Can Humans Know God

CAN HUMANS KNOW GOD?

One thing that has really had a huge effect on my life is the study of apologetics. In the current context, apologetics is defined as the study of the evidence behind the Christian faith. While it includes the study of the Bible it also includes the study of other ways that God would reveal himself according to the Bible. Psalm 19 tells us that “the heavens declare the glory of God.” Romans 1 says, “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities … have been clearly seen… so that people are without excuse.” Job 12 tells us to “ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?” The concept of God revealing himself through creation is known as general revelation. What he has revealed to us in the Bible is called specific revelation.

While most people think about apologetics for the purpose of arguing about your faith with unbelievers, see I Peter 3:15, I believe there are other, possibly more valid reasons for learning these truths. The first is to enhance your own relationship with God. In any relationship, if that relationship is to be truly intimate, you should seek to know everything about the other person that you are able. It is through really knowing the other person in a relationship that we can learn to appreciate them more. The second is to be able to answer your own doubts with truth. We are all subject to doubts in our relationship. Some days we may question whether our spouse or our children truly love us. However, when we look at the evidence of that love, we can quash those doubts much more easily. Specifically as it comes to God, the voices of our culture can cause us to question his very existence. When we look at all the many ways he reveals himself, we can see more clearly his desire for relationship.

Finally, for the believers, we are commanded to learn. Jesus said that one of the ways that we love God is with our mind. The verse cited above from I Peter tells us to always be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have in us. Today, we will begin a journey to see if God really has revealed himself in creation, and if that is so, can we learn anything about him from this creation. It is a fun ride, I promise.

HISTORY IS FULL OF THOSE WHO HAVE SOUGHT GOD IN CREATION

Many historic scientists believed that engaging in science was part of learning about God. Francis Bacon is credited with establishing the scientific method. Galileo Galilei was an astronomer and physicist. Johannes Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion. Blaise Pascal was a prominent physicist and mathematician. Robert Boyle was a prominent figure in chemistry. Isaac Newton discovered gravity. Several of these were also considered Christian apologists and wrote profusely on religion.

In the 20th Century, Lord Kelvin, who did important work on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, was a strong Christian. Also, Georges Lemaitre, who proposed the Big Bang Theory was a Roman Catholic priest. Heisenberg, who won a Nobel Prize for the creation of quantum mechanics also. The list actually goes on and on and can be found in Wikipedia under “List of Christians in Science and Technology.”

Even today, you can go to YouTube and find a large number of scientists who are very strong believers and also stand firm in their faith. Many of them debate with unbelievers and make very clear that their faith is only strengthened by their study of science. This study can do the same for us.

THE UNIVERSE DECLARES HIS GLORY

Isaiah 40:22 has an interesting concept that is unlike any discussion in religious texts anywhere. It tells us that “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers; he stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them like a tent to live in. So how close to a description of the universe is written about in a book that was written nearly 3000 years ago?

Prior to the 20th century, and to some extent until the middle of that century, scientists generally believed that the universe was eternal. It existed in a pretty much fixed and steady state and had no beginning whatsoever. It simply was. The first chink in the armor of this theory was Einstein’s theory of relativity. The problem is that this theory seemed to show that the universe was expanding and implied that it had an absolute beginning. To fix this, Einstein added what he called a cosmological constant so that the universe could come out of the equation as static. He would later call this his greatest blunder of his life, after he learned that the expansion and beginning of the universe was being proven true in many ways. The other key point in the theory of general relativity is that time, space and matter are dependent upon one another. Thus, to have one, you must have the others. So if there was indeed a beginning of the universe, it had to happen outside of time, space and matter.

I will here use a phrase that actually is incorrect and discuss “before the universe.” I say this because there was no before because there was no time. So before the existence of the universe, there was nothing. I do not mean that there was nothing in the sense of an empty jar. I mean it in the sense of what Aristotle called nothing. He said nothing is what rocks dream about. There was that kind of nothing. While famed physicist Lawrence Krauss has written a book trying to describe what this “nothing” was, agnostic Dr. David Albert completely debunked Krauss’s writing by simply pointing out that Krauss had used a “something” for the universe to come from.

Since the revelations of Einstein other prominent scientific findings have clearly confirmed that the universe, and thus time, space and matter, had an absolute beginning. The laws of thermodynamics show that the universe only has a finite amount of energy and therefore it could not expand and contract back and forth infinitely as the energy would run out. The red shift in light seen through the super telescopes shows the proper expansion of the universe is at a specific rate. In 1989, a predicted cosmic background radiation was found that showed that the explosion and expansion of the universe was very precisely accomplished so that just enough matter would congregate to allow the formation of galaxies, but not enough to allow the universe to collapse back on itself. Then finally, there has been located radiation from the universe’s formation, which is literally everywhere, that shows that there was an ultra-hot explosion at the formation of the universe.

