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Originally Posted by Dr.D @http://www.ibeforums.com/portal/forums/showthread.php?t=3555 |
Does science support the existence of God?
Some people believe that science and religion are incompatible. That may be so, but religion is not the issue I'm defending. Organized religion is man-made and subject to corruption. I am generally not fond of it. Nevertheless, God is real and Christ is the one and only way to reach Him. I am about to demonstrate this with a brief, scientific explanation for those of you who don't know God. The time is close when you will have to make an eternal choice. I never push my beliefs on anybody, but please consider my logic and really think about it for a minute. I hope it helps you to make a solid choice on this issue. The reconciliation of science and Christianity is fairly simple...
The Second Law: Life violates entropy and supports the idea of providence.
The psalmist says, "Great are the works of the Lord, pondered by all those who delight in them." Basically, every scientist seeks to understand the mind of God. Even the most hard-core agnostic or dietistic scientist (as I use to be) accepts on faith that the universe is ordered. There is a rational basis to existence that is evident in this order. This is shown in the laws of science and math which are very predicable. So I think many scientists will agree that there is a god. How else can you explain order and design? The Second Law of thermodynamics states that entropy (or disorder) always increases with time, so we basically live in a decaying universe. All you have to do is stop making repairs around the house to see that principle at work! Eventually, the entire universe will "burn out" as it continues to expand and be reduced to nothing more that low level, background radiation mostly in the form of microwaves. How then does life develop and thrive when the whole universe is in a state of decay? How is it that there are sophisticated, self-replicating organisms in the universe, known as life, that develop in spite of the Second Law? It is know as the Anthropic Principle and it shows divine providence without a doubt. If there was not a god that favored mankind, it simple could not have developed. Life shows an extremely high level of order and complexity that must have been created because order is not the natural state of the universe, disorder is. In other words, there is design and design requires a designer! Therefore, there must be a god.
Darwinian Evolution VS Divine Evolution...
Atheistic scientists are a different story. They believe that life resulted from random combinations of simple molecules in a spontaneous fashion and that the universe just happened without cause or that it always existed in a static state, but that's not mathematically legitimate and does not agree with common observation. Even Darwin said of the human eye that the odds that it "could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." Darwinian evolution is simply not possible. It requires transitional life forms that do not exist in the fossil record. The "missing links" as they are called. Why are there well defined species in the fossil record with no intermediate forms? There are gigantic gaps in the record that can't be explained! I can sympathize with the rational of an agnostic scientist, but the atheistic scientist is simply a fool that can not be taken seriously. There's just way too much evidence against the spontaneous appearance and progression of life or "naturalism" as some call it. Creation is the best explanation, and that is obviously precluded if there if no creator. Besides, if law and order are really the products of a mindless natural process, the human mind must be viewed as an accident too in a series of many accidents. If that's so, how can we have any confidence that our mind could even recognize the truth anyway?! How could a concept like truth even be possible? It just doesn't make sense without God. There would be no need and no reason for any of this observed order plus the observation itself would necessarily be questionable.
The First Law: Conservation necessitates creation to explain existence.
I talked about the Second Law already but the First Law of thermodynamics is a fundamental, scientific property of the universe that also strongly supports the existence of God. It states that energy can change forms, but can not be created or destroyed. That means that the overall energy of a finite system remains constant. Man can only refashion existing materials, but can't actually create anything new. The First Law shows that the universe must have had a finite beginning and that it could not have just created itself. Just like naturalism can't properly explain life, there is no natural process that could possibly account for it's own origin. This scientific law is directly oppositional to evolution or a godless beginning. The reason energy can not be destroyed is stated in the Bible: God "upholds all things by the word of his power" Heb.1:3 and "preserves and keeps in store his creation." Peter3:7 So basically, the Second Law proves that the universe must have had a beginning and the First Law proves it could not have just begun by itself. The total energy of the universe is constant, but the amount of available (or ordered) energy is steadily decreasing over time into a disordered form. If you could go back in time, this would reverse itself and order would increase. You would reach a point where total energy was equal to available energy. That was the beginning of time and time can't go back any farther than that point. That point is known as a singularity and is part of the mystery of one singular god. Since energy can't just create itself, and there was no other imperative in the first place for it to exist, there is only one logical scientific conclusion: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". Really, it seems like a no-brainer and there are no other satisfactory explanations that match the known facts and laws, unless you believe the Norse legend of creation which involves a hungry giant and a big cow and lots of fire and some other weird stuff like that. (lol)
The Cosmological Argument demonstrates there must be some god out there.
There are only 4 possibilities as to the origin of the universe and thus the existence of life. If I forgot any, please point it out to me. This is an argument of universal causation and can be summaries like this:
The universe has no creator/cause.
1) It has never existed so it has no beginning or end. This model requires no creator, but is also rather absurd. We are here! I mean, we can all agree that we do exist and something is going on here, right? If this is all just an illusion, then the argument can stop here because the question is just an illusion too.
2) It has always existed in a steady state and has no beginning or end. This requires no creator, but is also disproved by the First Law and not supported by the Second Law. Mathematically, a static, infinite universe just can't work and doesn't match observations either. This is like saying you've always been alive and will also never die, and we all know better than that.
The universe has a creator/cause.
