#9 Contest With God

Humans have become so technically evolved that they can now make a living, breathing person.

A summit of scientists believed that because they now had the power to create life, God was no longer needed. So they all decided that someone should go and tell this to God.

One of the scientists volunteered to go. So one day he climbed a mountain and called upon God. “God! a bunch of us have been thinking, and I’ve come to tell you that we really don’t need you anymore. I mean, we’ve been coming up with great theories and ideas, we’ve cloned sheep, and we’re on the verge of cloning humans. So as you can see, we really don’t need you anymore, so you can leave us alone.”

God nods understandingly and says, “I see. Well, no hard feelings. But before you go, let’s have a contest. What do you think?”

The scientist says, “Sure. What kind of contest?”

God replies, “A human-making contest where we make a human being. If you can create a better person than me, I’ll go,”.

The scientist quickly agrees, “Sure! No problem.”

The scientist bends down and picks up a handful of dirt and says, “Okay, I’m ready!”

God shakes his head, “No, no, no…you go get your own dirt.

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This wasn't exactly a proof for God, but I've always remembered it as a story with a great punch line. I can't be serious all the time about this.

As great as the achievements of science, even to the extent of being able to create life if we ever get to that point, still we are completely within the physical, material world with all it's laws and principles. We can't create something from nothing.

There must be God.

PS: Here's another memorable poster.

#8 Love

Almost every song that you hear on the radio is about love. Many movies are about love and many of the others have a love-centered subplot. A Google search for images depicting love gets 16.8 billion returns.

The goal of life for our culture is true love. Everybody knows about love. Everybody wants love. But is love something that really exists? No one has ever possessed a physical handful of love.

Let’s assume you believe in love, a fairly safe assumption.

How did you come to believe in love? Love is invisible so you didn’t see it. It has no physical dimensions.

Some people go so far as to call love “all powerful”. How could something invisible and weightless be “all powerful?”

There are different kinds of love: love for parents, siblings, children, grandchildren; love for pets; love of possessions and other inanimate objects; love of money, love of power, love of freedom; on and on.

Love grows. Given time your love for one person can grow greater and greater, stronger and stronger. You can love additional people also, but love is not diminished as if there were a limited quantity. There’s more of it. Where does it come from?

Love is not limited by time or space. It doesn’t get old. It does not decrease if your beloved is far away.

Someone may love you, but it is possible that you don’t know that love for you exists. It’s also possible that you can even deny that there is love. When you do, you won’t notice the love any longer, but it still exists. It’s still there, but beyond your perception.

If we outlive our physical death, love could go on beyond the grave. I happen to believe that after death, your personality continues and therefore your experience of love will continue. Furthermore, it keeps growing and expanding.

Do you still believe in love after realizing all of the apparently contradictory aspects listed above? Did you answer “yes”? I think most people would still believe in love.

If you stop to analyze it, how are the characteristics of this thing called love all that different from the likely characteristics of God?

It’s invisible, not affected by time, no mass or weight, no physical dimensions.

The major difference is that God is a source of love, a creator of love, not the love itself. But what’s so fantastic or unusual about there being a creator. You are a creator of love as well, so a being that creates love is not unusual.

If you believe in love, you are very close to believing in God already. If you don’t believe in love, you are missing out on what everyone else is getting. Poor you.

The attributes of God and the attributes of love are very similar. God however gets a lot of criticism which I think He doesn’t deserve and a lot of blame for things He didn’t do.

Where did love come from? My observation is that it always comes from a being who creates the love in order to send it to another being. In every case there is a “source” being that creates the love. Therefore, there must be an original source of love.

There must be God.

#7 Car Mechanic

When your car breaks down, do you try to fix it yourself? Do you take it to a mechanic and then watch over his shoulder telling him how to do his job?

You have probably experienced that there are many different mechanics out there, and some are way better than others. However, almost any one of them or even all of them are better car mechanics than you.

Your passion in life is probably not car mechanics and likely you don’t know a thing about it. Thankfully, there are people who do have a passion for car mechanics. They are fascinated by it. They devote a lot of time and energy to studying all about it. They devote many hours to working with the tools of the trade and getting hands on experience. After a certain amount of that, we call them an expert. There are even processes developed to obtain an official “certification” at car maintenance.

