I’m not an atheist, yet I respect all opinions in regard to the question of whether there is this something mysterious called God. I may be de-platformed for saying this or cancelled on Twitter, but I don’t think you can disprove the existence of a Higher Power any more than you can prove it. Besides that, I don’t Tweet.

Yet I will say this for those who believe you can prove God. You have one thing on your side, and that is consciousness. Consciousness is a simple and undeniable fact which no one can disprove. To attempt to disprove that one is aware will require consciousness to do it. The proof will contradict itself. You don’t need to prove awareness. It’s self-evident. It’s self-authenticating. Humans are not only conscious, but they’re conscious of their awareness. They are self-aware.

How is it that something (consciousness) arose out of nothing? That’s what atheism stands for; that out of nothing came something, that out of randomness, order arose. If you’re an atheist, it’s not that awareness arose out of thin air. It’s that consciousness arose out of purely chance processes. How could this have happened?

And once it arose out of chaos, what becomes of our awareness? Does it devolve back into disorder, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics holds?

How does a dream dream itself? Who is it that dreams? Who or what preceded the dream? And what came before the dreamer? Science, the shield and sword of materialist philosophy, can only venture up to the water’s edge on these questions. In other words, it can’t ask what came before the Big Bang, the moment the cosmos was created. If science can’t prove or disprove that, then how can anyone disprove God?

Awareness is self-awareness. You’re aware, and you’re aware that you’re aware. You’re conscious of your self. This can’t be explained by the laws of physics, which hold that something shouldn’t exist, because nothing is more stable than something. Oh, some physicists and cosmologists will argue that something is more stable than nothing, and they’ll insist that’s how a universe can inflate out of nothing.

I’m not a physicist or a cosmologist, but I am a believer in common sense, and in intuition, and in experience. And all three agree: there is something, and that something is aware. That’s reality. Give it any name you like. It won’t change what it is. Our beliefs about reality, about the truth, have no effect at all on what’s real and what the truth is. But those beliefs do have effects on the believer.

Ockham’s razor, an old rule of reason that’s been around for a few hundred years now, holds that the simplest explanation which fits a given set of facts is, absent contrary indications, the right one. The self-evident fact of consciousness can’t be denied. For to believe that I’m not really here – not really aware – contradicts my very ability to entertain that belief, or any other.

So, cancel me if you will. The very fact I can write these words means that I’ll continue on despite the cancellation.

© 2023 by Michael C. Just