© 2020 Olga López
© 2020 Urantia Association of Spain
Talk in the UAB Zoom room, September 26, 2020
I know very well that no one convinces anyone; it’s oneself who changes one’s mind or becomes convinced of an argument or position. But for days now, I’ve been wanting to write a response to the possible arguments someone who doesn’t believe in God might throw at me.
Of course, my answers are not unanswerable (they can’t be if the other person doesn’t believe or isn’t predisposed to believe). The Urantia Book says that “A person who knows God does not describe his spiritual experiences to convince unbelievers, but for the edification and mutual satisfaction of believers” (UB 1:6.6), so my intention with this exercise is to encourage each other in an environment where unbelievers abound.
I am therefore aware that right now I am “preaching to the choir” (as they say in English), because there is no one here who needs convincing of anything, and we all have in common that we are moved by the teachings of The Urantia Book. Call it a release, or better yet, the desire to share my arguments with people who understand me. For various reasons (some conscious, others “coincidental”), I have been in contact for a few weeks now with people who are on other wavelengths to learn about topics from different fields (some that have nothing to do with religion or spirituality), and in many cases I am saddened that the spiritual component is left out of the equation when it comes to issues such as politics, climate change, or the energy crisis. I firmly believe that the problems facing humanity cannot be solved unless they are approached from an ethical-religious perspective.
As a starting point for my answers (which will be supported by quotes from the book), I’ve used a list of modern atheist claims that someone shared on Facebook. It’s not exhaustive, but I think it serves the purposes of this presentation. If you remember any other arguments, we can discuss them at the end.
Just because no one has returned from the dead doesn’t mean there isn’t something beyond, that we don’t have another kind of existence, another life with a different, lighter body. What else have all our experiences served? Can we really believe that, as the android Roy Batty said in Blade Runner, “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain”? The bonds with other people, the experiences we’ve had that have made us grow and become stronger, the love we’ve felt… who will benefit from them if it all ends? What purpose do they serve if they’re doomed to disappear?
Recall that the book tells us that “personality and personality relationships are never scaffolding; the mortal memory of personality relationships has cosmic value and will outlive” (UB 112:5.22).
No, the universe can’t be that terrifying or that purposeless. The book itself tells us that spirit-led people have “the certainty of being citizens of a friendly universe” (UB 180:5.8), not to mention the exhaustive explanations they offer about what awaits us after physical death, which “is but the beginning of a career of endless adventure, a perpetual life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery” (UB 14:5.10).
This argument is the one that amazes me the most. There are signs everywhere that there was a Creator! How can order emerge from chaos? Is the orderly procession of galaxies, stars, and planets due to chance and a couple of laws of physics? Is the emergence of life on a planet due solely to chance and necessity? Nor is it that God took care of everything, because He always delegates to other creatures everything that is not essential for Him to do. Order does not arise naturally: someone must have created it, programmed it, foreseen it.
It doesn’t matter what you call the Creator-Maker-Organizer. You don’t even have to resort to religions to reach that conclusion: you only need to take an unprejudiced and thoughtful look at material processes to see the beauty of order and the intelligent hand behind it.
There is a quote from the book that I personally love about the impossibility of material creation and human evolution being mere accidents due to chance (bold added):
…some of the less imaginative of your mortal mechanists insist on viewing material creation and human evolution as an accident. The Urantia midwayers have assembled over fifty thousand facts of physics and chemistry which they deem to be incompatible with the laws of accidental chance, and which they contend unmistakably demonstrate the presence of intelligent purpose in the material creation. And all of this takes no account of their catalogue of more than one hundred thousand findings outside the domain of physics and chemistry which they maintain prove the presence of mind in the planning, creation, and maintenance of the material cosmos. UB 58:2.3
There are excellent critiques and arguments against mechanism in The Urantia Book. Since I do not intend to provide an exhaustive account of all of them, these quotes from Section 6 of Paper 195 serve as examples:
Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an unromantic and mechanistic universe. But whence comes all this vast universe of mathematics without a Master Mathematician? … UB 195:6.8
… If the universe were merely a mechanism and mind were unapart from matter, we would never have two differing interpretations of any observed phenomenon. The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or chemistry. A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness. UB 195:6.11
If men were only machines, they would react more or less uniformly to a material universe. Individuality, much less personality, would be nonexistent. UB 195:6.13
Here I do appeal to our personal experience with Jesus, how we see him, and who he is for us in our lives. There are many people who adhere to other religions and religious doctrines who do not see Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God but as a prophet, an avatar, or a person especially enlightened by wisdom. I must also say that I have found a certain respect for Jesus among many who define themselves as atheists or agnostics. At least he is not the target of such intense attacks as those that the figure of God receives. Needless to say, I absolutely respect all those positions; all I can say is that I think and experience differently regarding the figure of Jesus.
