Does God really exist? Does God Really Exist, Evidence Does God Really Exist, Evidence.

Elena Terekhova

Does God really exist?

About, does God exist, you can talk a lot and for a long time. There are many opinions on this matter, but everyone understands them differently, so disagreements may arise. The traditional answer to this question is to explain natural phenomena as events subject to the mind of the Creator.

It is worth imagining at what high level the cells that make up all living things are created. This design far exceeds the complexity of the most extraordinary skyscraper. Based on even such small arguments, one can understand that everything that surrounds us in this world did not just appear out of nowhere.

When atheists talk with believers on the topic of whether God exists, they often hear the provocative question as a reproach that you are talking about God, but you yourself have never seen Him.

And indeed, in order to convince a person of the existence of someone or something, the simplest thing is to show it to him. Christians see the manifestation of God in everything that surrounds them.

The fact is that everyone is free to choose any religion or not choose it at all. But if you ask a Christian about the existence of God, you will immediately hear an affirmative answer. These people firmly believe that illnesses and trials are sent to develop spirituality and strengthen faith.

Why do Christians so confidently know the answer to the question of whether God exists? From the lives of the saints. This is one of the reasons for their confidence. The lives of saints have been the favorite reading of Orthodox people since ancient times. Children read lives from early childhood, thus studying literacy and perceiving the example of the life of holy people.

The righteous had great faith, for which they often suffered torment and death. Information about this has reached our times thanks to the records of witnesses of that time. The miracles that the saints showed and show still remain evidence of the existence of God and His special relationship with those who love Him.

About, does God exist, and which faith is true is evidenced by an event that occurs once a year at the site of the Holy Sepulcher. On Easter Day, many people of different faiths gather in the temple. An Orthodox priest is allowed to take the place of the Coffin, who is first checked for the presence of flammable substances.

The priest prays until midnight, and at this moment the candles themselves light up, he distributes this fire to everyone present in the temple. For the first few seconds, the fire has healing properties and does not burn the body. Taking advantage of this, believers apply it to diseased parts of the body in order to be healed... Many Christians consider this fact sufficient to prove that God exists.

Take it for yourself and tell your friends!

There is enough evidence for the existence of God

But is the skeptic's call for “evidence” a criticism of biblical faith alone? I think no. Faith is not only an alternative to evidence, but also the ability to believe in a higher power. And faith is relational. Several centuries ago, philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote a wonderful phrase:

“By openly appearing to those who seek Him with all their hearts, and hiding from those who flee from Him with all their hearts, God regulates human knowledge of Himself. He gives signs that are visible to those who seek Him and invisible to those who are indifferent to Him. To those who want to see, He gives enough light. For those who don’t want to see, He gives enough darkness.” (Blaise Pascal, “Thoughts”, chapter 7, 430 pp.).

In other words, the amount of evidence of His existence that God has given us is sufficient; it cannot be reduced or added. He neither overwhelms the seeker with signs of His obviousness, nor does He hide the evidence to such an extent as to turn a person away from Him. God also respects our free will. He could make us believe, but he doesn't do it to avoid being disrespectful. He only provides enough evidence of His existence that our response to it can naturally combine free will, rationality, and trust.

Conclusion:

The existence of God cannot be proven scientifically, but this does not at all prove His absence. Many things in the real world are beyond the reach of science, which, by the way, explores only the sphere of matter and energy in space and time. If God could be subject to scientific research, then He would in some sense become part of our physical world, which is only a part of His creation, because the Creator, by definition, exists outside of what He created. Finally, God may not want us to be able to prove His existence. This would replace our faith with knowledge.

Thus, what may have seemed like a weakness of biblical doctrine turns out to be a great strength!

Translation: Anton Melnik

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Does God really exist and do you believe in God? This is the question you need to ask yourself first. The answer determines the direction of life, efforts, motivation, and ultimately happiness or suffering. Of course, this worries few people because everything seems fine anyway, but for the time being. One way or another, losses are inevitable.

After all, if there is no God, then you can do whatever you want: “Drink, walk and have fun!” But from the example of others or our own, we can be convinced that this is not an option to live - this is degradation. So there are laws, but who created them, who created the flower, the tree, the sky and the earth? Obviously not a person, because we don’t even fully know how we ourselves work.

For example, we are made up of cells, but the cell itself has such a complex structure that scientists will never fully understand it. Not to create something like that. This is an endless topic. A creation must have a Creator, or at least something from which everything came.

This world is very interestingly structured, there are no accidents or injustice in it, but we are so limited to see this unity and harmony. We do not give birth to ourselves and do not die at will, and with rare exceptions, we do not even know when we will die. So who are we, masters or servants?..

WHO IS GOD?

Religion can only be called a worldview in which there is the thought of God, the idea of God, the recognition of God, the belief in God. If there is no this, there is no religion. We can call such a faith whatever we want: shamanism, fetishism, astrology, magic...

But this is no longer a religion, it is a pseudo-religion, a degeneration of religion. Today I would like to talk to you about a fundamental issue for any religion, of course, for Christianity - the doctrine of God.

The question of God is not simple. You will have to hear more than once: “Here you, Christians, tell us about God, prove that He exists. And Who is He? Who are you talking about when you say the word “God”?” We’ll talk to you about this today.

