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). Most atheists
maintain 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! In 1999, it was discovered
that the galaxies are accelerating in their
expansion. Any notion that we live in an
oscillating or pulsating universe has been
dispelled by this discovery. The universe
is not slowing down, but speeding up in its
motion.
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! 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 was 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.
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.
DOES
GOD EXIST?
PO Box 2704
South Bend IN 46680-2704
08/27/2007
References
1. Glanz, James, “Accelerating the
Cosmos,”
Astronomy, October, 1999.
2. Hoyle, Frederick,
The
Intelligent Universe, Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1983.
3.
Humanist Manifest I and II,
Prometheus Books, 700 East Amherst St.,
Buffalo, NY 14215, 1985.