If what we are looking for is information about who Jesus really was, then The Urantia Book is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and valuable source for understanding who Jesus of Nazareth really was and what his role is in the universe organization. He is not only the Son of God, but the Creator Son of a local universe, of which there are 100,000 in a superuniverse, and of whose order there are nearly a million (UB 118:6.2).
I do more or less agree with the first part. What Jesus did cannot be considered miracles, since those supposedly supernatural acts were related to the acceleration of natural processes in time and space. A miracle is anything that happens without our knowing how, but it doesn’t have to be supernatural. To a primitive person, everything a cell phone or any other device we use in our daily lives does would seem like magic.
There are beings out there of a different order than ours who can manipulate the physical environment, yet they don’t perform miracles. As for the supernatural not existing… I’m referring to Shakespeare’s famous quote from Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The book mentions Jesus’ supposed miracles on numerous occasions. If I had to choose one, I’d pick this paragraph:
The healing wonders which every now and then attended Jesus’ mission on earth were not a part of his plan of proclaiming the kingdom. They were incidentally inherent in having on earth a divine being of well-nigh unlimited creator prerogatives in association with an unprecedented combination of divine mercy and human sympathy. But such so-called miracles gave Jesus much trouble in that they provided prejudice-raising publicity and afforded much unsought notoriety. UB 145:3.15
In Paper 149 we are told something very interesting about what they call “apparent miracles of healing” during Jesus’ earthly ministry, which were the result of three powerful influences: the faith of the human being seeking healing, the compassion of the Creator Son, and the will of the Father (UB 149:1.4-7).
If we understand resurrection as returning to life in the same body one had, Jesus’s was not a resurrection. As explained very well in The Urantia Book, Jesus was resurrected in a morontial body (made of a substance less dense than matter but denser than spirit). This type of substance cannot be seen with the eyes of the flesh, but it can be made visible through the action of certain types of beings.
On the other hand, what Jesus’ friend Lazarus experienced was indeed a resurrection as commonly understood. Lazarus was dead and returned to life in the same body he had (which I imagine had undergone some minor repairs so he wouldn’t die too soon again). I find it very curious that Lazarus ended up dying years later from the same illness that had taken him to the grave the first time, once the “reprieve” he had been granted had expired.
As for the disappearance of Jesus’ physical body, a phenomenon occurred that was not at all miraculous, but impossible to replicate by our science:
Jesus’ mortal remains underwent the same natural process of elemental disintegration that characterizes all human bodies on earth, except that, as far as time is concerned, this natural mode of dissolution was enormously accelerated, hastened to such an extent as to become almost instantaneous. UB 189:2.8
Is it a matter of believing what the book tells us or not? Absolutely, but we must recognize that the explanation offered by The Urantia Book is very coherent. Lazarus’s resurrection was a physical resurrection, as Jesus wanted to give the Jewish religious leaders a new opportunity to believe in him (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”) and in his message. In Jesus’ case, it made no sense to resurrect in the same physical body, as his mission on Earth had already ended, and he had to move on to the next stage as a mortal, the same stage we all go through after death.
As for it going against science… Science is a constantly changing and expanding body of knowledge. Today’s theories may be refuted tomorrow; it’s happened thousands of times in human history. It’s also true that science can’t explain everything, as it focuses only on the material level, and there are realities that transcend that level and explain many supposed miracles. This reality (the resurrection) is one of those we can’t explain with the science available to us today.
