God Existence Question Essay, Research Paper
Does a God Exist? Either God exists or He doesn’t. There is no middle ground.
Any attempt to remain neutral in relation to God’s existence is automatically
synonymous with unbelief. It is far from a simple clear cut question, for if God
does exist, then nothing else really matters; if He does not exist, then nothing
really matters at all. If He does exist, then there is an eternal heaven to be
gained (Hebrews 11:16) and an eternal Hell to be avoided (Revelation 21:8). The
question for God’s existence is an extremely important one. One might wonder why
it is necessary to present evidence for the existence of God. As Edward Thomson
so beautifully stated it: "…the doctrine of the one living and true God,
Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor of the universe, as it solves so many
problems, resolves so many doubts, banishes so many fears, inspires so many
hopes, gives such sublimity to all things, and such spring to all noble powers,
we might presume would, as soon as it was announced, be received by every
healthy mind." Some, however, contrary to their higher interests, have
refused to have God in their knowledge and thus have become vain in their
reasonings and foolish in their philosophy (Romans 1:21,22,28). They do not see
the folly (Psalm 14:1) of saying there is no God. The Christian has not only the
obligation to "give answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning
the hope that is in you…" (I Peter 3:15), but an obligation to carry the
Gospel message to a lost and dying world (Mark 16:15-16, et al.). There will be
times when carrying the Gospel message to the world will entail setting forth
the case for the existence of God. In addition, we need to remember that
Christians are not agnostics. The agnostic is the person who says that God’s
existence is unknowable. As difficult as it is to believe, some Christians take
that same stance in regard to God’s existence. They assert that they
"believe" there is a God, but that they cannot know it. They state
that God’s existence cannot be proved. Is God’s existence some "blind leap
into the dark" as so many have erroneously asserted? If we do attempt to
prove that there is a God, we do not mean by the word "proved" that
God’s existence can be scientifically demonstrated to human senses as one might,
for example, prove that a sack of potatoes weighs ten pounds. But we need to be
reminded (especially in our day of scientific intimidation) that empirical
evidence (that based solely upon experiment and/or observation) is not the only
basis for establishing a provable case. But an important question which serves
as a "preface" to the case for God’s existence is this: "From
whence has come the idea of God in man’s mind?" The inclination to be
religious is universally and peculiarly a human trait. If, therefore, man is
incurably religious–and has the idea of God in his mind–and if we assume that
the world is rational, it is impossible that a phenomenon so universal as
religion could be founded upon illusion. The question is highly appropriate
therefore: what is the source of this religious tendency within man? The idea of
God has not come from reason (skeptics hold, of course, that the concept is
unreasonable), and that it has not come from revelation. The idea of God has
simply come through imagination. David Hume, renowned in the secular of
philosophy, stated that the "creative power of the mind amounts to nothing
more than the faculty of combining, transposing, augmenting and diminishing the
materials afforded to us by sense and experience." The imagination, it
turns out, has `no creative power’. Neither reason nor imagination create.
Reason, like a carpenter’s yardstick, is a measure, not an originator.
Imagination works only on those items already in the mind; it does not
"create" anything new. [Sigmund Freud, German psychoanalyst of the
first part of the 20th century, attempted to explain God’s existence by stating
that man had indeed formed the "heavenly father" from the idea in his
mind of his "earthly father." But this idea will not suffice either.
Is the God of the Bible the God man would "invent" if asked to do so?
Look around at the "god" man invents when left to his own devices–the
"god" of hedonism, epicurianism, subjectivism, or the "god"
of "if it feels good, do it." The God of the Bible is not the God man
would invent, if left to his own devices. Freud’s attempt to explain the idea of
God in man’s mind failed miserably. The idea of God in man’s mind could have
come through revelation. So is the concept of God a traceable communication
between the Creator and the creature? An argument against this can be posed in
the following question: "If the idea of God is basic to human nature, we
would not be able to deny it; we do deny it, however; therefore it is not
intuitive." It is sufficient to observe in rebuttal to such a claim that
man, under the enchantment of a deceptive philosophy, can deny the most obvious
of things. Those deluded, for example, by "Christian Science" religion
deny the existence of matter and death. Some today deny that the earth is
spherical or that man has ever been to the moon. But a denial of facts does not
automatically negate the facts. Man’s attitude toward Truth does not. Dr. E.A.
