm fond of from Deep Space Nine is a line from Garak:  "I believe in coincidences.  Coincidences happen every day.  But I don't TRUST coincidences."  And my suspicious and curious nature rules out as incredibly unlikely that the only place we have to look to see this order - our universe - just happens to be exactly where we see this order.  That's TOO suspicious - TOO coincidental - for me to believe that it's a random happening.

And that, to me, is why I believe in God.  God seems the most plausible explanation for the orderly design of the universe.

And, I believe, this potentially explains a little of God's nature.  Obviously, if he's the creator, it would make sense that he had complete understanding of his creation - translating into being "all-knowing" or omniscient.  And, in my view, if he "built" the laws of physics, it would only make sense that he knows how they're built - meaning that he can alter them at will - making him "all-powerful" or omnipotent.

Picture a programmer sitting at his computer.  That programmer can modify lines of code - intervening - or he can sit and watch.  He understands what his code does, and understands the intricacies of it.  He is in control if he chooses to be - or he can let his program run - completely at his whim.

If you picture God as being part engineer and part computer programmer - except at a level beyond our comprehension, that's kind of how I think about God.  

This page last updated 11/13/2006 .