WHY GOD

PART I
THREADS OF PROOF
If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation, that He exists.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French mathematician, physicist and philosopher
    Why God?  This question is asking for an explanation of why anyone should take God seriously. It is a question for our times as it seems the old God as we came to know him has disappointed. If he exists does he really have anything relevant to say to us today or is his time past. Are there any cosmic imperatives which we are subject to when it comes to a God concept? Is there a real God who is relevant, helpful and loving who can be contacted by us all and in that contact has the power to transform?
The answers to these questions is what this book intends to explore. You may be discomfited, perhaps insulted by some of what is written in these pages. At various times you will be forced to confront your beliefs about important matters in your spiritual life. I will forewarn you that on some pages you will have no place to hide. It is at that point that you may take the blindfold off and see the rest of the world. My hope is that when you finish the last page you will be left with important questions about yourself, the cosmos and God which you will carry with you until you find the answers for yourself.  The aim is to incite a flame of curiosity about the greatest question ever put to mankind. Is there really a God?  Is it all myth and if not what is the foundation for believing that a God exists? Why should any non-believer suddenly pick up the yoke of faith and deviate from a path of total self indulgence?
 I am convinced that this is the most important question facing the human species today. The answer to the question will determine if our species can continue to survive. Man is not just a physical being. He is also a spiritual being. Our idea of what constitutes spiritual may differ but man’s drift away from his spiritual self has had disastrous consequences for us on the material level. We can’t trust anyone and we are at War with someone, somewhere at all times. Our political system is infected by the human virus commonly referred to as greed, pride and self dealing. Our religious institutions are infected with the same virus. In fact all the institutions which we use to put our trust in are no longer trustworthy because the people, or at least a significant number of them, who lead these institutions are grounded in their physical selves with no idea of how evil and decadent they have become. Our common goal has now become the quest for king of the hill regardless of whom it is that must be sacrificed in the process.
Consider the country’s current financial and moral crisis. Millions of Americans have suffered losses of their entire assets and income. They have lost their homes, their jobs and many have taken their lives leaving their families to struggle on. Now this state of affairs was caused by individuals in corporations, banks, real estate concerns, investment houses and insurance companies whose only concern was adding to their bank accounts. They did not then and they do not now even blink an eye at the tragedy and human misery which their greed created. They sense no connection to the unfortunate people who were not clever enough to avoid the crash.
The chief benefit of the spiritual life is that it teaches and demonstrates the unbreakable connection between all people. It underlines the fact that your act, your thought may not come back to you today but it will return and you will either be pleased to welcome it home or you will be dreading the very thought of having to answer to your creation in your own life.  It is a life of compassion.  It is a life of peace, tranquility and beneficence.
Because our lives move at such a fast pace these days it is difficult to see the connection between that thought or action which was ours and its consequences in our lives when the two do not immediately follow one after the other. Besides we see “bad people”, people who have committed acts that have harmed other people, who prosper and seem to walk away unscathed from the human misery which they have created. It is perhaps more disturbing that we admire these people as the supreme providers. They are the top of the food chain, taking what they want without any regard for the short term consequences to others and the long term consequences to themselves. They pride themselves on their conquests, their acquisitions above all else.
We are a society in which we all suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. When is the last time you had a conversation with someone who was either only pretending to listen, texting on their phone, or talking so relentlessly that you could have fallen asleep and they would not have noticed nor would they have stopped talking. The problem with this condition is that the spiritual world operates at a different pace, a much slower pace. It requires a lack of impatience, anxiety and preoccupation to make contact. It is everywhere but you cannot make contact with it unless you slow down and listen for it, watch for it, feel it, breathe it, smell it, taste it and live it.
The spiritual world proceeds at an organic growth rate and it has seasons. The physical world proceeds at the 4G rate, an eighty miles per hour rate, winning a million dollars in one hour on television rate, erasing wrinkles in a one minute commercial rate, and instantaneously communicating with someone on the other side of the world rate. It does not recognize night and day and it has no seasons. Technology is incredible and it has provided an abundance of benefits to the human race. It has also dissembled man’s sense of himself and created false selves that we pursue while our souls whither on the vine and today’s prophets are trolling for more friends on facebook. We are no longer what our mighty species used to be, back in the day when the world was equally ruled by the spiritual and the material, a balanced partnership. Those were gritty but truly miraculous times, when men wondered at the stars and reverenced their mystical existence. They felt life flowing through them and it burned their souls with its magnificence. If we are the plastic palm tree in the lobby of the Holiday Inn in L.A. then they were the Giant Redwoods which towers above all its neighbors, reaching toward the heavens while protecting the life living beneath its limbs. Just listen to the names, Joshua, Moses, Abraham, Mohammed, Jesus, Osiris, Buddha, Confucius, Solomon, and Socrates, read what they had to say and how they said it. Those were times when men who acted like Gods and perhaps some who were Gods walked this earth, spoke to the people and delivered their messages in person while looking you in the eye. They left us behind and the evolution of our “personal resurrection towards enlightenment” has sputtered. There were not cell phones to distract the listener from the message, no televisions capturing their attention while Buddha spoke to his followers of his revelations.
We as a species must change our ways or perish. We already see the disaster in the wind if we do not adjust our behaviors and our attitudes towards our planet and our fellow brothers and sisters who inhabit this planet with us we are doomed.