Regarding this matter, I would like to recall the question that the intermediate beings ask us in document 189:
Humanity is slow to perceive that, in all that is personal, matter is the skeleton of morontia, and that both are the reflected shadow of enduring spiritual reality. How long will it take you to consider that time is the moving image of eternity, and space the fleeting shadow of Paradise realities? UB 189:1.3
Indeed, we tend to see ourselves as bodies inhabited by a spirit, as if material reality were the only real one simply because it’s the only one we can perceive with our senses. The material world is a shadow of the spiritual world, which is the truly real one.
Once again, the fact that we don’t see them with our limited human vision or perceive them with our senses doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Their existence seems perfectly coherent to me, since they are the ones in charge of doing everything God delegates to them. No matter how omnipotent God is, it’s by no means necessary for Him to be in charge of absolutely everything. Every being has its function in the organization of the universe, and there’s no overlapping of functions.
Personally, I haven’t had any experiences seeing or sensing any celestial beings, but it seems perfectly plausible to me that they are part of the organization of the universe as part of the Creator’s troop. I believe they are there and look forward to the day I can see them and interact with them.
The Urantia Book provides a wealth of information about what it calls “ministering spirits,” much more than is offered by sacred texts such as the Bible. Thanks to the book, we know that the word “angel” is actually a generic term that encompasses many different types of these celestial beings, who perform a wide variety of functions throughout the inhabited creation. Here, for example, is one of the quotes:
Angels are the ministering-spirit associates of the evolutionary and ascending will creatures of all space; they are also the colleagues and working associates of the higher hosts of the divine personalities of the spheres. The angels of all orders are distinct personalities and are highly individualized… UB 26:1.1
I understand that those who do not believe in God deduce that praying is useless, since it is like speaking only to an invisible friend or a non-existent being, which from their point of view is obviously absurd.
I wonder if those who claim such a thing have actually tried praying. Not to pray for material things (such requests are background noise, they get lost along the way) or to alter the natural order of things. Let’s see what the midwayers tell us about this in document 146:
… A wise father does not literally answer the foolish prayers of his ignorant and inexperienced children, albeit the children may derive much pleasure and real soul satisfaction from the making of such absurd petitions. UB 146:2.6
It’s true that faith heals, but if you pray for someone not to die and then they end up dying, that doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist or that He has turned a deaf ear to your pleas. What is true is that if you ask to receive spiritual gifts (strength, patience, wisdom, discernment, insight, etc.), that request will surely reach its destination and be granted. Probably not when or how you want to receive it, but in due time, like all divine things.
In the paragraph following the one quoted above, they tell us:
- When you have become wholly dedicated to the doing of the will of the Father in heaven, the answer to all your petitions will be forthcoming because your prayers will be in full accordance with the Father’s will, and the Father’s will is ever manifest throughout his vast universe. What the true son desires and the infinite Father wills IS. Such a prayer cannot remain unanswered, and no other sort of petition can possibly be fully answered. UB 146:2.7
In any case, prayer cannot be said to be useless if it has not been sincerely tried and if it has not been asked for what can be granted.
And how can we affirm this with certainty? We won’t see it isolated in a test tube or a brain scan: we must connect with it, listen, and maintain a dialogue with it. The divine spark is the great gift God has given us to accompany us on our journey and to become increasingly spiritualized, but it resides in a place in the mind we cannot access if we remain anchored in the material. If we elevate the quality of our thoughts and focus our attention and interest on the Transcendent, the divine spark will help us more than we can imagine.
The book devotes entire documents to this divine spark, which appears under the name of the Thought Adjuster, about which it offers abundant information. This concept is not new to the book (there are other religions and beliefs that speak of a divine fragment inhabiting us), but no other religious text addresses the divine spark with the depth and breadth that it does in The Urantia Book. I could go on for many paragraphs, but this time I’ll stick with this one from document 107:
The Adjusters are the actuality of the Father’s love incarnate in the souls of men; they are the veritable promise of man’s eternal career imprisoned within the mortal mind; they are the essence of man’s perfected finaliter personality, which he can foretaste in time as he progressively masters the divine technique of achieving the living of the Father’s will, step by step, through the ascension of universe upon universe until he actually attains the divine presence of his Paradise Father. UB 107:0.2
This is a logical conclusion for those who think we are an extremely improbable accident of the universe. How can the universe be friendly if it was created based on chance, necessity, and a handful of laws of physics? Those who think this way believe the universe is mostly chaos and destruction, but that’s not the case at all. At least every apparent destruction is the beginning of something new, although that won’t always be the case: as the book clearly states, perfection at the finite level will also occur at the material level, so that as the eons pass, there will be less destruction and more stability in the universe.
