The
second question that begs itself is, “How do you know that God exists?”
There
have been lots of arguments in history regarding God’s existence. There is
everything from Pascal’s Wager. It goes like this in a shortened way. If I
believe in God and He doesn’t exist I won’t know because I will cease to exist.
If you don’t believe in God and He does exist, you’re fried.
There
have been arguments from Aesthetics, Desire, Conscience, the Moral Argument,
the Ontological Argument, and on and on for thousands of years. But, really,
the argument for God’s existence breaks down to where we live. The most
important proof of God’s existence is that there is something rather than
nothing and since stuff doesn’t create itself it had to be created, and that’s
where God comes in.
Of
course, faith cannot be based on this idea. Faith is based on your experience
with Him and on the truth of what He has said in His book. Not only have I
encountered a risen Saviour in prayer, Bible reading, answered prayer, and in
the creation and reality around me but I completely trust His book containing
His ministry of reconciling mankind to Himself. I have no doubts. God speaks to
my heart through His book changing me without me hearing words in my ear but
working on me from the inside in His special way.
You
may not find me a credible witness. Unbelievers become adamant, raving even,
that as a person of faith you are a lunatic, or weak, or small-minded. They
cannot accept that a perfectly rational scientist, businessman, or scholar of
any type could believe in and love a God who has not revealed Himself to them.
These
are things outside of our personal experience with God, a personal experience
that no unbeliever can understand or accept unless God Himself touches their
hearts, that suggest or even prove His existence.
Let’s take something as complex as life. The astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle was born in Yorkshire,
England on June 24, 1915. He was conferred a master's degree from Cambridge in
1939 and then was elected Fellow, St. John's College, Cambridge in the same
year. He worked his way to become a Professor of Astrophysics and Natural
Philosophy in 1958. He was a leading contributor in the discovery of how the
elements from lithium to iron are synthesized inside stars.
Professor N. Chandra Wickramasinghe was born in
Colombo, Sri Lanka, on January 20, 1939, studied astrophysics at Cambridge, and
was a student of Hoyle's. He received a Ph.D. in 1963 taught at Cambridge. He
later became a Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at the University
College, Cardiff, Wales. He is an expert in the use of infrared astronomy to
study interstellar matter.
These are no lightweights although
Wickramasinghe has gone a little bonkers in the last few years. But, they both
came to the logical atheist conclusion that life came from outer space. Why?
Because it was impossible for it to
have happened by random chance on earth, not in 15 billion years or a hundred
billion years. Let me read you a quote published recently by Dr. Wick…
“Improbability of Life
The blueprint for all
life from bacteria to plants to animals was discovered in the 1950s by Watson
and Crick to reside in DNA – in particular in the precise arrangements of the
nucleotides A,G,T,C that effectively code for proteins that in turn control
cell function. In a series of books and articles published in collaboration
with the late Sir Fred Hoyle, I have argued that highly specific arrangements
needed for the operation of living cells cannot be understood as arising from
random processes. For the simplest bacterium (Mycoplasma genitalium) the
probability that its few hundred genes will be discovered by random shuffling
of their amino acid components gives a figure of 1 in 10 to the 1000th
power or smaller. Hoyle and I have compared such horrendous improbabilities to
the odds against a ‘tornado blowing through a junk yard leading to
self-assembly of BOEING 707 airplane.’”[1]
1
in 10 to the 1000th? These types of scientists estimate there is
only 10 to the 80th power number of atoms in the universe. Saying
that life came about by random processes is like me saying that I’m getting
handsomer, wealthier, and smarter as I get older. You would just look at me and
go, what? I’m joking, right? But, scientists who believe in spontaneous
generation, I mean abiogenesis, or life by accident are serious.
So,
proof that God exists, step one. Life could not have happened on earth by
chance. It’s not mathematically conceivable, not by any stretch of your Star
Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dr.
Who imagination. But, what about it coming from somewhere else? That’s called
panspermia and that’s what Dr. Wick believes in.
Well,
NASA scientists Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, in their book, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in
the Universe, explained that it is also highly unlikely that life came from
someplace else as this planet, located where it is, is the best and most likely
place for life to exist and, in fact, probably could not exist anywhere else.
So,
proof that God exists, step two. Life could not have happened anywhere but on
earth. But, it couldn’t happen here by chance. So, something else, or someone
else rather, must be happening than mere material processes randomly achieved,
or if you don’t like my use of the word random, then how about without purpose
or intent, by accident.
Who could it be?
