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Questions About Life and God
Questions About Life and God
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By Marilyn Adamson
Just once wouldn't you love for someone to simply show you the evidence for God's existence? No arm-twisting. No statements of, "You just have to believe." Well, here is an attempt to candidly offer some of the reasons which suggest that God exists.
But first consider this. When it comes to the possibility of God's existence, the Bible says that there are people who have seen sufficient evidence, but they have suppressed the truth about God.1 On the other hand, for those who want to know God if he is there, he says, "when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you."2
Before you look at the facts surrounding his existence, ask yourself, If God does exist, would I want to know him? Here then, are some reasons to consider.
As you can see in this photo, our Earth is a tiny dot compared to the size of the Sun.
It's all the more amazing that the Earth's distance from the Sun is absolutely perfect. Any further away from the sun, we would all freeze. Any closer and we would burn up.
While the Earth remains this perfect distance from the sun, it is rotating around the sun at a speed of nearly 67,000 mph, creating seasons and biodiversity on our planet.
And while moving around the Sun, the Earth is also rotating on its axis, allowing the entire surface of the Earth to be properly warmed and cooled every 24 hours, and also giving us both day and night.
All of this continues without disruption and with unchanging precision.
The Earth itself is also exactly the right size. Its corresponding strength of gravity forms an atmosphere of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, suspended only 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal, and human life.
If Earth were smaller, an atmosphere would be impossible, like the planet Mercury. If it were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter’s.3
Add to this, our Moon is the perfect size and distance from the Earth for its gravitational pull. The Moon creates important ocean tides and movement, so ocean waters do not stagnate, while keeping our massive oceans from spilling over across the continents.4
Water itself also contains incredible and complex features, necessary for our lives.
Water is colorless, odorless and without taste, and yet no living thing can survive without it. Plants, animals, and people consist mostly of water. The human body is about two-thirds water.
What’s impressive are the characteristics of water and how each one is suited for us.
For example, water has a wide margin between its boiling point and freezing point. This allows us to live in an environment of fluctuating temperature changes, while keeping our bodies a steady 98.6 degrees.
Water is also a universal solvent allowing nutrients, chemicals, and minerals, to easily dissolve in our bodies and be carried into the smallest of our blood vessels.5
Further, water is also chemically neutral which means it doesn’t interact or change the substances we take into our bodies.
Water has a unique surface tension allowing water to flow upward against gravity, bringing life-giving water and nutrients to the top of even the tallest trees.
Water freezes from the top down and floats, so fish can live in the winter. Because water is transparent, sunlight can penetrate deep into lakes and oceans allowing for photosynthesis of plant life which leads to a diverse environment of fish and sea life.
97% of the Earth's water is in the oceans. But on our Earth, we see a system of evaporation which takes the ocean waters, removes the salt, and forms clouds easily moved by the wind to disperse purified water over the land, for vegetation, animals, and people.
This quick look at the Earth and water is enough to ask, “What brought this about?” So let’s consider the start of the entire universe. What do we know about what brought it into existence?
The universe has not always existed. It had a start. That alone is profound.
Scientists are convinced that our universe began with one enormous explosion of matter, energy and light, which we now call the Big Bang. It was the singular start to everything that exists in our universe.
When you see a building, you know that people constructed it. It didn’t just appear. And it didn’t always exist.
Science has determined that the universe had a start. What caused it?
Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in Physics, said at the moment of this explosion, "the universe was about a hundred thousand million degrees Centigrade … and the universe was filled with light."6
This eerily parallels the record, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...and God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."7 It came about not from matter, but from pronouncement. A spoken word. "Let there be light."
Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, a self-described agnostic, stated, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."8
"Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth."9
"...for he commanded and they were created."10
What about the laws of physics that govern the universe? What do they tell us about God’s great care for us?
Much of life may seem uncertain but look at what we can count on day after day: gravity remains consistent, a hot cup of coffee left on a counter will cool, the earth rotates in the same 24 hours, and the speed of light doesn't change – on earth or in galaxies far from us.
Our world operates by unchanging, reliable laws, that are uniform across the entire universe.
All of the sciences – molecular biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. – hinge on these consistent laws of nature: the law of universal gravitation, Newton’s laws of motion, conservation of energy, the law of thermodynamics, etc.
Dr. Emily Baldwin commented, "One of the most important numbers in physics, the proton-electron mass ratio, is the same in a galaxy six billion light years away as it is here on Earth.…"11
In our daily lives, we can live with stability knowing that gravity never changes. The speed of light is reliable when we turn on a switch. Fire is always hot. Water in a summer lake is always porous.
