Convincing Evidence From Sound Reasoning

TO BE convinced of something, we must be presented with proof or sound evidence. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” wrote an inspired Bible penman.—Heb. 11:1, Authorized Version.

In the original Greek, the word for “evidence” means “a proof, that by which a thing is proved or tested.” The word was used by contemporary non-Biblical writers to refer to proof in court cases. Certainly, this would involve more than emotions; it would require the presentation of facts. Who would go to court and say, “I feel” that the defendant did this or that? No, you would have to present proof, convincing evidence.

So we must deal with facts. Yes, what proof or evidence is available that God must exist?

Sound Scientific Logic

It is a scientific and logical axiom “Out of nothing, nothing comes.” Mathematically, zero times 1,000 is still zero! Even a child realizes this. If he takes his piggy bank, puts no money in it and hides it, and if no one touches it for days, even for months, when he takes it out what does he find? Still no money. Matter does not spontaneously appear or just “pop” into existence.

Yet we have an abundance of material objects in the starry heavens. Where did all of these come from? Logically, they could not have come from nothing. So there must always have existed something from which all these things could have come into existence. That “something” must be eternal.

As recently as 1977, cosmologist Jayant Narlikar said that the most fundamental question in cosmology (the study of the origin and development of the universe) is: “Where did the matter we see around us originate in the first place?” Also, comparing the universe at its beginning to a very compact “cosmic egg” that supposedly exploded, biochemist Isaac Asimov says: “Astronomers are bound to ask: What happened before the cosmic egg? Where did it come from?”

Trying to show the origin of the stars from dense dust clouds, astronomer Fred Hoyle reached another dead end. He said: “Both these elements [making up the dust] are produced in stars . . . But how did this happen, if we can’t have any stars until after we have dust? Which came first the chicken or the egg?”

The vast majority of scientists today agree with Czech astrophysicist Josip Kleczek, who said in The Universe: “Most and possibly all elementary particles may be created by materialization of energy.” He then referred to Einstein’s famous formula E=mc² (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared), which shows that matter can be produced from a tremendous source of energy. Scientifically, then, it is possible for matter to be created from a source of “high energy.” “But,” lamented one outstanding physicist, “where the energy came from we don’t know.”

So, what logical conclusion can we reach? Simply this: That a source of “high energy” must have been that eternal “something” from which this material universe originated. This conclusion is backed up by the well-tested Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy, which says that energy-mass can neither be created nor destroyed, but merely converted from one to the other. Hence, science acknowledges that from an eternal source of energy you could get the material universe.

First Cause—Living or Nonliving?

Now please consider these key questions: Was this original eternal source of energy a living, intelligent personality? Or was it something inanimate, nonliving? Did the universe merely arise out of purely mechanical, physical movements apart from conscious, intelligent direction?

Scientists, by carefully examining the universe, have seen evidence of machine-like precision. Heavenly bodies follow laws so exact that years in advance scientists can predict various celestial happenings. Moreover, some of our most accurate timepieces are set by the stars.

Very organized gatherings of matter also are observed. Especially is this true of the complex systems that make up living organisms. Even the “building blocks” of life, the protein molecules, display astoundingly complex arrangements of atoms.

How did all this precision and complexity arise? Is it the result of “blind chance” operating over billions and billions of years?

Some prominent scientists suggested that if a series of monkeys were allowed enough time to bang away on typewriters, in time—perhaps billions of years—they would, simply by chance, produce a book such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace. So, the scientists reasoned, if given enough time, this complex world gradually would be produced by random chance.

But, as another researcher observed, “You would need someone to recognize when they [the monkeys] had done their work. . . . and just how long the monkeys would be expected to take would depend on exactly how the selection was done.” Yes, an intelligent individual who knows what the book says must be there to select what is produced by the monkeys and arrange it into the masterwork. Without a “selector,” the monkeys would never really produce the book. At most, their efforts would result in an alphabetic hodgepodge or mere lines of disconnected or partial words.

“Blind Chance,” says the book The Life Puzzle, “is a creative fellow. . . . He is, however, very limited. Low levels of organization he can produce exceedingly easily . . . but he becomes very quickly incompetent as the amount of organization increases. And waiting for a long time, or using massive material resources, is not, as we saw, much help.”

Even youngsters know that you cannot build a “house” out of toy “building blocks” merely by tossing the blocks into the air, with the hope that by chance they may form a “house.” True, maybe on a certain toss, two or three blocks may stack up on each other. But what chance is there of an organized “house” being built? In fact, unless the child protects the few blocks that by chance did stack up, these could be undone by the next toss. Someone must manipulate the blocks to produce an organized, complex “house.”

Therefore, by their own observations scientists have been forced to rule out “Blind Chance” as the factor responsible for the high degree of organization evident on earth and in the universe.

In 1859 Charles Darwin proposed that “natural selection” was the guiding “selector” that could organize the results produced by blind chance and bring order out of chaos. Natural selection is believed to be a process whereby only “right” (favorable) designs or organisms (plants and animals) especially suited for their surroundings survive, and, hence, pass on the “right” design to their offspring, gradually “evolving” into more complex forms of life.

Yet, after describing the many unique conditions that permit life to exist on earth, evolutionist C. F. A. Pantin, former professor of zoology at the University of Cambridge, England, admitted that “the operation of natural selection did not account for all the special features of the natural world.”

What kind of “special features”? Well, zoologist W. H. Thorpe has called a certain feature “one of the most surprising and disturbing jolts to evolutionary theory in recent times.” It is the unbelievable complexity of the gene—the microscopic unit within a living cell that determines what that particular plant or animal will be. Genes are complicated indeed! Like miniature computers, they store information and feed instructions to the cell. If all this information were written out in standard type, it would fill an encyclopedia of about 1,000 volumes!

What chance would there be for a complicated gene to originate by natural selection through “random mutations” over billions of years? “The chances are, then, still unimaginably small (10⁻⁴¹⁵) that a proper DNA molecule would be produced in this time,” writes biologist Frank B. Salisbury in the scientific journal Nature. “Unimaginably small”! One chance out of 1 followed by 415 zeros!

Though Salisbury believes in evolution by natural selection, nevertheless the impossibility of such a thing’s happening caused him to conclude: “Special creation or a directed evolution would solve the problem of the complexity of the gene.”

Some intelligent force must have “directed” the construction of such a complex molecule. It could not have developed by mere chance or even by “natural selection.” Nonliving matter, like atoms and molecules, does not order itself.

“We also know that the most basic characteristic of life is that it can reverse entropy [the tendency of highly organized systems to become less organized], that is, it can restore order in contrast to the tendency of non-living matter to reduce order (or increase entropy; i.e., stones tend to roll downhill, not uphill),” reports the book The Reflexive Universe.

What does all of this tell us? That an original Source of Energy must have been alive to provide direction as the energy at his disposal was used to create the natural world around us.

We are drawn by sound scientific logic to the same conclusion anticipated over 2,700 years ago by the Bible in this scientifically accurate statement: “Raise your eyes high up and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who is bringing forth the army of them even by number . . . Due to the abundance of dynamic energy, he also being vigorous in power, not one of them is missing.”—Isa. 40:26.

[Diagram on page 5]

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COMPUTER

GENE

The gene—the microscopic unit within a living cell—determines what that particular plant or animal will be. Genes are like miniature computers; they store information and feed instructions to the cell.

CELL