You
know if they could have proven that life could have come together by random
events on earth like Miller-Urey’s experiment tried to do and failed in the
1950s it would be astounding. But, you’d have to have nothing and then have
something suddenly come into existence for it to simulate God without God.
After all, Miller-Urey made something happen
with the equipment and chemicals they introduced making themselves in the place
of God. But, they did not create life and established conditions that
evolutionists do not believe were present in their fantasy of early earth
anyway. So, it worked as a publicity stunt but was not good science.
Then,
there was Dr. Wimmer in the latter part of the twentieth century who supposedly
made a virus out of synthetic DNA. Now he admitted in an interview that he did
not create life as a virus isn’t alive, it can’t reproduce itself and needs a
host, and he used synthetic DNA.
None
of these experiments or any other created life or proved that it could be
created by random processes without an intelligent mind involved.
So,
now you have the gorilla in the living room. You have something as complex as
life and you shouldn’t have it if there were no one to inject their
intelligence into it. Life isn’t possible without God.
You
have the atheist or the doubter demanding, “How do you know God exists?” and
you have your own testimony, if you have one, and you have this
incontrovertible fact, “Because without God life could not exist.”
You
see, we are not just alive. We are aware that we are alive. Science has a huge
problem with conscious self-awareness. Step three to proving that God exists. I
am.
It
has been said repeatedly that consciousness is the window through which we
understand. Science has failed to pinpoint the actual brain processes that are
behind our awareness. Some neuroscientists and philosophers of science express
a deep pessimism that we will ever find an explanation for consciousness. But
we know. Every car mechanic or customer service rep, a farmer or bank teller
can know what a neuroscientist does not know. We know where consciousness comes
from, that function of our spirit.
Zechariah 12:1 ¶ The burden
of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the
heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
Scientists say that a good theory, a theory that must supplant
other theories, doesn’t have to answer every question. But it must answer more
questions than its competitors. The belief in God answers far more questions
than theoretical science can even come up with.
God is the
greatest of all self-aware beings.
Exodus 3:14 And God said
unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt
thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
He
made us. He formed our bodies, our souls, and our spirits. In these verses are
all three; body, spirit, and soul.
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD
God formed man of the dust of
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul.
1Thessalonians 5:23 And the
very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body
be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He uses our spirit to see
us from the inside.
Proverbs 20:27 The spirit
of man is the candle
of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
We
are made self-aware and our soul is the seat of our self-identity and will and
our spirit makes us aware of it, of God, and of all things. It is our
understanding, our skills, our drives, our emotions, our yearnings.
It
is sad that the atheist or doubter will question your testimony as to whether
or not you are a credible witness for God’s existence. That was how I came to
Christ, the mechanism He used, the testimony of others. I vacillated between
atheism, happy to believe in any religion at all, and really, God just being
irrelevant to my life or thinking. But, over time I saw the truth of
Christianity in the lives of people around me.
No,
it wasn’t because of someone screaming Bible verses at me on a street corner.
It wasn’t from someone handing me a gospel tract. It was the testimony of
Christians, filled with faith and goodness, relying completely on God for their
very survival, trusting in Christ’s righteousness and not their own for eternal
life. Their faith was real, and it took time but God impressed on me that
reality until I accepted it myself and received Christ on March 19, 1986. It
was a Wednesday evening I believe.
The
question of whether or not God exists has been a subject of deep philosophical
debate for thousands of years. But, even outside of our experience we know.
Psalm 19:1 The heavens
declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
The
proof of God’s existence is all around us. Without God’s existence no reality
makes sense for very long.
Ask yourself, if there was no God, then why is there
something rather than nothing? Why is something as complex as life here in this
space of earth? If God doesn’t exist why
do I know that I am? Where did that come from, o’ wise one?
How can we have this conversation?
The
universe is finely tuned, so finely tuned that something as rare and fragile as
life can live in it. Things like the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism
to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, nuclear efficiency of fusion
from hydrogen to helium, the density parameter, the cosmological constant, and
a bunch of other intelligent sounding stuff make many scientists insist that
the universe is just so and because of that you, me, and that little chipmunk
you saw on your deck this morning can exist.
Other
scientists invent all sorts of nonsensical things to counteract this belief.
They will resurrect the multidimensions of the occult of the late 1800s which
impacted theoretical physics then and say there is a multiverse, many universes
where things are different and anything is possible. I might even be handsomer,
wealthier, and smarter on one of them, in their imagination only of course.