I’ll start from very far away, don’t be surprised and be patient for a minute. Plato, a student of Socrates, has this idea: first principles (simple things that have no complexity) cannot be defined. They are impossible to describe. Indeed, we can define complex things through simple ones.

And what about simple ones? If a person has never seen the color green, how do we explain to him what it is? There is only one thing left to do - to offer: “Look.” It is impossible to tell what the color green is. Father Pavel Florensky once asked his cook, the simplest, uneducated woman: “What is the sun?”

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Tempted her. She looked at him in bewilderment: “The sun? Well, look what the sun is.” He was very pleased with this answer. Indeed, there are things that cannot be explained, they can only be seen.

To the question “Who is God?” I have to answer like this. Christianity says that God is O standing Being, the simplest of all that exists. It's simpler than the sun. He is not a reality that we can talk about and through this understand and cognize. It can only be “seen”. Only by “looking” at Him can one know Who He is.

You don’t know what the sun is, look; you don't know who God is - look. How? - “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). I repeat, not all things lend themselves to verbal description or definition. We cannot explain to a blind person what light is, or to a deaf person what the sound of the third octave or D of the first is.

Of course, there are any number of things that we talk about and explain them quite clearly. But there are many who go beyond the boundaries of conceptual expression. They can only be known through direct And denition.

Do you know what was called theology in pre-Christian Greco-Roman literature and who was called a theologian? Theology meant stories about the gods, their adventures and deeds. And the authors of these stories were called theologians: Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus. (I won’t say what we find with them.)

So much for theology and theologians. Of course, there are interesting ideas about God among Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other ancient philosophers, but these ideas were not popular.

What is called theology in Christianity? The term "theology" is the Russian translation of the Greek word "theology". In my opinion, this is a very unfortunate translation, because the second part of the word “theology” - “logos” has about 100 meanings (the first - Theos, or Theos, is clear to everyone - God).

The ancient Greek-Russian dictionary of I. Dvoretsky contains 34 nests of meanings of the word “logos”. Each slot contains several more values. But if we talk about the basic religious and philosophical meaning of this concept, then most correctly, I believe, it corresponds to “knowledge”, “cognition”, “in And Denia."

The translators took the most common meaning - “word”, and translated theology with such a vague concept as theology. But essentially, theology should be translated as knowledge of God, knowledge of God, knowledge of God. At the same time, knowledge in Christianity does not mean at all what the pagans thought about - not words and reasoning about God, but a special, spiritual experience of direct experience, comprehension of God by a pure, holy person.

The Monk John Climacus formulated this thought very precisely and laconically: “The perfection of purity is the beginning of theology.” Other fathers call this theoria, i.e. contemplation, which occurs in a state of special silence - hesychia (hence hesychasm).

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The Monk Barsanuphius the Great spoke beautifully about this silence: “Silence is better and more amazing than all stories. Our fathers kissed him and worshiped him, and were glorified by him.” You see how ancient, patristic Christianity speaks, or rather spoke, about theology.

It is the comprehension of God, which is realized only through the correct Christian life. In theological science, this is called the method of spiritually experiential knowledge of God; it gives a Christian the opportunity to truly comprehend Him and through this, understand the true meaning of His Revelation given in the Holy Scriptures.

There are two other methods in theological science, and although they are purely rational, they also have a certain significance for the correct understanding of God. These are apophatic (negative) and cataphatic (positive) methods.

You've probably heard of them. The apophatic method proceeds from the unconditional truth about the fundamental difference of God from all created things and therefore His incomprehensibility and inexpressibility by human concepts. This method essentially prohibits saying anything about God, since any human word about Him will be false.

To understand why this is so, pay attention to where all our concepts and words come from, how are they formed? That's how. We see, hear, touch, etc. something and name it accordingly. They saw it and called it. They discovered a planet and named it Pluto, discovered a particle and gave it the name neutron. There are concrete concepts, there are general ones, there are abstract ones, there are categories.

Let's not talk about this now. This is how the language is replenished and developed. And since we communicate with each other and convey these names and concepts, we understand each other. We say: table, and we all understand what we are talking about, since all these concepts are formed on the basis of our collective earthly experience.

But they all describe real things very, very incompletely, imperfectly, and give only the most general idea of the subject. Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, rightly wrote: “The meanings of all concepts and words formed through the interaction between the world and ourselves cannot be precisely determined...

Therefore, through rational thinking alone one can never arrive at absolute truth" ( Heisenberg V. Physics and philosophy. - M., 1963. - P. 67). It is interesting to compare this thought of a modern scientist and thinker with the statement of a Christian ascetic who lived a thousand years before Heisenberg and did not know any quantum mechanics - St. Simeon the New Theologian.

This is what he says: “I... mourned the human race, because, looking for extraordinary evidence, people bring human concepts, and things, and words and think that they are depicting the Divine nature, that nature which none of the angels or people could see, nor name" (Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. Sergiev Posad, 1917. P. 272).

You see what all our words mean. If they are imperfect even in relation to earthly things, then all the more are they conditional when they relate to the realities of the spiritual world, to God. Now you understand why the apophatic method is right - because, I repeat, that no matter what words we define God, all these the definitions will be incorrect. They are limited, they are earthly, they are taken from our earthly experience.

is it true that god exists

And God is above all created things. Therefore, if we tried to be absolutely precise and settled on the apophatic method of knowledge, we would simply have to remain silent. But what would faith and religion become then? How we could preach and generally talk about true religion or false.

