Why I Believe

Let me pass over the interior aspect, my personal cry for meaning some 25 years ago, for the time being, and center on the intellectual understanding why we can believe in an Intelligent designer and with a mind to set aside any faith and conviction that the universe and biological forms are creations of chance. Or rather give reason and confirmation in your search that this is a universe of design and purpose.
I take great comfort in knowing that in the last few decades evidence has come to light that refutes this chaos or chance view of the universe. Much of what I have to say comes from these books: Patrick Flynn's God the Evidence and Lee Strobel's Case for a Creator and Robin Collins' website (He's written several books on the subject) all puporting intelligent design. I am well aware there a those who would perfer the certainty of their own superior intellect, most of whom are not reading this anyway I suppose, to the certainty of a divine intelligence far greater than their own. Their "superior" intellect likely will be dust once again before another 60 or 70 years rolls around.

Anyway...simply stated it's been observed (by a physicist over 30 years ago now) that looking at a number of cosmological and sub-atomic factors (23 as I recall) each seem especially fine tuned. Meaning to say that if anyone of these would be ever so slightly modified or adjusted the universe would cease to exist.
For example lets look at four factors
1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 1060 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.) (See Cosmological Constant below.)

2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.)

3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 1040, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.)


4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. [Directly off Robin Collins' website]

Now we get 20 some more of these coincidences together it makes you begin to think, doesn't it. How much an accident is the universe? It begins to look more like miracle than accident. An accident is where we have thousands of cars motoring along and once in awhile they crash into each other; miracles are 23 or so separate factors each finely tuned and any one altered ever so slightly would destroy the universe as we know it and good evidence for intelligence creator.

I'm asking that if need be to look beyond mere physical pleasure as an end in itself. In this society it seems many people believe in just what pleasure their gonads can provide them. Nothing especially wrong with those organs. I'd miss mine, too. But could there be more to making us truly human and to give life meaning?
In addition the level of cultural and spiritual ignorance in this culture is frightening. I'm sure that this Great Republic wasn't founded with the deluge of television advertising with the titillations and enticements in mind. Beautiful bodies are paraded: unattainable for virtually all of us except those with several hours a day devoted to fitness and unlimited amounts of money for plastic survey.
Along with the print media they represent society's vehicle for imparting pervailing wisdom. The predominate mass philosophy is consumerism, whose ends are simply hedonistic. Comfort and cupidity (desire for as many toys as possible) are it's goals and try to avoid the nursing home before its all over. We've lost the foundations, understandings and wisdom of our Judeo-Christian culture.
No, I can't blame just the commercial aspects of this society alone. There's been plenty of intellectual sabateurs (Nietzsche and Darwin are first to come to mind)of the Enlightenment in the last 300 years that provide a sceptical intellectual framework if you can call it that but that will have to be another blog.
I don't mean to sound too judgmental and condemnatory. I'm part of this culture too and literally would not have been born into any other, so my criticism should be tempered. So this is a backhanded plea and invitation to truth.
Anyway we don't see Darwinian randomness but rather purposful design in the workings and creation of the universe. In fact since the Greek philosophers some have argued that the material universe has eternally existed but now science is faced with a beginning which poses a question. Who or what came before the beginning? I say, masterful designer worthy of our worship.
Now, Stephan Hawkins, reknowned astronomical physicist (known for this analysis of Black Holes), has a response to the miraculous universe....this universe is not the only one. There are simply billions and billions and billions and billions and .... you get the picture of alternate universes and we just inhabit the one that works. Hmmm.... ok, let's go with that. I see a man standing over another man with a knife in his back. The man standing over him has his shirt and hands bloodied. We could draw alternate conclusions but the best one, Hawkins can come up here is...say an alien landed knived the guy flew off and the man, standing next to the victum, just happened to come along afterwards to help. And that's purported to be the most believable possibility. It's possible but not very believable. These other universes are not available for us to test of course. Neither is the universe generator which would be necessary to create these countless universes. Yes, others formulate responses to evidence of fine tuning that don't involve a Designer. But let me take a sceptical view further; I suppose one could argue the world could have started with me too and its all for my entertainment a la Jim Carrey's TV world in Truman Show.

Back to the fine tuning idea. Let's imagine a radio dial with 30 or so knobs. Now the settings represent a range of 10 thousand billions billions billions and billions the various strengths of forces in the universe. The strongest being the strong force binding the proton and the neutron together then moving down to the force of gravity, amongst the weakest. In this example we move the gravity dial by one inch compared to the whole universe. That in fact in this model represents an increase in the strength of gravity by a billion fold! but the change compared to total range of strengths of the forces in the universe is infintesibly small just one part in 10 thousand billion billion billon. Well with that change, animals the size of humans will be crushed and the earth is only 40 feet in diameter. Any stars with lives over 1 billion years (our Sun for example has several billion years life span we are told.) would not exit...if fact if you increase gravity by 3,000 times not a billion the Sun wouldn't exit.

