When we say "I did this", "I did that", what we are actually saying is "I am God". We attribute life's existence to God and the functioning of our life to 'I'. We effectively say that I control myself and my life. I = God. Where both "I" and "God" are non-existent.
Neither can be proven. There is an assumption that because this exists (whatever 'this' is) then it must have been caused or made or created by something or someone. It is assumed that 'this' is an effect of something else.... It's extrapolating a causer of existence. That there is this existing and it must be caused by 'something' even though that something can't be seen or proven to exist.
And it's entirely logical, because if we take a look at anything - for instance this screen that you're looking at now - we attribute it's existence to it being made by somebody; it was put together out of component parts by a person, who got their instructions from a design, that was put together by another person, that was created by someone else etc., etc. Therefore, there's a deduction that anything existing does so as a result of a previous action, and the mind needs to solve the equation, the conundrum, and come up with a definitive answer that puts a stop to the never-ending cycle of cause and effect. It sees it in linear terms, rather than as a cycle of creation and destruction.
So, there is this experience, and it's assumed that there must be a creator. A generator; which try as we might, can't be found. To return to the example of this computer screen, we can endlessly trace back it's existence but can never find it.
Try it now. Break it down into its component parts; all put together by a factory operative somewhere; take each of those parts - trace each back to its manufacture; to the plastic and the silicone and the metal; even so early on in the backward chain you can already see that there is no single cause of the result that appears to be this screen. And so the same with this existence.
It's precisely because there can be no trace back to one singular causative agent that the human brain, in its confusion of being unable to make the equation work, manufactures a cause and gives it a name, attributes, qualities and so ........ God is made in our own image. But made so that it can't be seen, known or proven. The cause (or God) has to be bigger, more powerful and more knowing than us. Because, we deduce - if God created this, then that God must surely be bigger, better, more powerful and more intelligent than that which it created. So God becomes a story of such fantastical proportions that its qualities can never be apprehended by the creation it made. And therefore, God becomes unknowable, and if God can't be known, neither can it be proved. Because in order to prove something it has to be evident... otherwise it's just a theory.
I hear you say: "Ah, but you can see the evidence of God. The entire creation is evidence of God's." No, it isn't. The entire creation is evidence of the entire creation. It doesn't need a Creator. It doesn't need God for it to exist. Similarly it doesn't need a big bang or a potentiality. It is evidence in itself. It is only evidenced by it's existence.
And to get personal, the very same mechanism that creates the story of a creator is the same process that conjures this thing called 'I/Me/You/Self'.
There is seeing, and hearing, and smelling, and thinking and tasting, and a cause is overlayed onto the experiencing: Ha! becomes part of the experiencing. There is a surmisation that there is a causative agent that is doing the things that are experienced, and is also having the experience. And this surmising is called 'I'. And this 'I' is given the credit for doing it all.
But just like God, if this 'I''s existence is asked to be proven, the person can't come up with a definitive, knowable thing that can be incontravertibly proven to be the 'I'. All sorts of theories about what "I" is, are put forward: The body, the brain, a spirit, an animating force, awareness, conscioussness, the soul. And then at some point, when all the possibilities of what this 'I' is are exhausted - when that which is labelled "I" can't be found to be an actual thing, the person questions the very existence of an 'I' in the first place. And sees that it does not, has never, nor will ever exist. It sees that its own existence is not caused by an 'I'. And on further looking it sees that the very seeing itself is not as the result of a definable, explainable, describable originator.
Belief in God is just a belief in a bigger 'I'. It says that as there is an 'I' then that 'I' must have been created by something and that something must be more than what I am - so it conjures up an originator. Questioning God or questioning 'I' is the same process - it's looking for the proof of something that is only a belief. And when the proof can't be found, it's seen that there is no origin - no begin point. Only an assumption that there is a beginning point which set off a whole chain of events that can explain the what, how and why of existence, of life.
But take the belief of an Originating Doer out of the picture and what is left?
Well, have a look - what is left?
Well, have a look - what is left?
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