After all, the essence of every religion is the doctrine of God. And if we could not say anything about Him, we would cross out not only religion, but also the very possibility of understanding the meaning of human life.

However, there is another approach to the doctrine of God. Although formally incorrect, it is in reality as correct, if not more so, than the apophatic one. We are talking about the so-called. cataphatic method. This method states: we must talk about God. And they should because this or that understanding of God fundamentally determines human thought, human life and activity.

Consider the difference between the following statements: I cannot say anything about God; I say that God is Love; I say that He is hatred? Of course, there is a great difference, for every indication of the properties of God is a guideline, a direction, a norm for our human life.

Even the Apostle Paul writes about the pagans that everything that can be known about God, they could know through looking at the world around them. We are talking about some properties of God, about how you perceive some of the actions of God, this simple Being. And we call these the properties of God. His wisdom, His goodness, His mercy and so on. These are only individual manifestations of the Divine that we can observe on ourselves and on the world around us. God is a simple Being.

Therefore, although all our words are inaccurate, incomplete and imperfect, nevertheless, Divine Revelation for our teaching says quite definitely that God is Love, not hatred, Good, not evil, Beauty, not ugliness... Christianity says: “ God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16).

It turns out that the teaching about God-Love is not some kind of uncertainty, abstraction, no, it is the very essence of human life, He is a really existing Ideal. Therefore, “he who does not love his brother remains in death”; therefore, “everyone who hates his brother is a murderer”; therefore, “no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:14,15).

In other words, know, man, if you have hostility towards even one person, you are mistaken and bring yourself harm and suffering. Just think about what a great criterion is given to a person by the positive teaching about God and His properties. By it I can evaluate myself, my behavior, my actions.

does god exist evidence

I know the great truth: what is good and what is evil and, therefore, what will bring me joy, happiness, and what will insidiously destroy me. Is there anything greater and great for a person?! This is the strength and significance of the cataphatic method.

You understand now Why there is a Revelation of God, which is given in human concepts, images, parables, Why Does He, inexplicable and indescribable, tell us about Himself in our harsh words? If He told us in angelic language, we would not understand anything.

It would be the same as if someone came in and spoke Sanskrit. We would open our mouths in bewilderment, although it is very possible that he would communicate the greatest truths - we would still remain completely ignorant.

So, how does Christianity teach about God? On the one hand, it says that God is Spirit and, as a simple Being, cannot be expressed by any human words and concepts, for any word is, if you like, a distortion. On the other hand, we stand before the fact of God’s Revelation, given to us in the Holy Scriptures and the experience of many saints.

That is, God speaks about Himself to man in his language, and although these words are imperfect and incomplete in themselves, they are necessary for man, since they indicate to him what he must do in order to come, at least in part, to saving knowledge , V And God's day.

And that knowledge of God is partly possible, the Apostle writes about this: “Now we see as if through a dark glass, fortune-telling, but then face to face; Now I know in part, but then I will know, even as I am known” (1 Cor. 13; 12). And the Lord Himself says: “This is eternal life, yes know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Earthly life is the beginning of this eternal life.

God the Lord condescends to our limited understanding and expresses the truth to us in our words. I think that when we die and are freed from this “conceptual” language, we will look with a smile at our ideas about God, the spiritual world, angels, eternity... which we had, even reading Revelation.

should you believe in god

Then, on the one hand, we will understand all the wretchedness of these ideas of ours, on the other hand, we will see how good this hidden Revelation of God about Himself, about man, about the world was for us, for it showed us the path, means and direction of saving life. That is, all this has a direct bearing on the spiritual life of a Christian.

We are all filled with passions, we are all proud, we are all proud, but there is a huge difference between people. Which? One sees this in himself and fights with himself, but the other does not see it and does not want to see it. It turns out that the positive (cataphatic) teaching about God gives a person the correct criteria, measures with the help of which he can correctly evaluate himself if he really wants to be a believer.

Of course, he may hate his brother, calling himself a believer, but then, if his conscience is not yet completely seared and his mind is not completely darkened, he can understand what demonic state he is in. You know, there are natural and supernatural religions. Natural religions are nothing more than an expression in images and concepts, myths and stories of the immediate, natural human sensation of God.

Therefore, such ideas are always either primitively anthropomorphic or intellectually abstract in nature. Here are all kinds of images of gods, filled with all human passions and virtues, here is the divine Nothing, here is the idea of the Platonic Demiurge and the Aristotelian Prime Mover, etc.

But all the truths of these religions and religious-philosophical ideas have a distinctly human origin. Supernatural religions are distinguished by the fact that God Himself makes it known about Himself, who He is. And we see what a stunning difference there is between the Christian understanding of God and that which is outside it. At first glance, both here and there have the same or similar words, but the content of these religions is essentially different from each other.

How striking this difference is, the Apostle Paul beautifully expressed it when he said: “But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, but foolishness to the Greeks” (1 Cor. 1:23). Really, All specifically Christian truths are fundamentally different from all previous analogues. This is not only the crucified Christ, but also the teaching about the Triune God, about the Logos and His Incarnation, about the Resurrection, about Salvation, etc.

