It Must Be True |
What can we know about reality and truth? |
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OverviewThere is a passage in the Bible which always gets me to thinking: What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (Romans 1:19) The obvious questions are:
That's what this article is all about. More evidence for God's existence. Featured article: My Visions and Ideas Related article: How to know what is true Matter, Energy, and the Natural LawsSecular science assumes that all that exists is matter, energy and the natural laws. But is this a reasonable assumption? And is it even true? It is assumed to be true as a philosophical assumption. But is there evidence to the contrary? There are things we can all easily observe that strongly suggest there is more to the universe than just matter, energy and the natural laws. Here are a few things that cannot be adequately explained otherwise:
Therefore, there must be more than just the natural laws. And whatever else it is that exists, it must be sufficient to explain consciousness, love and morality. Of course, the "something else" that exists, is God. Beings from Outer SpaceSome scientists are scanning the skies with radio telescopes to find evidence for life on other planets beyond our solar system. They are looking for non-random sequences of information containing embedded messages — a language system. If they find these messages they will conclude that they have found life. The reason for this is that the existence of a message implies the existence of a living being who wrote the message. Intelligent messages from outer space could not come from mere randomness. What would happen if we turned the instruments inward so that we scanned the sequences of base pairs in the DNA molecule? We would discover a language system with four letters, words that are three letters long, and sentences of complete thoughts. And we can't deny that these messages are intelligent; after all, these messages contain encoded information that controls and directs the development and growth of the body. So what is the proper conclusion of this? We have found life. The messages were created by an intelligent being. And the only being with sufficient power to create messages such as these is God. There is a GodDarwinian evolution is not sufficient to explain the design and creation of biological entities. There must be a designer and a creator. The following links provide evidence for design from Michael Behe, author of "Darwin's Black Box" Behe writes an overview of his ideas That the universe has evidence for design More evidence for God. If God Exists, What Would He Be Like?God would need to have enough power to create the universe. God would also need to have the following attributes:
If God exists, He must be the creator. Otherwise He is not really God. Since God is the creator of humans, He must have some of the same attributes that we have such as:
Other articles of interest: God | Letter to a Skeptic | The Problem with God If God is Love. . .He would:
And since God is love, He therefore has these characteristics. The Problem of EvilRelativism tries to explain it away but some things are just plain wrong. Examples:
We should ask ourselves:
Psychology demonstrates that sociopaths and psychopaths exist. They are often violent. Does everyone have a "dark side"? Some claim that people are basically good. There is a sense in which this is true. But we can't deny that people do have a "dark" side. And how can we say "I'm a good person" if we think hateful thoughts toward others? That is basically saying that hatred is not really bad, but good. If we honestly consider our thoughts, feelings, and emotions we would soon see that we are not so pure and holy after all. We all have negative emotions — anger, hatred, jealousy. Do these "small sins" matter? If we ignore the small ones, we should ignore the large ones too — but we can't ignore these. If there is a personal creator God who loves us, He would care about our "dark side." The following issues are generally ignored in our society today:
Rather than seek the answer, many use these questions as an excuse to reject God. We Have a Sense of JusticeWhen someone wrongs us, we naturally feel that an injustice has been done and want to see the wrong made right. Even in our societies we want the laws to be fair and we want to see criminals punished. Therefore, we have a sense of justice. So does God. But because He is all powerful, He must judge all things — every deed, thought, and intention. Whereas man's law excludes certain actions, God's law pertains to every deed, thought and intention — no matter how seemingly small. This is because God knows all things. He sees the heart of a person. When we have thoughts of anger and hatred, God sees it as spiritual murder — we have killed them in our hearts. In our society, it is common for people to want to defend the criminal rather than the victim (I am ignoring cases in which the alleged criminal is really innocent). And in the spiritual realm this same tendency exists. We would rather excuse a person's sinful and evil actions and thoughts, and blame God for judging sin, rather than give God the right to judge all things. This is, I suspect, because we humans are "sin-aholics" and are in denial of the fact of sin's ugliness before God and man. But we should, rather, defend God as the true and righteous judge, and the process by which He judges sin and evil. It is righteous for God to be concerned with justice and to desire to truly judge sin, evil, and wickedness. Free WillIf God exists then He has free will, and He created us humans with free will. In spite of what the Psychological Behaviorists think, we do have free will choices in this life. It is true that our range of choices is constrained by our environment but each of us can decide what to do or say. This implies that we have responsibility for our choices, actions, and words. If God gave us a free will and expects us to use it, then He would have a "hands off" policy on our use of this free will. This means that we could do and say things that are outside of God's will for us. The natural implication of all this is that we can choose whether to accept or reject a love relationship with God, and that He will honor that choice. While God will never choose to reject us, we can choose to reject Him. This is analogous to divorce between a married couple. One of the parties can choose to reject the other through divorce. We can divorce God if we wish and He will honor our wishes. But since all blessing comes from God, we should not expect to partake of God's blessings, or to be with God in His presence in the eternal state after death. Yet people who reject God by divorcing Him are often mad at God because He would send them to hell. Just as human divorce is a hell on earth, rejecting God is eternal hell. Hell is just that place where God is not. We choose it through spiritual divorce. Relationship with GodIt can be understood as an allegory by comparing it to human-to-human relationships. As in humans, so with God. There are really only two conditions of a relationship: (1) an intimate love relationship, and (2) a broken relationship — we "divorce" God (this is what hell is). In relationship between humans:
In relationship between humans and God:
How do we meet God?
What happens to those who "divorce" God?
What about hell? Hell = God loves them, they don't love Him. What else can He do? He can't force them to live with Him forever (in heaven) so they live apart (= hell). But wouldn't they change their minds once they found out what their actions resulted in? Apparently God does all that is possible in life to convince them. But how do we know this? Even if we don't know the rules, the principles are clear, so it really doesn't matter. Anyone who rejects God should expect to not have a relationship with Him. How do we "connect" with God? There is no other way to connect with God except through our consciousness. What we experience, He experiences. In a relationship with another person we sometimes share intimate moments (other times we are not in active relationship). But with God, it is a continual relationship. Each and every moment God is with us; observing, etc. But we relate to God like others — sometimes with Him, sometimes not. But some (many) who don't believe or care about Him, neglect Him. Other articles of interest: God | Letter to a Skeptic | The Problem with God Basics of Christianity
From the book of Romans of the Bible (1:20):
Article originally written in October, 2001. Statement of Faith | About the author
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