I recently read a book (which will remain unnamed) written by a brilliant scientist; the objective of the book:  Prove that there is no God.  My quick reaction (and I am sure yours) is that how can you write a book to prove a negative!  And if you do, can you succeed?  As we shall see, he didn’t.

That said, the author, is a superb writer, and admittedly kept my attention through what was a voluminous manuscript.

To make his case, this writer relied mainly on philosophical, religious, and scientific arguments.  The philosophical and religious arguments can be rebuked only after a certain degree of study – which I won’t do since my interest lies in some of the scientific theories (both the ones expressed in the book and by other scientists).

I make an exception on a point made by the author regarding religions.  He again and again stressed the harm religions have wrought on humanity.  I agree with him!  So much blood has been (and still is) spilled in the name of religion.  Nevertheless, one can argue that the blame should be laid at the feet of our barbaric nature.

Religions, while divinely inspired, are governed by our free will; no religion will tell you that it is the only true one; we interpret it this way, and are ready to fight to the death to defend our viewpoint.  Can we really blame God for what is strictly a human issue?

One of the last things Jesus told his disciples (and obviously future adherents to Christianity) was:  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  So what did Christians states did in Europe for centuries?  They slaughtered each other! They did it over a slight or a perceived slight; over land; over power; and, yes, over religion.  But do you really believe that if religions didn’t exist, there would be no wars?

With this introduction out of the way, I am now ready to make the case for a Creator, a First Source and Center, who made it possible for us to exist.

Cause and effect

Hurl a stone in a pond, as a result the water will splash!  Your action is the cause, and the splash is the effect.  You can explain that to a grade 1 student and she will understand you.  The lesson on cause and effect will not be forgotten, for a lot of her life will be series of cause and effect.

Then how is it that many of our scientists are unable to understand such a simple principle?  They are continually telling us that there are effects, but that God (the cause) does not exist!

The immense gap

Perhaps I can partially clarify this mystery.

We are all initiated as two cells coming together!  When we come into the world we know nothing!  We have a series of empty databases in our brain which we will gradually fill; for instance, what we see will begin to fill our visual cortex; ditto for our auditory cortex; and so on.  A baby will sleep for some 18 hours to allow the brain to connect all that input together and perchance begin to make sense of the world.

For how long will that process go on?  For all of life!  You’re never finished learning.  And when your physical life will come to an end, you will still know very little!

What I am trying to say is that there is an immense gap that exists between the creature and the Creator.  You’re the most finite (intelligent) entity in the cosmos; and God is the most infinite Being in the universe.  It will take you eons to bridge that gap.  You start the process here and will carry on long after your mortal life terminates.

God is not hiding from you; therefore, don’t say, “show me,” or “prove to me.”  It cannot happen now.  Be patient, and don’t try to fill that gap with improbable theories; you will fail. I am demonstrating that next.

The universe

How did the universe come about?

For a long time our scientists have pondered over this question. The 20th century witnessed two competing theories:  The Steady-State Theory and the Big Bang Theory.

The Steady-State Theory is,  in my humble opinion, pure science fiction!  It basically states that the original matter in the universe is continuously being added to.

The Big Bang Theory (the theory now largely accepted by the scientific world) explains that the universe started as an infinitesimal amount of matter, incredibly hot, and infinitely dense.  Despite its name, this matter did not explode, it expanded and cooled until it attained the size and temperature of our current universe.

This in a nutshell is the story behind the Big Bang, an event that happened some 14 billion years ago.  Before that there was nothing!  Gravity plays a role here and I’ll address it later on.

Two questions come to mind:  From where did that matter come from? How can it have such amazing properties, powerful enough to create the universe?  We (both poor mortals like you and me and eminent scientists) have absolutely no idea.

Does the Big Bang (as opposed to Steady-State) shed more light?  No, but it deepens the mystery!

The Big Bang explains that the universe started as a “singularity.”  What is a singularity and where does it originate?  Singularities are zones which defy our current understanding of physics.  They presumably exist at the core of  “black holes.”  What then are black holes?  Black holes are areas of intense gravitational pressure; so intense that finite matter is compressed to the point that it attains infinite density. From where do they come from? How could they even exist since they defy the laws of physics?  We don’t know.

To summarize: The universe started as an infinitesimally small, unbelievably hot, incredibly dense singularity.  And we cannot begin to explain it.

Gravity is the force that keeps you firmly implanted on earth.  It causes any two objects in the universe to be drawn to one another.  Without it, the suns, the planets, and the moons would be hurtling into space, in other words, there would be total chaos.  As already mentioned, gravity played an important role in forming the universe.  Both Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein formulated theories to explain this force.  But they are ultimately theories only, and not definitive ones at that. Gravity remains very much a mystery.

Leaving the official science aside, my own question is:  where does gravity originates?  Putting it in a different way, is there is a force that holds all the heavenly bodies suspended in space, in other words, who is holding the strings?

