Letter to a Friend about God's Existence

 I sympathize with your attempts to find a proof for God's existence and concede that you are not like most atheists. Certainly, a lot of time must have been spent researching and it can become frustrating to seek dead ends. So why are the sources I recommend different from Einstein and Godel? Einstein and Godel were, no doubt geniuses in their respective fields. Einstein within physics and Godel within math, but to expect them to deliver a proof of God's existence from within those fields is akin to expecting Mozart to prove God's existence through music. The branch of science that deals with causes is metaphysics. This is not the metaphysics of Kant (which is really epistemology in disguise) but the study of being qua being. This science is the most certain of all sciences as is evident from observing the order of the sciences from least certain to most certain: Biology<Chemistry<Physics<Math<Metaphysics
As we can see from this order of science, if math is wrong then so is physics, because everything in physics is supported by mathematical formulas. If a physical theory fails at math, it is discarded (except in instances where it is somewhat useful). Math is physics with motion abstracted from it so that all we study are the relationship of objects as understood intellectually with their actual motion mentally removed. Metaphysics studies the existence and being of objects. For example, a mathematician is skilled at using numbers but it is not the job of the mathematician to determine what, exactly a number is or what the status of its existence is. Rather, a philosopher of mathematics, who is also quite good at math, will question whether numbers are Platonic forms, just ideas existing within us or an intermediary between the two as Aristotle and Aquinas maintain.
Now, when we speak of God, we are speaking of the Ultimate Reality - existence itself. This is apart from any religion such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Those religions must be taken on faith but they do not prove God's existence. Faith starts from the top-down, philosophy from the bottom up.
Thus, the first true proof of the existence of God (as far as we know) began with Aristotle. Aristotle did not set out to prove God. Rather, in studying motion and change, he came up with a system of "act" and "potency." These are metaphysical terms that all modern physics are based on. Everything in modern physics can be reduced to act and potency just as calculus can be reduced to fundamental mathematical principles. Just as no new advancement in math can disprove Pythagorean's theorem, so no new advancement in physics can disprove Aristotle on this fundamental point (though Aristotle drew incorrect conclusions about other things, but who doesn't?) When considering act and potency, it became apparent that anything reduced from potential to actual must be made actual by something already actual. A merely potential being or quality in a being cannot bring about something actual on its own but needs another to act on it. This fundamental discovery is what led to a proof of God's existence.

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