re: I want God to be real.

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One way to look at it IMO is that the universe has a beginning. How did it all start? It couldn't have all just appeared out of thin air. There had to be a source for it's beginning. Someone had to create the process that led to the big bang. It couldn't have just happened on it's own. The laws of gravity and physics that the universe has couldn't have just been a complete accident IMO. Everywhere you look in the universe, especially on Earth, just makes it hard to believe it was all one big "oops" to me.

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You've laid out well the conundrum of creation. It invites, of course, the question: Who created the creator? Like the "endless mirror effect" the answer alludes to infinity.



Infinity is anathema to physics. Many a theory has met its end when the math led to infinity as the answer.

I think it's better to step out of the human box and think of existence without beginning or end. I say human box because the nature of our existence, or at least our perception of it, causes us to conclude that everything begins and ends. It's a false conclusion.

For example, we say that life begins at birth and ends at death. That isn't the case. Life "began" when chemical evolution on earth reached a level of complexity that it became self-sustaining. The "tree of life," of which you and I are parts, has been ongoing for about 3.8 billion orbits of the sun by earth. So you can say, quite truthfully, that you are about 3.8 billion years old.

Death? No such thing, considering this train of thought. The molecules and atoms used in a living creature are recycled over and over when its level of chemical complexity is no longer sustainable.

Another example: We say that a day has a beginning and an end. That a year begins on January 1st and ends on December 31st. Step out of the box, though, and look at earth from space and we just see sunlight bathing part of the planet with the rest being in shadow. It's a continuously changing movement as the earth rotates. There are no demarcations for time periods. When we watch the earth orbit the sun, again it's a continuous movement with no indications of time markers.

It is we who construct beginnings and endings. They're artificial. Nature doesn't observe them.