I believe an ultimate source of health and well-being exists. And if we tap into this source with our minds, we can reduce our stress, and realize greater meaning and purpose in our lives. I believe this source is God, but maybe not the God you learned about in school or from your parents.
There are many deep, philosophical arguments for this ultimate source of being. I believe this source is fundamentally good and good for us. I believe it’s important to explore this line of thinking because it can benefit our brains and our bodies. Also, the greater we believe something to be true, the greater the chances are we take action that supports our beliefs.
The more we know about something, the better equipped we’ll be to put that something into play in our lives. In other words, to achieve the greatest degree of health and well-being, we must first understand where that comes from and how to achieve it. Hence, the reason for this lengthy philosophical blog post.
Here’s one of my favorite arguments for the existence and nature of God. This is rooted in the philosophical thinking of Aristotle thousands of years ago. It gets a little deep, but very much worth exploring.
Existence and Nature of God
Everything that we observe in the world is moving and changing. Change entails going from potential to actual. For example, if I am standing on a green over a golf ball, the ball is potentially in the cup. If I putt well, it drops into the cup. So its potential has been actualized.
In any situation involving change, something actual must exist to cause that change. Something had to cause the ball to move from potentially dropping into the cup to actually dropping into the cup.
In this case, the golf club was that cause, but its action, too, was only potential until I actualized it. We could continue running this thought exercise further and further back:
The club’s potential to move was actualized by my arms… whose movement was actualized by my brain… whose ability to work is actualized by cells, atoms, and subatomic particles. Eventually, we have to reach a fundamental point and source of pure actuality—that is, something that itself has no potential and needs no actualizing.
I believe this entity MUST exist, because if it didn’t, we would have an infinite regress of causes and effects, with no ultimate first cause… and this is logically and philosophically absurd.
Change is occurring at all times, in every circumstance, in every place in the universe. Something has to be causing all this movement, something that itself is changeless—nothing is required to actualize it. It actualizes all potentials and yet is purely actual itself.
It is thus a changeless entity, an “unmoved mover,” as Aristotle put it thousands of years ago, the prime mover. That would make it the foundation for all reality and all existence. And of health.
God’s Nature vs. Nature
If an uncaused entity that transcends our reality exists, there are significant implications. If this entity has no potential, then it can’t exist in time and space, because everything in time and space undergoes change.
It can’t consist of energy or matter, because energy and matter undergo change. This entity must be infinite, because if it were finite, it would at some point cease to exist, which means that it would change.
It couldn’t have just popped into existence at some point because that, too, would indicate change. Plus, going from non-being to being is quite illogical! Also, in order to create, move, and change everything, this entity must have maximum power.
Perfect intellect, perfect goodness, perfect love, beauty, and every other beneficial feature of reality must also be part of its nature. If not, it would have only the potential for these maximum attributes; it couldn’t be purely actual.
So, what is this fundamental primary cause? Since everything within our realm of understanding undergoes change, even subatomic particles and energy lack these perfect, maximum, infinite characteristics of an “unmoved mover.”
And the laws of nature are abstract entities that have no power to move or create, they just describe movement. On the other hand, God is a very reasonable candidate. Not the old, bearded, judgmental man in the sky. But rather a perfectly loving, perfectly good, nonphysical source of existence that is sustaining life at this very moment.
To me, God is not religious, but rather, God is rational. No matter what your religious beliefs are, or if you even have any, there seems to be very rational arguments that point toward the existence of God. These are certainly worth exploring. Especially because the nature and characteristics of God benefit us tremendously.
So take the time to think rationally about your reality today. I believe reasoning like this for the existence of God is foundational to a mindset that leads to improved health and well-being. If God, by definition, is the ultimate source of reality and being, then that is where we get our well-being from. If God is accessed with our thoughts, and our thoughts dictate our well-being, then maybe we should direct our thinking toward God a little more often.
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