3) It has a beginning and created itself. This is a formal contradiction because how can something create itself before it even exists? Nothing finite can cause itself because it is connected to another, prior cause. Sorry Darwin, self-creation just can't explain reality and lacks the imperative that this cause and effect universe requires. That's like saying you created yourself and did it before you were even born!
4) It has a beginning and God created it. By a process of elimination, we can say that if we do indeed exist in a finite universe that had a beginning that it could not have caused itself then God is the only other explanation that works! In other words, God is the uncaused cause. The universe exists because of a first cause, there can not be an infinite series of causes. Therefore, the first cause had to be God.
Statistical odds of random, advanced life (does God play dice?)
Also, let's look at the math involved. Consider a very simple microorganism consisting of 200 cells. Let's not even consider the math on where the cells came from (that's too much math and I'm not that smart) but just think of the combination of those cells to form a primitive organism. The probability of forming that ordered system by chance is 1 in 200 factorial. That factorial (expressed as 200!) can be calculated by multiplying all the numbers together from 1 to 200 and yields a result of 1 chance in 10E_375. I will not bother to type out 375 zeros, you get the point I'm sure. You actually have much better odds of jumping out of a plane with no parachute and surviving the impact every single day for the rest of your life even if you lived to be 100 years old! Would you really gamble on odds like that? As the complexity of a system increases, the odds of an ordered outcome occurring by chance become exponentially dismal, even for the random existence of a simple 200 celled organism. It's safe to say that it takes much more "faith" to believe in odds like that than it does to believe in God!
Why Christianity specifically?
So maybe you're starting to take the reality of God a bit more seriously now, but why Jesus Christ? People assume there's some reason that science and Christianity don't agree but that's just not the case. That particular misconception is mainly due to the broad institutionalization of Darwinian evolution, which doesn't require a creator. However, many of the great scientists were Christian, like Boyle, Newton, Pasteur, Joule, Kelvin, Faraday, Flemming, etc.. Biblical creationism correlates with the known scientific facts extremely well. Naturalism doesn't and neither do any other religions. I was 27 years old when I finally and reluctantly started to read the Bible. I was already set in my ways and it was hard to face the fact that I had been wrong for so long! The Bible was the last place I thought to look for truth. I have studied it in depth since then and have looked at the science and analyzed the facts. I have applied it and tested it in my own life and can not deny it holds scientific truth. I tried hard at first to deny and ignore it, even after I saw it starting to add up, but the science does support the Biblical account and is historically quite verifiable as to the people, places and events. Christ is the only god of any religion that actually died and rose again! The resurrection is the cornerstone of the Christian faith and what really separates Christianity from the rest. There where many witnesses and it is well documented and accounted even by secular historians such as Josephus that Christ was seen post-crucifixion many many times. No other religion in the world has a god that claimed he could do that. Buddha, Mohammed, etc.. never even made that claim. Only the one real God of the universe has that kind of power. The power over life and death. Only the god of the Bible even makes that claim. It's very simple, either Christ is who he said he was (the sovereign God of all creation) or he was a total lunatic. One way it makes sense and the other way it doesn't. I believe that Christ is the real deal based on the facts.
What is faith and can it be justified?
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, so once you see the manifestations of your faith becoming reality, that proof in turn substantiates your faith. You don't have to believe blindly, faith demonstrates and justifies itself over time. God can not be seen (at least I have not seen him) but can be clearly detected by indirect means, just like the position and velocity of sub-atomic particles are measured. You can never know the exact position and velocity of a particle at the same time because one is necessarily modified while observing the other, thus one of those measures can be directly observed and the other must be determined by indirect means. It does not mean that the particle lacks either property, only that they can not be accurately measured together directly. It's the same with God. You may never observe his existence directly, but when you see the effect God has in your life, it becomes easy to recognize that he is the cause.
The Message
I don't know what you believe, but I would encourage you to consider these arguments and scientific principles. This is the most important choice you'll ever make and your eternal destiny is influenced by it so don't take my word, look at the facts and seek the truth for yourself. It's simple, just take a few minutes and go some place private and ask God for the truth and he will reveal it to you. Christ is the only thing I am absolutely sure of in life and if you seek him, he'll show you he's there. It's an understanding that you can't verbally express or explain sometimes, but you just know once you receive it. Plus, you see him working in your life and the blessings he gives. He's gracious and loving and he takes good care of his kids. People think that God wants to make a bunch of stupid rules or they have to work their way up to heaven, but that's a lie! God is not looking down from heaven shaking his finger at you and waiting for you to screw up so he can smack you. That's what some churches and religious denominations might want you to think and that's definitely what your enemy Satan wants you to think, but that's a whole other issue that I won't get into right now. I am generally not fond of the church for political reasons, but you don't need anyone else in order to have a relationship with god. He already did all the work for you when he died on a cross. All you have to do is talk with him in prayer and he does the rest. If you accept him as he is, he will accept you as you are, so I'm not ashamed to tell people when they ask. I am a scientist and a Christian too!
So there you have it. That's the short version of why I believe and how to reconcile science and Christianity. If you never read another post of mine, please seriously consider this one and seek the truth for yourself. You will find what you seek. Amen and God bless!
I highly recommend this book by Lee Strobel to anyone interested in a more detailed explanation of the scientific principles I've discussed. Lee also makes some other excellent arguments that I didn't even address here. Check it out!
The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God by Lee Strobel
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...&link_code=as1