Why I Believe in God

Why I Believe in God - A Believer’s Answer to an Atheist
What is it with the atheists these days? Lately I’ve read a lot of web articles written by angry atheists including many news articles about those crazy Christians and what superstitious fools they are, and that science has proven there is no God and Darwin was right and blah, blah, blah, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Well I disagree with them all. I am a theist, the opposite of an atheist. I am one who believes in the Divine, who believes that all of life in its magnificence, beauty, splendor, wonder, and its finely tuned order is by design. And where you have intelligent design, isn’t it reasonable to assume that there is an intelligent designer? I believe it is and I believe that designer to be God -- the God of the entire universe and everything in it, including us.

Recently, I read an article by Greta Christina, a self-acclaimed atheist who writes for an online news source. Most of what she writes, from what I could gather, is about how feeble minded Christians are and that there is no evidence whatsoever of God’s existence. I’ve got a problem with this already. If you don’t believe in God, that’s your own business, but I can’t help wonder why someone who doesn’t believe in a Creator would spend so much time writing articles about not believing. If you didn’t believe there was a Loch Ness monster, would you waste your time interviewing people who did and then write about how wrong they are?

Also, when I read the answers she stated believers have given in response to her question “Why do you believe in God?” (although she didn’t quote anyone), it sounded as though there weren’t three firing neurons between them. Answers like, “Because…well because…since I don’t know, God had to have done it all!” or some such nonsense. It conjured up an image of mindless members of the God Squad…eyes glazed, slowly walking the Earth with outstretched arms muttering “God did it…God did it…” I don’t have all the answers. But I do have some better answers than that and I’m going to lay them out for you.

I could list a thousand reasons from the pages of my own life for believing in God, but that would be admittedly, a very subjective viewpoint. I want to give you what I think is some really good objective evidence for an Intelligent Designer. That’s what she asked for in her article. At one point, she asks for believers to give her some valid, scientific reasons for God’s existence so she could prove them wrong. Well, I did what she asked and sent it to her editor. I never heard back. So now I want to share with you some of what she wrote in her original article entitled: ‘Why ‘Everything Has a Cause’ Is a Terrible Justification for God’s Existence,” combined with my rebuttal.

Why I Believe in God - The Disproving Test
Firstly, I want to say that I believe God should be the default here. Meaning, I feel I shouldn’t have to prove His existence that it should be on the atheist to prove his/her case to the contrary. I’m no scientist, but I believe there is enough scientific evidence to support a designer. Greta certainly offered nothing scientific in her article as to why she doesn’t believe. No wait, I take that back. She did say this, and I quote: “And every single attempt to demonstrate the existence of any supernatural force or entity affecting the universe -- at least, every attempt using careful, rigorous, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, etc. scientific methods -- has fallen flat on its face.”

I’m sorry…what kind of God-disproving test was that again? A careful, rigorous, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, etc. scientific methods test? I think I missed that one. Was that on cable? Unless she was referring to the controlled testing of those so called psychics who claim to possess kinetic abilities like Uri Geller. You know, move stuff around with their minds... bend spoons. Because that’s the only kind of cosmic stuff I could think of that would qualify for such a scientific test as the aforementioned. For support of her godless theory, she quotes her wife as saying, “The universe does not look like one in which an independent outside agent is intervening. The universe does not look like one in which miracles happen and physical laws are violated by someone who's above these laws. The universe looks remarkably like a system of physical cause and effect: an unimaginably massive, intensely complex system of physical cause and effect, but physical cause and effect nonetheless.”

I have to ask, “Was this dreamy observation tested and proven scientifically, under controlled conditions, while holding a degree in Astronomy or Astrophysics…or just from the back yard looking up?” Please. She demands proof of God from believers and offers this cosmic rhetoric as proof He doesn’t exist? Come on. How about this serious sounding statement from her article? “Many astronomers and astrophysicists think the question, “Where did the universe come from?” might someday be answerable.”

