CAN
GOD EXIST?
After going to Bible college
and coming to the startling realization that the Bible is terribly flawed and
could not be the inspired, inerrant work of God, I had to face an even greater
question. If the Bible is not a revelation of God, what is? Is there another
way to know God? Is there even reason to conclude, outside of the Bible, that
there is a God? Does God exist? Can God exist? Could any God, not necessarily
just the God of the Bible exist? Is it possible for an intelligent being to
precede everything else that exists? Is God, as first cause, a logical
argument? Some would say that it is illogical to believe that any matter could
ever exist without a creator. Some would say that the ordered universe that we
observe today could not exist without design. This chapter will be devoted to
these questions.
There is a theory that says that God must
exist as the designer of the cosmos because nature is far too complex and
structured to have ended up this way by chance. Basically, says this theory,
you can’t arrive at an ordered universe if it began with chaos. It has been
said that the chances of a big bang producing the structured universe we see
today are less than the chances that an explosion in a print shop could produce
a dictionary. At least in the print shop, it is said, all of the elements
needed to produce a dictionary are present.
First I must pose the question: What is
order? It appears to me that order is subjective. Is our universe in order, or
is it the incredibly small scale of time and space that we live in that makes
it appear ordered? For centuries, man has observed the stars and charted their
positions. Each night they appear in their positions relative to each other and
each year they rotate through a predictable cycle. But we know that these stars
are flying away from us and each other at incredible speeds. They only appear
fixed and ordered to us because of our very limited time of observation. There
is an old saying meant to lend absolute assurance that says “as sure as the sun
comes up each day.” We know that on a larger time scale it is not that assuring
at all, in fact, our sun will one day burn out and die or explode into a
supernova. Again, it is our perception based on our comparatively miniscule
time scale that makes it appear that way. Is there order in our nature based
calendar? We had to add a leap second to 1995 and we add a leap day every four
years. Was it the order in our cosmos that brought a comet smashing into
Jupiter in 1995?
The fact is, for everything someone points
to as an example of order, an element of chaos can be found. With the example
of the dictionary produced by an explosion there are other things to consider.
In our natural world there are natural laws at work that cause things to behave
in certain ways. Gravity keeps the moon in orbit around the earth. Charged
particles are attracted to each other or repel one another. If an atom has one
proton it’s hydrogen. If it has two it’s helium. If you have two atoms with one
proton each and one atom with eight protons you get water every time. With
these principles at work, the results are somewhat predictable. But in a print
shop explosion, would ink be automatically attracted to paper? Would glue be
attracted to one side of papers which were blown into identical size pages? Are
letters attracted to each other to form words the way atoms are attracted to
each other to form molecules? No, an explosion in a print shop would have a
truly random result. But our universe couldn’t
look much different than it does given the way that matter behaves.
Because we, as humans, have observed our
tiny place in the cosmos for thousands of years, which is
a very long time on our scale, we have grown accustomed to things the way they
are and we call things the way they are ordered. When we look at things on a
larger scale of space and time we see the chaos in our cosmos. We are traveling
around our sun at enormous speeds, which is traveling in a spiral galaxy with
billions of other stars, which is flying away from other galaxies in a still
expanding universe which will someday, depending on the amount of dark matter
in our universe, either stop expanding and collapse in on itself or expand
forever as the stars burn out leaving the universe cold and dark. How can that be called order?
On a smaller scale, I had a friend who was
trying to demonstrate the order and design in nature by pointing to various
examples of what she called perfection in nature. She said “Look at the miracle
of childbirth.” I asked her to consider all of the birth defects that occur
naturally in humans, the product of some transcription error in the
There is an argument given for design in
nature that proposes the following scenario: If you were walking down the beach
and saw something in the sand, and you picked it up and found that it was a
watch, you would know that the existence of this watch required the existence
of a watchmaker. How? It displays characteristics of design. You could tell by
the way the parts fit together and formed a functional object that design is
inherent in that object.
Therefore, when you look at the intricate
way that all of nature works together; you must conclude that it exhibits
characteristics of design. To that I must ask the question: How do we tell
natural objects from man-made objects in the first place? What is it about the
watch that makes it stand out on the beach and catch our attention? I could
take nearly any ten year old child and walk around outside asking what was
man-made or natural and he would be right nearly every time. What about this
mailbox? Man-made. What about this tree? Natural. What about this truck?
Man-made. What about this mountain? Natural. What about this drainage ditch?
Man-made. What about this creek? Natural. The fact is that it is easy to tell
man-made objects from natural objects. Why? Because man-made objects display
characteristics of design and natural objects do not.
What about more intricate natural objects?