Without going through all the training to become an expert, imagine that you proclaimed yourself an “expert” in car mechanics. What would be people’s reaction? How much credibility would you have?

When it comes to knowing the truth about God’s existence, are there parallels to this story? Is your average person an expert based solely on having a personal belief or opinion? What kind of credentials are needed for a person to be an expert on the subject of God? Is every person’s point of view supposed to be considered equally?

Another idea is to take a vote of all the people. If the majority decides whether there is a God or not, does that make it the truth?

I don’t think so.

The existence of God is not in the realm of opinion. It is in the realm of facts. You don’t get to decide.

It is either true or it isn’t. He either exists or He doesn’t and no amount of debate, argument, wishing, believing, or demanding is going to change the fact.

When you want to know facts about your car, you would probably trust the word of the experienced car mechanic over a non-mechanic or a novice mechanic. Using the same analogy, we might want to trust the word of those who over their lifetimes had a profound passion to study religious truths. People like Jesus, Peter and Paul and other figures from the Bible, St. Augustine, St. Francis, Mother Teresa, and on and on were devoted day in and day out to discovering God and bringing knowledge about God to the rest of us.

Do you personally know anyone like those people mentioned? Do you know someone that you might consider a saint? Do you know someone who is an “expert” on God from their own lifestyle. The expertise that they have is what you want to gain first before deciding whether God exists or not.

Don’t be too hasty to think you are an expert on the existence of God unless you have gotten your “certification”.

There are many world famous people, past and present, who have revealed their experience of the nature of God from personal experience. Although many of them may have a different experience of the nature of God, all of them would absolutely agree that He exists.

If you are in grade school, it doesn’t make much sense to challenge someone with a PhD.

There is a God.

#6 Bigness

Things that are big do something to us emotionally. There is just an awesomeness to big things that can take your breath away.

Think about some “big” thing that you encountered in your life that deeply moved you and made you just marvel…”Wow”. Here are some of mine: the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the Redwood trees in Muir Woods, the giant Sequoia trees in Yosemite, Luray Caverns in Virginia, and the Twin Towers in New York before 2001.

Big dogs, big people, big houses, big storms, even big bugs all make us stop and take a second look. A big anything will give you pause. “The largest … (whatever)… in the world” makes us pause to see what is it. Just for fun, do a Google search for “the biggest _________ in the world” and fill in the blank with anything you can think of.

 

You probably keep some record book in your brain somewhere for each one of the “biggest I ever saw” in every category. Maybe there are a million categories. You could sit around with your family or friends for hours telling stories about the biggest whatevers you have seen.

I saw a TV show not too long ago about a new building going up in the United Arab Emirates that is going to be the tallest building in the world. It was totally fascinating. As you can imagine there are some really difficult challenges, not the least of which was the 125 degree heat and the very high winds.

Here’s my point. Something really, really big takes an incredible amount of effort and energy to bring into existence. The biggest building in the world takes phenomenal resources and time and energy and intelligence in its creation.

Let’s take a quantum leap and imagine all the resources, time and energy, it took to create every construction project ever made by human beings in all of history: buildings, houses, roads, bridges, dams, everything. Think of the end products that have been created. But note, the end product is what you can see with your eyes. What you can’t see is the intelligence and mind power, the creativity and knowledge, that it took to build all those things. In fact, all the thinking took place before any of the building itself was done.

A great amount of knowledge about the principles of construction was required even before the image of the end project could be formed. Otherwise the whole thing would come crashing down. A designer was absolutely necessary for every single project that has come into existence. A planner was absolutely necessary for everything to come into existence. Even though we cannot see the planner today, we know there was one for every single one of those construction projects. None of them happened accidentally.

Now let’s talk about BIG again. As awesome as some of the creations of man are, as big as some of them are, how big are they relative to the size of the earth? Or compare them to the Solar System or the Milky Way. Compare the Milky Way galaxy to the universe. NASA claims there are 3,000 already observed galaxies, and an estimated 125 billion or more.*

Now we’re talking BIG.