Maness once remarked, "If the word God were written upon every blowing
leaf, embossed on every passing cloud, engraved on every granite rock, the
inductive evidence of God in the world would be no stronger than it is."
When the writer of Hebrews stated that, "…every house is builded by
someone…" (Hebrews 3:4), he suggested the well-known principle of cause
and effect. Every effect must have an adequate cause. Further indicated is the
fact that no effect can be qualitatively superior to or quantitatively greater
than the cause. The universe is here, and is a tremendous effect. Hence, it must
be explained in terms of an adequate cause. There are four possible explanations
for the universe. (1) It is but an illusion, and does not really exist. This is
not a logical consideration. (2) It spontaneously arose out of nothing. This
view is not highly likely. No material thing can create itself. (3) It has
always existed. This theory, though held by many atheistic scientists of our
day, is scientifically untenable. Every moment reveals that the stars are
burning up, the sun is cooling off, the earth is wearing out, etc. Such facts
indicate that the universe had a beginning; otherwise it would long ago have
already reached a state of deadness. The essence of the strange developments is
that the Universe had, in some sense, a beginning–that it began at a certain
moment in time. According to the second law of thermodynamics, when applied to
the Cosmos, indicates that the Universe is running down like a clock. If it is
running down, there must have been a time when it was fully wound up. The
astronomer comes to a time when the Universe contained nothing but hydrogen–no
carbon, no oxygen, and none of the other elements out of which planets and life
are made. This point in time must have marked the beginning of the Universe. In
effect it must have been created. This is the only remaining alternative and the
only reasonable view of the origin of the universe. Since our finite, dependent
(and contingent) universe (of matter/energy) did not cause itself, it was
obviously caused by a force, to what this force is depends on your beliefs. Was
there a God in involved? There are an estimated one billion galaxies, and most
of them contain billions of stars (the Milky Way galaxy in which we live, for
example, contains over `100 billion stars’). It is so large that traveling at
the speed of light (186,317.6 miles per second) it would take you 100,000 years
to go across just the diameter of the galaxy. Our nearest neighboring galaxy is
the Andromeda galaxy, which is an estimated 2,000,000 light years away. That’s
so far that a radio wave which goes around the earth approximately 8.2 times in
one second would require over 1 million years to get there, and a return message
would take another 1+ million years. The observable universe has an estimated
diameter of 20 billion light years. But it isn’t simply the size of the universe
that is so marvelous. The size is important, of course, but so is the `design’.
The earth, for example, in orbiting the sun, departs from a straight line by
only one-ninth of an inch every 18 miles–a very straight line in human terms.
If the orbit changed by one-tenth of an inch every 18 miles, our orbit would be
vastly larger and we would all freeze to death. If it changed by one-eighth of
an inch, we would come so close to the sun w e would all be incinerated.. Are we
to believe that such precision "just happened by accident"? The sun is
burning at approximately 20 million degrees Celsius at its interior.. If we were
to move the earth `away’ 10%, we would soon freeze to death. If we were to move
the earth `closer’ by 10%, we would once again be incinerated. The sun is poised
at 93 million miles from earth, which happens to be just right–by accident? The
moon is poised some 240,000 miles from the earth. Move it in just one fifth, and
twice every day there would be 35-50 feet high tidal waves over most of the
earth’s surface. The distance of 240,000 miles happens to he just right–by
accident? And consider these facts: the earth is rotating at 1,000 miles per
hour on its axis at the equator, and moving around the sun at 70,000 miles per
hour (approximately 19 miles per second), while the sun with its solar system is
moving through space at 600,000 miles per hour in an orbit so large it would
take over 220 million years to complete just one orbit. What would happen if the
rotation rate of the earth around the sun were halved, or doubled? If it were
halved, the seasons would be doubled in length, which over most of the earth
would cause such harsh summer heat and winter cold that not enough food could be
grown to feed the world’s population. If it were doubled, no single season would
be long enough to grow the amount of food necessary to feed the world’s
population. The fundamental law of science, we repeat, is the Law of Causality
which states that every effect must have an adequate cause. There is no known
exception. The universe is admittedly a known effect. The Universe and
everything that has happened in it since the beginning of time, are a grand
effect `without a known cause’." The question is: `What is the adequate
cause?’ The atheist/agnostic has no answer. The Christian does. `God is the
First Cause’, and has left the evidences of His existence so evident that they
are incontrovertible. Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the
huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of
the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves
without wondering. So many people fail to see one of the most powerful arguments
possible for God’s existence–their own selves. Consider, for example, the human
body. It is composed of 30+ different kinds of cells, totaling over `100
trillion’ cells when all added together to make up the human adult.. These cells
come in all different sizes and shapes, with different functions and life
expectancies. For example, some cells (e.g., male spermatozoa) are so small that
20,000 would fit inside a capital "O" from a standard typewriter, each
being only 1/20th mm long. Some cells, put end-to-end, would make only one inch
if 6,000 were assembled together. Yet all the cells of the human body, if set
end- to-end, would encircle the earth over 200 times. Even the largest cell of
the human body, the female ovum, is unbelievably small, being only 1/100th of an
inch in diameter. Yet each cell is composed of a lipo- protein membrane lining
(lipids/proteins/lipids) which is approximately 6/100-8/100 fm (4 atoms) thick.
