More Possibilities and Impossibilities: God is in Control – not Atheists
God is in control - not Atheists. Click here for the first part of this blog.
Nothing in science tells us that there is no
Creator. To qualify, it is “scientific atheists” that declare so. Recently, a
famed British Scientist named Stephen Hawking said science is more convincing
than God in explaining the universe.
The report written by David Edwards for Raw Story was titled, “Stephen Hawking comes out: ‘I’m an atheist’
because science is ‘more convincing’ than God.”
According
to NBC News, Hawking made the
comments to the Spanish-language paper El Mundo during the Starmus Festival at
Tenerife in the Canary Islands. El Mundo’s Pablo Jauregui pointed out that
Hawking had written in his book “A Brief History of Time” that scientists could
“know the mind of God” if a unifying set of principles - or theory of everything - was discovered to explain the physical universe.
But Hawking later wrote in “The Grand Design” that God was no longer necessary
because science had provided a better understanding of the universe.
The world-famous
theoretical physicist cleaved more
to cosmology to explain the physical origins
and evolution of the Universe. Hawking reportedly said -
“What I
meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God
would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t,” he added. “I’m an atheist.”
(Ref: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/stephen-hawking-comes-out-im-an-atheist-because-science-is-more-convincing-than-god/)
The belief that there is a Creator came from the
Bible written a little less than four thousand years ago, and then accepted,
believed, preserved, shared, translated into almost all existing tongues and
have gotten the reputation as “the best selling book of all time.”
In contrast, the belief in the Big Bang,
Evolution, Natural Selection and The Origin of Species, was just formulated
barely 200 years ago! The latter belief intends to belie the existence of the
Creator, the Bible calls God. To disprove what the Bible says, believers of the
Big Bang and Evolution like atheists argue that there are unscientific things
in the Bible. For example, having morning and evening on the first day when the
sun and the moon were made only on the fourth day. Another is the
existence of vegetation in the absence of the sun. And many more similar
examples.
As mentioned in an earlier discussion, we have
to consider possibilities and impossibilities to arrive at a just and fair
conclusion on any refuted matter. Isn’t it possible that the universe and all
existing things came into being because of a Creator? The possibility is 100%!
Nobody in our time will believe that the NASA Space Station came into being
because of an accident. The construction, the design, and the transport of all
those materials that made up the NASA Space Station that now orbits the earth
at an altitude of 173 miles above the earth with an average ground speed of 17,
227 miles per hour to complete almost 16 orbits per day, entailed a lot of
creators.
The Space Station involves mathematical
precision in its transport from the Earth to escape the gravitational pull and
to stay in its own orbit above the earth! If such a minute thing required
creators, isn’t it possible that the universe with all of its complexities and
intricacies in its law and order also came from a Creator – an intelligent
being with a purpose in mind yet? The possibility is 100%! What is marvellous
is that, that knowledge was written in the Bible almost four thousand years ago
even before man has discovered of the universe vastness!
THE ACTS 17:24-26
24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and
earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
25 Neither is
worshiped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to
all life, and breath, and all things;
26 And hath made of one blood all nations of
men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times
before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
The preceding verses tell us that God is the
Creator of the universe. The word translated “world” is “kosmos” in Greek.
Something in these verses is worthwhile considering. “And hath made of one
blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath
determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;”
The verses incorporate a Creator, a purpose, a
time, a boundary. The truth in this information written millennia ago still
stands unrefuted today by human science and knowledge! The earth in the entire
universe is the only destined habitation with boundaries, for humans. Beyond
the boundaries set by God no human can exist! Shall we consider at this
juncture possibilities and impossibilities? Let us see:
Is it possible that there is life beyond earth –
a planet made like earth with life in it?
Joel Achenbach wrote that with instruments such as the Hubble
Space Telescope scientists discovered a huge amount of cosmic turf but came to
know of only a single inhabited world - the unique earth of the human beings.
Since 1995 astronomers have detected at least 22 planets orbiting other
stars. NASA hopes to build a telescope called the Terrestrial Planet Finder to
search for Earth-like planets, examining them for the atmospheric signatures of
a living world....
We all
have our suppositions, our scenarios. The late astronomer Carl Sagan estimated
that there are a million technological civilizations in our galaxy alone. His
more conservative colleague Frank Drake offers the number 10,000. John Oro, a
pioneering comet researcher, calculates that the Milky Way is sprinkled with a
hundred civilizations. And finally there are skeptics like Ben Zuckerman, an
astronomer at UCLA, who thinks we may as well be alone in this galaxy if not in
the universe.
(Ref:
http://www.reasons.org/articles/design-evidences-in-the-cosmos-1998)
The National
Geographic report further mentioned that all the estimates “are highly
speculative, and the fact is that there is no conclusive evidence of any life
beyond Earth. There is still no solid
knowledge about a single alien microbe, a solitary spore, much less the hubcap
from a passing alien starship.”
Back to the Space Station, as it is impossible
to be orbiting the earth without any creator, the grandest impossibility is for
the universe to be operating marvellously and in order without a Creator!
