“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”1
-Carl Sagan
Contrast that statement with the following:
God is all that is or ever was or ever will be.
This statement could be viewed as a summation of the various
“ontological arguments.” Ontological
arguments are arguments that articulate or argue for God as the necessary
being. We have here two diametrically
opposed worldviews. One view proposes
that God is the necessary, and the universe is His creation. The other view proposes that the universe
exists independent of a creator, and God is a myth. Both views cannot be true. Either one is true and the other is false, or
both are false. Anyway you look at it,
there is a great deception being perpetrated upon humanity.
“All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has
not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years
ago. This is probably the most
remarkable discovery of modern cosmology.”2
-Stephen Hawking
Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking are both well-known and
well-respected scientists and naturalists.
Both men are highly intelligent.
Sagan claimed the natural universe is all that ever existed. Hawking claims that the natural universe had
a beginning. I don’t know if these two
claims are contradictory or not, but if not, then what existed before the
universe and what caused the universe to come into existence? It would seem that Sagan’s assertion is that
nothing existed before the universe. Does
that mean that nothing caused it to come into being? Does that mean it has always existed? Hawking clearly asserts that it had a
beginning. This leaves unanswered
questions, any answers to which would clearly seem to be irreconcilable.
“Evolution is a religion.
This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution
still today.”3
-Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse is a self-proclaimed “ardent evolutionist” and
“ex-Christian”3 and he is also a well-known and highly respected
philosopher of science. To be fair, he
states that this quote of his is often taken out of context. Nevertheless, he still stands behind his
words. Feel free to read his own
explanation of his statement. By the
way, this same philosopher has made the claim that morality is an illusion, a
claim I have also proposed in other writings (insofar as morality is considered
without the existence of God).
“Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a
metaphysical research program—a possible framework for testable scientific
theories.”4
-Karl Popper
Karl Popper was another well-known and well-respected
philosopher of science. One area of his
academic focus was on demarcating science from non-science.
“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the
appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”5
-Richard Dawkins
“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see
was not designed, but rather evolved.”6
-Francis Crick
Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and
atheist. He is the author of The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion, as well as many other
books. Francis Crick was a molecular
biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist.
He is famous for co-discovering the structure of the DNA molecule. According to these two quotes, not only does
life in the natural universe have the appearance of design, but that appearance
can be so convincing that dedicated biologists must ignore that overwhelming
appearance and remind themselves that evolution is the truth.
In the documentary film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”
Richard Dawkins was asked about the apparent design of life on earth. His answer was as follows: “…it could be that
at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization evolved, probably
by some kind of Darwinian means, to a very, very high level of technology and
designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet.”7 He went on to say: “…that designer could well
be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence would itself
would have to come about by some explicable or ultimately explicable
process. It couldn’t have just jumped
into existence spontaneously.”7
When asked about the origin of life, he stated: “It was the origin of
the first self-replicating molecule.”7 When asked where that molecule originated, he
stated: “I’ve told you, we don’t know.”7 Well, a designer couldn’t have spontaneously
jumped into existence, because things don’t just spontaneously jump into
existence. Therefore, a self-replicating
molecule couldn’t just spontaneously jump into existence either, right? Or could it?
Is it less of a stretch, less of a leap of faith, less of a disregard of
observation and logic to believe that life spontaneously came into being then
to believe that an eternal and self-existent God created it? Well, life might not have spontaneously come
into being either, since it could have been seeded by extra-terrestrials. But where did they come from? They evolved too. From spontaneous life or from other
aliens? Where did the process start,
since according to Stephen Hawking, it had to have a beginning?
In the short video “Creationism Is Not Appropriate for
Children” Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”) asserts that believing in creationism is
detrimental to the advancement of science.8
“Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries
have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and
reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in
ideological struggle or professional disputes between life and social
science. Within this framework, teaching
modern Christian creationism should be fought as a form of child abuse.”9
-Donna Haraway
Creationism is viewed as an obstacle for science by some and
as dangerous (a form of child abuse) by others.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible
qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being
understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
-Romans 1:20, New
International Version
“They show that the requirements of the law are written on
their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts
sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.”
-Romans 2:15, New
International Version
So what evidence is there for the origin of the universe
being a creator God? Paul the Apostle
states in the preceding passages that there are two primary evidences, nature
and morality, or creation and conscience.
Put in another way, the fact that the universe exists testifies to its
creation by a creator. The fact that we
discern good and evil testifies to a law written in our being by a
law-giver. The fact that we think
rationally and have intelligence testifies to the existence of the intelligence
that made us.
“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and
worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever
praised. Amen.”
-Romans 1:25, New
International Version
“…They perish because they refused to love the truth and so
be saved. For this reason God sends them
a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be
condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
-2 Thessalonians
2:10-12, New International Version
There is a lie. There
is a deception. It is either that God
created the universe, or that the universe came into existence apart from a
supernatural creator. One is true, the
other is not. One is a lie (or both are
lies). They cannot both be true. Which is the lie? What is the lie? Could it be the origin of life and the
universe apart from God? It seems to me
that both claims require faith like a religion.
Carl Sagan said, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or
ever will be.”
The God of the Bible said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega…
who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8, New
International Version)
Sources:
1- Sagan,
Carl. Cosmos. New
York: Random House, Inc., 1980. (Page 4)
2- Hawking,
Stephen. “The Beginning of Time.” http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html
, 01/26/2014
3- Ruse,
Michael. “Is Darwinism a Religion?” Huff Post Religion, 07/21/2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ruse/is-darwinism-a-religion_b_904828.html
, 01/26/2014.
4- Popper,
Karl. Unended Quest: An Intellectual
Autobiography. Fontana/Collins,
1976.
5- Dawkins,
Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. Norton & Company, Inc., 1986.
6- Crick,
Francis. What Mad Pursuit: A Personal
View of Scientific Discovery. Basic
Books, 1990.
7- “Expelled:
No Intelligence Allowed.” Premise Media
Corporation, 2008. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1091617/quotes
, 01/27/2014.
8- “Creationism
Is Not Appropriate for Children.” Big
Think, You Tube, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/bill-nye-science-guy-creationism-evolution_n_1835208.html
, 01/27/2014
9- Haraway,
Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science,
Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The
Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge,
1991.