For those of us who believe in God, the universe is a friendly place created, directed, and overseen by divine beings. The procession of galaxies, stars, and planets is supervised by them.
In The Urantia Book, we are told that the physical universe is intelligently controlled by beings of different orders. For example, let’s look at this quote from Paper 24:
The immense power currents of space and the circuits of spiritual energy may appear to operate automatically; they may appear to operate without hindrance or restraint, but this is not the case. All of these formidable energy systems are under control; they are subject to intelligent supervision… UB 24:1.1
Someday, in the distant future, we will travel the universe in another “suit” and will be able to see for ourselves that the inhabited universe is friendly and our home, as well as better understand all the beings responsible for maintaining the balance of physical forces and energies.
Ah, the meaning of life! Rivers of ink have flowed trying to decipher it for centuries and centuries. Of course, if we remove God from the equation and think of us human beings simply as “rational animals,” we tend to think that our destiny is to grow, reproduce, and die, like any other living being. But if we assume the existence of a Creator who created us not to be His playthings but to experiment and perfect ourselves, we suddenly see the purpose behind all our experiences and learning in this world. This planet (and many others) is a great school where we begin the learning process of being perfect and transforming our full potential (which is much greater than we think) into reality.
Of course, it’s not something we’ll achieve here, because this is the first step in a very, very long journey. But this world is very important in our learning, because here we have the opportunity to experience things we won’t be able to do in the worlds that await us.
In The Urantia Book, they explain in great detail not only the meaning of life in this world, but also the general steps of our upward climb toward Paradise (which, let’s not forget, isn’t even the end). I sincerely believe that if many of those who claim not to believe knew what awaited them if they decided to include God in their lives, they would at least consider whether it might be worth changing their minds. Looking at it coldly: if we (believers) are right, fun is guaranteed beyond this world! And if we’re not, at least we will have lived our lives with meaning and an inner peace that is more necessary than ever in these times.
Let science deal with material things; that is its field of activity. The most honorable attitude would be to leave that judgment in abeyance if it cannot be demonstrated by scientific methods. The spiritual world will never be demonstrated by science because it is at a different level of verification. The key that leads us to it is called faith. Here are two quotes from Document 101 that express it perfectly:
Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion; logic is the attempted technique of philosophy… UB 101:2.2
Reason, through the study of science, may lead back through nature to a First Cause, but it requires religious faith to transform the First Cause of science into a God of salvation; and revelation is further required for the validation of such a faith, such spiritual insight. UB 101:2.3
It depends on what we call proof! Of course, there cannot and will not be scientific demonstrations of the existence or nonexistence of God. Religion (I mean it not as assent to a certain body of beliefs and dogmas but rather as religare, the connection with God) is demonstrated every day in the religious experiences of believers, and that (obviously) is not valid scientific proof. But no one can deny or refute another person’s religious experience. As The Urantia Book rightly states:
The God-knowing soul dares to say, “I know,” even when this knowledge of God is questioned by the unbeliever who denies such certitude because it is not wholly supported by intellectual logic. To every such doubter the believer only replies, “How do you know that I do not know?” UB 102:6.5
Many people claim not to believe in God precisely because of the lack of irrefutable scientific evidence, and many philosophers and theologians of the past have attempted to provide seemingly objective and logical reasoning to demonstrate God’s existence, but such arguments will only convince those who are already convinced. The Urantia Book expresses this clearly and brilliantly:
The existence of God can never be proved by scientific experiment or by the pure reason of logical deduction. God can be realized only in the realms of human experience; nevertheless, the true concept of the reality of God is reasonable to logic, plausible to philosophy, essential to religion, and indispensable to any hope of personality survival. UB 1:2.7
It’s not that believers are divorced from science and philosophy because we have God in our lives: on the contrary, it seems perfectly logical and reasonable to us that God exists and is our Father and the Creator of all. But trying to convince others of our belief using logical or philosophical arguments is useless, because faith is indispensable to reaching the Father and is non-transferable.
