Does
God believe in Atheists?
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“For in Him were all things created in
heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations or
principalities or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him” (1
Colossians 1: 16)
The first cause
We
know that everything in the universe, including the universe itself, had a
beginning. If you believe in the big bang theory, for instance, you believe
that the universe had a beginning. If the universe had a beginning then it
could not have been the cause of itself, since it would have to exist before
itself, which is impossible. So if the universe is an effect then it must have
a cause. This is an example of the law of cause and effect found in
Newton’s basic laws of physics which states that all effects must have a cause.
If everything in the universe has a cause, and even the universe has its
beginning, it follows that there cannot be an endless chain of causes
accounting for the existence of the universe as atheists want us to believe.
There must be some first cause of the universe which, is itself, caused
by nothing –this is what we know as God.
The Anthropic principle
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Modern
physicists teach that even tiny changes in any of the fixed fundamental laws of
the universe (e.g. gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces etc) would
drastically alter the universe we live in making it unable to support human
life. Life itself appears to be the goal around which all the most complex
forces of the universe have been precisely arranged from the first moment of
the big bang. This strongly suggests that the universe has been fine-tuned this
way from the beginning by an Intelligent Designer or Creator God. Scientists
say that the probability of these precisely balanced conditions emerging by
chance is far less likely than the existence of God. Indeed Nicholas Copernicus
once wrote “The mechanism of the universe wrought for us by a supremely good
and orderly creator ... the system the best and most orderly artist of all
formed for our sake." And how right he was. Modern scientists now know
that had the big bang exploded too slowly the universe would have collapsed
back on itself. And if it happened too quickly matter would not have been able
to form into galaxies and solar systems. The force of gravity needed to be so
fine tuned (within 1 part in 1060) to
ensure that the universe expanded at precisely the right rate. They also
discovered that if the sun was further away from the centre of the galaxy
planets could not have formed. But it were any closer to the centre, this would
pull the earth out of its orbit. The size of our planet also appears to be
precisely set at 8000 miles in diameter. If it were any smaller the earth’s
gravity would be too weak allowing the lighter gases in the atmosphere to
escape making the air poisonous to breathe. If it were any larger gravity would
be too strong for any life to survive. Similarly our earth is just the right
distance from the sun, 93 million miles. If it was just 1 degree closer all
life would fry and all of earth’s water would boil away. But if earth was just
1 degree farther away from the sun, all water would freeze, life would cease
and the earth would be covered in barren desert. The levels of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere are also set just so. If they were any greater we would
experience a greenhouse effect that would make life unsupportable, plants would
not be able to maintain photosynthesis and all animal life would perish.
Likewise if the earths crust were any thicker it would absorb too much oxygen
making it uninhabitable; if it was any thinner earthquakes and volcanoes would
make life impossible. Amazingly in 1995 scientists discovered that the earth’s
surface weight is perfectly balanced too. Where they found a mountain mass or
water reserves on one side of the earth they also found something of equal
weight on the other side of the earth preventing the earth from wobbling and
falling out of its orbit! If any of these, and countless millions of other
variables, were even slightly different, life as we know it would not develop
and be around to ask the question of why the universe is so special. 1
The chance of all this happening at random is unthinkable even to the best
mathematicians…
Intelligent Design
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Inferring Intelligent design from nature is at
least as old as Plato and Aristotle. This is the view that it is possible to infer
from scientific evidence that certain features of the universe and living
things are best explained by an intelligent cause not an undirected process
such as natural selection or evolution 2. When you look at a
building you know that this is adequate proof that there was a builder. You
don’t need blind faith in a builder to know this, just the evidence of the
building. When you look at a painting you know that it must have had a painter;
again blind faith in a painter is not required. The same principle applies to
creation and the creator. When we look at creation we see
design throughout the whole universe, from the atom to the entire universe, the
flowers, the birds, the trees, the sun, the moon, the stars, everything has
design, purpose and order to it.3 Take the following analogy
for example. The car has a body to protect and transport you from one place to
the next, a steering column to direct your course, a windshield to protect you
from the wind and insects, windscreen wipers to smear them across the
windscreen, squirters to clean them off, and a horn to let people know you are
coming through. It is clear that the car has design and purpose. Similarly we
human beings have a body to get us around, a mind and a will to steer us,
windshields in the form of eyelids to protect the eyes, tear ducts to lubricate
the eyes, and a mouth to let people know we are there. Think about it,
everything about us has been made with design and purpose in mind. From our
nose, to our mouth, and our teeth, our ears perfectly shaped to capture sound
waves; our hands and our feet our muscular and skeletal system.4 They have all been made with purpose
and design. Is it really intelligent then to say that the car has a designer
but the human being does not?.
