AMUSING REASONS FOR GOD?
Flipping through my journal from years back and what do I see? Bits and pieces, wondering about my stand, my perception, my relationship with people, these I see. In between all these, a common thread is faith, my faith in God and what that means for every part of my life. Am I a Christian because I was born to Christian parents? Do I believe there is a God because that is the worldview I grew up in? In the Bible, Isaiah 1: 18 says “Come now, and let us reason together….” To reason, that’s my plan. That’s the goal with Little Tittles, to think through topics that matter to me, and maybe to you too.
A friend once asked me to prove there is a God and I went on to quote a Bible verse that said God exists. He laughed and rightly so! A religious book to defend religion?
Some people bring up unexplainable occurrences and attribute them to voodoo, they say those prove there is a spiritual realm. Well… there are a number of things that were once inexplicable, that science and research have shed light on now. Some other persons claim to have a feeling of altered consciousness or awakened spiritual revelations when they consume some plants (like Opium, Cannabis, Salvia, Ayahuasca) that have hallucinogenic and psychological effects on people. Are these tangible proofs of the existence of God. Are they?
NO MIDDLE GROUND; IT HAS TO BE ONE OF TWO
So…. Is there God or is it (existence of God) only an invention like some people say?
Mutually Exclusive… Excluded Middle
There is either God or there is None. This God may be referred to as He or She or They, whether tangible or intangible, whichever; it is either God is existent and factual; or God is non-existent and fictitious! No Middle.
Does it matter?
Also, it’s either God’s existence or non existence makes no difference or it makes a huge difference. Which is it?
POPULAR ARGUMENTS
Some people have shared that they are convinced there is no God because of the presence of evil and suffering amongst us as humans.
“Is he (God) willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”
- David Hume (a philosopher)
“God’s only excuse is that he does not exist”
- Stendhal
As humans, even with our faults, we have a sense of fairness and justice. Why should a child be abused and then the assailant be prospering? Why did that individual who has been so nice to many die when there’s one wicked person, just enjoying life? The wars, the natural disasters, life’s struggles, why? If there is a God who is all mighty and all loving, why?
What does it mean to be all mighty and all loving? Is there a template, a person who has successfully achieved that, so we can then compare individuals’ God to such? It seems to me that the above argument is not against the existence of God but the type of God. Even believers have questions about pains so it appears it is not enough to discard the existence of God.
How about Nature, any Clues to God’s Existence/Non-Existence?
The Cause
Is our universe infinite or does it have a beginning? There are arguments in this regard but with evidences in the Faint Sun Paradox (and the age of the solar system), Earth’s rapidly decaying magnetic field and the Rock Layers among others; there are strong indications to a beginning of planet earth, our solar system and maybe, the universe. If there was a beginning, then what caused it? There are two prominent views here – from Nothing or from God.
A. Some who argue from nothing say –
“So where did the laws of nature come from? They came from nothing… the void out of which the universe arose”
- Victor Stenger
“The only reasonable belief is that we came from nothing by nothing and for nothing”
- Quentin Smith
B. On the other hand, there are those that say,
“Ex nihilo, nihil fit”
- A Latin Phrase (meaning “Out of nothing, nothing comes”)
Cause and Effect… (This reminds me of Newton’s Laws of Motion, Lol)
- Kalam Cosmological argument (developed by Muslim theologians and popularized by William Lane Craig) assert that everything that begins to happen has a cause and so the universe must have a cause.
- Pan Cosmological argument states that no effect causes itself, instead was caused by an external force
- Chronology Order Principle says that the cause comes first and then the effect
- Magnitude Order Principle states that the Cause is greater than the Effect.
Now, If we say our universe must have a Cause and this cause is God, what is the Cause that created God, our own cause?
Well… we must be able to have indications that “God” has a beginning like the universe does before we seek to find what caused the beginning!
How about Life? Biogenesis or Abiogenesis?
The Greek philosopher Aristotle was one of the first people to come up with the theory that life can come from non living matter (Spontaneous generation Theory). Jan Baptista van Helmont, a seventeenth century Flemish scientist even went ahead to propose that if one leaves rags and wheat kernels in an open container for 3 weeks, mice will arise from inside them. These have been disproven with time. Louis Pasteur is credited with conclusively debunking the theory with his famous swan-neck flask experiment. Louis even went on to propose that “life only comes from life.”
Abiogenesis proposes that life originated from non-living matter, potentially through a series of chemical reactions in the early Earth’s environment but scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports Biogenesis – that every living thing came from another living being.
The Design?
Have you ever looked at the universe and marveled at how orderly and complex it is? I have! I hear that
the simplest cell “… would require at least 100 functional proteins…. Giving a maximum combined probability of 10 -2000 or 1: 2000″
- Dr. Michael Denton
- Amino acid blocks come together to form proteins
- Simplest Protein has 10,000 amino acids in the chain
- All amino acids in the cell have to be only left handed
- Chromosomes are made up of nucleotides (links)
- 100, 000 nucleotides are needed to make complete chromosome for a cell
- All 100,000 nucleotides have to be right handed
- Then the 10,000 amino acids and 100,000 nucleotides got together at a particular time and space.
All these, for only one cell!
“The probability of assembling 10,000 left-handed amino acids and 100,000 right-handed nucleotides is 1 chance in 10 33113 “
- R Munchaster
The odds of a cell randomly assembling under the most ideal conditions is calculated to be 1 chance in 10 100,000,000,000 “
- Harold Morowitz, a microbiologist
How about the design of the life-allowing universe (the Anthropic Principle)?
There are certain characteristics of the universe so fine tuned, that if one changes by a fraction of a fraction, existence of life anywhere in the universe would become potentially impossible. These characteristics are
- Gravitational force constant
- Electromagnetic force constant
- Ratio of Electromagnetic to Gravitational force
- Ratio of Proton mass to Electron mass
- Size of the Relativistic Dilation factor
- … and many more
This is not just about the earth, change one detail in the universe and life becomes improbable. Mere chance?!
WHAT’S THE POINT?
Whether there be God or not, does it matter?
I have seen a family member buy some chicks; this person fed them well, took care of their needs and then after few months, killed some for food and sold the remaining to others who would also kill for food. Those animals were tended so they could end up as food for some people. How about me? Why am I here? Why am I alive? For what?
Well…some persons have come up with 4 major questions that are affected by whether God exists or not. They are:
- Origin: Where am I from?
- Meaning: Why am I here?
- Morality: How should I live?
- Destiny: Where am I going?
I believe I have a God-defined Origin, a Purpose, a Guide to live optimally for my Source, for others and for myself and that I have much more than what life on earth offers. I find the following quote interesting. As a result, I’ll add it for you to chew upon.
“Life, consciousness, mind and self can only come from a source that is living, conscious and thinking. Matter cannot produce conceptions and perceptions. So, at the level of reason and everyday experience, we become immediately aware that the world of living, conscious, thinking beings has to originate in a living Source, a Mind”
Antony Flew
Now, what do you think – Does it matter if God exists?
Little Tittles 