The phrase “Big Bang” was introduced to the world in 1949, by astronomer Fred Hoyle. Hoyle was appearing on BBC radio and used this term to describe a theory that he strongly disagreed with. Hoyle was a proponent of the steady state theory, and the problem with what he called the Big Bang is that it allowed a foot in the door of science for theologians. Very simply stated, if the universe, time and space all had a beginning, it would imply that there was a creator. With the many findings of the 20th century to confirm this beginning, the likelihood was that something caused it.

THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

This philosophical argument that first began in approximately the 11th century in Persia, has been rejuvenated today by philosopher, Dr. William Lane Craig. We will give it only brief mention here, and if you wish to study it further, you can look up Dr. Craig who is infinitely better with it than I am.

The argument begins with the idea that whatever begins to exist has a cause. Please read this carefully as it does not say that everything has a cause. It says that whatever begins to exist has a cause. You can’t really pull a rabbit out of a hat and you cannot make an elephant disappear, no matter what Vegas shows you may have attended.

The next statement is based upon the discussion above. The universe began to exist. If you want to continue to deny all of the evidence that has been found over the last 100+ years, just like Hoyle, you are welcome to do so, but it is pretty conclusively proven for all to see that the universe, time, space and matter, had an absolute beginning.

The last statement is that the universe had a cause. This argument alone neither proves nor disproves God’s existence, but it does give us a framework within which to work. Aristotle said that this is the very basis of science: the search for causes. At this point what we can know is that something caused the universe to exist, and that the something was outside of space and time, and did not consist of matter. It was something else.

As an aside to the Kalam argument, it should be pointed out that we exist, and the universe exists. There is something rather than nothing. So there had to have existed something, or if we have an open mind, possibly someone, who or which is timeless, spaceless, and eternal. So let’s look a bit deeper.

THE FINE TUNING OF THE UNIVERSE

According to maybe the most famous atheist in history, biologist Richard Dawkins, the argument from the fine tuning of the universe is the strongest argument for the existence of God. While some call this a “god of the gaps” argument, the argument stems from positive evidence. You will see this statement in future discussions, but the only place that humans have ever located specific information is from intelligent sources. One of the best examples of this is the SETI project. SETI is the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. You may have seen the movie “Contact” starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConnaghey.

The concept of the movie is that Jodie Foster was a scientist with SETI. They have a huge array of satellite dishes which are pointed all over the universe seeking out signals that would show that there was intelligent life out there. The movie is based on a book of the same name by famed scientist and atheist Carl Sagan. Suddenly during the movie, they begin receiving a signal that they eventually interpret to be a list of prime numbers. Since this is specific information, they realize that the signal is coming from intelligent life.

So too, when we study the earth, and the surrounding universe, we learn that there are a multitude of specific constants that exist without which there would be no possibility of life in any form whatsoever. These include, but are definitely not limited to:

Oxygen level of 21%

Atmospheric transparency – controls solar energy

Moon/earth gravitational interaction – controls tides and orbit

Carbon dioxide level – allows for plant life

Level of gravity – allows everything in the universe

Centrifugal force rotation – the sun, allows for our atmosphere and life

Expansion rate of the universe – cannot change by 1 part in 1 million

Atmospheric water vapor – determines temperature

Velocity of light – slight variation would negate all life

Position of Jupiter – acts as earth’s goalie

Thickness of earth’s crust – controls oxygen

Rotation of earth – controls night and day temps

Axial tilt – controls seasonal change

Lightning rate on earth – controls soil nutrition

Seismic activity – controls nutrients in water.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all of the constants that have to exist, not just for life to exist, but for the universe itself to have formed. The formation, or explosion of the universe had to have happened at a certain speed or the universe would not have formed. By certain speed, it is not meant within 1 mph, but within several decimals less than 1. The same is true all the way down to the relative size of the elementary particles of atoms. If they were any different at all, we have no universe.

CONCLUSION

What we have found today is that the universe, time, space and matter, appeared at a finite time in the past from absolutely nothing. The greatest magic trick of all time. Something really did, according to science, come from nothing. Since it came to exist, there must have been a cause. This cause is something or someone that is timeless, spaceless and eternal.

I also believe that the proof shows that since there is something rather than nothing, and that the something is so precise so as to allow life, that it shows that there must have been a conscious decision and an intelligent agent to control this beginning. While some would posit the existence of an infinity of universes, this only pushes the problem backwards, in that there still cannot be something rather than nothing. If one claims that the universes just exist infinitely backwards in time, they must face the problem of the impossibility of the existence of reverse infinite time. While it can exist as a mathematical construct, it cannot exist in reality. That is a discussion that will twist your mind a bit too hard for one day.

While this does not take us all the way to the God of Christianity, it does lend us to believe in theism, which is the belief in one God. Next time, we will discuss life and its origin, and what that tells us. Did God put his signature on our cells?