In my first post, I highlighted three leaps of faith involved in the decision to join the Catholic Church. The first leap, from atheism to theism, is the belief that God exists. In this post, I will map out the first small step on the path to this leap of faith: correctly defining the word “God.”
Some people think that “God” refers to a magical man in the sky. Some atheists even use this phrase to poke fun at theists. If it were an accurate definition, then we should all agree that there’s no such thing. But this is not what most theists mean when we affirm that God exists.
The two most common simple definitions for God are “Supreme Being” and “Ultimate Reality.” We can gain a better understanding of the word “God” by comparing these definitions.
The words supreme and ultimate are both synonyms for maximum, which describes something of the greatest degree. The words being and reality both mean something that exists or simply existence itself. So these definitions, taken together, suggest that God would be something that exists to the greatest degree, something that has, or is, maximum existence.
But merely defining God as something with maximum existence doesn’t make it true that God exists. It may be the case that nothing at all fits this description. But if something does, then that Supreme Being, that Ultimate Reality, is what we should call “God,” regardless of whatever other attributes it may or may not have.
So now, the key question is this: Does something with maximum existence actually exist? Is there really something that exists to the greatest degree?
Before we can answer this question, we need to consider more deeply what it means for something to exist to the greatest degree. What is the greatest degree of existence? And what criteria should we use to measure it? We will tackle these questions in Step 2 on the path to theism.
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Understanding Seeking Faith 
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