So what if God did not exist?

I have tried the question of the existence of God from the angle of positive proof and negative disproof of His non-existence, and come to the conclusion that no matter which way I go, I cannot sufficiently prove His existence to anyone who does not want to believe. Perhaps that is by design, and I will consider that possibility later. Right now I want to look at how existence would work if there were no God.

First let us define God as both creator and controller of existence. The question of to what extent begs answering eventually, but, for now, let us just define Him/Her/Them as the Creator(s) and Maintainer(s) of existence, and consider the possibility that They ultimately comprise all of existence as a viable theory. We shall also here-after refer to God as "He" for convenience, though we will also tackle the truth of that pronoun eventually. First, let us consider what this existence would be like without God? Then we can look at the reality and see if that description fits.

First of all, if existence were simply a random accident, would not that very existence be also random and with random and changing rules? Random means without design, motive or purpose. Can anything be without design, motive or purpose? I look now at what I like to call the "Butterfly Principal" (I stole that term from some other writer). The essence of this principal is that everything we do has effects so far reaching as to be quite unimaginable, using our current brains, down generations and possibly some day across galaxies, and that any act, no matter how small, has the possibility within it to change the universe or even all of existence. I have tried to follow the possible progression of one smile or one sharp word with "if-then" reasoning, and concluded that I will always run up against the infinity of time and space. I cannot begin to even imagine how much future there is, let alone what it will be. Our brains are finite, and can only really understand, or perhaps only express the understanding, of that which is also finite.

However, even though I cannot predict or even dream of the actual ramifications of the butterfly principal, I try to live by it, because it seems a consistent way for judging my own actions. So why do I care? Without the existence of God, would any sentient being care about the future? Without God, self interest would surely be the driving force in this world. However, if that were so, perhaps self interest would drive us to invent God in order to prevent utter chaos, or either mass murder or mass suicide. But, is self interest enough?

To be sure, self interest is a powerful force, but once intellect comes into play it is not enough for most people, not even those who are the top dogs at the time. Witness the French Revolution or World War II Germany. There were countless people who sacrificed even their own lives to protect the oppressed. Some of these people were even rich and powerful. Why did they do that? Does that not totally refute self interest? Even if you consider that "better world" that they wanted for their progeny, there is no evidence that any of these people ever tried to guarantee the survival of their own any more than that of total strangers whom they knew to be oppressed.

It seems that we humans need structure and purpose. We need rules. If we cannot find them, then we invent them. Chaos is frightening and we constantly strive to order everything. In fact, without this ordering we cannot even think. Is thinking possible without order? Not with our brains. We currently do not control enough brain power to maintain order in the face of chaos, let alone impose it. Now if you look at existence, it is apparrent that everything tends to chaos, but when that happens, it destroys. Most of what we know to exist demands order. Even the power to "know" demands order. Since the universe tends to chaos, we can assume it does not order itself. Yet, order does exist. There are those who would claim that we invented God, but nobody can even begin to postulate that we, poor creatures that we are, created order.