But this needs to be discussed separately. But let’s talk about one of these truths now. There is another unique truth of the Christian teaching about God, which decisively distinguishes Christianity from all other religions, including even the Old Testament religion. We will not find anywhere except Christianity that God is Love and only Love.

Outside of Christianity, we will encounter any ideas about God. At the same time, His highest understanding, to which certain religions and some ancient philosophers came, boiled down to the doctrine of a just Judge, the highest Truth, and the most perfect Reason. No one knew that God is Love before Christ.

Here's an example. Our Church has a commission for dialogue with Iranian Muslims. At a meeting last summer, the question of the highest virtue and the highest attribute of God was raised. And it was interesting to hear when Muslim theologians, one after another, said that such a property is justice.

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We answered: “If so, then the computer is the fairest. And don’t you turn to Allah: “O all-merciful and merciful!” They say: “Yes, merciful, but Judge. He judges fairly and this is where his mercy is demonstrated.” Why didn’t the non-Christian consciousness (even if it even called itself Christian) know and don’t know that God is precisely Love and nothing more?

Because we, people, have distorted the very concept of love. In human language, love means: forgiveness, absence of punishment, that is, freedom of arbitrariness. Do what you want, that’s what “love” means in human terms. We forgive a friend everything, but to someone who is unpleasant to us, we cling to every nonsense. Our concept of love has been distorted. Christianity returns to us its true understanding.

What is Christian love? “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Love is sacrifice. But sacrifice is not blind. Look at how Christ responded to evil: “Serpents, brood of vipers.”

He takes the whip and drives him out of the temple, overturning the benches of those selling in it. I remember one episode from the book of Archbishop Alexander of Tien Shan, when he was 14-15 years old. He wrote: I took some book and began to look at a picture in it of horses mating.

And suddenly my mother saw it. I have never seen such anger in her. She was always very gentle and kind, but here she indignantly snatched this book from my hands. It was the anger of love, which I remember with gratitude all my life.”

People do not know what the anger of love is and by love they mean only indulgences. Therefore, if God is Love, then, therefore, do whatever you want. From here it becomes clear why justice has always been and is considered the highest virtue. We see how even in the history of Christianity this highest teaching was gradually belittled and distorted.

The Christian teaching about God-Love was deeply accepted and revealed by the holy fathers. However, this understanding turns out to be psychologically inaccessible to the old man. The most striking example is the Catholic doctrine of salvation. It comes down, in the true words of A.S. Khomyakov, to a continuous litigation between God and man. What kind of relationship is this? Love relationship? No, court.

Is there really a god video

is there really a god video

If you have committed a sin, bring appropriate satisfaction to the justice of God, for by sin you have offended the Divine. They don’t even understand that God cannot be offended, because otherwise He turns out to be not an all-blessed Being, but the most suffering Being. If God is constantly offended by human sins, constantly shudders with anger at sinners, then what kind of bliss is there, what love! This is the judge.

Hence the proud doctrine of the merits and even super-due merits of a person, which he supposedly can have before God, was invented. Hence the teaching about the Sacrifice of Christ as a satisfaction to the justice of God, the teaching about purgatory, hence indulgences. All Catholic teaching boils down to the Old Testament doctrine: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” It all flows directly from a deeply distorted understanding of God.

Well, if God is Love, then how can we understand this Love? Are there human sorrows? Yes. Isn't there retribution for human sins? It happens, and what else. We can constantly see this from personal experience and the experience of others. And the Holy Scripture itself speaks of retribution, and so do the holy fathers. What, then, does all this mean, if not that God is Justice? It turns out not.

When the facts of human disasters and suffering are assessed as God’s punishment, that is, as God’s vengeance for sins, they make a big mistake. Who punishes a drug addict, who punishes someone who jumps out from the second or third floor and breaks his arms and legs? Who punishes a drunkard? Is it God’s revenge that he becomes broken, mutilated, sick physically and mentally?

Of course not. These sufferings are the natural consequences of violating the laws of the external world. Exactly the same thing happens to a person when he violates spiritual laws, which are primary and even more significant in our lives than physical, biological, mental laws, etc. And what does God do?

All the commandments of God are a revelation of spiritual laws and a kind of warning to man, just like the laws of the material world. If you want, you can even say this, God begs us people: don’t harm yourself, don’t sin, don’t jump from the fifth floor, go down the stairs; don’t envy, don’t steal, don’t be deceitful, don’t... - you’re crippling yourself with this, for every sin carries its own punishment.

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I remember when I was a child, one winter my mother told me that in the cold you shouldn’t touch the iron door handle with your tongue. As soon as my mother turned away, I immediately licked her and there was a great cry. But I remembered that incident well and since then, imagine, I have never repeated this “sin” again.

So I understood what God’s commandments are and that God is precisely Love, even when it hurts a lot. It was not my mother who punished me, it was not she who stuck my tongue to the iron handle, but I did not want to recognize the laws and was punished. God “punishes” us in the same way. Our sorrows are not God's vengeance. God remains Love and therefore warns us in advance, says, begs: “Do not do this, for this will certainly be followed by your suffering, your sorrows.”

But the idea that God takes revenge and punishes is a widespread and deeply rooted misconception. And a false idea gives rise to corresponding consequences. How many times, I think, have you heard how people are outraged... by God. They rebel against God: “What, am I the most sinful? Why did God punish me?” Either children are born bad, or something burned out, or things go wrong. All you can hear is: “What, am I the most sinful? Here they are worse than me, and they prosper.”

