Does God really exist?

Highlights from our meeting on 05/07/03

1. Isn't God just a story that we have been told for so long that we simply accept it as true?
2. Is God Love?
3. Is God is just energy?
4. Don't sudden unexplained jumps in evolution, such as flying, feathered dinosaurs, suggest the existence of God?
5. Is God the answer we use to answer the questions to which we have no other answer?
6. Does God, then, represent everything that is mysterious in out lives?
7. But what about direct personal experience?
8. Don't many people report having direct personal experiences which seem to be of a divine nature?
9. Could they just be due to brain chemistry anomalies?
10. Don't certain conditions or situations seem to promote the likelihood of having such experiences?
11. Don't near death experiences seem to bring about such phenomenon?
12. Can't some psychotropic drugs also induce such experiences?
13. Does the demonstrable involvement of brain chemistry activity invalidate the interpretation that these are divine experiences?
14. Don't all human experiences involve some sort of brain chemistry activity?
15. Haven't researchers demonstrated the ability to invoke all sorts of subjective experiences by stimulating various parts of the brain?
16. Don't psychotic individuals also seem to have very convincing hallucinations that can be traced to internal brain chemistry dysfunction?
17. So what is the difference between the experience of seeing an on-coming truck and the hallucination of an on-coming truck?
18. What is the difference between the experience of the divine and the hallucination of the experience of the divine?
19. Won't the brain chemistry activity be very similar?
20. Isn't the difference in the source of the stimulation?
21. In the case of hallucinations, isn't the source some internal dysfunction or short circuit?
22. In the other case, isn't the source from somewhere other than the individual himself?
23. Isn't another difference the eventual outcome or effect of the experience?
24. Isn't it true that the hallucination of a truck can frighten you, but the actual truck can flatten you?
25. Don't scientists emphasize the need for repeatability and independent verification of empirical experience to determine its validity?
26. Aren't there specific spiritual practices which, when followed diligently over a long period of time, dependably lead to certain experiences of a consciousness greater than ones own?
27. Is science even relevant in the search for God?
28. Can something that is inherently beyond the rational mind be comprehended by the rational mind?
29. As long as we are stuck in our rational minds, aren't we like little mice scurrying about in our little world with no awareness of the perspective of the eagle?
30. Don't the mystics say that in the higher state of consciousness, all becomes one and time ceases to exist?
31. So does that mean that if I go into a higher state of consciousness and become one with the truck, I won't get flattened?
32. Don't we need a way to reconcile great spiritual truths with plain common sense?
33. Doesn't there need to be some vertical integration between the world of the eagle and the world of the mouse?
34. Well, if the eagle wants to consume the mouse, doesn't it have to descend into the world of the mouse?
35. Can the eagle, then, operate in both worlds?
36. How can a mouse or man experience the higher world?
37. Is it a higher world, or simply this world properly seen?
38. Where does the wave need to look to experience the ocean?
39. Waves appear to be separate, but isn't it true that, when properly seen, they are no longer separate, but rather undulating manifestations of one great ocean?
40. Is God the great wholeness, of which we, and everything else in the universe, are but fleeting, undulating manifestations?
41. Is this wholeness, alive and conscious?
42. Does it have a will?
43. Is it still evolving?
44. Don't all living things have a need to grow?
45. Is there anything living that is not changing?
46. If God or the Universe is alive, isn't it also changing and growing?
47. Is God, then, a work in progress, changing and growing as we and everything else in the Universe are changing and growing?