The meaning of the word "God"

    I want to make it clear that when I talk about "God", I don't know exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, I don't want to overstate things here. I don't want you to hear something I'm not saying.

    "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..."

    "God" in this verse is the Hebrew word "elohim", a word which simply means "The Power". To put it into our vernacular, we might even casually suggest "The Force".

    "In the beginning, the Force, the Power, created the universe..."

    From the perspective of the Hebrew bible, the term "The Power" doesn't tell us much of anything. Instead, we have to read the story, have to engage with it, in order to gradually come to understand the character and nature of this force.

    It is the same way for me. "God" or "The Power" doesn't define much. In fact, it gives us nothing to believe in or disbelieve in. It simply is. Everyone from skeptics to atheists to agnostics can acknowledge that our existence is the product of forces beyond us. A powerful force, or set of forces, created all that we see.

    My aim, then, is not to prove or disprove the existence of a being or a force, but to explore what the nature of reality really is. What is the nature of the forces that brought us into existence?

    Science shows us the way to begin answering those questions. And here's what I get from surveying the broad scope of popular science concepts:

    1) The force is vast and immense, deeper than our wildest imagination.
    2) The force is powerful and creative, generating billions of galaxies of gigantic stars, rolling through many dimensions, across eons of time and multitudes of universes.
    3) The force created a universe fine-tuned for our existence to an incredible degree.
    4) The force, in an extremely rare and improbable occurrence, created life.
    5) The force continues to push our universe towards ever-higher levels of complexity and order.