They reach the point of blasphemy, curses, and rejection of God. Where does all this come from? From the perverted, pagan-Jewish understanding of God. They just cannot understand and accept that He does not take revenge on anyone, that He is the greatest Doctor,

Who is always ready to help everyone who has sincerely realized their sins and brought heartfelt repentance. He is above our insults. Remember, in the Apocalypse there are wonderful words: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with Me” (Rev. 3:20).

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Let us now listen to what the Holy Scripture says about God-Love:

He commands His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matt. V:45).

For He is good to the ungrateful and the wicked (Luke VI:39).
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

When tempted, no one should say: God is tempting me; because God is not tempted by evil and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But everyone is tempted, being drawn away and enticed by his own lust (James 1:13-14).

So that you... may... understand the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:18-19).

How do the holy fathers look at this issue? We will find in them (as well as in the Holy Scriptures) many statements that directly speak of God’s punishments for sins. But what do these punishments mean, what is their nature? I will read to you their explanations of this serious issue.

Rev. Anthony the Great: “God is good and impassive and unchanging. If anyone, recognizing that it is blessed and true that God does not change, is perplexed, but how He (being such) rejoices over the good, turns away from the evil, is angry with sinners, and when they repent, is merciful to them; then to this it must be said that God does not rejoice and is not angry: for joy and anger are passions. It is absurd to think that the Divine would be good or bad because of human affairs.

God is good and does only good things, but does not harm anyone, being always the same; and when we are good, we enter into communication with God - out of similarity with Him, and when we become evil, we separate from God - out of dissimilarity with Him.

By living virtuously, we become God's people, and by becoming evil, we become rejected from Him; but this does not mean that He is angry with us, but the fact that our sins do not allow God to shine in us, but unite us with demons tormentors.

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If then through prayers and acts of kindness we gain permission from our sins, this does not mean that we have pleased God and changed Him, but that through such actions and our turning to God, having healed the evil that exists in us, we again become capable of tasting God’s goodness; so to say: God turns away from the wicked is the same as saying: the sun is hidden from those deprived of sight"(Instructions of St. Anthony the Great. Philokalia. Vol. 1. §150).

St. Gregory of Nyssa: “For what It is impious to regard the nature of God as subject to any passion of pleasure or mercy or anger, no one will deny this, even those who are little attentive to the knowledge of the truth of Existence.

But although it is said that God rejoices over His servants and is angry with rage at the fallen people, then that He has mercy, and if He has mercy, He also gives generously (Ex. 33:19), but with each of these sayings, I think, the generally accepted word is loud teaches us, that through our properties the providence of God adapts itself to our weakness to those inclined to sin for fear of punishment restrained themselves from evil, previously carried away by sin, did not despair of returning through repentance, looking at mercy...” (St. Gregory of Nyssa. Against Eunomius. Creations. Ch.U1. Book.II.M.1864. P.428-429).

St. John Chrysostom: “When you hear the words: “rage and anger” in relation to God, then do not understand anything human by them: these are words of condescension. Divinity is alien to all such things; it is said this way in order to bring the subject closer to the understanding of cruder people” (Conversation on Ps. VI.-2. Creation. T.V. Book 1. St. Petersburg. 1899. P. 49).

St. John Cassian the Roman: God “can neither be upset by insults nor irritated by the iniquities of people...” (Interview - X1. §6).

All this is very important to understand because it has great implications for spiritual life. We are separated from God by our sins, but God never departs from us, no matter how sinful we are. Therefore for us Always the door of saving repentance remains open. It was not by chance, but providentially, that the first to enter heaven was not the righteous man, but the thief. God is always Love.

This understanding of God also stems from the Christian dogma of God, one in essence and threefold in Hypostases - a dogma, again, new, unknown to the world. There is a fatherly expression: whoever has seen the Trinity has seen Love. The dogma of the Trinity reveals to us the prototype of that love, which is the ideal norm of human life and human relationships.

Multi-hypostatic humanity, although united by nature, is, however, in its present state not at all united in essence, for sin divides people. The mystery of God the Trinity was revealed to humanity so that it would know that only God-like love can make every person a child of God.

Lecture by Professor A.I. Osipov on basic theology, was read at Sretensky Theological Seminary on October 10, 2000 G.

Believe it or not

Does God exist? This is a fairly pressing question of all times and peoples. Of course, religion gives only a positive answer to this. If a person is not an atheist, then he believes in the Almighty, regardless of whether he exists or not! Until recently, it was impossible to prove the existence of God using mathematical calculations and physical formulas. The only and indisputable proof of the existence of the Creator was considered to be firm faith in him and knowledge gleaned from the Bible... But first things first.

"Seventh Proof"

Remember how Bulgakov’s heroes - editor Berlioz and poet Bezdomny - in the chapter entitled “The Seventh Proof” (novel “The Master and Margarita”) assured Satan himself (Woland) that neither the devil nor God exists? True, they should be given their due: they did not know who was in front of them. But Woland was not at all moved by this excuse. He did not like these atheistic speeches directed at the Almighty. Woland is evil, but fair! He firmly knows that God exists, and does not accept such speeches that refute such truths! In general, the above-mentioned literary figures were punished - each in their own way: Berlioz had his head cut off by a tram, and Bezdomny became a schizophrenic and, pardon the pun, found his home in... a psychiatric hospital. Do you see what I'm getting at? If you suddenly find yourself involved in a discussion on the topic “Does God exist?”, you should not vehemently, foaming at the mouth, deny the very fact of his existence! This could backfire on you! It’s better to get out of it with a joke, answering “I haven’t seen it - I don’t know”...

