The Search for God

The most important question of all time is, "Does God or a supreme being or entity of some kind actually exist." And if so what is our relationship to Him, Her or It? Can God be found in the church or is a "personal experience" necessary? Is there then, a just and beneficent God, or is He a capricious being favoring some and not others? Is there a divine plan or is everything random? Even the most ardent secularists admit that there must have been an incredible alignment of circumstances and events, enabling life as we know it to form and exist. The fantastic design and function of the human body, alone, points to an amazing creation, whether we arrived at our present state through evolution or otherwise. Are we mortal beings or spiritual, or a combination of both? And what exactly does it mean to be spiritual? Did He give us free will? What about life after death? Is there an absolute good God as millions believe or is He of our own invention, a necessary myth to give us hope and purpose, to help us through this often difficult and painful world? Is there truth to be learned or is it mainly a matter of faith? Are these questions unanswerable and the idea of God forever incomprehensible? These and other questions, thinking persons have wrestled with for centuries. Herein are selected quotations from notable persons throughout history on the subject of God, religion, spirituality, afterlife and ethics. They are quotes from all points of view, believers, nonbelievers and agnostics. The reader may discover renewed confidence in her own beliefs or disbeliefs, or one might, as Emerson and Goethe have suggested, fashion one's own personal bible or religion, based on one's own ideas of what is true. It is my hope that through some of these quotations, uttered by thinking, questioning people throughout history, the door to the greatest mystery of all time may be opened a c