Belief In God

The existence of God has been debated and questioned throughout the ages. Belief in God has often been described as making a leap of faith. The leap is necessary when the believer perceives the universe to be too incredible, complex, beautiful, large, etc., to be a materialistic accident. The believer then makes the leap that the universe had to have been created by an intelligent force, i.e. “God”.This assertion is truly a leap because it certainly could be possible that it is all simply a random accident of chance. If faith is to be the bedrock upon which our lives are built, it would help to achieve it without leaping in uncertainty with only our hopes to get us there.

Direct personal experience is the key to belief in God without making a leap. I was around seven years old when I began to get the sense or feeling that everything in the world was connected. This connection was composed of an intelligent energy. My awareness and experience of this force has stayed with me throughout my life and is the basis of my belief in God.

I do not claim any special ability to perceive this connection. This experience is hardly unique to me, it has been and currently is experienced by people all over the world. I will in no way try to prove that what I experience is real. It is enough that it is real for me. If you experience God, I’m sure that your experience is just as real for you.

My purpose in these essays is to show how a person’s direct personal awareness of God, in combination with their rational mind, can navigate the world without the use of religious doctrine. I define religious doctrine as truth that is beyond analysis and simply asserted to be true because God has revealed it through a religious text or prophet.