Let's take your word for it

Whether God exists or not - everyone decides for himself. Statistics say that today almost 90% of the world population believes in the Almighty. The remaining 10% are divided approximately equally into those who believe not so much in the Lord as in the existence of some higher powers, and those who believe only in themselves, calling all talk about the Creator an invention of religious fanatics. Be that as it may, it is impossible to prove with complete certainty whether God exists. In the same way, it cannot be refuted. The Holy Orthodox Book (Bible) says that a person must accept the existence of the Creator as an indisputable fact by his very faith in the Lord, which many people do with great pleasure.

Yes or not?

So, we have found out that the fact of the existence or absence of the Creator cannot be proven from the point of view of the rational logical mind; it can only be accepted on faith. It turns out to be a kind of “axiom”. Now let's talk about something that may soon change some of our religious ideas, pleasantly surprising believers. Science has proven the existence of the Almighty!

Scientific basis for the existence of God

For a long time, pundits did not touch upon this aspect. Since the purpose of science is to study the material world using rational empirical methods, and the Lord is not material, no scientific explanation was given for this. The question “does God exist” was given entirely to religion. However, today it is scientists who take it upon themselves to unequivocally assert that there is a Creator! How do they prove this?

Proof

They say that the material world was created by an immaterial Lord, which corresponds to the law of conservation of energy (the first law of thermodynamics), which states that energy (matter) does not arise independently, that is, “out of nowhere.” Indeed, at the present time there is no longer any matter other than the existing one. This correlates with the biblical statements that the Creator completed his creation in the first six days. In other words, from that time on God no longer creates new matter. The second law of thermodynamics is clearly seen in the “curse” mentioned in the Bible. The Lord imposed it on the material world.

In the form of a conclusion

It is these reflections that are given as the main argument regarding the existence of the Almighty. This is a logical consequence of two fundamental and scientifically proven laws of thermodynamics, established empirically.

Culture

Both believers and atheists are constantly waiting for clear evidence that will confirm or refute existence of God.

Below is a list of theories and studies carried out by scientists from various fields who have worked to prove the existence of God, Heaven and Hell.

Do they provide real facts or are they still conjecturing many things? You decide!

1. The scientist who “dug” the road to hell in Siberia and recorded the cries of damned souls (1989)

What actually happened:

The Soviet Union drilled a deep hole in the ground - the Kola Superdeep Well (12,262 meters). The well is located on the Kola Peninsula. After its completion, quite interesting geological anomalies were discovered, but as it turned out, there was nothing unusual, much less supernatural, about them.

What the legend says:

According to legend, in 1989, a group of Russian scientists working under the direction of Dr. Azakov was drilling a hole almost 15 kilometers deep in an unnamed location in Siberia when they came across a bottomless cavity.

Intrigued by the unexpected find, they lowered a heat-resistant microphone into the hole along with other sensory equipment. According to experts, they were able to record and then hear the anguished screams of desperate people.

The second surprise was the incredibly high temperature they discovered in the center of the Earth (more than 1000 degrees Celsius). As a result, they came to the conclusion that they had opened the road to hell.

The story was soon picked up by numerous American and European media outlets, and audio files of the alleged sufferers filled the entire Internet. Immediately, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TNB) began discussing the audio track on all of their gospel channels, saying it was definitive evidence that hell exists.

Norwegian teacher Age Rendalen heard the TNB story during a visit to the United States. Feeling a terrible disgust for mass gullibility, he decided to “thicken the colors” of the fairy tale told by the channels.

Rendalen wrote online that he initially did not believe in this tale, but upon returning to Norway, he supposedly read the "factual" report on the story. According to Rendalen, not only were the voices of the damned souls clearly audible on the recording, but also the ghosts of bats were flying out of the hole, leaving an indelible mark on the Russian sky.

To perpetuate his fiction, Rendalen deliberately mistranslated a regular Norwegian article about a local structure and provided it, as well as TNB's English "translation".

Rendalen included in the article his real data, phone number and address, and also left the contact information of one pastor he knew who agreed play along him in case someone wants to check and call to ask about everything personally.

Unfortunately, TNB published the story without contact information for Rendalen and the California pastor, and the story itself was made up " Welcome to hell and hoax" began to be played on radio, television and published in all newspapers.

In fact, the reality is that Soviet scientists essentially drilled a hole, almost 15 km deep, in the ultra-deep Kola well, located not in Siberia, but on the Kola Peninsula, which borders Norway and Finland.

After completion of the well, some interesting geological anomalies were discovered, but they did not indicate any supernatural encounters. The temperature at depth reached 180 degrees Celsius, so further drilling was stopped due to high cost of the procedure.

As it later turned out, the recording used, supposedly the voices of tortured souls, was just a remix of part of the soundtrack to the 1972 film "Baron's Blood" with added effects.

