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The existence of God is a
subject that has occupied schools of philosophy and theology
for thousands of years. Most of the time, these debates have
revolved around all kinds of assumptions and definitions.
Philosophers will spend a lifetime arguing about the meaning
of a word and never really get there. One is reminded of the
college student who was asked how his philosophy class was
going. He replied that they had not done much because when
the teacher tried to call roll, the kids kept arguing about
whether they existed or not.
Most of us who live and work in the real world do not
concern ourselves with such activities. We realize that such
discussions may have value and interest in the academic
world, but the stress and pressure of day-to-day life forces
us to deal with a very pragmatic way of making decisions. If
I ask you to prove to me that you have $2.00, you would show
it to me. Even in more abstract things we use common sense
and practical reasoning. If I ask you whether a certain
person is honest or not, you do not flood the air with
dissertations on the relative nature of honesty; you would
give me evidence one way or the other. The techniques of
much of the philosophical arguments that go on would
eliminate most of engineering and technology if they were
applied in those fields.
The purpose of this brief study is to
offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence
of God from a purely scientific perspective. To do this, we
are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that
the matter of which we are made is real. If you do not
believe that you exist, you have bigger problems than this
study will entail and you will have to look elsewhere.
THE
BEGINNING
If we do exist, there are only two
possible explanations as to how our existence came to be.
Either we had a beginning or we did not have a beginning.
The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1 :1). The atheist has always
maintained that there was no beginning. The idea is that
matter has always existed in the form of either matter or
energy; and all that has happened is that matter has been
changed from form to
form, but it has always been. The
Humanist Manifesto says, "Matter is self-existing and
not created," and that is a concise statement of the
atheist's belief.
The way we decide whether the atheist is
correct or not is to see what science has discovered about
this question. The picture below on the left represents our
part of the cosmos. Each of the disk shaped objects is a
galaxy like our Milky Way. All of these galaxies are moving
relative to each other. Their movement has a very distinct
pattern which causes the distance between the galaxies to
get greater with every passing day. If we had three galaxies
located at positions A, B. and C in the second diagram
below, and if they are located as shown, tomorrow they will
be further apart. The triangle they form will be bigger. The
day after tomorrow the triangle will be bigger yet. We live
in an expanding universe that gets bigger and bigger and
bigger with every passing day.
Now let us suppose that we made time run
backwards! If we are located at a certain distance today,
then yesterday we were closer together. The day before that,
we were still closer. Ultimately, where must all the
galaxies have been? At a point! At the beginning! At what
scientists call a singularity!
A second proof is seen in the energy
 sources that fuel the cosmos. The picture to the right is a
picture of the sun. Like all stars, the sun generates its
energy by a nuclear process known as thermonuclear fusion.
Every second that passes, the sun compresses 564
million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium
with 4 million tons of matter released as energy. In spite
of that tremendous consumption of fuel, the sun has only
used up 2% of the hydrogen it had the day it came into
existence. This incredible furnace is not a process confined
to the sun. Every star in the sky generates its energy in
the same way. Throughout the cosmos there are 25 quintillion
stars, each converting hydrogen into helium, thereby
reducing the total amount of hydrogen in the cosmos. Just
think about it! If everywhere in the cosmos hydrogen is
being consumed and if the process has been going on forever,
how much hydrogen should be left?
Suppose I attempt to drive my automobile
without putting any more gas (fuel) into it. As I drive and
drive, what is eventually going to happen? I am going to run
out of gas I If the cosmos has been here forever, we would
have run out of hydrogen long ago! The fact is, however,
that the sun still has 98% of its original hydrogen. The
fact is that hydrogen is the most abundant material in the
universe! Everywhere we look in space we can see the
hydrogen 21 cm line in the spectrum_a piece of light only
given off by hydrogen. This could not be unless we had a
beginning!
A third scientific proof that the atheist
is wrong is seen in the second law of thermodynamics. In any
closed system, things tend to become disordered. If an
automobile is driven for years and years without repair, for
example, it will become so disordered that it would not run
any more. Getting old is simple conformity to the second law
of thermodynamics. In space, things also get old.
Astronomers refer to the aging process as heat death. If the
cosmos is "everything that ever was or is or ever will be,"
as Dr. Carl Sagan is so fond of saying, nothing could be
added to it to improve its order or repair it. Even a
universe that expands and collapses and expands again
forever would die because it would lose light and heat each
time it expanded and rebounded.
The atheist's assertion that
matter/energy is eternal is scientifically wrong. The
biblical assertion that there was a beginning is
scientifically correct.
THE
CAUSE
If we know the creation has a beginning,
we are faced with another logical question_was the creation
caused or was it not caused? The Bible states, "In the
beginning God created
the heaven and the
earth." Not only does the Bible maintain that there was a
cause_a creation_but it also tells us what the cause was. It
was God. The atheist tells us that "matter is
self-existing
and not
created." If
matter had a beginning and yet was uncaused, one must
logically maintain that something would have had to come
into existence out of nothing. From empty space with no
force, no matter, no energy, and no intelligence, matter
would have to become existent. Even if this could happen by
some strange new process unknown to science today, there is
a logical problem.
In order for matter to come out of
nothing, all of our scientific laws dealing with the
conservation of matter/energy would have to be wrong,
invalidating all of chemistry. All of our laws of
conservation of angular momentum would have to be wrong,
invalidating all of physics. All of our laws of conservation
of electric charge would have to be wrong, invalidating all
of electronics and demanding that your TV set not work!!
Your television set may not work, but that is not the
reason! In order to believe matter is uncaused, one has to
discard known laws and principles of science. No reasonable
person is going to do this simply to maintain a personal
atheistic position.
The atheist's assertion that matter is
eternal is wrong. The atheist's assertion that the universe
is uncaused and selfexisting is also incorrect The Bible's
assertion that there was a beginning which was caused is
supported strongly by the available scientific evidence.
THE DESIGN
If we know that the creation had a
beginning and we know that the beginning was caused, there
is one last question for us to answer--what was the cause?
The Bible tells us that God was the cause. We are further
told that the God who did the causing did so with planning
and reason and logic. Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know
God is
"through the things he has made." The
atheist, on the other hand, will try to convince us that we
are the product of chance. Julian Huxley once said:
We are as much a product of blind forces as is the
falling of a stone to earth or the ebb and flow of the
tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a
long series of singularly beneficial accidents.
The subject of design has been one that
has been explored in many different ways. For most of us,
simply looking at our newborn child is enough to rule out
chance. Modern-day scientists like Paul Davies and Frederick
Hoyle and others are raising elaborate objections to the use
of chance in explaining natural phenomena. A principle of
modern science has emerged in the 1980s called "the
anthropic principle." The basic thrust of the anthropic
principle is that chance is simply not a valid mechanism to
explain the atom or life. If chance is not valid, we are
constrained to reject Huxley's claim and to realize that we
are the product of an intelligent God.
THE NEXT
STEP
We have seen a practical proof of God's
existence in this brief study. A flood of questions arise at
this point. Which God are we talking about? Where did God
come from? Why did God create us? How did God create us?
All of these and many more are answered
in the same way_by looking at the evidence in a practical,
common sense way. If you are interested in pursuing these
things in more detail, we invite you to contact us. We have
books, audio tapes, video tapes, correspondence courses, and
booklets available and all can be obtained on loan without
cost. Just request our catalog from:
Hoyle, Frederick,
The Intelligent Universe,
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983.
Humanist Manifesto I and 11,
Prometheus
Books, 700 East Amherst St.,
Buffalo, NY 14215, 1985. |
