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  • Artist Info: I was raised being taught about God and had always assumed it true that he’s the creator of everything. I thought everything that happens needs a cause or there’d be nothing, so God makes sense, and didn’t think much more about it than that. I never thought that because everything we can experience is consistent because they need causes, that that is evidence for God. There needs to be a cause for time and space. I thought only that God was consistent with the rest of reality. I asked my mom one day when I was a child where God came from. She said he doesn’t have a beginning and I thought that meant he existed for an infinite amount of time because I thought for God to have been requires a past. I never thought of being timeless and space less, because I understood time was needed to do anything, and space needed to be anywhere.<br />
    When I was 14 I doubted God existed for the first time in my life because I realized I didn’t know of any evidence for him. It felt like I was in hell. Without God, everything exists for no reason. What people think and feel about things doesn’t determine what’s true, so any sense of good, evil, and value could only be opinions. Such things can’t be tested to see if there is any correct standard for how things should be, so any belief of such things would need faith without evidence. It would do no good to have love for anyone or thing because what’s needed for anything to be beneficial would all end with no future. It could make no difference what happened. The only thing I remember my mom telling me when I would tell her my doubts was to just know He’s real. I don’t remember if I thought to tell her that I don’t know how to know if God is real. I thought she meant to not care about evidence and just not think of my doubts. My parents didn’t know that I needed an explanation of how cause and effect is evidence for a creator of time and space. Within two or three months I later realized that there was no reason to suspect God might not exist. Thinking so can only be an assumption because evidence isn’t needed to think that.<br />
    There was a time of two and a half years, late October 2010 to May 28, 2013, when I doubted hope again because I thought that God having always bean meant he has an eternal past and that him being omnipresent was him being of unlimited size. With an eternal past, it would take eternity to do anything, so nothing could ever happen because the wait couldn’t end. There can’t be an unlimited amount of space, because for anything to exist relative to each other there has to be a beginning and end of something else for them to be in. I struggled to believe in God because of that. I explained my doubts to a prayer group at a bible study the first time I went there. A person named Austin said something like “And how do you handle that”. His response felt dismissive. I explained that I think of cause and effect to try to make sense of God. I’m sure he didn’t understand my doubt, or I think he would have explained that God didn’t exist for an eternal wait for anything to happen and that He’s not infinitely big. Whenever I explained the doubt to my mom or dad their responses felt dismissive too. I thought that they were saying I’m overthinking those doubts and should just believe that God can do things taking eternity to do so and be of infinite size. Every time someone told me we can’t understand everything about God it felt like they were encouraging ignorance of those contradictions. Anytime I thought of people saying God always was or He’s existed for eternity, I would always struggle to understand how anyone could think that was possible. I thought the same thing about people saying God is timeless and space less. I wondered how anyone could think God is timeless and space less but also existed for an eternal wait for anything and be infinitely big.<br />
    Even though I knew infinite time and space are contradictory, I didn’t understand that God couldn’t wait to make time or be any size. I thought because the Bible teaches that God created time and space, that an eternal past and having an unlimited size wasn’t infinite space and time. I thought it was teaching that because time and space have to begin, that them simply having no end would be infinite time and space, so a past and space without beginning or end was actually not time or space at all. It made me feel like I was dying most days. I was always imagining something like darkness at the beginning of time and an end of time that darkness was closing in on.<br />
    I didn’t realize until four years after the suffering ended that the only way to imagine something happening without a cause and an end with no future is by imagining empty space for anything else to happen in. Black empty space would also need to begin. To think of anything ending you still need to think of something. It’s strange that people don’t often notice that. I thought most people who believed in God did so from ignorance of the contradictions I struggled with, or simply hadn’t ever thought about them. I would do lots of reading about archaeology, records not part of the Bible, and science consistent with the Bible to try to calm myself, but it couldn’t satisfy my logical problems. The amount of atheist criticism of scientific and historical facts being evidence for the Bible made things worse, especially after learning most scientists believe in evolution. It made me confused what to think about creation studies. I got so hopeless that I would often think there isn’t any reliable hope for God to make sense, but I can only wish God did. My existential struggle got so bad that one day I thought even more about the contradiction of such a being that I had a panic attack. It was during the last few months. I don’t remember how often that happened before, but it was always a struggle to function. After that panic attack, it took all my will at times just to have an appetite to eat a slice of bread. Imagining everything ending after death was more intense. I didn’t think it was possible for the doubt to get worse.<br />