Try to think of something that doesn’t exist
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If
I asked you this question you might say “What has this got to do with God?” But
if I insisted you might reply “Okay then, Pink elephants” But I would have to
correct you by reminding you that pink exists and elephants exist. I might
repeat my question and this time you might say “Fairies” But again I would have
to explain that human beings exist and wings exist. Seeing the puzzlement on
your face I might ask you to try again and try to come up with something for
which we have not been given an example. To this you might respond by saying
“Cameras or Computers -They didn’t exist until we created them!” But again I
would have to explain that cameras were designed based on the human eye and
computers on the human brain. Again, I would say, try to think up something
that doesn’t exist, for which you have no example. Exasperated, you would have
to concede defeat. And I would have to explain that it is, in fact, impossible
to think of something which does not exist or for which we do not have an
example. Only God can create something out of nothing. So if God didn’t exist
you wouldn’t be able to think of Him! 5
Absolute statements
To say “there is no God” is an absolute
statement. To make an absolute statement and be right I have to have absolute
knowledge; I have to know everything about that subject. For example in order
for me to say “there is no gold in China” and be right I have to have to know
everything about China –what is under every rock, inside every rock, inside
every jewellery store and inside every Chinese person’s mouth. However if I
want to make the statement that “there is gold in China” I don’t have to have
all the knowledge about China I just have to have a little knowledge perhaps
one person’s gold filling and then I can say with confidence that there is gold
in China. The same is true with God and the universe: for a person to say that
there is no God and be right they have to be omniscient (possess all knowledge)
and nobody is. 6
Those who do not believe in God then have no proof He does NOT exist. On the
contrary, there is plenty of proof He DOES.
Explosion
in a Print Shop produces complete Encyclopaedia!
Did you know
that Darwin’s theory of evolution has not yet been proved and therefore is not
to be considered real science? Teaching a theory for the origin of man without
any evidence for it is religion. Put simply evolution is a religion not a
science!
Life from non-life?
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To most people the possibility of physical
resurrection from the dead is impossible. Even though all the chemicals needed for
the life are present in the decomposing corpse and we have reliable witnesses
in history to say that it has happened before, most people would shun this idea
as religious myth-making. Yet today many more people believe in something even
more extraordinary - that life formed itself from non-life. That over billions
of years dead hydrogen from the Big Bang formed itself into living people.7
This is rather like saying that if you throw scrap electronics over a wall in a
few billion years you will get a TV set! Take this analogy for example:
Billions of years ago there was a big bang is space, nobody knows what caused
it, it just happened, and from this bang issued a mountain and on the top of
this mountain a sweet brown bubbly substance, and over millions of years
aluminium crept up the side and formed itself into a can, then a lid and then a
tab, and then millions of years later, red paint and white paint fell from the
sky and form itself into the words “Coca Cola, 12 fluid ounces, do not litter”.
Are you still convinced? Of course not! I am insulting your intelligence. To
believe the coke can happened by chance is to move from the rational into the
ludicrous.8 A random jumble won’t organize itself no matter how long
you give it. But this is precisely what the theory of evolution asks you to
believe when it claims that life just formed itself out of nothing over
billions of years. Do you see the problem with this? It requires blind faith.
