In this short essay I define an experientially-based concept of God that can be shown to exist. I hope that others will find this idea as powerful and rewarding as I do.

First, we will specify the domain or scope of the concept of Universe. R. Buckminster Fuller wrote a definition of Universe (Synergetics, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1975, p.81) that adequately delimits our problem-solving space:

Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences.

Aggregate means sum-totally but nonunitarily conceptual as of any one moment. Consciousness means an awareness of otherness. Apprehension means information furnished by those wave frequencies tunable within man's limited sensorial spectrum. Communicated means informing self or others. Nonsimultaneous means not occurring at the same time. Overlapping is used because every event has duration, and their initiatings and terminatings are most often of different duration. Neither the set of all experiences nor the set of all the words used to describe them are instantly reviewable nor are they of the same length. Experiences are either involuntary (subjective) or voluntary (objective), and all experiences, both physical and metaphysical, are finite because each begins and ends.

With this background I now present my current working definition of God. God is the loving, superhuman, nonanthropomorphic, intellectual integrity operative in Universe. Loving refers to the interattractive and interaccommodative nature of God's integrity. Superhuman means beyond any one human's capabilities. Nonanthropomorphic means not having human form or qualities. Intellectual refers to the faculty of perceiving experiences and the relationships among them (such as the facts of life). Integrity refers to the unity of the mutually interaccommodative components in a system. Operative means participating in the operation of a system.

To me it is patently clear that the God defined above exists. Every day I find myself relying on the integrity of my understandings about how Universe works. I confidently ride escalators, airplanes and other ``feats of technology'' knowing that the principles upon which they are based are quite reliable. The Universe does seem to have an intellectual integrity which we humans are able to perceive (if only in bits and pieces). Many books (especially those about Nature and Science) disclose new insights into the nature of God. Finally, I'll note that if Universe did not have integrity, logic and reason, it would be disorder and chaos and unreliable.

In conclusion, the idea expounded here meets three criteria that I think are crucial to any concept of God: a clear definition of terms, evidence that proves that the defined concept occurs in Universe, and applicability to the strategic guidance of humans in Universe. I don't have space to expand on the later aspect, but I invite the curious reader to explore the richness of this concept of God.

Reference: See Buckminster Fuller's essay Guinea Pig B.