JEREMIAH 33:25
25 Thus saith
the LORD; If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; …
The laws that govern the strict and mathematical
order in the universe, written in the Bible long before man have understood and
discovered it, implies that the Bible carries in it scientific information
which are impossible for men at the time of its writing to know. The Creator
who understands and who ordained such laws is the only possible source of such
information.
To take exception to Hawking, if God cannot
explain the universe where science is better at doing it, it will be impossible
for the writers of the Bible to advance or even guess the precise scientific
truth that modern science have understood nowadays.
ISAIAH 46:9-10
9 Remember the
former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
10 Declaring the end from the beginning,
and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel
shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
God’s intention is apparently and logically
clear: For man to believe that He exists!
JOHN 13:19
Now I tell you before it come, that,
when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he.
The Bible even predicted precisely the existence
of Stephen Hawking and his fans club!
II PETER 3:3-5
3 Knowing this
first, that there shall come in the last
days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4 And saying,
Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all
things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
5 For this they
willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and
the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Scoffers do not believe in God. The modern term
for scoffers is ATHEISTS! The writer of this book, Peter, the Apostle, is an
illiterate man.
THE ACTS 4:13
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men,
they marveled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.
The illiterate
Peter knew that the earth was formed out of water and by means of water – just
with God’s bidding. But let us look into how astrophysicists like Stephen
Hawking look at the creation of planets like Earth. This one is from the
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) of the University of
Colorado at Boulder.
TERRESTRIAL PLANET FORMATION
Gasses condensed into rocky particles → Rocky particles begins to clump →
These clumps accrete more → Clumps from planetesimals → Planetesimals accrete more
→Terrestrial planets formed
Hydrogen compounds, such as water and methane, typically condense at low
temperatures, and remain gaseous inside the frost line where temperatures are
higher. The heavier rocky and metallic materials are better suited to condense
at higher temperatures. Thus, the inner planets are made almost entirely of
rock and metal and form the group known as the terrestrial planets.
How did the terrestrial planets form?
After the heavier elements and minerals condensed into solid bits of
rock, they all orbited the Sun at about the same speed. As you can imagine,
collisions of objects moving at the same speed are less destructive than those
of objects moving at different speeds. Thus, when rocks orbiting the Sun move
close to one another, they stick together more often than they destroy each
other. These pieces gradually grow larger in a process called accretion. Once
they are large enough, gravity forces them into spherical shapes.
The excerpts just given speak of gasses and
solids – simply moving among themselves in time and space to form, accrete,
reform - all devoid of purpose. And yet out of chaos something beautiful is
formed?
We must not forget that water came from gas - hydrogen
and oxygen - which are things unseen and jive with the Biblical truth that
things that are seen were made from things unseen.
HEBREWS 11:3
Through faith
we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made
of things which do appear.
Meaning that things which are seen were made
from things that are not seen, like gases! The Bible teaches us wonderful
knowledge in science even before the birth of Stephen Hawking.
Hawking is a British scientist, who, according to Maria
Cheng of the Associated Press, first gained attention with his 1988 book
"A Brief History of Time," a simplified overview of the universe. It
sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. His subsequent theories have
revolutionized modern understanding of concepts like black holes and the Big
Bang theory of how the universe began. (Ref: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45886738/ns/health-aging/t/stephen-hawking-how-has-he-survived-so-long/#.VDz2k7CUdpA)
Unfortunately, for all his intellect, Hawking
felt no presence of a Creator who let him live comfortably and long despite his
disabilities. He vilified God as incapable of explaining the origin and nature
of the universe that he tried so hard to explain with physics sans a Creator.
He worshipped Science more. But then there would be many more Hawkings in many
forms.
The book of Hebrews was written some time in 61
AD, an era wherein No human understood the composition of gases and the
possibility of producing things which are seen from the unseen gases. Yet the
people were described to be perfectly peaceful, calm, restful, undisturbed by
circumstances and so were powerful, effective, accomplishing things. They found
hope, joy and patience in the face of tribulations. They believed in a Creator
that made things possible for them. Whatever they could not explain, they
trusted in their Creator.
Hawking is said to be the most famous scientist
alive today. His 2001 book “The Universe in a Nutshell” is hailed as a
masterpiece in the history of modern physics. At 72, he thinks little of his
humanity.
Explaining the universe sans a Creator is new knowledge that
came only 200 years ago. Isn’t it possible that the minds so oriented to a Creator-less
creation are being influenced by the same force that said in the Garden of
Eden, “You won’t die when you eat this fruit”?
It is possible to ignore the existence of a Creator but it is
impossible to obliterate that existence, even if one believes in such
non-existence. It is upon the existence of a Creator that we can even think of
possibilities of how the world was created.
It is possible that a cause can cause an effect but it is
impossible that the cause is nothingness for in nothingness, the ability to
think cannot develop or exist.
It is possible for the seen to cause another seen to exist,
but penultimately, the seen is caused by an unseen, a being of higher level than
the one caused.
It is possible that atheists may fool people with their
so-called masterpiece knowledge but it is impossible for such knowledge to take
the place of truth.
It is possible that the Father of Lies is at work with
people’s minds, and those he would seduce are those who preferred to be rich
and famous - with lies, but it is impossible that one’s heart does not lust for
the power and fame that comes with it.