What about people and animals? Don’t they by their sheer intricacy and man’s
inability to duplicate them require a designer? A college level biology class
would reveal that these organisms are produced with time and countless
repetitions of basic chemical reactions. Organisms are not designed to be a
certain way. They are that way because the environment has rewarded some
arrangements of molecules with survival and punished others with extinction. If
you can’t accept that we are nothing more than that, if you must believe that
we are incredible, special beings, then consider this. If there did exist a
being who was capable of designing a creature like man, with all of the alleged
complexity and intricacy that proponents of this theory point out, would this
being not be even more complex and intricate than man? If God is so much wiser
and greater than man, wouldn’t that make him, as a being, even more complex and
intricate than man? If the argument holds that complexity and intricacy and
form and function are all characteristics of design, wouldn’t God then, display
characteristics of design? Wouldn’t God’s existence, by virtue of that same
argument, be dependant upon a designer? It is an endless argument. God as the
necessary designer could not exist without an infinite line of preceding
designers. That argument is dead.
The more intriguing question is this:
could there have been an intelligent being capable of creating before there was
any matter? I say no, absolutely not. Here’s why. Creation and design would
require intelligent, organized thought. Organized thought requires a language
of some sort. When most Americans think, we think in English. When most
Russians think it occurs in Russian. We think with words because we have
learned to use words, audible sounds, to represent objects, places or ideas.
When an English speaking person hears the word “spoon” it conjures up the idea
associated with that sound, a spoon.
But what about those people who can’t
hear? How do they think without ever having heard words? They use imagery. They
associate images with objects and ideas much the same way hearing people
associate sounds with objects, places or ideas. But what about those who can’t
see or hear? They are certainly capable of thought. Helen Keller is a
remarkable example of that. They rely on touch, smell and even taste to
communicate ideas. We all use our senses, all of the time, to identify objects
or ideas. Without our senses we would have no language. We would have never
heard a word, seen an image, felt an object, smelled a rose or tasted a thing.
In short, we could not know anything.
What if we had all of our senses, but
there was no matter? That is the environment one would have to imagine a
creator in. If God created all matter, then initially he would have existed out
of time and space in an environment with zero stimuli. He could never have
heard a noise, because there was no air for sound waves to travel in and
nothing or no one to make a noise. He could never have seen anything, because
there was nothing to see and no light to illuminate anything. He could never
have touched anything because there was nothing to touch, nothing to smell,
nothing to taste. There was nothing.
In a state of total sensory deprivation,
how could there have been a language, of any kind, to produce thought? You say
that God never needed sensory input to know anything or to have the capacity
for thought? He just knew everything? There was nothing to know! What could God
have thought about? Nothing existed. Could he think about himself since he existed?
In relation to what? Could he consider himself holy? Compared to whom? Could he
consider himself mighty? Compared to what? Could he consider himself wise?
Compared to whom?
Some have said that matter could not exist
without God. I say that God could not exist without matter. Without matter
there is no context for thought. There is no sensory input. Without sensory
input there can be no language. Without language there can be no organized
thought. Without organized thought there could be no creator.
Now I know for some the first objection to
this argument will be that God doesn’t need sensory input to know things. He
never learned anything. His knowledge of everything has always been complete.
God was never surprised by anything. I remember hearing one preacher ask “has
it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God?” God, they will
say, had no need for sensory input and has no capacity for learning because he
has always known everything. He’s the ultimate know it all. You can’t tell him
anything.
If that is the answer to God’s sensory
deprivation problem then consider this: God never had an original idea in his
life. God never created anything. Everything has always existed in the mind of
God. God could not have generated new ideas because he already knew them all.
God would be like a giant hard drive on a super computer. He can store all of
the information, but he can’t learn anything new. All of the information is
there, but he certainly couldn’t be credited with thinking of something new or
creating anything any more than a computer could have an idea. What is in
memory has always been in memory, even if it was never used before.
Creation requires a point of origin in
time. There must have been a time when something did not exist before it can be
said that it was created. There must
have been a point in time when the idea for something had not been conceived to
accurately describe it as being designed.
I cannot make a coffee cup and take credit for inventing it because I already
knew what it was and how it functions. My prior knowledge of coffee cups
prevents me from creating the concept and taking credit as its designer. At
most, I can take the existing idea and materialize it. The Bibles description
of God as omniscient, eternal and unchanging prevents God from taking credit
for inventing the universe, for creating the concept, or for the design of the
universe because he would have had prior knowledge of it. So, you see, it is
quite impossible to place an intelligent, thinking, creative being before
matter.
CLOTHED
IN INERRANCY I WHAT IS
INERRANCY?
FACING
THE TRUTH I BIBLICAL
CONTRADICTIONS I BIBLE
BASED MORALITY
EXCUSES USED TO EXPLAIN
ERRORS I CAN
GOD EXIST? I ATHEIST
IN A FOXHOLE
ATHEISM I THE
EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES I DOES THEIR BELIEF AFFECT ME?