It sounds like it has meaning. Let’s take a closer look at that factual sounding sentence. “Many astronomers and astrophysicists [she names not one] think [don’t know for sure] the question might [which also means might not] someday [which is not a day on the calendar] be answered.” Yeah …and many scientists think they might, someday, discover Bigfoot…but I’ll have my neighbor’s ever-barking dog hold its breath just in case.

What is the answer here? There can be only two choices. Either all life, along with the universe and everything in it was by design or it came into being all by itself. Believing the former would explain a lot. I mean really, which one makes more sense, belief in a Designer, or Dirt + Water + Time = All Living Creatures? To me it takes more faith to believe in that unlikely formula for life than it does to believe in God.

Why I Believe in God - Complexity of Life
Why do I believe in God? Let’s get to some facts. Most scientists agree that intelligence comes before life. Does matter become mind? I don’t believe so.

I’m making a case for a Creator and I call my first witness; the Lampsillis Mussel! How could this simple looking creature develop such a mind blowing strategy for continuation of its species unless it was programmed into him at birth…hardwired into his DNA from the beginning? DNA is known as the Language of Life. I believe God created that language.

Check out this fascinating video clip of the Lampsillis Mussel for yourself. When you get back, I’ll offer up some more evidence for Intelligent Design.

In this section of her atheist article Greta wrote:

“I want to look at some of these more earnest answers to the question, "Why do you believe in God?" I want to take them seriously, and assume the people presenting them mean them sincerely. And I want to point out, in as much detail as I can, that they still don't hold water.”

I was sorry they didn’t publish my rebuttal, I was looking forward to her pointing out “in as much detail as she could,” why anyone should believe that a single cell, the simplest form of life, which we now know contains enough encoded information to fill nearly 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, could have created that knowledge by itself! Where did all that information come from? Information is not matter. I just don’t see how innocuous salts and amino acids and proteins etc. could randomly come together and create sophisticated intelligence of that magnitude.

Additionally, molecular biologists have discovered thousands of exquisitely designed machines at the molecular level; each with a specific task(s) to perform. Information requires intelligence and design requires a designer. Here’s another incredible video on the DNA Double Helix you can watch. Watch this and make up your own mind as to whether you think life happened by creation or by mere chance.

“The odds of accidentally producing the correct DNA code in a species or changing it into another viable species are mathematically impossible.”¹ - J Leslie

Dr. Henry "Fritz" Schaefer is the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize five times and was cited as the third most quoted chemist in the world. He says, "The significance and joy in my science comes in the occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it!' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan."

He states in his lecture presented at the University of Colorado that, against overwhelming logic, some atheists continue to claim that the universe and human life were created by chance. Science is primarily concerned with facts, not motive, and thus a complete scientific description of the creation does not rule out a providential account at the same time.

William Paley's famous argument suggests that if you're taking a walk in the woods and you find a watch on the path, you don't conclude that the watch just assembled itself, despite the fact that we can take the watch apart, look at every single part, and completely understand how it works. We look at the watch on the path and we prudently conclude that it was designed by some higher intelligence.

Why I Believe in God - Complexity of Life
As I stated previously, I am no scientist, nor am I some religious freak, or out to convert anyone. Far from it. I’m just a regular guy who believes in God and wanted to show the other side of the atheistic coin. And I believe I have. However, if one is predisposed to believing that the entire world with all its glorious diversity of life just happened, then no amount of evidence will be enough to prove a Creator. Case in point from Greta’s article; “Finally, and most importantly: There is not a single scrap of evidence that the God hypothesis is true.”

I couldn’t disagree with her more. Here’s what it gets down to. Either all space, time, matter, energy, natural laws, chemical properties, mathematical formulae, organic information, consciousness, rationality, music, etc., is the result of Conscious Something (Creator Mind) or just itself (chance matter).

Theist or atheist…both require faith.

I’ll put my faith in God the Father Almighty…maker of Heaven and Earth.

Romans 1:20 - "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 men are without excuse."

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Compliments of Alan Ray.

¹ J Leslie, "Cosmology, Probability, and the Need to Explain Life," in Scientific American and Understanding, pp. 53, 64-65; *E. Ambrose, Nature and Origin of the Biological World, 1982, p. 135

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