But,
the universe is fine-tuned. Now, how does something get tuned? Have you ever
seen a radio tune itself? Never mind. In today’s world I suppose that is
possible. But, at some point a person was involved; an engineer or someone to
tune that radio. How do you think the universe was tuned so close and exact? Who
did it? Who maintains it? We all know that if you leave your car in the
driveway without maintaining it for thirty years the tires will rot and it will
become undriveable. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that all things fall
apart. Oh, and there is this;
Colossians 1:17 And he is
before all things, and by him all things consist.
Scientific
papers have expressed alarm at the harmful mutations produced in each
generation of people. One of them was entitled, “Contamination of the Genome by
Very Slightly Deleterious Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” But,
we’re here, our biology is preserved, life goes on and the planet is not yet
cold and dead.
Again,
I say ask yourself, if there was no God, then why is there something rather
than nothing? Why is something as complex as life here in this space of
earth? If God doesn’t exist why do I
know that I am? Why is the universe so finely tuned as to permit us to exist?
You
know, our government has spent millions of dollars searching for
extraterrestrials, life on other planets, even microbial. They will continue to
do so but will probably never find it. The scientific community has a hunger, a
lust, to overthrow God. They are searching for microbes and water on Mars.
In
the Rosetta Mission they recently learned that water in space can be vastly
different than water on earth so they feel confident in at least admitting that
our water didn’t come from comets. But, they will keep searching, hoping to be
able to drive the nail in the coffin for belief in the God of the Bible.
There
are two other things that scream the truth of the existence of God. One is the
very desperate desire to prove beyond all doubt that He does not. Let me read
you part of the short religious history of man that God has provided in Romans.
Romans 1:19 ¶ Because that
which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even his eternal power
and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified
him not as God, neither were
thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
And in
another context an ancient warning;
Isaiah 66:4 I also will
choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them;
because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but
they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.
Remember
what King David thought of atheists in about 1000 BC.
Psalm 14:1 « To the
chief Musician, A Psalm of
David. » The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God. They are
corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Finally, evolutionary biologists admit an astounding thing. Belief
in God, according to some of them, is hard-wired into the human brain. A
neuroscientist and the author of several books, Andrew Newberg, wrote a book
entitled Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain
Science and the Biology of Belief. He is called a neurotheologist, studying
how religious belief and prayer affect the brain.
On page 129 he wrote, “…evolution has adopted this machinery, and
has favored the religious capabilities of the religious brain because religious
belief and behaviors turn out to be good for us in profound and pragmatic
ways.”
As evolutionists often do he refers to evolution as he does in
other places with natural selection almost as a god in itself rather than just
a process or a mechanism by which new species of dog, cat, or deer are produced
by environmental stresses or opportunities or human cross-breeding efforts
(There are more than two dozen scientific definitions of species.) The fact is
that all of the genetic information necessary for a creature to adapt to its
environment are present within the creature’s DNA and no dog ever became a cat
and no alligator ever became a trout. But, Newberg, like other of his ilk,
refer to evolution as a sort of inert god who unfeelingly adopts and favors in the
passage I quoted. In a preceding page he refers to natural selection as not tolerating something. So, it is almost
humorous to see how these kinds of scientists use language, at the least, in a very
interesting way.
Susan Mazur, a science writer and journalist who doesn’t appear to
be a fundamental Baptist (said in a tongue-in-cheek manner), wrote in her book The Altenberg 16: An Expose’ of the
Evolution Industry that, “Evolutionary science is as much about posturing,
salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying as it is about actual scientific
theory.” (v)
So, to summarize, if you want to look outside of your own
experience for proof that God exists I suggest starting with life. There are
many other topics we could talk about that prove or at least suggest His
existence but for brevity sake let’s review the points I’ve made.
One, there is something rather than nothing and since space dust
did not create itself then something or someone did. Two, life could not have
begun here on earth and probably not on some distant planet by chance. Some
intelligent being had to create it. Three, self-awareness and consciousness
imply a reality greater than the physical universe. Four, we are apparently
“hard-wired” to believe in God. It is part of our make-up.
We believe in God because He has communed with our spirit so that
we can. We experience Him in our prayer and in the answers to it, the way the
Bible speaks to us, in the truth found in it, the way He molds and changes us
by our reading and hearing it read, by the reality arounds us that is confirmed
in the Bible, and by His miraculous intervention in our lives.
[1]
Chandra Wickramasinghe & Robert Bauval,
Cosmic Womb: The Seeding of Planet
Earth (Rochester, Vermont:Bear & Co., 2017), Kindle
ed., chap. 1.
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