That’s certainly a bold statement! This argument reminded me of the case of a man who was nearly quadriplegic after a car accident, but with rehabilitation managed to regain almost full use of his arms. In a television interview, he was asked if believing in God had helped him, and his response was that he hadn’t needed any God to help him recover; he had done it on his own. He even went so far as to say that God was a kind of unnecessary “crutch” that people clung to when they were in trouble. As time goes by, I wonder if he wasn’t angry with God for “allowing” the accident to happen to him. But only he knows that.
In any case, I prefer to view my relationship with God as one of love, not one of need and dependence. Need seems to compel and constrain our free will, but love is free and generous. God helps us more than we can imagine if we align our will with His. In The Urantia Book, we are told about this:
… When man consecrates his will to the doing of the Father’s will, when man gives to God all that he has, then God makes that man more than he is. UB 117:4.14
Aside from the credibility each person wants to give to the Bible, it is true that it reflects two types of God: the vengeful and all-too-human God of the Old Testament, and the God the Father revealed by Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament. Sacred texts have their value, but they are not necessary for a religious experience understood as a personal relationship with God. The God of the Bible is the story of many human beings from centuries ago; the God of truth is much more, but above all and primarily He is our Father and a God of love. Our challenge as human beings is to transcend the God of institutionalized religions and have a firsthand relationship with Him, without intermediaries.
The God of the Bible is the creation of an evolutionary religion, which in its early stages projected all human flaws and desires onto God. But that is not a true image and hardly reflects God’s true nature.
If there’s one thing that is emphasized throughout The Urantia Book, it’s the loving nature of God as the Universal Father. I could quote many more, but I’ll choose these three:
“God is love”; therefore his only personal attitude towards the affairs of the universe is always a reaction of divine affection… UB 2:5.1
The brotherhood of men is founded on the fatherhood of God. The family of God is derived from the love of God—God is love. God the Father divinely loves his children, all of them. UB 134:4.1
… It is the love of God that impels men to seek salvation. Love is the ancestor of all spiritual goodness, the essence of the true and the beautiful.” UB 192:2.1
I can admit that many evolutionary religions have allied themselves with political and social power and have served to subjugate people with the fear of eternal damnation and being exiled from the group. Hence, Marx’s famous phrase, “Religion is the opium of the people,” is one of the arguments nonbelievers use to support their position.
Unfortunately, the identification of religion with political power has caused many to distance themselves from God, because they fail to consider the possibility that it is not necessary to be part of a Church to believe in God and establish a personal relationship with him.
The revelators are well aware of the problem that religions have faced with matters other than religion. Specifically, in Document 195, they deal extensively with the problem of modern Christianity, about which they say, among other things:
Christianity is threatened by slow death from formalism, overorganization, intellectualism, and other nonspiritual trends. The modern Christian church is not such a brotherhood of dynamic believers as Jesus commissioned continuously to effect the spiritual transformation of successive generations of mankind. UB 195:9.10
Regarding rich people being cultured and atheist, I must say that religion is not a matter of money, educational level, or social class. Anyone, rich or poor, cultured or uncultured, can have a religious experience that is valid and enriching. Sometimes the veneer of culture leads us to disdain spirituality and look down on those who are uneducated. I believe this tendency is very dangerous because it divides us and distances us from our brethren, fostering excessive self-importance. Countering this tendency, we have the magnificent example of Jesus of Nazareth, who preached on many occasions that “in the kingdom of heaven there is neither rich nor poor, neither free nor slave, neither male nor female” (UB 150:1.3).
It never ceases to amaze me that, in the age of social media, which is designed to allow us to spend hours and hours wasting our time on it, many people who waste their time surfing the Internet accuse religion of exactly the same thing.
