The Search for God
What evidence would convince you?
Before we begin, this article is certainly not exhaustive; books have been written on creation and evolution. This article is more about my journey and the reasons I moved from an atheist to the belief that a being created the universe and life.
I like to think I examine information like a court case, searching for evidence as a detective, then weighing evidence like a judge and jury. You and I are always weighing evidence. My goal is to consider the reams and mounds of evidence and come to the best conclusion, knowing we as humans are limited in knowledge.
Limitation of human knowledge
In this search, be skeptical, doubt, question, but also be humble enough to doubt ourselves and our own motives. For me, the motive in this search was to seek the truth no matter where it led. I hope you are looking for that as well.
Opinion Article
If God exists he should be the creator of the universe
What is God?
Quest to find God
So I am searching for this being God, but what about science? Can God and science both exist? What about the big bang? I mean, couldn’t the universe be uncaused going through cycle after cycle expansion/collapse/expansion.
When I was small, that was the teaching that the universe itself was eternal. Now, we know the universe had a beginning, a big bang. We weren’t present at the big bang, so we have to weigh evidence and probabilities.
What convinced me?
The evidence I found compelling, which made me believe the universe was created. During my freshmen year of college, I engaged in philosophy 101 along with biology, physics, and inorganic chemistry, stimulating my mind to whirl with new thoughts new ideas.
Entropy, cycles, cells, the big bang, and the philosophical idea of the first cause captured my mind and convinced me to believe the universe and life are created.
First Cause
Many call this the cosmological argument, but I didn’t know this term until 10 years later. During philosophy 101, we dealt with what is truth, how do we know what we know, and logical arguments.
So I endeavored to know what the truth is and, just as importantly, how would I know when presented with information. I wondered what the cause of the big bang was. Where did everything come from? Why is there something rather than nothing?
Something doesn’t come from nothing. Is that true? Also, did this something (the universe and human life) showing design properties come from a being or no being?
| Being | No-being | |
| Some Pre-existing Material | Planets, Galaxies, life reforged or repurposed | Probability, no patterns, no design, random natural forces, ? cause/spark |
| No quarks, no atoms, nothing | Depends on power, ? will material into existence | Nothing arises – No Big Bang |
How A Being (life) and Substance (material) interacted for the Big Bang
Real-World Example – Automobiles
Calvin: Dad, where do cars come from?
Dad: They just show up on the dealer lot.
Car Dealer: Well you see, these parts arrive and they jump into a box all by themselves, shake the box up, lightning and water flow in, and viola.
Calvin: Hmm, how long does it take? Where do the parts come from?
Dealer: Whoa, there son, slow down. A truck from the factory just dumps them on our lot. (looks at dad). Does he always ask so many tough questions?
Dad: Yup. Hey, son let’s go to the factory.
Factory foreman: Hear you got a question son. You see those piles of iron, aluminum, silicon, palladium.
Calvin: You mean the ones oozing from the ground?
Foreman: Yup, you see the wind, pressure, lightning, gravity, just force all these materials to just spring up out of the ground, put themselves into the same area and parts come out.
Calvin: So what do you and the car dealer do?
Foreman: uh, we collect the money.
Calvin: I see. Then where did the box and parts factories come from?
Dad: (slaps his forehead) Son you got a lot to learn.
This was and is ridiculous. Gravity, tidal forces, lightning, random collisions have no power, no design, no ability to create something. Take something, anything, and explode it; raw material at massive energies nothing living forms, not even when it cools and settles down.
Some want to argue that complexity takes time to develop. But I ask you, where do we see something complex from something simple? How do simple molecules: iron, silicon, aluminum, palladium, and plastic shake around for billions of years, and Lightning McQueen emerges?
How do the parts: a muffler, a carburetor form, then stick together in just the right pattern, forming an engine, then a car? No, wait the factory formed first and made the muffler and engine. Chicken or the egg? Cell membrane or the RNA?
A Cell is as complex as an automobile supply chain.
This is all assuming that material was present, but no intelligence, no designer with a plan for the factory or what car design should be. So the designer is random natural forces, and the power is time; to me, the idea of “no being creating multiple complex somethings” strained reason and logic.
The Solution
A Being (God) is the first cause and designer of life.
The Big Bang and an expanding universe
I am no astrophysicist, but I did stay at the Holiday Inn of undergraduate physics. I am more adept at cell biology and biochemistry. Still, each of us is equipped to examine the agreed-upon facts.
The universe had a beginning, and the universe continues to expand. Simple right? So what caused this universe? Either some being or no being created something. So where did the material, the something, come from?
We have two options either the material of the universe always existed, or the material did not always exist. Modern physics suggests that material underwent a big bang.
That the universe came into existence suddenly and all the matter organized itself without any outside power or force, there was no guiding principle. So nobeing ultimately caused being.
