I am going to start a whole new line of thinking here in future posts, but don’t worry it will all come together before the end. This new line of thinking starts out, but doesn’t entirely depend upon, my faith as christen. I’ve been a christen my whole life, from the time I was a little boy growing up in Papillion Nebraska to the present day. But lately, as I’ve grown older and my understanding of the world began to broaden, I began to question the faith I’ve grown up with. Who is God? What is He? Is He a literal being? Does He exist at all? I still question many aspects of my personal faith, but I’ve come to the conclusion that there simply must be a God. The world is far too complex, far too fragile to be the result of some random chance, as pleasant mistake that was never meant to be. Even now any slight change in our solar system could spell disaster for the entire species, and doom the planet. There is a sort of natural order to the universe, nothing is all chaos, it’s structured, follows rules and guidelines such as gravity, and never strays away from those laws. Nothing happens randomly and without cause, there is always a cause to everything no matter how insignificant and untraceable. Causality is the law which governs all matter and livening beings; cause, and effect.
But what was the original cause? Certainly there must have been one by our understanding of natural laws, science, and physics. The Big Bang theory is not truly credible, for that theory relies on the idea that matter already existed. Matter, by definition, can neither be created nor destroy, so where did that matter come from? Although there is no physical proof to the existence of an all powerful being, and there probably never will be, the idea that someone, or something, out there beyond the scope of our understanding created the world for a purpose is not as absurd as so many believe, as long as those who hold the belief in a creator do not impose their beliefs on others, and as long as others do not impose their beliefs on believers.
But what was the original cause? Certainly there must have been one by our understanding of natural laws, science, and physics. The Big Bang theory is not truly credible, for that theory relies on the idea that matter already existed. Matter, by definition, can neither be created nor destroy, so where did that matter come from? Although there is no physical proof to the existence of an all powerful being, and there probably never will be, the idea that someone, or something, out there beyond the scope of our understanding created the world for a purpose is not as absurd as so many believe, as long as those who hold the belief in a creator do not impose their beliefs on others, and as long as others do not impose their beliefs on believers.
3 comments:
I’ve come to the conclusion that there simply must be a God. The world is far too complex, far too fragile to be the result of some random chance, as pleasant mistake that was never meant to be.
In my 53 years of life, and more than three decades as a Christian, this is the reason I hear most Christians give to justify that a god must exist. But the atheist/agnostics seek answers and just because we haven't found the answers yet, we can't simply write the answers off that it had to be formed by something greater than ourselves. It's the same thing as a child saying their must be a Santa Claus because he hasn't seen how the toys arrive under the tree on Christmas morning.
There are plenty of mistakes in the universe and in our world. The universe is not orderly, and is quite chaotic, in constant motion, galaxies collide. Our own galaxy is set on track for an eventual collision with the Andromeda Galaxy in the far future.
We can never know all there is to know. But science keeps looking to learn as much as we can from one generation to the next. For those of us who will never know what they will find in the future, it's easy enough to replace that lack of knowledge with religious superstition. That satisfies as answers for many.
Despite all the far-reaching telescopes and all of the research, no evidence at all has been recovered/uncovered for the existence of god. All you have to go is on stories told in oral tradition passed down from ancient, superstitious people who knew little, if anything about the world around them or the universe that surrounds their world.
I must say, despite our differences that for your age, Jonathan you are quite a thoughtful young man and an excellent writer.
Nice blog
I'm struggling with whether or not to post a reply here ... it's not my place to disturb the faith of a man as young as yourself. But maybe if I constrain myself to pointing out a couple of possible flaws in your facts that won't be too much of a disturbance. ;-)
Jonathan: "Matter, by definition, can neither be created nor destroy"
Unless I'm mistaken, the Big Bang theory is based upon the fact that matter can be converted to energy and vice versa. That is Einstein's famous equation: E = MCsquared. This equation tells you how much energy it takes to create matter and how much energy the annihilation of matter will create. Just look in the sky to see the evidence of this - the sun and the stars are creating energy from matter as we speak.
Jonathan: "The world is far too complex, far too fragile to be the result of some random chance, as pleasant mistake that was never meant to be."
Systems that are balanced on a knife edge of stability are quite commonplace and easy to create. In my line of work, we have studied the evolution of electronic circuits. Evolved circuits significantly outperform designed circuits of similar complexity. Why? Because evolution takes advantage of anything and everything it can. A molecule out of place here; a crack in the silicon there - evolution will take advantage of these and kick a designed circuit's butt. So why don't we use evolved circuits all the time? Because not every silicon chip has a molecule out of place here or a crack in the silicon there - that is, there is no way to mass-produce an evolved circuit precisely because evolution has taken advantage of a unique set of conditions and created a circuit that teeters on a knife edge of stability. Put the molecule in a different place and the circuit stops working. Patch the crack in the silicon and the circuit stops working. And here's the cool part - if we don't know that a molecule is out of place; if we don't know that there's a crack in the silicon - we can poke and probe at the evolved circuit, scratch our heads, and say "How the heck is this thing doing what it's doing?!" Evolution is smarter than we engineers ;-)
Mr. Chicken.
"There are plenty of mistakes in the universe and in our world. The universe is not orderly, and is quite chaotic, in constant motion, galaxies collide. Our own galaxy is set on track for an eventual collision with the Andromeda Galaxy in the far future."
Aww, but there IS an order to everything, despite what it may look like. I'm not going to play scientist here, I'm a C student at best and I won't pretend otherwise, but as far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, everything in this universe has a natural law which governs it, and nature is incapable of acting outside those natural laws. A pen can no more disobey gravity then a green chair magically turns blue. Although yes, the universe looks chaotic, everything has a cause, every cause has an effect. There is a method to all the madness we see.
"We can never know all there is to know. But science keeps looking to learn as much as we can from one generation to the next. For those of us who will never know what they will find in the future, it's easy enough to replace that lack of knowledge with religious superstition. That satisfies as answers for many."
And I hope those scientist find the answers they seek, and if they uncover hard core proof that God is a figment of my imagination I'll admit I was wrong and move on with my life, it won't ruin me like it would many others. And please don't call my beliefs superstition, it makes it sound like I don’t' walk under ladders or such things like that. lol.
"I must say, despite our differences that for your age, Jonathan you are quite a thoughtful young man and an excellent writer.
Nice blog"
Well thank you.
"Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity" Timothy 4:12.
I try to live this out as much as possible.
This was a post that I wondered about posting for a while because to be honest I hate debating science, and I knew that’s where this post would lead, but hey, I love feedback. I'll get back to morals and politics soon, that’s what I'm good at anyway.
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