Who is God?

God is love, unconditional love.

What is love? True love is pure gift without expecting anything in return. Love is personal. Love never treats a person as an object but seeks the best for them regardless of self. The ultimate example of love is someone dying for someone else.

God is trancendant, which means God is above everything. God is not limited by this universe, but infinitely beyond it. God holds the universe in existence. If God was not continuing to wish the universe to exist, it would cease to exist. 'Behind' existence is God.

God knows everything about us, our past, present and future. God knows our deepest thoughts, our sins, our faults. God always loves us.

How do we know this about God?

When we reflect upon the universe we can realise that there is a God. Science now holds to the 'Big Bang theory' of how the universe came to exist. It is generally accepted that the universe started 13.5 Billions years ago from virtually nothing that exploded out to create the universe as we know it today. This agrees with the Catholic creation account in the Bible.

God created the universe. The Bible, the Catholic scriptures is made up of many chapters which are called 'books'. The first book is called Genesis and starts with how God created the universe. We will speak more about the Bible later.

Here is the passage

Gen1-2:4a

This short passage contains so much depth and meaning that it still has not been exhausted.

God created the universe out of nothing. Science tells us the universe had a particular starting point, 13.5 Billion years ago. Science has not been able to explain what was happening before that. Science is limited to doing experiments to verify its understanding. Anything beyond the experimental method is not within science's scope of understanding. To go beyond that scope is no longer science, it is philosophy and/or theology. Philosophy is about reflecting on anything and coming up with some concepts about it. Theology is about God.

If we reflect that there was an infinite amount of 'time' before the big bang, and then suddenly it happened, we naturally ask the question, what was before it and how come it suddenly started? (in fact science tells us that there was no time before it started, but it still raises the question what was before). Our logic tells us that something had to start it. Therefore it is reasonable to think that God started it. A transcendant being of some type. This step to God is reasonable, but not verifyable. Therefore it is a step of faith. Faith is reasonable, but always a step of trust into accepting something that is transcendant.

Faith and reason are fully compatible.

Science and Catholicism are fully compatible. God is the creator of the universe. Anything the universe tells us is compatible with the creator of it, and in fact explains something of the creator. Just like someone's artwork expresses something of the artist. We can say the universe is beautiful and thus the creator is beautiful. But since the creator is infinitely more than the universe, the creator is infinitely beautiful.

Good science leads to good theology and good theology leads to good science. If science sticks to the limits of its own abilities and does not come up with explanations beyond itself, it is good science and thus leaves the gaps as gaps, eg what happened before the Big Bang can't be scientfically explored. It can only be philosophically explored, eg something started it. This reflection can lead to theology, ie that God is the creator. Good theology leaves the science to science, knowing there can be no incompatibility with its findings and the findings of science. If it tries to explain a particular scientific explanation, then it is no longer theology, but science. Science and theology help each other come to a better understanding of existence and are totally compatible.

Theology is bad if it makes scientific assertions. Good theology can say God created the universe. Good theology complements good science. Bad theology would make an assertion about the exact period of time for the creation of the universe, eg 6 days - in fact this is no longer theology, but bad science. Theology can never say how many days it took to create the universe, that is up to science.

Science is bad if it makes theological assertions. If science says the universe just created itself, then it has gone beyond itself and is making a philosophical point, since it cannot explain what happened before, because it can not experiment there. If science says that creation has the 'power' within it to create intelligent life. then it is giving mear atoms and energy an ability beyond itself. Science can say what has taken place by looking at the evidence, and can explain what has effected what, but beyond that, it is silent. As soon as such things as beauty, free will, intelligence, comes into it, science is silent.

Science, philosophy and theology all need each other to come to a complete understanding of the universe.

Reason alone can come to realise that there is a God, and can assert that God is beautiful, good, even infinite and transcendant, but beyond that is only imaginings. And so those questions have been filled with the imagingings of the various ancient cultures around the world. These have been useful and God has layed seeds of God's truth among them.