As I’ve said before, religion as I understand it (personal experience with God) is far from a waste of time. Not only do we lose nothing, but we gain a lot: we discover a purpose in life, we acquire inner peace, we gain reasons to live a meaningful life. We’re not talking about conversing with an imaginary friend, but with Someone very special. Furthermore, this conversation isn’t simply talk for the sake of talk: in this dialogue (because, although many don’t believe it, communication is two-way) we grow, progress, and evolve. For example, this is what The Urantia Book tells us about the advantages of conversing (praying) with God:
…never forget that the sincere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of personal happiness, individual self-control, social harmony, moral progress, and spiritual attainment. UB 91:6.3
Why not try to establish that relationship? What have you got to lose? Forget about traditional religions and their rigid rules and doctrines! Talk to God every day, have a divine appointment every day, wherever and whenever you want. The results are guaranteed!
It is true that reason, logic, and the scientific method are very valuable tools, but they fall short when it comes to non-material aspects of reality.
To reach the highest values we undoubtedly need faith, a faith that is accompanied by reason and logic so that it does not become fanatical or blind: this is what the book calls living faith, which they talk about, for example, in this quote from document 102:
Convictions about God may be arrived at through wise reasoning, but the individual becomes God-knowing only by faith, through personal experience. In much that pertains to life, probability must be reckoned with, but when contacting with cosmic reality, certainty may be experienced when such meanings and values are approached by living faith… UB 102:6.5
The scientific method is the best way to advance science and advance our understanding of the physical world, but it’s useless for understanding the spiritual realm. How can we isolate God in a test tube? What is the mathematical formula for love? How can we quantify faith or intuition?
On the other hand, could we call reason, logic, and the scientific method values? Aren’t values valuable in themselves, rather than tools or means to an end? Let’s look at what the revelators tell us in Document 100:
In physical life the senses tell of the existence of things; mind discovers the reality of meanings; but the spiritual experience reveals to the individual the true values of life. These high levels of human living are attained in the supreme love of God and in the unselfish love of man. If you love your fellow men, you must have discovered their values… UB 100:4.4
This statement (which is perfectly valid when speaking of science) is nevertheless misleading in its formulation when applied to the spiritual realm. First, can the existence of God be considered an extraordinary claim? For millions of believers around the world, God is a constant presence in their lives, so for them, there’s nothing extraordinary about it: He’s part of their everyday life.
Second, what kind of evidence would people making this claim admit? There is no evidence other than the transformative power of true religion in people, and that cannot be measured or quantified according to the scientific method. There can be no objective evidence, for it is absurd to question other people’s religious experience; we cannot enter their minds and perceive what they are experiencing and the lofty ideas they are receiving, unless they use language to express them (and even then it would depend on a person’s expertise to correctly define their religious experiences). So how can we doubt the authenticity of such an experience?
Furthermore, we must not forget that there are countless clues in the physical universe that point to an intentional Creator, even if they are scientifically inconclusive because they cannot be proven. At this point, I cannot resist including this quote from Document 102:
… Scientific materialism has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring universe phenomenon, in refunding its current objections by referring what is admittedly higher back into that which is admittedly lower. Consistency demands the recognition of the activities of a purposive Creator. UB 102:6.9
This is the eternal question that has tormented millions of human beings throughout human history. There’s even a branch of philosophy that studies it: theodicy! Here I always say that if God were to prevent misfortunes or any adverse circumstances that befall us in this world, we would automatically cease to be free and become puppets, mere entertainment for a capricious God who does and undoes as he pleases according to his desires at that moment. But if we start from the premise that as human beings we were created with free will and live in a world where natural accidents occur (which science is increasingly understanding), we are exposed to misfortunes, or at least to the possibility of them occurring.
Faced with this question, I always remember the inevitabilities of document 3, and especially this fragment:
… The only evolutionary world without error (the possibility of unwise judgment) would be a world without free intelligence… UB 3:5.15
Nature follows laws and is not necessarily just. In Paper 118 we are told that “many things that happen in an evolving world are rather difficult for mortal man to understand—natural law is very often seemingly cruel, heartless, and indifferent to all that is true, beautiful, and good within human comprehension” UB 118:10.12.
The prey might consider it unfair to end up killed by a predator, but both are part of a delicate balance whose disruption would have catastrophic consequences (in fact, we’ve been paying the consequences of this for a long time, but that’s another topic). Earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions can all take human lives (and indeed have taken millions throughout history). Should God have intervened in this process to save innocent lives? If the purpose of our existence on this planet is to experience a life subject to the vagaries of time in order to perfect ourselves, wouldn’t our Creator be cheating if He spared us the chance to face life’s vicissitudes?
