Born to Believe in God
Why do some people believe and others not? Do scientists believe that God is? Why do you believe in God?
MEN were born to think about God. They were created to worship and serve their Creator exclusively. This fact the Bible makes clear. (Ex. 20:2-5) Therefore, no matter how hard some men try to dismiss God from their minds, God has a way of coming to the fore in their thoughts.
For example, hardened materialists, such as Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev and others, quite regularly bring up the subject of God even though they say they do not believe. When the Soviet rockets and earth satellites penetrated outer space, Y. T. Fadeyev, head of the Russian scientific-atheistic section of the journal Science and Life, in a speech said: “The fact that satellites and rockets have not detected the All-Highest, angels and so on, bears testimony against religious convictions and strengthens disbelief in God.”
One is almost forced to laugh at the childishness of such arguments, because what adult would expect rockets or satellites to search out supernatural angelic creatures or detect evidences of the Almighty Spirit? As Jesus Christ said: “God is a Spirit, and those worshiping him must worship with spirit and truth.” Yet from this report it is evident that these materialists do think about God, whether they believe in him or not.—John 4:24.
According to a survey by George Gallup, “no less than 96 percent of U.S. citizens polled believe in God.” In Great Britain the percentage appears considerably less. Out of a number of Britons who regarded themselves as upstanding Christians, 78 percent said they believed in God even though they were not active in religion in any discernible way. Atheism, however, is not on the increase in England; only 6 percent of the population so identify themselves.
Belief in God, as the expression is generally used in the world, does not necessarily mean ability to explain his existence or purpose. It merely stands for a conviction that there is a Creator. All too frequently, especially in Christendom, there is a strong conception of God created in the image of man rather than the way the Bible puts it, ‘man created in the image of God.’ Perhaps equally distressing is that “believers” in God often have no idea whatsoever of who he is. Presbyterian minister Frank Lawson stated: Grandfather believed unreservedly. “His son believes also, but he isn’t just exactly sure what he believes or why. Asked if he believes in God, he’ll answer, ‘Yes’; asked why, he won’t know.”
Why, after approximately 2,000 years of Christianity and about 1,500 years of Jewry, is not God real to Americans and Britons, who are among the most churchgoing people in the world? Lawson pointed the finger of blame directly at the churches. He said the churches have minimized God and have hidden Bible truths from the people. Life magazine, March 30, 1959, says that this state of unbelief exists “partly because of the blight of secularism in the churches, which have become just another valued branch of American democratic culture instead of its center. What used to be the minister’s study is now his office, and as a busy agent of his social gospel he is less a spokesman of God than a useful citizen, making East Overshoe ‘a better place to live.’”
Physiologist and biochemist Walter Oscar Lundberg gives us another reason why there is so much skepticism today about God’s existence. He says: “A denial of the existence of God is sometimes an arbitrarily established policy of influential social groups or organizations, or of the state. Fear of social consequences, or even physical consequences where atheism is a state creed, discourages any active espousal by the individual of the revelation of God found in Nature.” Others parrot the propaganda line that any who hold fast to the Bible account of creation are old-fashioned and unscientific, that believers in God are among the uneducated, uninformed, simple folk of the earth who do not know any better.
To dispel any such idea for all time and to build faith in the Almighty and give reasons for his existence, herein are submitted the statements and arguments of world-famous men telling why they believe there is a God.
WHY SOME MEN BELIEVE IN GOD
Scientist-inventor Thomas Edison, when asked his view about whether there is a God, replied: “After years of watching the processes of nature, I cannot doubt the existence of a Supreme Intelligence. The existence of such a God can, to my mind, almost be proved from chemistry.”
Theologian Thomas Aquinas gave reason for belief in the existence of God with a premise common both to the theist and to the atheist, the fact that “some things are in motion.” ‘Motion implies an unmoved Mover; similarly, there must be an uncaused First Cause that possesses in itself the reason for its existence; the existence of creatures whose nonexistence is possible implies the existence of a necessary Creator; the scale of perfections evident in the universe implies the existence of an absolute standard, a perfect Being.’
Scientist Sir Isaac Newton had this to say about nature and God: “Whence is it that nature does nothing in vain; and whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world? . . . How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art and for what ends were their several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in optics, or the ear without knowledge of sounds? . . . And these things being rightly despatched, does it not appear from phenomena that there is a being incorporeal, living, intelligent?”
Mathematician and chemist John Cleveland Cothran says: “Lord Kelvin, one of the world’s greatest physicists, has made the following significant statement: ‘If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to believe in God.’ I must declare myself in full agreement with this statement.” Cothran further states: “The material realm not being able to create itself and its governing laws, the act of creation must have been performed by some nonmaterial agent. . . . Hence our logical and inescapable conclusion is not only that creation occurred but that it was brought about according to the plan and will of a Person endowed with supreme intelligence and knowledge (omniscience), and the power to bring it about and keep it running according to plan (omnipotence). That is to say, we accept unhesitatingly the fact of the existence of ‘the supreme spiritual Being, God, the Creator and Director of the universe,’ mentioned in the beginning. . . . The advances that have occurred in science since Lord Kelvin’s day would enable him to state more emphatically than ever: ‘If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to believe in God.’”
The existence of radioactive elements establishes a beginning to earth’s creation. The fact that such radioactive elements, which disintegrate over a period of time, are still in existence is incontrovertible evidence that the earth has not always existed, that it did have a beginning. And since no material thing can create itself, and since not even the wisest scientist will argue that the universe created itself out of nothing, all of this points to but one thing—God.
