God is in control - not Atheists. Click here for the first part of this blog.
Nothing in science tells us that there is no Creator. To qualify, it is “scientific atheists” that declare so. Recently, a famed British Scientist named Stephen Hawking said science is more convincing than God in explaining the universe.
The report written by David Edwards for Raw Story was titled, “Stephen Hawking comes out: ‘I’m an atheist’ because science is ‘more convincing’ than God.”
According to NBC News, Hawking made the comments to the Spanish-language paper El Mundo during the Starmus Festival at Tenerife in the Canary Islands. El Mundo’s Pablo Jauregui pointed out that Hawking had written in his book “A Brief History of Time” that scientists could “know the mind of God” if a unifying set of principles - or theory of everything - was discovered to explain the physical universe. But Hawking later wrote in “The Grand Design” that God was no longer necessary because science had provided a better understanding of the universe.
The world-famous theoretical physicist cleaved more to cosmology to explain the physical origins and evolution of the Universe. Hawking reportedly said -
“What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t,” he added. “I’m an atheist.”
(Ref: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/stephen-hawking-comes-out-im-an-atheist-because-science-is-more-convincing-than-god/)
The belief that there is a Creator came from the Bible written a little less than four thousand years ago, and then accepted, believed, preserved, shared, translated into almost all existing tongues and have gotten the reputation as “the best selling book of all time.”
In contrast, the belief in the Big Bang, Evolution, Natural Selection and The Origin of Species, was just formulated barely 200 years ago! The latter belief intends to belie the existence of the Creator, the Bible calls God. To disprove what the Bible says, believers of the Big Bang and Evolution like atheists argue that there are unscientific things in the Bible. For example, having morning and evening on the first day when the sun and the moon were made only on the fourth day. Another is the existence of vegetation in the absence of the sun. And many more similar examples.
As mentioned in an earlier discussion, we have to consider possibilities and impossibilities to arrive at a just and fair conclusion on any refuted matter. Isn’t it possible that the universe and all existing things came into being because of a Creator? The possibility is 100%! Nobody in our time will believe that the NASA Space Station came into being because of an accident. The construction, the design, and the transport of all those materials that made up the NASA Space Station that now orbits the earth at an altitude of 173 miles above the earth with an average ground speed of 17, 227 miles per hour to complete almost 16 orbits per day, entailed a lot of creators.
The Space Station involves mathematical precision in its transport from the Earth to escape the gravitational pull and to stay in its own orbit above the earth! If such a minute thing required creators, isn’t it possible that the universe with all of its complexities and intricacies in its law and order also came from a Creator – an intelligent being with a purpose in mind yet? The possibility is 100%! What is marvellous is that, that knowledge was written in the Bible almost four thousand years ago even before man has discovered of the universe vastness!
THE ACTS 17:24-26
24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
25 Neither is worshiped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
The preceding verses tell us that God is the Creator of the universe. The word translated “world” is “kosmos” in Greek. Something in these verses is worthwhile considering. “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;”
The verses incorporate a Creator, a purpose, a time, a boundary. The truth in this information written millennia ago still stands unrefuted today by human science and knowledge! The earth in the entire universe is the only destined habitation with boundaries, for humans. Beyond the boundaries set by God no human can exist! Shall we consider at this juncture possibilities and impossibilities? Let us see:
Is it possible that there is life beyond earth – a planet made like earth with life in it? Joel Achenbach wrote that with instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope scientists discovered a huge amount of cosmic turf but came to know of only a single inhabited world - the unique earth of the human beings.
Since 1995 astronomers have detected at least 22 planets orbiting other stars. NASA hopes to build a telescope called the Terrestrial Planet Finder to search for Earth-like planets, examining them for the atmospheric signatures of a living world....
We all have our suppositions, our scenarios. The late astronomer Carl Sagan estimated that there are a million technological civilizations in our galaxy alone. His more conservative colleague Frank Drake offers the number 10,000. John Oro, a pioneering comet researcher, calculates that the Milky Way is sprinkled with a hundred civilizations. And finally there are skeptics like Ben Zuckerman, an astronomer at UCLA, who thinks we may as well be alone in this galaxy if not in the universe.
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(Ref: http://www.reasons.org/articles/design-evidences-in-the-cosmos-1998)
The National Geographic report further mentioned that all the estimates “are highly speculative, and the fact is that there is no conclusive evidence of any life beyond Earth. There is still no solid knowledge about a single alien microbe, a solitary spore, much less the hubcap from a passing alien starship.”
Back to the Space Station, as it is impossible to be orbiting the earth without any creator, the grandest impossibility is for the universe to be operating marvellously and in order without a Creator!
