BIG QUESTION:  DOES GOD EXIST?

Journalist Christopher Hitchens has written that God did not make us, but we made God and that religion poisons everything.  Scientist Richard Dawkins calls God a delusion and one of the more irrational beliefs imaginable.  Author Sam Harris wrote to a “Christian nation” in order to “demolish” its “intellectual and moral pretensions.”
     Yet at the same time there is writer A.N. Wilson’s return to Christian faith after a season of outspoken skepticism, and the champion of atheism and Oxford University professor Anthony Flew has a new embrace of God.  So the truth is the debate over God’s existence has never been more public, than now.
     Because of that, there is a new generation of people and spiritual seekers that are asking the foundational questions about the existence of God.  The idea that you have to put your brain on the shelf to believe in the existence of God is just simply not true.  While belief in God is a faith decision, it is a very reasonable faith decision.  We live in day when many Christians do not speak to these issues or feel intimidated to state their faith in public, as if there is no intellectual basis for their beliefs.  The truth is God’s truth has and will always stand the test of time so we need to be prepared to share it.  We need to think through our faith so we can discuss it.  So I want to share with you some of the thoughts that have led pervious generations of those seeking God to come to a deep abiding faith in our Creator.
     Polls tell us that very few people in America are atheist.  Chances are that people who say they don’t believe are actually agnostic.  What they are saying is not that “I don’t believe there is a God” but they are saying “I cannot know if there is a God.”  So in many ways agnosticism is an understandable place to begin a spiritual journey.  I mean you cannot prove God exists using the scientific method.  The scientific method of proof depends upon repetition, and there are certain things that cannot be contained or repeated in order to be scientifically proven. If it is beyond our five senses to examine, then you cannot use something like science and the normal rules of “proof” to either prove, or disprove.
     But just because you cannot repeat something, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.  No one has ever seen love, but we all know that it is real.  No one has smelled freedom but it exists.  If there is a God, He could be far beyond a test to be validated.  What we do have available is that we can explore the reasons for believing in God.  So I want to share with you some of the more compelling reasons to consider belief in God. Today we will look at one.
     The first reason to think about has been called the cosmological argument or sometimes known as the “cause and effect” argument.  The cosmological argument for God rests on a simple question:  Look at the existence of the world and ask yourself, “How did this happen?”  The issue is the law of cause and effect.  In other words, every effect has a cause.  The universe has a beginning.  Anything that has a beginning must have been begun.  It could not have started itself—it had to have been caused by something else.  Over the years some skeptics rejected this idea because they did not believe in a creation moment for the universe.  There idea was the universe is eternal in nature; it did not have a start date, prior to that date, nothing existed.  Astronomer Carl Sagan began his book Cosmos with “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” Yet, now this is no longer the prevailing view of science.
     What really laid the idea of an eternal universe to rest was the idea of the “Big Bang” which was first put forward by Dr. Edwin Hubble, the namesake for the famous Hubble telescope.  His theory was that at one time, all matter was packed into a dense mass at temperatures of many trillions of degrees, then there was a huge explosion.  From that explosion, all of the matter that today forms our planets and stars was born, creating the universe as we know it.
     So, if the universe could no have come into existence by itself, from nothingness… because nothingness cannot produce anything (matter has to come from somewhere)…and the universe isn’t eternal… then the theological questions begin to flow, specifically “Who made it bang?” and “Where did the matter come from to get banged?”  This makes the idea of a creation, through a Creator, not only in line with science, but almost demanded by science.  This also puts the Bibles contention for believing in God right in line with our knowledge of the world when it say “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” Genesis 1:1 (NIV). The One who was without beginning, One who stands outside of our boundaries of space and time.  He created.
     The Hebrew word “bara” used for “created” most linguists take to mean something out of nothing.  That God, our creator created something out of nothing.  The bible tells us that there is a clear and compelling reason to believe in God.  “…what men can know about God is plain to them, Ever since God created the world, His invisible qualities, both His eternal power, and His divine nature, have been clearly seen. Men can perceive them in things that God has made” Romans 1: 19-20 (GN)
     So when we walk outside and breath the air, feel a breeze, see the stars, moon and sky, we feel the awesome effect of what our incredible Creator has made for us.  We can walk outside and say “Thank you, God for all that you have made.”  As I look out the window at another beautiful fall day, I think that is just want I will do.  We can talk about this some more later.
 
Scott Palmer
 
Sources
 
Christian Theology   by Millard J Erikson
 
Can I Believe?   Message by James Emery White