The best part is that today you can buy a copy of The Sounds of Hell for $12.99.

Does God exist?

2) Neurologist who claimed that Heaven exists after spending a week in a coma (2008)

In 2008, Eben Alexander III suffered a very serious, week-long coma caused by meningitis infection. Brain scans showed that the entire cortex, which surrounds the brain in the area responsible for consciousness, thinking, memory and understanding, was not functioning.

Doctors gave him very little chance and told his family that even if Eben survived, he would likely remain brain damaged for the rest of his life. Despite all the difficulties endured, Eben woke up exactly a week later.

While in a deep coma, the brain was so severely damaged that only its most primitive areas worked. After waking up, the man claimed that he experienced something extraordinary: he traveled to heaven.

In his autobiographical book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, he talks about how left his body and suffered clinical death.

Alexander claims that after death, an entire eternity of perfect splendor awaits us, complete with angels, clouds, and deceased relatives.

By July 3, 2013, the book had been on the New York Times bestseller list for 35 weeks.

In a wide-ranging investigation into the history of neurologist Alexander, based on his medical background, Esquire magazine reported in its August 2013 issue that before the book's publication, the neurologist was suspended from medical practice due to negligence, as well as due to his participation in at least two procedures to cover up medical errors.

The magazine's specialists also talked about what they found discrepancies in the book of Alexander. Among the inconsistencies, in particular, what stands out is that Alexander writes that he “fell into a coma as a result of a severe form of bacterial meningitis, while brain activity was suspended.”

At the same time, the doctor who observed him during the coma states that the coma was medically induced, and the patient was partially conscious, but was accompanied by hallucinations.

Alexander's book and the advertising campaign in support of it were criticized by scientists, including neuroscientist Sam Harris, who called Alexander's work "disturbingly unscientific" and stressed that the evidence presented by the author is not only insufficient, it also suggests that the author knows little about how the brain works.

In November 2012, Alexander responded to critics by releasing a second article in which he recounted the words of the doctors who performed all the brain tests on him. “Nothing was done that would impair any of the functions, including vision, hearing, emotions, memory, language or logic.”

Truth or lie? Everyone decides for themselves.

Evidence for the Existence of God

3) Chemistry student who demonstrated that heaven and hell exist

According to urban legend, the following story began with a response that was received from a University of Washington chemistry student.

And here is the question itself: Is hell an ectothermic place (that is, it gives off heat) or an endothermic place (that is, it absorbs heat)?

Most students answered the question using Boyle's law (a gas cools when it expands and heats up when it contracts).

However, one of the students approached the answer like this:

First, we must understand How much does the mass of Hell change over time?. That is, we must have an idea of at what speed souls move to Hell and at what speed they leave it.

I think it's quite reasonable to assume that if the soul has already fallen into Hell, then it is unlikely to leave it. As for exactly how many souls go to Hell, it is worth looking at the various religions that exist in the world today.

Most of them claim that if you do not profess this particular religion, then you will undoubtedly go to Hell. Since there are so many religions today, we can confidently say that all souls go to Hell.

Considering the birth and death rates throughout the world, it can be assumed that the number of souls in Hell is growing exponentially(that is, the value increases in direct proportion to the value of the value itself).

Now we are looking at the rate of change in the volume of Hell, because Boyle's law states that in order to maintain the same temperature and pressure in Hell, the volume must expand in direct proportion to the addition of souls. In this case, two scenarios are possible.

1. If Hell expands more slowly than the number of souls living there grows, then the temperature and pressure there will increase disproportionately, so the day will come when Hell will “fall apart.”

2. If Hell increases in size at a rate greater than the volume of incoming souls, then the temperature and pressure will drop and Hell will freeze over.

So where is the truth?

If we take into account the postulate that I heard from my colleague Teresa in my first year ("Hell will freeze over if I sleep with you") and also take into account that I spent last night with her, then of the points I proposed, the second is true.

So I'm sure that hell has already frozen over.

The consequence of this theory is the fact that since Hell has already frozen over, it means that no more souls go there, and, therefore, only Heaven remains, which proves the existence of a divine being. This explains why Teresa screamed for a long time last night: " Oh my God!"

For obvious reasons, the student received the highest mark.

4) Professor of Medicine Who Claimed to Find a Sculpture of God (1725)

In 1725, Professor Adam Beringer, dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of Würzburg, found many carved in limestone figurines of lizards, frogs, spiders, birds with the faces of fish, the sun and stars.

Some of them were signed, for example, the Hebrew name of God in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. These figures carved in stone, in his opinion, were created by God himself when he experimented with types of life, planning the universe.

Behringer also, along with his main explanation, suggested several possible other interpretations, among which was the version about the imprints of dead animals (fossils). However, most of them, according to the professor, were " capricious thoughts of God."

He also considered the version that these drawings belonged to prehistoric pagans, but it would be more correct to exclude this option, because the pagans did not know the name of God.

In fact he became a victim of deception, committed by his fellow ex-Jesuits Ignatz Roderick, professor of geography and mathematics, and Johann Georg von Eckhart, privy councilor and librarian.

Having got to the bottom of the truth, Beringer sued the deceivers, then a scandal followed, after which all three have lost their authority.

Some of the fossil animals discovered by Behringer then are kept today in the Oxford University Museum.