There were no observers, the vast amounts of time required cannot be repeated
and there is not a shred of evidence for it in the fossil record. Interestingly
in 1999, the U. S. National Academy of Sciences declared that “intelligent
design and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or
of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of
science.” What these “experts” didn’t say was that neither is evolution!
Transitional forms
All human beings are supposed to have come
from one single cell organism. Every animal supposedly transformed into another
kind of animal over long periods of time. But when we look at the fossil record
evolutionists cannot find any of these so called “transitional forms”. Unless
you have those bones you cannot prove that evolution ever happened. That is what
they call “the missing link”. And there could not be just one but would have to
be thousands and thousands of mutant transitional forms between just one
species and the next. If man evolved from the apes, for instance, the first
thing we would look for would be a gradual increase in complexity in the
fossils, until they looked like man. The "older" fossils would be
found in the bottom layers, and the "more recent" fossils would be
found in the top layers 9 Unfortunately for them evolutionists can’t
even produce one transitional form. Instead the fossil record details the
abrupt appearance of apes and men without a common ancestor. The truth is that
transitional forms are not missing at all. They never existed in the first
place!
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But what about those science teachers who
showed us those pictures of ape-men hunched over and slowly straightening up
into men? Well remember those are just drawings and the real proof is what we
can find in the fossil record -the bones that we dig up and that’s what is
missing. There have been no transitional forms produced to date –they only
exist in the imaginations of the evolutionists who want us to believe in their
theory! 10 Take the amazing discovery of the first “missing link” Neanderthal man
(Homo neanderthalensis) whose famous bent-over skeleton found in Germany in
1856 turned out to be that of an old man who suffered from arthritis! Next there was Java man
(Pithecanthropus erectus) discovered in Indonesia in 1891 –1892 consisting of a
hybrid skeleton that turned to out be the skullcap of a small woman, a human
left thighbone fragment, and three molar teeth belonging to the animal kingdom. Then there was Nebraska man (Hesperopithecus
haroldcookii) discovered in North America in 1922 for which they created an
entire skeleton out of one tooth which was later found to be the tooth of an
extinct pig! Not to mention Piltdown man (Eoanthropus dawsonii) discovered in
Sussex, England in 1912 whose jawbone turned out to belong to a modern ape.
Finally we have Lucy
(Australopithecus afarensis) discovered in Ethiopia in the 1970’s now most
experts agree it just the skeleton of a 3 foot tall chimpanzee. No, the so
called missing link transitional forms between ape and man will remain that way
–missing –because they were never there in the first place.
Why
do human beings and apes have such similar features then like hands, facial
features, behaviour etc? Does this prove that man evolved from apes? No. Think
of the biplane and the jumbo jet –they are both very similar machines, both
have wings, landing gear, cockpits etc. But does that mean that the jet evolved
from the biplane? Of course not! It just means that they had a common designer
(man) who uses a similar blueprint for each one. It’s the same story with apes
and men. God who is the creator of the universe is our common designer. He
simply used a similar blueprint when creating the hands and feet and facial
expressions of apes and men. The great apes are not pre-historic men who are
less evolved than us – they are a separate species! 11 Despite the
fact that there is no evidence that men evolved from apes we are continually
told that primates are our relatives. Do you think an airline would permit you
take one of these “relatives” on board with you for your vacation? Do you think
you could book him in at the airport? Of course not! When it comes down to
common sense we know what is true…
Irreducible Complexity
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Refers to biological mechanisms possessing
several interacting parts which cannot have evolved by chance over time because
the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to cease functioning
altogether. For instance a mousetrap consists of several interacting pieces—the
base, the catch, the spring and the hammer—all of which must be in place for
the mousetrap to work. The removal of any one piece destroys the function of
the mousetrap. This is true for biological systems which do not function unless
all the parts are in place at the same time like the human eye 12
Evolutionists say that 10% of an eye or a partially evolved eye is better than
no eye at all. The problem with this argument is that it assumes that 10% of an
eye equals 10% vision. But biologists have now shown that unless the eye is
completely formed and all its components are in place the eye cannot function
at all and the person is blind! A partially evolved eye then would hardly be a