Zoologist Edward Luther Kessel reveals some interesting facts about a law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy as it is often called. Kessel says: “The law of entropy states that there is a continuous flow of heat from warmer to colder bodies, and that this flow cannot be reversed to pass spontaneously in the opposite direction. Entropy is the ratio of unavailable to available energy, so that it may be said that the entropy of the universe is always increasing. Therefore the universe is headed for a time when the temperature will be universally uniform and there will be no more useful energy. Consequently there will be no more chemical and physical processes, and life itself will cease to exist. But because life is still going on, and chemical and physical processes are still in progress, it is evident that our universe could not have existed from eternity, else it would have long since run out of useful energy and ground to a halt. Therefore, quite unintentionally, science proves that our universe had a beginning. And in so doing it proves the reality of God, for whatever had a beginning did not begin of itself but demands a Prime Mover, a Creator, a God.”
The argument about life on earth and the age of man is not ended. Jim Bishop of the Washington Evening Star reported this interesting bit: “A short time ago, Dr. John Rosholt of Miami University, working with Dr. Cesare Emiliani, worked out an age prospectus based on minuscule amounts of uranium which have settled to the bottom of the seas as proactinium 231 and thorium 230. Uranium requires thousands of years to decay, and, by testing amounts found in sediment on the ocean floor, the so-called warm period of the earth can be determined. Their tests show that, if man came from the sea as a two-legged fish, or as an ape, it took place 95,000 years ago. The time is too short for the fish (or ape) to have evolved into a two-legged man with—most important—a will of his own and the ability to impart knowledge to his young. In the universe, 95,000 years is nothing.” Creation is the only logical explanation for man’s presence, which again proves God’s existence.
Consider the magnificent universe in which we live. Consider our earth and the great variety and complexity of living organisms on it. Could chance or any known natural laws have built them up from inorganic matter? According to Bryant, Lecomte du Nouy, the first scientist to apply mathematical formulae successfully to the statement of biological laws, shows that “the laws of inorganic evolution contradict those of the evolution of life. He gives mathematical formulae to show that inorganic matter acting in accordance with its laws could not have created even a single molecule of protein—let alone a living organism with powers of reproduction. He maintains that only through the intervention of God could the gap have been bridged between the inorganic and the organic.”
THE BIBLE AND GOD
Not only does science give one reason to believe in God, but it causes one to see the need for a revelation from God about himself. The Bible fills that need. Chemist Roger J. Voskuyl says: “As a scientist, it is more reasonable for me to believe in a Creator than in an eternally existing cosmos. . . . One cannot rightly know God from the natural world alone. The scientist may work for an eternity, but he will never come to know God and all His attributes. . . . Man is but a creature of a Creator; therefore, man cannot learn about God by investigation of His creation alone, but he needs a special revelation. That special revelation is God’s Word, which has been given in the Scriptures.”
Distinguished scientist Warren Weaver said: “I believe that the Bible is the purest revelation we have of the nature and goodness of God.” Physicist and chemist Oscar Leo Brauer writes: “There is Special Divine Revelation. Another name for that is the Bible. Science can establish that a creative act at some time must have taken place, implying the existence of a Divine Intelligence and a Divine Power. Science can also establish that none but a Divine Intelligence could have been the Author of the tremendous, involved and intricate system of laws in the universe. But only the Bible can identify that Divine Intelligence and Power as the God most of us have learned to know about from early childhood—the God who has revealed himself uniquely and supremely in His Son, Jesus Christ.”
The Bible does what nature cannot do. Nature only submits circumstantial evidence that God exists, but the Bible calls the Creator by name. “This is what The true God, Jehovah, has said, the Creator of the heavens and the grand One stretching them out; the One laying out the earth and its produce, the One giving breath to the people on it, and spirit to those walking in it. ‘I am Jehovah. That is my name; and to anyone else I shall not give my own glory, neither my praise to graven images.’” (Isa. 42:5, 8) The psalmist wrote: “That people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.”—Ps. 83:18.
The inspired apostle Paul tells us that Jehovah’s “invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are understood by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship.” The psalmist exclaims: “The heavens are declaring the glory of God, and of the work of his hands the expanse is telling. One day after another day causes speech to bubble forth, and one night after another night shows forth knowledge.”—Rom. 1:20; Ps. 19:1, 2.
The scales of perfection evident in the creation of the universe imply the existence of an absolute standard and a perfect Being. Regarding Jehovah, the Bible says: “Perfect is his activity.” “God is a God, not of disorder, but of peace.” Order and design in the universe are proof of that fact. The presence of life bespeaks a lifegiver. Jehovah is “the source of life.”—Deut. 32:3, 4; 1 Cor. 14:33; Ps. 36:9.
Another fact that stands out in nature is that our God is a Master Creator who loves beauty. The majesty of the sunrise and sunset, the moon and stars, flowers and trees, the gorgeous colors on the scales of a fish and the feathers of a peacock tell us that Jehovah loves beauty. (Ps. 104:24) We know too that Jehovah is a loving God, for among men we find the love of a mother for her child, the love of men and women for each other. We also see that falsehood betrays itself and injustice reaps a grim reward. Can we imagine these qualities stemming from an Author who knows nothing of love, righteousness and judgment? No, we cannot. The Bible tells us that “God is love,” that “righteousness and judgment are the established place of his throne.”—1 John 4:8; Ps. 97:2.
Nothing can be more true than that God is, as both the Bible and nature so eloquently testify. Therefore, in God’s own Word unbelievers are appropriately called fools and are justly judged inexcusable.—Ps. 14:1; Rom. 1:20.