The universe is estimated to be 10 to 20 billion years old. The Milky Way alone is 100,000 light years across and contains from 200 to 400 billion stars. The universe is estimated to be over 14 billion light years across but nobody really knows what’s beyond that.

That’s BIG. Just trying to imagine the size of the universe seems impossible. Sort of like trying to imagine God. The universe is real. Nobody doubts that it exists even though we can’t really get our head around it. But we have more trouble trying to imagine something BIGGER than the universe. Could there really be a being that in fact is the creator of the universe? It is very hard to imagine God in this way, as a being bigger than the universe using 3 dimensional thinking about size. Maybe that’s one reason many people stop trying.

I would argue that since anything that we can conceive of from our experience that is orderly and BIG has an intelligent creator, therefore the universe must have a creator because of the need for a planner and builder.

Therefore there must be a God.

Reference:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html

#5 Babies Are Cute

Think of babies with me for a while. Think of human babies that you have known. Think of animal babies, puppies, kittens, baby birds, farm animal babies, going to the pet store. Think of baby fish of all kinds. Even think of baby plants, shoots coming out of the ground, sprouts emerging.  

Let’s make two categories: “cute” and “ugly”. Or make a long line with “really cute” on the left end and “really ugly” on the right end. Now imagine putting all the babies one by one somewhere on the scale. What would it look like?

I’m going to take an educated guess and say that a very huge percentage of the babies are on the left end over by “really cute” or “mostly cute”.

Most puppies and kittens have got to be on the “cute” end. Don’t you have a calendar somewhere in your house with pictures of kittens or puppies? Do you remember the last time you went to the zoo? The biggest attraction was always the baby animals. Even baby hippos are cute. Was there any babies at the zoo for the “ugly” category? Can’t remember any.

Go through “Mammals” in the encyclopedia and check out all their babies. Any ugly there?

Human babies certainly are “cute”. They stay that way for years, maybe up to 5 or 6. There is a daycare at the building where I work and all the babies are cute. Maybe a couple get sort of close to the mid-point between “really cute” and “really ugly” on the spectrum, but definitely I’d still put them on the cute side. That’s just on physical appearance. If you add in their little personalities…definitely, definitely cute. If you ask their mother’s opinion, would you ever get “ugly”?

Baby birds almost all follow this pattern of cuteness. I say “almost” because a few might be tending over into the ugly area. Definitely the gigantic majority of baby birds are cute, for sure.

My wife loves gardening and yard work. Baby plants, flowers just coming up, even new grass sprouting are reasons for joy and excitement. If pressed to admit it, I’d have to say that those baby plants are actually pretty cute.

I’ve left insects for last because I’m a little conflicted where to put them on the scale. Probably, I’d have to get very close to, if not touching, “really ugly” when I’m thinking of baby flies (i.e. maggots). Can’t think of too many baby insects that I could put on the cute side. What about you? So I don’t mind if the ugly bugs get eaten by birds and mammals. (Maybe bugs were created ugly so we’d avoid attachments to them.)

So all in all, what percentage of the above creatures would be on the cute side? I’d go with about 98% myself when I look at the world. What about you?

If humans and animals are all the result of random accident, why are we all so darn cute? It makes no sense. Natural selection or survival of the fittest have no connection with cuteness. Ugly can survive and prosper. Do animal parents kick out the ugly ones and only keep the cute ones? Do animal parents have any idea that we humans look upon their offspring and say, “Oh, he’s so cute!”

Can we all agree that only humans see “cuteness”? It gives us joy. It also motivates us to act to share our feeling of joy with others.

Human parents expend great time and effort to give joy to their children. Isn’t that the whole point behind toy stores and going to the zoo, or buying them a pet?

The cuteness that I see everywhere in the world is not an accident. It’s a deliberate effort on the part of my “original” parent, God, to give joy to me, individually, as well as everyone else collectively. We are God’s children. 

There must be a God.

#4 Order of Assembly

Have you noticed that most things in life that you buy will come with an instruction booklet?

All around you there are signs and directions telling you how to do things in the right order or the right way.

Obviously, to be successful at many, many things, you will have to do them in a particular sequence or you get poor results or nothing at all.