survival advantage. In fact evolutionists themselves admit that any non-functioning
system would be eliminated by natural selection. Even the “godfather” of
evolution Charles Darwin himself admitted to this flaw to his own theory of
evolution when he wrote “To suppose that the eye could have formed by natural
selection seems I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” 13
The same can be said for other irreducibly complex biological systems like the
feathered wing, the arm like processes (flagellum) of the bacteria E. coli, the
blood clotting cascade and the adaptive immune system etc 14 They
simply wouldn’t work unless they were formed complete all at once. In fact they
would confer a survival disadvantage to any species if they were
anything but 100% developed. This rules out evolution as being responsible. For
this reason Darwin himself wrote in his The Origin of the Species “If it
could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly
have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would
absolutely break down.” 15
Probability
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If
I asked you to mix up 10 balls numbered 1 through to 10 in a bag and then pick
out number 1 what chance would you have of doing this right first time? You
would have a 1 in 10 chance. If I then asked you to pick out ball number 1 then
ball number 2 in the right order again what chance would you have of getting it
right on your first attempt? The odds would go up and you would have a 1 in 100
chance. What if I asked you to pick out ball number 1, then 2, then 3 right
first time? The odds would climb to 1 in 1000 chance. If I moved things along a
little bit and asked you to pick out balls number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
and 10 in precisely the right order, do you have any idea of what chance you
would have of succeeding first time? It
would be nothing less than 1 in 10,000,000,000 or one chance in a ten
billion! This is the odds for picking a
simple ten digit sequence by chance.
Now
consider a protein molecule like insulin consisting of 84 amino acid building
blocks all in a precise sequence. The odds of it occurring randomly would be
around 1 chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion,
trillion, trillion, trillion,
trillion. That’s a 1 with 109
zeros after it (written 1 x 10 109) And this would be just one
extremely small step in the supposed evolutionary process of forming a simple
living cell. To maintain our perspective, this is the odds for the random appearance
of just one of the 400 or more proteins necessary for what the evolutionists
refer to as their most basic cell (In reality the simplest bacteria have around
2000 proteins and are extremely complex). This is without even mentioning large
genetic molecules like ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
When all the necessary ingredients for this basic cell are actually considered
the odds against a simple cell emerging randomly are less than 1 chance in 1
with 58,700 zeros after it! (1 x 10 57800). This number is so big it
would take 11 full pages of magazine type to print it!
To
put these numbers into perspective the whole universe (from one side to the
other) is 1 x 10 28 inches (that’s 1 with 28 zeros after it) and the
total number of elementary atomic particles in the entire universe is 1 x 10 80
(that’s 1 with 80 zeros after it). The odds of you being able to throw a rock
with your arm and land it on the moon are 1 chance in 1 x 10 50
(that’s 1 with 50 zeros after it). But that doesn’t mean you could really throw
a rock to the moon! Such odds are not really “probabilities” but
“impossibilities”. The same is true for these proposed random evolutionary
processes. Now reconsider that the odds against a single insulin molecule
occurring randomly are 1 chance in 1 x 10 109 a figure higher than
the number of atoms in the universe! And for the most basic of living cells to
appear randomly we are talking about 1 chance in 1 x 10 57800 which
is an event we can state with certainty will never happen regardless of the
amount of time. Even though it takes more faith to believe in evolution than
Intelligent design, evolutionists prefer to believe in these mathematical
“miracles” rather than in all the evidence for a Creator God.
Specified Complexity
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Refers to biological molecules like RNA and
deoxyribonucleic acid DNA which not only possess a complexity which would have
a very low probability of being repeated by chance but which also transmit an
intelligent message that random forces
could not generate. For instance
if I write the following 27 letter nonsense sequence:-
APFHAOIDFHAIOSOOGFUSDOGFUIS
What chance do you think I have of repeating
this nonsense sequence exactly by picking the letters at random out of a
scrabble box? It would be 1 chance in ten thousand, trillion,
trillion, trillion attempts that’s a 1 with 40 zeros after it
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is because my
nonsense sequence is a long complex string of letters. The longer the
string of letters gets the less likely it will be repeated by chance. The same is true for random mixtures of
molecules in nature. They may be complex and unlikely to be repeated but
because they are not ordered in any way they do not contain any useful
information.
