Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

In this high tech day and age, it's tempting to think we are enlightened. We like to think we keep an open mind. Almost everyone in this era believes in the existence of atoms. In part, of course, this is because of the large amount of evidence for atoms. This evidence has emerged as our technology has been able to produce instruments capable of testing hypotheses about the existence of atoms. But supposing we were able to somehow communicate without language barriers with a very intelligent Stone Age person. We could explain atomic theory to him or her. But no matter how well we explain atoms, and the lead-up to the discovery of atoms, and all of the scientific discoveries therein, the Stone Age person isn't very likely to believe in atoms. This is because he or she has no personal experience with atoms and no context in which to put this. They might think it's a conspiracy theory or a lie. Even if we describe the chemical process of combustion (for example in the case of ...

This past autumn, I was cutting down annual plants which had finished producing and placing them on top of the soil to eventually decompose.  I was rejoicing that this decomposition process would improve the soil. I thought to myself "Decomposition into existing soil improves it so that it is much better than soil that has never been used."  This struck a memory for me of a quote from C.S. Lewis: "For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been..." - C.S. Lewis, Miracles 1947, in Chapter 14 "The Grand Miracle". In other words, C.S. Lewis believed that man who is redeemed through the death of Jesus is somehow intrinsically better than unfallen man. I found it a bit easier to see this viewpoint using the gardening analogy. It's not a great analogy, but it was concrete enough to help me. Soil that has never been used is never going to be as good ...

Some people think that just because the laws of nature exist, that this means there is "no room" for God to exist. In fact, they often see the idea of God existing as near-sighted. Instead, it's important to remember that God created the laws of nature . In fact, God states this very clearly in the Bible as far back as Deuteronomy in the Old Testament: And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under heaven. Deuteronomy 4:19  In the above Bible verse, God cautions people against worshiping objects that He created.  Yet all the time, people get caught up in serving those objects instead of God himself. Some of these people think that it is shortsighted to believe that God exists. Rather, it is shortsighted to believe that God does not exist. If you found this post interesting, you may ...

While it appears that both Creationism and Intelligent Design have some reason behind their different stances, from where I see it, it seems like Creationism is being used as a political pawn, which is unfortunate. I don't think that all proponents of Creationism are involved in this, but at least in my field of vision in today's world, I'm seeing it be used as a political pawn. I feel that is a danger area, where getting involved in all that might make us like Sadducees or Pharisees, who put political agendas ahead of God's word. The Creationism in and of itself is not the issue: if anything, the proponents are going very literally by God's word, for which they can hardly be faulted. No, the problem lies where atheists claim that evolution is proof that the Bible is untrue. (That itself is a flawed argument - read my other post about why ). Instead of calling out atheists and pointing out that evolution does not tell us one way or another about whether the...

In the Bible it makes it clear that Adam and the human race were created to be the caretakers of the earth. Would God be happy with the mountains of trash on the planet?  Obviously, some trash is always going to be created no matter how conscientious the human race is going to be about the environment.  But when people do not make any effort to even consider the environment (either in the things they create or in the things they purchase), we wind up producing more trash or more emissions than we need to. I don't think that is being a very good caretaker. I'm not intending this to be a politically-slanted topic at all. I dislike politics myself and can't bring myself to identify with any type of political party. I'm talking purely from a Biblical perspective, I feel like we as humans have not done a great job at being caretakers of the planet. What is even more puzzling to me is that there are many individuals who are Christian but who readily admit ...

With all the bad things happening in the world, plenty of people find themselves drawn to ask why God created a Universe that can become so chaotic (for example, where volcanos or tsunamis can happen). The answer to that is due to the consequences of Adam and Eve disobeying God and losing the Garden of Eden: To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:17-19 Thus, some of the difficulties of nature that we have to deal with (such as thorns, thistles, weeds) are a direct result of Adam and Eve disobeying God and therefore having...

The issue of God intervening by miracles is a big point of contention between Christians and atheists.  Are miracles the bound between the natural and the supernatural? And if so, why even have a 'supernatural'? Is it because God has to 'jump in' occasionally and 'save the day' to prevent things form getting out of hand?  Or maybe (as other atheists might suggest) miracles are simply Christians conveniently attributing to God mysterious phenomena which we can't yet explain? C.S. Lewis had pondered this question and written an entire book on it called 'Miracles'.  In this book, he argues that what we call miracles (which some would call the 'supernatural') are 'not exceptions nor irrelevancies'.  Instead, miracles are simply God's usual powers used in accordance with the 'rules behind the rules' (C.S. Lewis, Miracles 1947, Chapter 12 'The Propriety of Miracles').  C.S. Lewis likens God's use of miracles to art...

Here we'll find out what miracles mean for the big picture of God's work.  In Miracles Part 1 , we studied the argument put forward by C.S. Lewis in his book 'Miracles' that miracles are a form of artistic license used by God (and not a device to rescue out-of-control situations), and they are not exceptions to nature, although they occur infrequently.  C.S. Lewis puts forward the notion that if God is using artistic license for miracles and it is an infrequent event, then this evidence should tell us that these are the parts of his work that he wants to emphasize, which in turn lets us know that these parts of the story are hugely important.  In his book 'Miracles', C.S. Lewis goes on to have us question what we think of the big picture.  In Chapter 12 "The Propriety of Miracles", he states: "If you have hitherto disbelieved in miracles, it is worth pausing a moment to consider whether this is not chiefly because you thought you had discover...

"God isn't real if I don't believe in him" "I can't believe in a God who lets X or Y happen" The above are sentences which are heard frequently.  Curiously, these people seem to think that if God doesn't match up to THEIR specifications, He can't be real.  I think the root of this is the lack of ability we humans have to 'prove' or see the existence of God (or from the opposing viewpoint, to prove a lack of existence). The difficulty with which we can detect spiritual things compared to the ease with which we can detect the physical world makes it very easy for us to think we make the rules and that if God doesn't appear to follow 'our' rules (expectations), He can't be real. Consider a hypothetical creature of spirit visiting Earth for the first time.  This creature has no way of directly measuring anything physical.  Although unable to sense gravity itself, it realizes from reading minds that humans have measured...

I was fortunate enough to take part in a conversation with two other biochemists once. We all came from different religious backgrounds (one Hindu, one Jew and one Christian). We posed the question "Can science explain everything? [about the universe]". This was quite an interesting question, especially as we didn't already know the others' viewpoints (we were only working together briefly). The discussion didn't last long because we all had exactly the same viewpoint, which was that "Science can explain a lot… but only up to a certain point. Beyond that there is something more." In my scientific career, I've noticed a few scientists having the poor logic of "Everything can be explained by atoms, therefore God doesn't exist". Even if you could explain all of the physical laws by atoms and quantum mechanics (which in itself is a matter up for debate!), this is not necessarily proof that there is no God. It's simply a discovery of t...