These laws of nature are not only consistent, but also mathematically measurable. This has enabled humanity to explore and solve problems with reliability in all fields of science, medicine, construction, aviation...in everything.
It’s one thing to find orderly laws governing the universe. The fact that they are able to be measured and discussed in precise mathematical terms leaves us with no logical explanation except that it seems planned.
Could it be that we have a God who not only exists, but in kindness has created a universe that allows us to live with rational, unchanging predictability, giving us the tools to build, create and solve problems?
Now let’s move from the universe to a more personal area...what you have been given to function in your life.
Your brain simultaneously processes a vast amount of information. It takes in all the colors and objects you see, the temperature around you, the pressure of your feet against the floor, the sounds around you, the dryness of your mouth, and the texture of an object in your hand.
At the same time, it registers all your emotions, thoughts, and memories. Still at the same time, it keeps track of the ongoing functions of your body like your breathing pattern, eyelid movement, heartbeat, movement of each muscle, hunger.
The human brain processes more than a million messages a second.12 It weighs the importance of all this data, filtering out the relatively unimportant so you can focus and operate effectively in your world.
Your brain functions differently than your other organs. There is an intelligence to it, the ability to reason, to produce feelings, to dream and plan, to take action, and relate to other people.
Beyond your brain, we could talk about the functions of the heart, your respiratory system, how your eye can distinguish among seven million colors, and much more.
It’s hard to look in detail at the human body and conclude that it all simply fell into place nicely. Would we look at a nonliving car and decide that no planning was behind it? Why would we conclude no such planning went into a far more complex living entity as yourself, residing in this amazing environment called Earth?
Have you ever considered the blueprint informing our body’s processes? Here it is.
At the center of each cell in your body is a complete plan for how your body is designed to function.
This very detailed instruction code, residing as DNA in each cell of your body, functions much like a miniature computer program.
A computer program is made up of ones and zeros, like this: 110010101011000. The way the programmer arranges them tells the computer program what to do.
The DNA code in each of our cells is very similar. It's made up of four chemical units, called nucleotide bases, which scientists abbreviate as A, T, G, and C. These are arranged in the human cell like this: CGTGTGACTCGCTCCTGAT and so on. There are three billion pairs of these letters precisely arranged in every human cell.13
There is no program without a programmer; and, with DNA, a computer-like program resides in each cell!
Just like you can program your phone to sound for specific reasons, DNA instructs the cell to act in a certain way. It is a full instruction manual.14
Why is this so amazing? One has to ask… how did this information program come to exist in each human cell? These are not just chemicals. These are chemicals that instruct and code in a very detailed way exactly how the person's body should function.
There is nothing haphazard about the world in which we live.
We’ve considered how the universe had a start. And how our Earth remains the perfect distance from the Sun, as it moves around the Sun providing an even distribution of light and warmth.
We’ve seen how our Earth contains the exact atmosphere and water needed for human, animal, and plant life.
And we’ve seen that we live with consistent, dependable laws of nature that, oddly enough, can be mathematically measured. All our explorations and discoveries over the ages have been possible because of these reliable laws.
We've seen how our brains process an amazing amount of information every second. And we've seen that the three billion chemicals in each cell in our body act as a sophisticated program instructing all of our thinking, memories, muscles, breathing, human communication and more.
Nothing in this appears random, sloppy, or accidental. The most logical, most sensible conclusion is that something outside our universe brought all of this into being.
Further, and perhaps most astounding, all that has been provided for us shows an intention of love and care for us, for our well-being.
The next question then is this: Can you know God in a personal way? Can you actually experience his love, his guidance in your life? Yes.
Please see any one of these articles:
| ► | I just asked Jesus into my life (some helpful information follows)... |
| ► | I may want to ask Jesus into my life, please explain this more fully... |
| ► | I have a question or comment... |
Footnotes: (1) Romans 1:19-21 (2) Jeremiah 29:13-14 (3) R.E.D. Clark, Creation (London: Tyndale Press, 1946), p. 20 (4) The Wonders of God's Creation, Moody Institute of Science (Chicago, IL) (5) Ibid. (6) Steven Weinberg; The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe; (Basic Books,1988); p 5. (7) Genesis 1:1-3 (8) Robert Jastrow; God and the Astronomers; (Readers Library, Inc.; 1992) (9) Isaiah 40:28 (10) Psalm 148:5 (11) Dr. Emily Baldwin; "Earth's Laws Still Apply in Distant Universe"; AstronomyNow.com; June, 2008. (12) The Wonders of God's Creation (13) https://www.genome.gov/human-genome-project/Completion-FAQ (14) Francis S. Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, and author of The Language of God, (Free Press, New York, NY), 2006
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