But what if I wrote the following 27 letter
intelligent sequence:-
ILIKETOWALKAROUNDTHEGARDENS
It
is long and complex sequence like the first one and so unlikely to be
repeated by chance. But it is also an
intelligent or specified sentence written in English (minus spaces and
punctuation). Biological molecules like RNA and DNA have the same
characteristic because they are intelligent codes containing useful
information. Just as the information in this English sentence does not derive
from the chemistry of the ink, but from an outside intelligence, so the
information in biological molecules like RNA and DNA does not derive from the
physics and chemistry of the molecules themselves. For that reason we say that
they are examples of specified complexity. Let me put it another way:-
if I picked up a granite rock and showed it to you and asked you what would be
the probability of finding another rock identical to it in every way you
would probably say very low. That is because this rock has complexity
and the more complex things are the less likely they are to occur again
randomly. But what if I picked up a beautiful granite sculpture and asked you
to tell me the probability of it occurring by itself randomly over billions of
years. You would probably think me stupid, right? Well that’s because your
common sense tells you that this object not only has complexity like the
rock but also specified complexity because it is clear that an
intelligent process has formed it’s shape. We see the same situation with
intelligent codes like RNA and DNA containing useful information. They possess
intelligent design and require an intelligent designer–again this is what we
call God.
Concluding remarks…
In
the argument from ignorance, a lack of evidence for one view is erroneously
argued to constitute proof of the correctness of another view. 16
For instance, evolutionists say that because there is “no evidence” for
God, the theory of evolution must be
right (even though there is no evidence for it!). On the contrary there is
plenty of evidence for God and Intelligent design as we have shown.
Evolutionists also point out that the consensus of scientific opinion
overwhelmingly favours Darwinian evolution and rejects intelligent design. Many
scientific societies in the U. S. have issued statements to this effect. But
common sense tells us that what matters in science is evidence, not opinion
polls, and that history shows that the scientific consensus is often
unreliable…17 Occam’s razor is an accepted scientific principle which
states that “all other things being equal the simplest solution is the best”.
In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects,
e.g. intelligent design vs. evolution, the principle recommends selecting the
theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest
entities. So what’s it going to be - the imagined organism of the evolutionists
which makes itself out of nothing and then evolves into everything else or the
Intelligent Design of all life by a Creator God? You decide…
References
1.
Anthropic
principle, Evolution or Creation, Intelligent Design Page, Retrieved November
16th, 2008
2.
Intelligent
Design, New World Encyclopaedia, Retrieved November 15th 2008
3.
Atheism video
presentation, Way of the Master, Retrieved November 15th 2008
4.
Ibid
5.
Evolution
video presentation, Way of the Master, Retrieved November 15th 2008
6.
Atheism video
presentation, ibid
7.
The Edinburgh
Creation group, Flyers, Flyer Spring 2007, Retrieved November 15th
2008
8.
Evolution
video presentation, ibid
9.
Revolution
Against Evolution, by Douglas B. Sharp, Chapter 2, 1994
10.
Evolution
video presentation, ibid
11.
ibid
12.
Intelligent
Design, Wikipedia, Retrieved November 15th 2008
13.
Evolution
video presentation, ibid
14.
Intelligent
Design, Wikipedia, ibid
15.
Intelligent
Design, New World Encyclopaedia, ibid
16.
Intelligent
Design, Wikipedia, ibid
17.
Intelligent
Design, New World Encyclopaedia, ibid
To find out how to be SAVED
read the following short Catholic Presentations….
1. Does God believe in atheists? (You are Here)
3.
Finding the true Church of Christ
4. Are you going to Heaven or Hell?
5. Catholic Presentation on Hell
6. The Good News and the Bad News