5) Pascal's Wager: Does God exist or not? You must decide (17th century)

Pascal's Wager is a dogma in apologetic philosophy that was developed by the 17th century French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1622).

Dogma states that Throughout our lives, humanity has debated the existence of God.

If God exists, then given the infinite gain or loss associated with believing in God or not believing in God, a reasonable person should live as if God exists, seek him, and believe.

If God does not actually exist, then such a person will only have a finite loss (of some pleasure, luxury, etc.).

The following logic is used in philosophy:

1. God either exists or He does not;

2. In the game we all play, it will always come up heads or tails;

3. For obvious reasons, you are unable to prove any of the above statements;

4. You must choose something for yourself (this is not optional);

5. Let's weigh all the benefits and losses if we assume that there is a God. Let's evaluate these two choices. If you win, you get everything, if you lose, you lose nothing.

Historically, Pascal's Wager was groundbreaking because it outlined new areas of study in probability theory, marking the first formal use of decision theory, as well as the emergence of expected topics in future philosophy such as existentialism, pragmatism, and voluntarism.

6) Euler's formula to explain the existence of God (18th century)

Leonhard Euler (1707 – 1783) was one of the first Swiss mathematicians and physicists to make important discoveries in areas such as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory.

Euler also created much of modern mathematical terminology and notation in calculus, such as the concept of a mathematical function. He is known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics and astronomy. He lived most of his life in St. Petersburg and Berlin.

Much of what is known about Euler's religious beliefs can be inferred from his letters to a German princess, as well as from his early works, which show that he was a devout Christian who believed that the Bible was written under divine inspiration.

Moreover, he argued for the divine inspiration of Scripture.

There is a famous legend inspired by Euler's arguments. The French philosopher Denis Diderot, at the invitation of Catherine the Great, paid a visit to Russia. However, the empress was extremely alarmed that the arguments of the atheist philosopher could affect her closest subjects.

So, Euler was asked to confront a clever Frenchman. Diderot was informed that the mathematician had developed a formula proving the existence of God, and he agreed to study its proof.

When the time came for Euler to talk about his formula, he said: " Sir, (a+b) to the nth power divided by n = x, therefore God exists. Now you!"

Diderot, for whom, as history claims, mathematics was akin to Chinese literacy, was left dumbfounded and immediately left the meeting place. Being in an extremely embarrassed position, he asked the empress let him leave the country, to which the latter kindly agreed.

Euler was depicted on the sixth series of Swiss 10-franc banknotes, as well as on numerous Swiss, German and Russian postage stamps. An asteroid that fell to Earth in 2002 was also named after him.

In his honor, the Lutheran Church even created a holiday, which is celebrated on May 24. He was a very devout Christian, a believer in the inerrancy of the Bible, who wrote apologetics and actively opposed the prominent atheists of his time.

7) Mathematician who developed the God Theorem (1931)

Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian and later American logician, mathematician and philosopher. It is believed that he, along with Aristotle and Frege, was one of the most powerful logicians in the history of mankind.

This man made a huge contribution to the formation of scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century. Gödel published his two incompleteness theorems in 1931, when he was 25 years old and had just received his doctorate from the University of Vienna.

The first theorem states that any self-consistent system force is sufficient to describe the arithmetic of natural numbers (for example, arithmetic Peano), however, there are true propositions about natural numbers that cannot be proven using axioms.

To prove this theorem, Gödel developed a technique known today as Gödel numbering, which encodes formal expressions as natural numbers.

He also showed that neither the axiom of choice nor the continuum hypothesis can be falsified by the accepted axioms of set theory by relying on the axioms being consistent. Previous results allowed mathematicians to talk about the axiom of choice in their proofs.

He also made important contributions to proof theory by clarifying the connection between classical, intuitionistic and modal logic.

When Gödel died in 1978, he left behind an interesting theory based on the principles of modal logic (a type of formal logic that, in a narrow sense, involves the use of the words "necessarily" and "possibly").

The theorem itself states that God, or the supreme being, is that greater than which it is impossible to understand anything. That is, if a person has proven and understood that God exists, he can do anything.

God exists in understanding. If God exists in understanding, we can imagine that He exists in reality. Therefore, God must exist.

Heaven, earth, hell

8) A scientist who says there is no conflict between science and religion (2007)

During an interview with CNN in April 2007, Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, reaffirmed the information that embedded DNA evidence proves the existence of God.

According to the researcher, he gathered a consortium of scientists to read 3100000000 letters of the human genome. As a believer, Dr. Collins sees the DNA information in the molecules of all living things as a divine language, and the elegance and complexity of this language is a reflection of God's plan.

However, he did not always hold this opinion. When Collins was a graduate student in physical chemistry in 1970, his atheistic thinking found no reason to postulate the existence of any truths that deviated from the laws of mathematics, physics and chemistry.

He then entered medical school and came face to face with the problem of life and death among his patients. One of the patients asked him: " What do you believe, doctor?" From then on, he began searching for answers.

Dr. Collins admitted that the science he loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as: “What is the meaning of life?”, “Why am I here?”, “Why does mathematics work this way and not otherwise?”, “If the Universe had a beginning, then who created it?”, “Why are the physical constants in the Universe so subtle are determined to allow the possibility of the emergence of complex forms of life?”, “Why do people have a sense of morality?”, “What happens to us after death?”.