Why is there God if, indeed, God exists, or existed ?

 Something must be eternal, unless we accept the proposition that something can come from nothing. Once we accept that, logical and rational discussion is derailed from the outset.

Whatever is eternal is true reality - the ultimate reality - and whatever is not eternal must ultimately depend upon it. The things we experience in this world can be real without being ultimate. The mistake isn’t recognizing that temporary realities exist; the mistake is mistaking them for the whole of reality or independent of it.

Everything we see around us is temporary. Objects come into existence and eventually disappear. Even the universe itself appears to have a beginning and will have an end. But reality itself cannot simply disappear. If what is ultimately real were not eternal, then ultimately it came from nothing, and we are back to the proposition that something can come from nothing.

So there is a distinction between what is real and what is ultimately real.

A dream is a good example. While we are dreaming, the experience is real enough to us. We can be frightened, happy, excited or distressed by something that isn't actually happening. Yet when we wake up, we discover that the dream was not the reality we thought it was. Its temporary nature is part of what allows us to recognize it as a dream.

Imagine someone who spent the last week of his life dreaming and never woke up. As far as his experience was concerned, the dream would be reality. He would have no waking experience with which to compare it.

Temporary realities can therefore have a kind of reality without being ultimate reality. Emergent properties are similar. They weren't there, then they were, and eventually they aren't again. If life and consciousness are merely emergent properties of temporary arrangements of molecules and atoms, then they may be real in a temporary and dependent sense without being part of ultimate reality.

That distinction matters because reality ultimately has its way with us.

Gravity is a simple example. We can ignore gravity, deny gravity, or behave as though gravity doesn't apply to us, but gravity will eventually correct our mistake. Time works similarly. We can pretend that we aren't subject to it, but time doesn't negotiate.

The consequences of being out of alignment with reality aren't always immediate or obvious. But if something really is reality, it cannot ultimately be defeated by our refusal to acknowledge it. Reality will have its way. If it didn't, it wouldn't be reality.

That is why an unrealistic solution is unlikely to work. We use the word unrealistic because the proposed solution doesn't correspond with the way things actually are. The problem isn't that reality is being unfair to us. The problem is that we are trying to live contrary to it.

The same principle applies to societies. A sustainable society has to be realistic. It has to be aligned with reality. If it is built upon a conception of reality that is fundamentally mistaken, eventually the cracks will begin to show.

We can see increasing secularism in some affluent Western societies alongside rising levels of nihilism, loneliness, depression, cultural fragmentation, suicide and moral uncertainty. These things do not prove that secularism caused them. They are nevertheless worth asking whether they are symptoms of a deeper philosophical problem.

Perhaps they are simply temporary problems that better healthcare, technology, education and a greater understanding of the universe will eventually solve. Perhaps.

But there is another possibility.

Perhaps we are trying to build a human society while denying something fundamental about human beings.

If God is understood as eternal, personal, alive, conscious, intelligent and sentient, then consciousness, intelligence, personality, agency, love, purpose and meaning are not inexplicable accidents occurring within an otherwise unconscious reality. They are manifestations of qualities that belong to ultimate reality itself.

We may experience these qualities only as limited reflections or sparks of that greater reality, but that doesn't make them unreal. A reflection is not the original, but it tells us something about what is being reflected.

On the other hand, if ultimate reality is eternal but impersonal, inanimate and devoid of consciousness, intelligence, sentience and agency, then we have a rather strange situation. The things we regard as most precious and meaningful—our consciousness, our relationships, our love, our moral sense, our aspirations, our search for purpose—would ultimately have no counterpart in reality itself.

They could still be useful. They could still be experienced. They could even be valuable to us.

But ultimately they would be temporary emergent phenomena arising from something that possesses none of the qualities they express.

And that creates an interesting question.

Are we really being realistic when we regard these things as genuinely meaningful while believing that the ultimate reality behind them is devoid of meaning?

This may help explain why even societies that have attempted to suppress religion have often eventually found themselves accommodating it. Russia and China, for example, have both had periods of severe religious repression, yet today they tolerate, regulate and sometimes actively accommodate various religious traditions. China is also promoting Confucianism as a source of cultural and moral identity.

This does not necessarily mean that the people running these governments have discovered God. They may simply recognize that human beings need something deeper than political ideology, material prosperity or technological progress.

Voltaire famously observed that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. But perhaps there is another possibility: perhaps the persistent human need for God isn't evidence that God is a useful invention. Perhaps it is evidence that something about our understanding of reality is being expressed through that need.

Religion need not be an imaginary refuge from a cold and meaningless universe. Perhaps the greater danger is imagining that the universe is cold and meaningless when it isn't.

Because if an eternal, living personality with consciousness, intelligence and agency really does exist, then those qualities are not alien intrusions into reality. They belong to reality.

And if we are ourselves conscious, intelligent, sentient beings capable of love, relationships, purpose and meaning, then perhaps these things aren't anomalies that somehow emerged from an ultimately meaningless universe. Perhaps they are reflections of the reality from which we came.

This brings us back to the question: Why is there God, if He exists?

One way of answering it is that if God exists, then He isn't an unnecessary addition to an otherwise complete universe. He is the eternal reality upon which everything temporary depends.

And if He doesn't exist, we have to accept that the things we regard as most important in life, eg. consciousness, personality, love, morality, purpose and meaning, are ultimately temporary phenomena without any foundation in ultimate reality.

We can continue living as though they are ultimately real. We can build families, friendships, cultures and civilizations around them. We can call ourselves realistic, pragmatic and free from imaginary friends. But if those things have no foundation in ultimate reality, then we are living out of alignment with reality.

That is not realism. It is a temporary arrangement with reality that will eventually prove unsustainable.

So the question isn't simply whether we want God to exist and created Him, but: What kind of ultimate reality would have to exist for the things we know and value most deeply to be genuinely real?

If ultimate reality is impersonal and unconscious, we should accept that much of what we cherish is ultimately an illusion of significance.

But if ultimate reality is eternal, personal, conscious, intelligent and purposeful, then our ordinary human lives suddenly look very different.

Our families, relationships, love, aspirations, morality, consciousness and search for meaning aren't things we have to abandon as unrealistic. They may be things we need to understand more deeply, and in so doing align with the reality from which they come.

Because if something better is actually real, choosing to live as though it isn't may be the most unrealistic choice of all, and unrealistic choices seldom end well.