Furthermore, I can’t help but suggest another question to consider: what if we stop seeing death as absolute, as the end of our existence, and consider that we continue to live beyond death? Wouldn’t life have a new meaning if we considered that possibility? After all, what do we have to lose if we believe in it?
Why do we trust what someone tells us, as if they have the absolute authority to decide for us what is true and what is not? Of course, we can trust the opinions of experts on a subject (especially if they are scientific experts, because they are supposed to present data and evidence to support their claims), but when it comes to religion (again, true religion, not religions of authority), there are no experts.
Let’s see what Jesus taught about how they should live their faith:
… Jesus exhorted his followers to exercise experiential faith. He admonished them not to depend on mere intellectual assent, credulity, and established authority. UB 140:4.9
There are more than seven billion religions in the world: as many as there are human beings. So, who can call themselves an expert? Who can set themselves up as the competent authority to prove that God doesn’t exist? In this world, there are no infallible people who never make mistakes. Why, then, should we surrender our own capacity for discernment and accept as true the claims of another regarding a matter as momentous and personal as this? Isn’t that claim (that God doesn’t exist) also an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence?
This argument reminded me of something I read a few days after Stephen Hawking’s death, in which someone thanked the scientist for proving the nonexistence of God. In the face of arguments of this kind, I say that we shouldn’t base our position regarding the existence of God on the claims of other people (not even those who claim to be believers). We should always trust our understanding, our intuition, and (above all) our inner guidance. It is necessary to have an open mind and heart for the Truth to penetrate both.
Of course, I won’t deny the existence of people within religious organizations who don’t live up to the ideals of those institutions. Whenever I read or hear news related to this, these words of Jesus of Nazareth come to mind:
…But whosoever causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea. UB 158:8.1
But it’s also true that we shouldn’t judge the whole by a single part. In all evolutionary religions, there are many truths and many guidelines for righteous action: the fact that some people violate these guidelines and act contrary to these truths doesn’t invalidate them. It’s not fair (or even logical) for us to deny God just because there are bad apples in the basket of an institutionalized religion. As they tell us in Document 92:
The many religions of Urantia are all good to the extent that they bring man to God and bring the realization of the Father to man (…) There is not a Urantia religion that could not profitably study and assimilate the best of the truths contained in every other faith, for all contain truth… UB 92:7.3
Religion, properly understood, is not only good, but true and beautiful. Those who act despicably in the name of religion (or, worse, in the name of God) only sully and pervert that religion, but they can never contaminate people’s personal religious experience.
The existence of God is not demonstrable, nor can it ever be, because to believe in it we need faith. Science will not help us understand ALL of reality, but only physical reality, and that is precisely why it does not conflict with religion (or should not). As they tell us in document 195:
… In reality, true religion cannot become involved in any controversy with science; it is in no way concerned with material things. Religion is simply indifferent to, but sympathetic with, science, while it supremely concerns itself with the scientist. UB 195:6.2
Therefore, science is not a source of meaning for our lives, as many non-believers claim. However, this does not mean that we need help from experts or intermediaries to address the eternal question of the existence of God and how to live a meaningful life in which a Creator Father is an important part of our lives.
The world’s problems will not be solved solely by science and by leaving God out of the equation, because the crises we are experiencing are a consequence of a deeper crisis: the crisis of values, and true religion is an essential tool as a source of meaning and actions aimed at improving the world. As the revelators tell us:
A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity. UB 195:5.9
We are perfectly capable of addressing this question ourselves without any help. It’s simply a matter of opening our minds and hearts to that possibility, and allowing our inner guidance to help us lift the veils. Why not start from the idea of a personal God with whom we can have a relationship, a God of love who loves us enough to give us the freedom not to believe in Him? Could there be a greater proof of love than that? No experts or intermediaries are needed; no one tells you that you have to go to a church to pray or to join a particular religion: it isn’t necessary. God is far above all the churches that have been created in His name, for He will always be infinitely more than the image we have of Him.
And above all, He loves us with an immeasurable and unconditional love, even if we don’t believe in Him.