In The Beginning...

In order to reverse engineer God, we must first learn or discover everything we can about how God works. This is a journey that can easily last a lifetime, but let's limit our learning to a much shorter period.

Engineering requires knowing how many things already work, how things are structured, and how and where to find additional information to keep from re-inventing the wheel. Reverse-engineering takes something that already exists and through intense observation, prodding, measuring, and holding it up to an existing body of works, all in an attempt to discover how and why it does what it does.

Education and experience will help us satisfy the requirement of knowing how many things already work. In my particular case, as an engineer/inventor, it's my job to know how things work. Take for example a television, while it may seem like magic that makes it work, it's actually a complex system composed of many simple operations. An automobile has many complex systems, propulsion, transmission, drive-train, steering, braking, cabin air conditioning, entertainment, power windows, doors, wipers, etc... the list does end, but it ultimately breaks down into many super simple mechanisms, that when closely examined, is very simple to understand.

The Bible is an excellent guide of reference, since it speaks of God directly. Knowing the Bible verse by verse and in context, is crucial to understanding how and why God does what he does. There are a few principles that are important when the Bible is used to learn about God. After 10 years of scholastic Bible study from a very gifted Bible Teacher, Dr. Bill Creasy (who has spent decades sharing his knowledge of the Bible plain and simple) I tend to acknowledge these very same principles of the Bible as well:

#1 The Bible is rooted in its geography - Everything happens in terms of its locality.

#2 The Bible emerges from history - Events happened and were recorded by third party verification.

#3 The Bible has a linear structure - It starts in Genesis and ends in Revelation, in between is a linear narrative.

#4 The Bible is the word of God - While the stories are written and edited by man, the original intention remains, however translations make for many heated debate and entire religions, we'll undoubtedly research this principle in greater detail, later.


To keep from clouding our judgment, in this reverse-engineering endeavor, I think it makes sense to keep religion, as a personal worship mechanism, off-the-table, so no one is personally offended. However it is perfectly reasonable to use cultural and traditional beliefs to share insight and experience on any aspect of understanding how and why God works. Obviously God works, but it's how and why he does what he does that promotes this entire exercise! Also equally obviously, God is neither he nor she, God is... With that, I'll stick with he since there appears to be a father/son relationship described within the biblical text.

All of this groundwork should setup a framework or structure to begin this journey. We have the experience, to understand complex subjects, and knowledge of the Bible to provide a blueprint and additional information for the task of reverse-engineering God.