Yet it allows selective transport outside the cell of those things that ought to
go out, and selective transport into the cell of those things that ought to go
in. Inside the cell’s three-dimensional cytoplasm there are over 20 different
chemical reactions going on at any one time, with each cell containing five
major systems: (1) communication; (2) waste disposal; (3) nutrition; (4) repair,
and; (5) reproduction. The endoplasmic reticulum of the cell serves as a
transport system. The ribosome produce protein, which is then distributed around
the body as needed by the Golgi bodies. The mitochondria (over 1,000 per cell)
are the "powerhouses" of the cell, producing the energy needed by the
body. The nucleus, of course, carries the genetic code in its DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid). Red blood cells (there are approximately 30 trillion of
them) live about 120 days; white blood cells (the blood’s defense system) live
about 13 days; platelets (which help blood to clot) live about 4 days; nerve
cells may live over 100 years. In any given 60-second period, approximately 3
billion cells die and are replaced in the human body through the process we call
`mitosis’, whereby the standard chromosome number (in the human, 46) is
faithfully reproduced. A single cell contains a strip of DNA (placed in the
nucleus in a spiral-staircase configuration) which is about one yard long, and
which contains `over 6 billion biochemical steps’. Every cell of the body
contains such DNA–over a billion miles total in one human. How powerful is the
DNA? It provides, in coded form, `every physical characteristic of every living
person’. How many people are there on the face of the earth? There are a few
more than 5 billion. It took two cells (a male spermatozoa and a female ovum) to
make each one of these people. If there are roughly 5 billion people on the
earth, and it took two cells to make each of them, that’s approximately 10
billion cells (remember: this is the DNA it took to give every living person
every physical characteristic he or she has), and that DNA would fit into no
more than `1/8th of a cubic inch’. Are we to then understand that this kind of
design came "by accident"? Consider the skin of the human. It is a
nearly waterproof layer, enclosing the body’s contents, almost 60% of which is
water. It prevents the exit or entrance of too much moisture, and acts as a
protector for the rest of the body. At the same time it is both a radiator and
retainer of heat, helping to regulate the body’s temperature in conjunction with
the two hypothalamus glands in the brain. Skin may be as thick as 5/16th of an
inch (e.g., the eyelid). The skin contains over 2,000 sweat glands which form
one of the most ingenious air-conditioning systems ever known to man. Skin acts
as a barrier to protect the sensitive internal organs, and even has the power to
regenerate itself. Consider the skeletal system of the body. It is composed of
206 bones, more durable and longer lasting than man’s best steel. Each joint
produces its own lubrication and the system as a whole is able to provide not
only structure, but great protection (e.g., the 24 ribs guarding the internal
viscera). There are 29 skull bones, 26 spinal vertebrae, 24 ribs, 2 girdle
bones, and 120 other bones scattered over the body. The bones range in size,
from the tiny pisiform bone in the hand, to the great femur (over 20 inches long
in the thigh of an average man). Yet in a man weighing 160 pounds, the bones
weigh only 29 pounds. And consider, of course, the muscles. There are over 600
of them in the human, with the function of contraction and release. From the
smile on the face of the newborn baby to the legs of the marathon runner, the
muscles are in charge. They are placed, however, into two systems–the
`voluntary system’ over which you have control (reach out and grab a ball), and
the `involuntary system’ over which you have little or no control (try stopping
a kidney). Are we to believe that the skeletal and muscle systems, in all their
complexity, "just happened"? No one could ever convince you that, for
example, a Cadillac limousine "just happened." Yet something
infinitely greater in design and structure– the human body–we are asked to