Third Blog

So far, this blog has been somewhat skewed toward one side of the argument regarding the existence of God and stance on religion.  So here I will approach the topic from a different point of view, answering rebuttal questions as they would be asked in this sort of debate.

One thing I must admit that the scientific point of view does not sufficiently address is how the universe began.  In this regard, the religious point of view actually has an answer, so it can be said here that when the scientific point of view simply says "I don't know how it all began," it's sort of like giving up on the argument.  Now, there are hundreds of theories as to what could have started the existence of matter as we know it, most of them going back about 13.7 billion years ago to an event that we know as The Big Bang.  We have sufficient proof that the Big Bang actually happened, dark matter, redshift, and the outward expansion of all observed moving matter leading back to one point in space expanding outward, however we have no way of measuring or observing anything in time before this event, so to say how the matter actually got there would be nothing more than a theory- one that will probably never be discovered.

I find it interesting to think that religion, having an answer to this question, actually somewhat has a more concrete basis to stand on.  Essentially, it all comes down to which side you believed in before this argument, but proof of how the universe was made does not exist so we must first decide what makes the most sense.  Atheists claim that "it was just there" and believers of faith claim "God put it there."  Neither can be proven really, but here's a different way of looking at it.  Think, which answer actually has an answer that makes sense through cause and effect?  The secular perspective claims that there was an effect, but no cause- in essence, there was matter, but no reason to believe how it was ever formed.  The nonsecular perspective says there was matter and (given a premises that we believe to be true: that God has the power to do anything and that God has been around as long as anything else has if not longer) God put it there.  For what purpose?  Every religion has a different answer to that question, but I won't go into that because this is a blog and not an entire textbook.

But anyway, my point for saying this is that if you believe in the real scientific method, it really essentially believes in cause and effect.  While secularists can know that The Big Bang was the start of matter as we know it, they have no proof to where it came from and no validity in any conclusion about what happened before it.  Faith actually supports the scientific theory here, in a very broad sense, that given a certain premises (no matter how much we can prove it or disprove it, we have no data on the universe before The Big Bang so all laws of physics that say God does not exist are null in this argument), there is a cause; God willed there to be a universe... and an effect; a universe popped up.

On an entirely different foot here, I feel like I need to go back to my original point of view now, so get ready. There are explanations that claim to prove that God does not exist, and one that is gaining more popularity in the secular world is this.  Many people assume God is an intelligent designer, who created all matter as we know it.  Now, how do you as a human process information and data?  A Russian will come to America after living in Russia for 40 years, and learn to speak fluently in English, never needing to speak Russian ever again. When a Russian person thinks in their head however, they think in Russian language.  They hear a word and associate it with past experiences, with cues based on their senses such as what that word (for instance, a cow) looks like, what it sounds like, what it smells like, what it feels like, even what it tastes like.  However, what if they had never even heard the word cow or seen or touched or heard or felt or smelled or tasted one?  A deaf person (even since birth) will use imagery to represent things in their mind the way someone who isn't deaf uses sound and language in their mind to make sense of things and make ideas link together to make sense.  Basically, you use whatever sense you have to attain an understanding of the world around you.  Even a blind, deaf person can feel or taste or smell.  Helen Keller had this problem.  How did she learn or even come up with an understanding that there was a world around her?  She could still handle thought in her head.  Now assume you had no senses at all, but all the mental capacity to process any information.  You have no eyes, ears, or sensory nerves of any kind.  How would you learn what the world was, what language do you think with then?  You would have no starting point.  Now assume you are God and have unlimited ability to create or destroy, but before there was ever any matter.  There would be nothing in existence except for you, so no light to see with, no vibrations in an atmosphere to hear.  What language would you think in if you've never needed to speak to anyone?  In essence, how is it possible for an intelligent being to exist before matter when all intelligence is entirely dependent on matter and understood concepts about that matter derived from senses?  Now if one were to say that God already knew everything that ever happened or will happen, and he knew all concepts that were to be known, that takes away God's ability to design anything.  God's creativity would not have existed if everything was predetermined, so in this sense, God would be trapped into one paradigm of thinking forever; he could never change anything.   If God is all powerful, how could that be?  That is not an intelligent designer, that is more like a huge hard drive of stored information.  So what would be the point of information stored if no one could ever have access to that information to observe it?  To have access to that would mean that you are now God!