    Some months before that my mom got L theanine for me to try. Two hours after my first time taking it, the research I had done of Jesus overwhelmed my doubts of God. I didn’t have a problem thinking that God is the only logical reason for the miracles indirectly affirmed by non-Christian records, so there must be something I don’t understand about what he is. I forgot if that lasted two weeks or months. Knowing atheists have no problem believing that what people hate and love determines that there’s good, evil and value made it more difficult because I thought that what’s needed for hope is just an opinion then. They’re fine thinking there’s no reason for anything, but enjoy things even thinking they’ll lose literally everything needed for hope after death, simply because they couldn’t know it. I can’t comprehend how it’s possible to know that things are only beneficial if there’s a future for what we get joy from, and having no problem with everything being gone, simply because suffering would be gone.<br />
    After discovering that God having always been is simply there having been no time without him, and that being omnipresent is not being of unlimited size, but transcending space, my understanding that time and space need beginnings finally made sense of God to me. It was like being in a universe that functions differently. I still at times wonder how there can be a guarantee that God is real and that there is eternity for all God made, since we make mistakes and have to decide to trust something as evidence or we couldn’t know anything. There doesn’t need to be evidence for something being false to doubt it if you don’t know about evidence for it to begin with. I remind myself then that how we can even know anything is because all we can see happen is caused by the same things every time, or no one could test for anything to make predictions about. So thinking it’s possible for anything to happen without a cause and for there to be an end of anything we get joy from without a future takes more faith because that doesn’t require evidence to have faith in.<br />
    But I remember when I thought that God had an eternal past and was of unlimited size and think what if I hadn’t learned that he transcends time and space? Then I wouldn’t be assured that something from nothing and everything ending with no future are impossible. If one can misunderstand what God is, how can there be any reliable evidence for Him and eternity? If that misunderstanding is thinking there’s something contradictory about Him then the only motivation to want to believe in Him would be bias to feel better. But the person would struggle to function knowing such a being can’t exist. Hope is irrelevant for what’s true. If God wants everyone to know Him and have a relationship with Him, keeping away such crucial knowledge about Him prevents that. That intense an existential crisis is traumatizing and I dread that those doubts are even possible. It’s the kind of experience that makes you wonder how you’re still alive. I greatly wish I never misunderstood God being without a beginning and being omnipresent. I wish that when I was a child I realized how effects needing causes was evidence for a creator of time and space. I would have loved to understand these things without having to struggle making sense of anything first, like it how simple it was to understand for most people who’ve believed in God. I also don’t understand how God can be timeless and space less. To do anything there needs to be time, so how could God have created time? Nothing can be before time because time is things being before other things and there always being things after them. If God can’t be before time how could he create it? How can he transcend time and space if he’s eternal, and there always being more things for him to transcend? There can’t be an end to what he transcends so how could he be complete? How can he do anything if anything that happens has to begin and end and God can’t change? How can he be space less and still be anywhere? To be anywhere there needs to be space used. How can Jesus be God if Jesus has limits to where he can be, what he knows and what he can do but God is unlimited? How can He be both unlimited and limited? Do I know enough to be assured God is not a contradictory being? Have most people who believed in God and eternity never thought of these things? Have they chosen to believe He’s necessary simply because all we can see happen is consistently because of causes, so believe that alone proves God is a necessary cause? Does it make any more sense for a timeless and space less existence to be possible than it does to think anything could happen without a cause? people can at least imagine something happening without a cause, but can’t imagine being anywhere being space less and doing anything being timeless. Have most people who’ve believed in God ignored these other things because they need to to believe in Him, so part of the reason for most of their faith has been because of ignorance? Have there been many people who discovered the evidence for how any of that is possible for God?
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