Eminent thinkers have offered many, dare say innumerable, arguments against the existence of a God. Why does God permit evil? Why does God commit atrocities in the Old Testament? Why do "Acts of God" kill and injure so many? Why do the different religions have different Gods? Why would an omnipotent God have any concern for humans? Who created God? Can the stories in the Bible be believed? Where are miracles today? How is an all-knowing God consistent with one that gives free will? Hasn't science provided a better basis for understanding existence? Isn't religion better understood as a cultural and psychological phase in human advancement?

This listing is unfair, you might respond. Citing only questions challenging the existence of a God gives a biased representation. Equally eminent thinkers have offered many, dare say innumerable, arguments dispelling these exact challenges, and offering logic supporting the existence of a God. So a proper discussion requires presenting the counter arguments.

But I won't be doing do that.

In fact, I won't delve any further into the logic and reasoning on either side. That is not due to any desire to not be balanced and thoughtful. That is not due to any lack of admiration and respect for the depth of theological thinking, both for and against the existence of a God. And that is certainly not due to any sense that the topic is unimportant. The topic is critical, vital.

Rather, I will not delve any further into the logic and reasoning on either side because doing so is irrelevant to the fact question here - does God exist. As thoughtful and sincere as any discussion may be, and as deep and elegant as the theological writings in history have been, those items can not change the fact. Either a God exists, in some independent sense, or a God does not exist. Arguments and discussions and writings will not change that either way.

This is to make a bold statement, to be sure. So let me support that with an admittedly secular, but none-the-less instructive and analogous issue of fact.

Issue of Fact

Mankind certainly has achieved great intelligence. But will we encounter a separate and different intelligence from another part of the universe?

Now discussion abounds on this question. Of course we will encounter intelligence, some may say; millions of Earth-like planets likely exist, and the natural tendency for life to emerge and advance essentially assures that other intelligence exists or will exist, and that such intelligence will advance sufficiently to cross mankind's path. No, we won't encounter intelligence, others may say; any sufficiently advanced intelligence to visit Earth would have populated the entire galaxy in a few millenniums after achieving interstellar capabilities, and thus if such intelligence existed it would have done so already.

Now discussions of other-world intelligence are insightful, and even necessary. Deep a course in miracles on the question gives mankind a broader perspective on ourselves, and pragmatically allows development of effective means of searching for intelligence beyond.

But out there, in the universe, either intelligence does now or will exist and will perform some action mankind can perceive, or it doesn't exist or won't/can't perform a detectable action. Our pondering the question does not move one atom in the sequence of events necessary for intelligence to arise independent of mankind, and for that intelligence to do something to make themselves detectable by mankind.

Thus, whether intelligence does or will exist separately from mankind, and then whether that intelligence will do something humanity can detect, is a fact question. We can't influence the facts of the matter. Certainly, we can influence our attempts to find that intelligence. But our thinking and pondering will not influence the necessary physical, chemical and biological evolutionary events in another part of the universe, necessary to give rise to intelligence that becomes detectable.

In a more profound way, then, the existence of a God stands as a fact question. More than the issue of other intelligence in the universe, mankind can not influence the existence of a God.

Either a God exists, or a God doesn't exist.

Role of Faith

Now where does faith enter? Many people believe a God has been revealed, so does faith turn this question of fact into something different, say something that is not a question any more, or something that is an unanswerable question.

Not necessarily. Faith does not necessarily conflict with questions of facts. Physicists had a faith of sorts that the Higgs boson existed, but their faith, and all their equations, didn't influence whether the particle did actually exist. Had they not found it, or had it been shown it didn't exist in the expected mass range, the physicists wouldn't have denied the facts. Rather, they would have revised their equations, and adjusted their faith.