Simple machines don’t require a lot of instructions. However, as the machines get more and more complicated, the instructions become more and more complicated as well. At a certain point, you are not allowed to do certain things unless you are trained and certified. Take for example brain surgery or piloting an airplane.

In order to assemble something correctly, it takes intelligence. You can give a monkey all the pieces to build a Lego submarine, but he’s not going to accidentally build it in your lifetime and I’ll take odds on eternity. And monkeys are among the smartest of animals.

To correctly assemble something, you have to not only put the pieces in the right PLACE, but you also have to place them in the right ORDER. If you don’t get the position and the sequence correct, then the construction will fail.

Imagine the blueprints for building the Empire State Building. First you have to dig a huge hole in the ground and then each step of the way up you would need directions how to lay in all the water pipes, the electricity wires, the plumbing, the air ducts, the heating ducts, on and on.  

A human being is sort of similar to a building. We have nerves (like electrical wires), lungs and blood for moving air, water, food, and waste; heating and air conditioning systems. If you were to try to create the “blueprints” for a human body, do you think it would be more or less complicated than the blueprints for the Empire State Building? Absolutely, the human body is 100’s if not 1000’s of times more complicated than a building. The human body changes and grows. It replaces itself cell by cell. It moves around.

The human body is actually “assembled”. I’m sure you have seen books or videos of fertilization and growth of an embryo. That’s a clear pattern of assembly going on piece by piece and in a certain planned sequence.

Was there an intelligence that put that all together? It’s incomprehensible how it could have happened without intelligence.

There must be God.

#3 Three Sticks

Let's imagine that you are walking through the woods in a very secluded area. As you are walking, you see something on the path in front of you. When you get up close, it turns out to be three sticks that look like this.

What goes through your mind? How did those sticks appear like that?

Please give me a number on a scale from 0 to 100. Closer to zero means that the sticks happened to become like that totally at random with no interference from any unusual force. There is zero significance or meaning to the pattern.

A number closer to 100 would mean that you are more and more certain that some intelligent being arranged the sticks in exactly that pattern with some specific purpose in mind. The intention of the intelligent being is to send a message which has meaning and possibly value to an observer.

There is no right or wrong answer. This is just a line of reasoning.

My guess is that most people would give a number in the high 90's, although I haven't yet done the experiment. If you would care to leave a comment at the bottom, I'd be curious what you think.

OK, next step. Let's go a little further down the path. This time you encounter four sticks instead of three sticks. Look at the two pictures of 4 sticks that follow and think again of a number between 0 and 100.

  

Did your number go higher or lower? I'm pretty confident when I say that I think your number would go higher. It's getting less and less likely that this was an accident and more and more likely that the arrangement was done by some intelligent being.

One more picture and then my conclusion. Imagine again you are walking in the woods and encounter 5 sticks that look like this.

What number between 0 and 100 would describe whether this is random or put there by an intelligent being.

I don't know what number you are at right now, but if your number keeps going up, there will be some point at which it will get infinitesimally close to 100 as I keep adding more and more sticks.

What about 6 sticks, 7 sticks, ...100 sticks, ...1000 sticks in an arrangement that looks ordered?

I haven't even gotten started. I can go all the way up to 3 billion sticks. Take a look at this picture of "sticks":

Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

"The human (Homo sapiens) genome is stored on 23 chromosome pairs and in the small mitochondrial DNA. Twenty-two of the 23 chromosomes belong to autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex determinative. The haploid human genome (ex. sperm or ova) occupies a total of just over three billion DNA base pairs.

The haploid human genome contains about 23,000 protein-coding genes..."

Now imagine that you are walking with a friend in the woods and you come upon 3 sticks, then a little while later 4, then a little further on 5 sticks, on and on, ... 100 sticks arranged as I have described. Every time you come to a new set of sticks, your friend denies that any intelligent being could possibly have left this trail. Neither of you can see any intelligent being anywhere around can you?

What do you do? Do you laugh at the foolishness of your friend? Or do you cry for him because he is so lost from his senses for some reason.

3 billion "sticks" all lined up and organized ... there must be a God.

PS: Here's another ordered pattern that I love, but it's not sticks, it's "rocks".

There has got to be God.