I believe it can be proved that God exists. However, it is most unlikely that anything said on a thread like this will convince a serious skeptic.
'' I honestly want to hear them'''
So I've been studying the Vedic texts for about 7 years. I also happen to be studying Science (Physics). It is my firm opinion that anyone looking for coherent answers must look to the knowledge of the Veda. Here are some quotes to justify my claim:
Schopenhauer: "Vedas are the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world." (Works VI p.427)
Niels Bohr: ''I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.''
Erwin Schrödinger: ''There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction....The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.''
Werner Heisenberg: ''After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense''
Julius Robert Oppenheimer: ''Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.''
Henry David Thoreau: ''In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.''
Ralph Waldo Emerson: ''I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-Gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.''
There are a ton more quotes where that came from.
Interestingly, most of the founders of Quantum Mechanics studied the Veda to some extent (Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg). Robert Openheimer (father of the atomic bomb) quoted Bhagavad Gita the moment the first nuclear explosion was observed, and he glorifies the philosophy to the n'th degree. Einstein read and praised the Bhagavad Gita. German scholars raved about the Upanishads once they were translated. Clearly there is something interesting there - at least.
Growing up in a Christian house (stepdad was a minister) I was always quite religious. One problem though was the Bible. How can THE ONLY book the all-intelligent Creator left us be so incoherent, incomplete and contradictory? Sure, they will preach to you about faith, but those talks were unappealing to a person who is looking for a perfect philosophy.
I turned to study psychology, and specifically all Carl Jung's works. I must've read 5 books a week at that point in my life. It was riveting stuff - unravelling the deep mysteries of the human psyche. This (obviously) led to the study of Buddhism. Jung himself was enamoured with India and its philosophy, and Buddhism was an attractive prospect at that point in my life - intellectual, philosophical and not based on ungrounded faith.
My next big step was reading 'The Path of the Masters'. Most interesting was the story of the author. Julian Johnson was a guy that went to India to go and 'save' the people by teaching them Christianity. He was no ordinary man - he was a qualified MD, Pilot, Artist and Minister. After his first visit to India he returned to America in despair. It was clear to him that these people that he wanted to 'save' know a lot more than him, and were more advanced spiritually. After searching his soul he left all his posessions behind and went to study Sant Mat under a Master. The book is stunning: http://www.archive.org/details/ThePathOfTheMasters
The philosophy of religion must be exact and coherent. It must be perfect. It must be beautiful, and it must give joy to the soul. All parts of the human being must be satisfied by it. Whatever knowledge emanated from a Supreme Being must be beyond the fabrication of the fallable human mind.
The Sanskrit word 'Yoga' literally translates as 'a method of linking'. Incidentally, the word 'religion' has the exact same meaning if one knows about its Latin roots. Yoga has nothing to do with stretching. These excercises are simply one part out of eight of the Ashtanga Yoga process. It is not even essential to do any physical process to follow yoga, but all types of inclinations are accomodated. So, for instance, if you are more into philosopy or meditation then you may focus on that.
In the Ishopanishad it is written:
oḿ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaḿ
pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya
pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate
''The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance.''
This verse requires some careful pondering. It implies many things. One simple implication is with regards to the language of the Veda - Sanskrit. Even though you don't need to learn any Sanskrit to follow the yoga process, the shear intellectual delight of studying the sublime language satisfies the mental desires of even the most intellectual man. Surely if the Veda emanated directly from the Supreme Being then its language must be perfect? Interestingly enough 'Sanskrit' directly translates into 'Perfectly Created'.
Sanskrit stands as the only unambiguous spoken language on the planet. Studied by NASA as a possible language for communicating with A.I systems, it is more developed and elegent than the closest known language - Latin. All this is in the Wikipedia page. I would advise to take most of what western scholars say with a grain of salt since there has been a steady attempt at devaluating 'Hindu' India by the British academics since their colonial rule. Anyway that's up to you.
I have many more things to say - personal experiences from when I was in India, incredible experiments with mantra, Vedic Mathematics (from the Shulba sutras) etc. etc. etc.
But as always, I wonder if anyone will even bother to read this wall of text. Anyways, if you are intrigued at all, then I can most certainly advise some books - unchanged for thousands of years - that I am certain will prove to be something like you've never encountered before - at least.
Peace out man.
EDIT: I see several typos. Don't judge me by them plz - I wrote this quite fast.