Just one other fine tuning example: the Cosmological Constant. This constant is used in the formulation to explain expansion of the universe and the formation of galaxies and stars. A large positive constant would act as a replusive force that increases with distance and there'd be no clumping of matter so essential to the early universe. A large negative constant would counteract the expansion of the universe and the universe would collapse. Opps! No universe, I guess. In fact the cosmological constant is surprisingly small, that is almost zero. So small that it is one part in hundred million billion billion billion billion billon ( 10 followed by 53 zeroes). I've heard it's similar to the likelyhood of balancing a broom stick on the palm of your hand for say, 100 yrs. The dials have been finely tuned and preset, baby! Even secular journals are stunned. Discover magazine wrote, "The universe is unlikely. Very unlikely, Deeply, Shockingly, unlikely."

There is far more evidence for design than random chance. I'd like to conclude; there is design in the universe along with a designer representing a vast intelligence not chance random forces. We live in a miracle..wonder and worship our maker.

You know I haven't really stated what I believe. Simply stated its a Big God. Its an Ethically monotheistic Being (both Good and Powerful). I find the beauty and mystery of the cosmos so compelling that I started with that. But to the point my God is all good and all powerful. He's the God that is encountered in the Bible, the Holy Scriptures. The One that become incarnate in Jesus Christ God/Man.

This God stands for the highest moral and ethical standards and ideas that we can imagine. In this hedonistic society people look askance at moral absolutes. But everyone, except for socio-paths, keeps a moral compass; a sense of justice or right and wrong of some form. Even Communists/socialists[Old School ones] believe in absolutes and strive for ultimate justice for the downtrodden, of course by any means necessary. And Absolutes represented by this God are the highest aspirations of our natural moral nature however marred in this fallen world. God is a Being that represents Ultimate Good. It's the compelling, enthalling idea of ultimate goodness and justice that can bring us to our knees in worship. What a compelling concept! This is something we can live by.
Charitable acts are not uncommon. It is written God is Love. I think in some manner we can say as long as there is Love, Charity and Goodness, there is evidence of God.

Another reason why we believe: we are made to worship. It is our nature to worship. We deny a part of ourselves when we refuse to worship something as great as God. Do we understand everything? Certainly not. But the results for not worshiping the True God can be tragic for both the individual and the society. I'll mention mass movements of the Twentieth Century such as Nazi's with their Genecide and the Soviets with their Gulag and Pol Pot...do we need to go on. No bothersome Church there..no Ethical Monotheism to crimp people's style and shackle minds. Even in American Society look at what scientists, the high priests of our technological society, wrought when left to their own devices and unlimited support. A weapon so destructive it can destroy our civilation and life as we know it. A weapon that concluded a war carried on by mass societies with incredible atrocities without reference to God or his malinged Church. Ok, yes the Crusading idea was bad and burning people for their beliefs is very bad (witness Roman Catholic Queen, Mary I of merry old England burning Protestants by the hundreds in the brief time she reigned. This was after Henry VIII had claimed England free of Papal Jurisdiction and began the creation of the Protestant movement in England. Mary's persecutions created repercussions that lasted 4 centuries and to some extent continue today.) But in comparison to the century of slaughter characterzed by the 20th century, it was amateur hour. The God denying Socialist and Nazi Utopia's were grotesqueries.
As an aside, one of the initial steps for Nazi Germany was Bismark's Kultur Kamp (Cultural Struggle) with that Roman Catholic Church, the one modernists love to hate. The result of which was to limit the influence of the Church in a creation of a Liberal Society in the original sense of the word. (One aspect of that struggle was that the state was the one to recognize marriage not the Church. Think about what's happened to marriage.) Funny thing is Christianity invaribly gets the blame as the incubator for the rise of the Nazi's but the Authority of the Roman Church had to be broken to complete the creation of Bismark's Liberal State of late 19th century Germany from which the Nazi's arose later on. Don't get me wrong I'm not arguing for a theocracy just drawing contrast.

Back to the point, we are not truly fulfilled until we worship our creator and seek the good. Carl Jung, psychologist, Freuds pupil, touched on this in his psychology of Religious symbols as objects of healing. On the other hand, people worship jobs, their bodies (sex of course), creation itself, their intellect but this is not true contentment and is oft times fleeting.

Final words: Worship the one True God and his Son and be content.