Is there a higher power behind the universe?  Yes.  There is an effect:  The universe; perforce there must be a cause:  God.

Life

There is a scientist that towers above all others both in the 19th and 20th centuries; I am referring to Charles Darwin.  In 2009, we celebrated the 200th anniversary of his birth.  Darwin managed to explain how life as we know it came about.  While the theory of evolution was already “in the air” before Darwin formulated it, his natural selection explanation and the way he substantiated it was pure genius.

For the first time we had a logical explanation for the natural world.  We finally had no need for God!  It was clear that nature had self-created itself! The proof was all around us, why even man was descended from the monkey!

The storm Darwin caused has yet to abate.  Let us, however, leave all that behind, and go back to the question raised in my discussion of the universe; Who started the process of natural selection?  Putting the question in a different way:  Who implanted the first life on our planet, and Who gave it its amazing properties of continually evolving and eventually producing an intelligent animal?   Scientists had theories, theories that were so full of holes, they were no longer science!  And indeed, today, most scientists will tell you that they are not sure how life started.

What theories were formulated early on?

We are all made out of proteins; our skin, hair, internal organs, enzymes, hormones, even our thoughts and memories are proteins.  That’s also true for the rest of the animal and vegetable worlds.  In turn, proteins are made from the existing 20 amino acids which are assembled in a precise way in accordance with the blueprint provided by the DNA.

The question the academic world asked itself was the following:  If we could prove that amino acids existed in the young earth, we can then show that nature can manufacture proteins, and subsequently, accidentally, create the first life.  And this is indeed what two brilliant scientists did.

In 1953, chemist Stanley Miller and physicist Harold urey carried out the following experiment:  They mixed gases thought to be present on the primitive earth:  Methane, Ammonia, Hydrogen and Water (vapor).  In a closed environment, the mixture was subjected to an electric current (to simulate the lightning storms of the early earth).  At the end of one week, 13 amino acids were found in the flask.  Further experiments were carried out using other sources of energy, and eventually all 20 amino acids were produced in the laboratory.

What about the DNA and RNA  nucleotides (Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine (or Uracil for the RNA)) ?  [The process of manufacturing a protein is complex and is of limited relevance here; but, if you wish to know more, go to Epigenetics, The Dance of Life, Parts IV, V, & VI].

Subsequent experiments did produce, under certain conditions. the above nucleotides.  So did we have the ingredients necessary to produce life?  Not exactly.

These are the issues that faced biologists:

a) An average protein = 100 amino acids of 20 varieties (or 10 to the power of 130 – 10 followed by 130 zeroes –  possible combination of amino acids);

b)  the odds for a) to happen by accident and produce a protein is incredibly remote, and;

c) even if b) was to happen, you’ll only have only 1 protein, the simplest form of life is made out of many proteins.

[There are more compelling arguments (See Sources:  The Primordial Soup Theory); however, the above is sufficient to dismiss once and for all the accidental appearance of the first life].

Sometimes in the ’80s I stopped hearing about amino acids “getting together” to give rise to the first life.

So how is the first life now explained (again making sure to keep God out of the equation!)?  We don’t know, but we still insist on providing an “explanation.”

Somehow, the first living organism came about by accident, once that happened, the natural selection process, over millions of years, took over until  it culminated in intelligent(?) life.

The above, in my opinion, is junk science!  A scientist should never say that something (the first life) happened by accident and build a theory (natural selection) on that.  I am certainly not referring to most respected professors out there, many will simply tell you:  “I don’t know.”

Yes, I agree that evolution and natural selection have been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.  As for the first life, there is little doubt that it has been implanted by a higher power after it has been carefully designed.  The eventual goal:  intelligent humans who can understand the world around them and wonder at the Creator of such a wondrous universe.

Faith

Faith is a force of nature.  Before they knew, and were ready to accept, a universal God, people worshiped idols.  There were gods for the mountain, the river, the sun, moon, fertility, war; you name it, there was a god (or goddess) for it.

When God was taken out of the old Soviet union, people filed past the coffins of their deceased (and carefully preserved) leaders.  The urge to believe in a higher power is strong indeed.

But the Universal Father will never impose himself on His children.  We have free will.  Thus you will have the strongly spiritual, the agnostic, and the free-thinker.  If God accepts and loves the atheist, who am I to deny him/her the privilege of believing in nothing?

Sources

1) All About Science

Big Bang Theory

An Overview

www.big-bang-theory.com

2) How Stuffworks

“How does gravity works?”

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question232.htm

3) The Primordial Soup Theory

Amino acids forming Proteinoids

(Out of the Slime)

http://leiwenwu.tripod.com/primordials.htm

4)  Miller-Urey Experiment

Amino Acids & The Origins of Life on Earth

www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/miller_urey_experiment.html

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