Automobile Example
Random Natural Forces and Time (billions of years) could cause:
- Car Part design: Mufflers, Pistons, Wheels, Electronics, bolts, screws
- Factory for parts: Building, structure, production line, moulds
- Assembly: Simple parts into more complex parts, engine, radio, braking system
- Transportation: placing parts in the correct order, bringing parts from the parts factory to the car assemly, bringing raw materials to the parts factory
- Basic material gathering and processing: Rubber, plastic, silicon, iron, aluminum, palladium
The Result: Lightning McQueen. Why not? This is just as probable as human “evolution”
First (evolution) Premise: no-being caused being and intelligence.
This first premise seemed non-sensical to me, but that is what many believe.
Second (evolution) Premise: no-being caused something to exist or the material itself is eternal.
If there is no being, nothing with power within itself, where did the something (material) of the universe come from? A universe creating engine? A Multi-verse? Great, where did that come from, and how do we know? So what is more likely a being creating everything or nobeing, no intelligence?
What does non-being lack?
So non-being lacks intelligence, but it also lacks something else: Power. Intelligence applies to design and organization. Power involves the ability to manipulate objects into a cohesive design: to gather resources, to refine them, to transport them.
We think stars, planets, gravity, forces, and particles are simple things, accidents, but I see complexity. I see design.
However, I came to the conclusion even if I believed a bunch of space stuff exploded, and when it cooled, a black hole formed, dense, dense matter, with high gravity and everything just started circling each other and matter coalesced; even if I grant all that happened by chance, I was still left with a dead burnt rock with the sun blaring down on a planet without life.
Nobeing creates nobeing – I could roll with that, but that is not the reality of the universe we live in. We live on a planet with life, with being.
So the big bang. If there is no-being, then either I have to believe that the material is eternal or non-being developed something. Even if there is a universe generating engine, like a multi-verse, all that does is push back the question of where did that come from?
Some then ask where did the being of God come from? Who created God? Something is eternal, either non-being material or a being or both. So the big bang. If there is no-being, then either I have to believe that the material is eternal or non-being developed something.
Even if there is a universe generating engine, like a multi-verse, all that does is push back the question of where did that come from? Some then ask where did the being of God come from? Who created God? Something is eternal, either non-being material or a being or both.
Entropy and Time
A single cell is so complex, just like automobile production. How could all the components needed just for basic reproduction and growth of an organism of life develop all at the same time?
Evolutionary scientists would have us believe that given enough time all things are possible, no matter how improbable. Time is power. “Just give us more time and then we will know.”
Let’s say we need to randomly build a car or a cell with nothing but natural forces and time. Let’s say that the car body or a cell wall formed randomly, is that life? Can it reproduce? Can it grow or take in energy? We still need an engine, wheels, steering, a way to take in energy.
How long would that car body sit around waiting for the other parts 10 years, 100 years, a billion years? What would happen to the car body or the cell wall? We see it in our own bodies, cars, and nature; without energy things breakdown fall apart, stop working.
There are little machines everywhere in nature. As we have seen, we need machines to make machines; we need patterns and designs to fit pieces together. Cells die without energy, cars die without energy, or when they crash into one another.
Lightning, wind, heat, and crashing waves all provide power but are undirected and destructive. Here rides the idea of entropy.
Entropy is the principle that things move from a state of order to disorder, and to return to a state of order takes energy.
To put a disordered system into order, the process takes intelligence, design, and planning to direct that energy into a creative force. Randomness, chance, and non-being are incapable of creating complexity, of harnessing energy, collecting raw materials, processing them, then building layer upon layer of machines, and feedback loops.
- Assembly Plant
- Multiple part factories
- Transportation to and from each plant (which you need to construct those vehicles)
- Raw materials mined
- Raw materials processed
- DNA (translation, transcription, replication each need its own machinery)
- RNA (translation, transporation)
- Proteins (construction, transporation, the RNA and DNA need protein machines for them to function)
- Cell walls to protect, but they have to be made
Which Part of the production cell randomly develops first, then sits around and waits for the rest of the machines to get built. The RNA? Then how do we get the proteins the RNA is telling the cell to make?
Ah just wait a billion years, no 10 billion years, and we will have a complete intelligent _____ (cell, human, car, tree, etc.). It won’t happen; it can’t happen. Time has no power to build. Time develops rust and decay, not shiny and new. Entropy is the enemy of time.
Design and Intelligence
We understand the creative process, yet we ignore the signs. Was the universe created? Does it show signs of complex multilayer design? When we see a car, we know that an intelligent being designed and built it.
Instead, we satisfy ourselves with “we just don’t have enough information.” or “given enough time, all probabilities could happen.” If not now, when?
I could have developed theories to support my desire for no creator being, no God, but the evidence, truth, and reason would not allow me to ignore what science and experience showed me.
Eleven years before I was a Christian, I believed that God existed. Philosophy, science, reason, and my own eyes all informed me. I was not looking for satisfaction or happiness or riches, I searched for truth, no matter where it lay.
Next Steps
I just could not believe that no-being built something so complex as the universe and life. But now I had a problem, who is that being? Did he/she/it speak to humans? That is what I wanted to know next.
- Did God communicate with humans?
- What is the simplest organism needed to consider life to have evolved?
- What would communication from God look like?
What Next?
- What is the crucial concept?
- Why is that significant?
- If you agree, the next steps.
- If you disagree, please consider reading.
References and Links