JEREMIAH 33:25
25 Thus saith the LORD; If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; …
The laws that govern the strict and mathematical order in the universe, written in the Bible long before man have understood and discovered it, implies that the Bible carries in it scientific information which are impossible for men at the time of its writing to know. The Creator who understands and who ordained such laws is the only possible source of such information.
To take exception to Hawking, if God cannot explain the universe where science is better at doing it, it will be impossible for the writers of the Bible to advance or even guess the precise scientific truth that modern science have understood nowadays.
ISAIAH 46:9-10
9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
God’s intention is apparently and logically clear: For man to believe that He exists!
JOHN 13:19
Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he.
The Bible even predicted precisely the existence of Stephen Hawking and his fans club!
II PETER 3:3-5
3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Scoffers do not believe in God. The modern term for scoffers is ATHEISTS! The writer of this book, Peter, the Apostle, is an illiterate man.
THE ACTS 4:13
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.
The illiterate Peter knew that the earth was formed out of water and by means of water – just with God’s bidding. But let us look into how astrophysicists like Stephen Hawking look at the creation of planets like Earth. This one is from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
TERRESTRIAL PLANET FORMATION
Gasses condensed into rocky particles → Rocky particles begins to clump → These clumps accrete more → Clumps from planetesimals → Planetesimals accrete more →Terrestrial planets formed
Hydrogen compounds, such as water and methane, typically condense at low temperatures, and remain gaseous inside the frost line where temperatures are higher. The heavier rocky and metallic materials are better suited to condense at higher temperatures. Thus, the inner planets are made almost entirely of rock and metal and form the group known as the terrestrial planets.
How did the terrestrial planets form?
After the heavier elements and minerals condensed into solid bits of rock, they all orbited the Sun at about the same speed. As you can imagine, collisions of objects moving at the same speed are less destructive than those of objects moving at different speeds. Thus, when rocks orbiting the Sun move close to one another, they stick together more often than they destroy each other. These pieces gradually grow larger in a process called accretion. Once they are large enough, gravity forces them into spherical shapes.
The excerpts just given speak of gasses and solids – simply moving among themselves in time and space to form, accrete, reform - all devoid of purpose. And yet out of chaos something beautiful is formed?
We must not forget that water came from gas - hydrogen and oxygen - which are things unseen and jive with the Biblical truth that things that are seen were made from things unseen.
HEBREWS 11:3
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Meaning that things which are seen were made from things that are not seen, like gases! The Bible teaches us wonderful knowledge in science even before the birth of Stephen Hawking.
Hawking is a British scientist, who, according to Maria Cheng of the Associated Press, first gained attention with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," a simplified overview of the universe. It sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. His subsequent theories have revolutionized modern understanding of concepts like black holes and the Big Bang theory of how the universe began. (Ref: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45886738/ns/health-aging/t/stephen-hawking-how-has-he-survived-so-long/#.VDz2k7CUdpA)
Unfortunately, for all his intellect, Hawking felt no presence of a Creator who let him live comfortably and long despite his disabilities. He vilified God as incapable of explaining the origin and nature of the universe that he tried so hard to explain with physics sans a Creator. He worshipped Science more. But then there would be many more Hawkings in many forms.
The book of Hebrews was written some time in 61 AD, an era wherein No human understood the composition of gases and the possibility of producing things which are seen from the unseen gases. Yet the people were described to be perfectly peaceful, calm, restful, undisturbed by circumstances and so were powerful, effective, accomplishing things. They found hope, joy and patience in the face of tribulations. They believed in a Creator that made things possible for them. Whatever they could not explain, they trusted in their Creator.
Hawking is said to be the most famous scientist alive today. His 2001 book “The Universe in a Nutshell” is hailed as a masterpiece in the history of modern physics. At 72, he thinks little of his humanity.
Explaining the universe sans a Creator is new knowledge that came only 200 years ago. Isn’t it possible that the minds so oriented to a Creator-less creation are being influenced by the same force that said in the Garden of Eden, “You won’t die when you eat this fruit”?
It is possible to ignore the existence of a Creator but it is impossible to obliterate that existence, even if one believes in such non-existence. It is upon the existence of a Creator that we can even think of possibilities of how the world was created.
It is possible that a cause can cause an effect but it is impossible that the cause is nothingness for in nothingness, the ability to think cannot develop or exist.
It is possible for the seen to cause another seen to exist, but penultimately, the seen is caused by an unseen, a being of higher level than the one caused.
It is possible that atheists may fool people with their so-called masterpiece knowledge but it is impossible for such knowledge to take the place of truth.
It is possible that the Father of Lies is at work with people’s minds, and those he would seduce are those who preferred to be rich and famous - with lies, but it is impossible that one’s heart does not lust for the power and fame that comes with it.
