I will begin with Stephen Hawking’s train of thought from his latest book “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”.
“If you want, you can claim that the laws of nature are determined by God, but that is more of a definition of God than proof of existence. It’s like looking for road signs to the edge of the world — the Earth is round, so it’s pointless to do so.”
At what point does faith in God arise?
We have a natural desire to seek reasons and meaning in what is happening. Not so long ago, no one knew what lightning, storms or diseases were, so everything was attributed to the gods. Today, we understand the mechanisms of physics, chemistry and biology, but we still continue to search for higher powers — sometimes out of unwillingness or inability to accept the facts.
Science provides explanations. Religion provides comfort.
- Science is based on data. It does not offer comfort. It says: “We don’t know everything yet.”
- Faith says: “Someone knows, even if we cannot see or explain it.”
These two approaches are also the reason why God exists in minds but not in experiments.
- If the universe can be explained by natural laws, then God does not participate in this process.
- If God is only needed for the unknown parts, then God’s role diminishes with scientific discoveries.
- Faith is a feeling, not a fact of knowledge.
Imagine that a person hears a noise in the attic. He doesn’t know what it is and concludes that it must be a ghost. This is belief, not fact. When he sees a cat in the attic, his thoughts about ghosts disappear, but the noise remains. The problem was in the mind, which wanted an explanation for the unknown. In the same way, many people see God’s work in nature only because they lack the knowledge to explain the process. Ignoring the unknown is foolish. But filling it with God is not much smarter.
So does God exist?
- Rationally – there is no evidence.
- Emotionally – faith gives people peace, hope, and a sense of security.
God may exist as an idea, but not as a provable reality. The processes of the universe take place regardless of whether we assign them the role of God or not.