I don’t need God

This phrase is particularly appealing to me. In my weakest days (when I do have all I need), I tend to fall into this old thought. An alternative of this idea is the question: ‘what do I need God for?’. However, this question is rather the result of the idea that I don’t need God. And since I don’t need God, I don’t want God. And since I don’t want God, the answer why I need God must be a good one.

Imagine we are micro-organisms on a big melon. What could we know about the world we live in? We would see tons of fellow organisms, we would know the structure of our melon and we would assume life is good; plenty of food, plenty mates. We have every reason to enjoy life, not thinking about anything else. However, as humans we know there is more than the melon: plants, animals, human life, earth, the universe, which are as real as the micro-organisms.

This obvious silly example shows nonetheless some parallels with the human race. As the mirco-organisms, we are limited in our capabilities of experience, knowing and understanding. Maybe not within our square inch where we do experience, observe and understand, but about the bigger context we live in.

Although the first response might be skeptic (since anything about a bigger context can be true), there remain two reasons why a skeptic reaction is too fast.

The first is easy: do we have reason to believe we exist in a bigger context? That answer is positive, both for matter and mind. We observe an immense universe around us, replacing earth to the proportions of the melon or smaller. We also have a notion of something higher: a bigger mind, a higher power, a higher purpose, which makes us wonder if such things exist. So the idea of living in a bigger context is valid, which should make us mild towards the idea of a bigger context.

The second question is harder: if we live in a bigger context, what is it? Does the notion of living in a vast universe and a higher power refer to something bigger, or not? If there is a bigger context and a higher power, as real as we deal with gravity, then possibly our statement ‘I don’t need God for I have all I need’ is not true. Like ‘I don’t need gravity for I have all I need’. We do need gravity, but we need to know how.

The hardest element is the evaluation of our tool, our mind. Can our mind say anything about the bigger context, or are we too limited? If we say ‘God exist’, our mind questions this statement: how do you know, who is God, what does it mean for me, etc. This example shows the process in our mind:

• there (ironically) is an unseen phenomenon,
• we make a statement about the phenomenon and why we think so,
• we relate the statement with everything else we know

Doubt can only go as far as our mind can think. Our doubt cannot go beyond the presence, positioning, and consequences of unseen phenomena.

So, what is real? If God is real, ‘I don’t need God for I have all I need’ might not be true since God as a real phenomenon might relate to everything we know.

How does God relate to everything we know? The first answer is if we do or do not believe in God. If we don’t, we leave God as a fantasy, unrelated to our reality (and thus are a higher mind, meaning and purpose, if existent, unrelated to God). Or we do believe in the existence of God. The second step is to explore the nature, characteristics and details of God as our unseen phenomenon. We can either philosophize or interpret what the religions have to say.