Since the Enlightenment science has made many considerable advances and discoveries. In recent years, science has taken on certain working assumptions: it acts as though there is no God and it assumes that all things are physical things. Based on such assumptions, science can still not explain either consciousness or free will. While the God of the gaps has been getting smaller as the gaps in human understanding are filled with scientific explanations, I believe that this will eventually stop at just the right size of gap for the God that does exist.
While it is not conclusive proof, I argue that this failure indicates that there may be something besides physical matter that plays a role in our world.
I suggest that besides being a physical body we also are a soul. Now, I am not arguing for a Cartesian dualism that needs a God to explain the otherwise unconnected “thinking thing” and “extended thing.” In its place, I am arguing for a temporal distinction between subject and object. In the present moment, there is an aspect of me that is influenced, but undetermined by my past. This (loosely speaking) is my soul-at-the-moment. It is not a physical thing in that it cannot be seen or detected as it is in itself. As soon as my soul decides/acts, its expressions become part of the physical world. Until that moment, it exists only for itself, not for others.
Is there an analog of the soul’s relation to the body that is God’s relation to the world? While many things can be explained without such an assumption, there are some indications that point towards that possibility: the big bang and the origin of life.
The big bang might be called an ultimate irrationality in that no reason for it can be given. It is unpredictable just like the free actions of the human soul.
The next phenomena that points even stronger towards the presence of a God is the origin of life. Life seems to possess an internal desire—a will to live. Either life has always been part of the universe or else it was an emergent property that developed with sufficient complexity. I tend to think that life has always been a part of the universe and that God is the soul of the world.
Is it a proof? No, but I maintain that it provides an explanation that has more explanatory power than is possible with an atheistic / physicalistic world view.
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