Wednesday, January 18, 2006

# 121: A God For Skeptics

This post is directed toward anyone who is skeptical concerning the existence of God. This can also include atheists and Christians who sometimes have doubts about certain aspects of God. Much of what is written herein will be a bit speculative; nevertheless, it will be presented with human logic.

A question I am occasionally asked when visiting with nonbelievers is this: “Where did your God come from?” Years ago, I became aware that just mouthing the phrase “He is eternal” does not suffice. The word “eternal” is not in the vocabulary of nonbelievers. And therefore, they discounted the remainder of the Gospel message on that premise. This is the hypothesis I have been successfully using since then: I would ask, “Do you believe in Darwinian evolution?” The answer most often was/is, “Yes.” Since that is the case, let me tell you exactly where my God came from. The realm where my God evolved was a timeless dimension of supernatural reality which many humans may not be aware of. Yes, God evolved, if you will. One cannot say how long this process took, since time and space do not exist in God’s abode. When God fully evolved to completion, He/She/It–God has no gender, preferring to be referred to as a father figure because of His stern discipline for disobedience, whereas the feminine gender is generally not as harsh; therefore I will refer to God in the masculine—He realized He had unlimited power. He could do and be whatever He desired. He chose to be the God of love. In reality, God actually had little choice because love is the only attribute that fully satisfies. Without love at the center of God’s life, His life would not be complete. That also goes for physical life.

In this invisible timeless reality, He created invisible peers like Himself, with each entity having a free will. But there was only one problem: Some of His creation did not live as He desired. They had self-centered ambitions. They disrupted the perfect environment where only selfless love and goodness were meant to dominate. God could not remove their free will or they would be nothing but puppets, and no one would want puppets in an eternal love affair. Free will was absolutely essential for any of His creations, be it spiritual or physical. I am not certain how/if He resolved this situation, but he needed something better.

As God looked into the future, He saw that the only way to go was to create an endless physical existence (the universe) controlled by time (the changing of physical matter from one substance into another) and the laws of physics which He set into motion. As we humans measure with earth’s time, the universe is most likely about 13 billion years old, but in God’s dimension, which is void of time and space, there are no outer limits to the size of His/our universe.

The end result of creating His ever-evolving universe was the establishment of an infinite number of planets/worlds which collectively could sustain a limitless number of physical beings. Therefore, on only these congenial worlds, God would form systems of evolution that He personally would guide to completion, although He would always be working behind the scenes. That evolutionary process of life started when He created the first forms of life out of single-celled organisms made from elements of each particular planet, thus giving life to the inanimate (creating the animate out of the inanimate)–something we humans have not been able to accomplish. That evolutionary development continued until certain forms of life acquired sophisticated intelligence. Now the tricky part: to somehow teach–without intimidation or coercion–His intelligent creation, to live according to and believe in the existence of a supernatural Supreme Being.

Why? Because God was the absolute epitome of love and all that it entailed, to say the least. That boundless love, in order to manifest itself, needed to be shared with life that could reciprocate that same love. God’s love is so consuming that it could not be contained. It had to be shared. That was the sole purpose for the entire creation of the physical universe: to share His loving nature with all physical beings who choose to believe in what God commands is true and live in accordance with all those commands. Only those individuals will belong to His universal love society. In short, we must choose through belief and obedience in order to be in God's company.

Simply stated, in human terms, compare it to a cook who discovers a recipe that contains all the essential ingredients necessary for life, is easy and quick to make, tastes great and is not expensive. This recipe is absolutely too awesome and too valuable for anyone to keep to oneself. That person, most certainly, would desire to share it with the world—I think many women can identify with this illustration. That is the only reason for God’s creation. The essence of what He was/is was too wonderful to contain. And besides, love cannot exist when one remains in solitude.

Now to get down to earth: Since this is the only planet we, at this time, are aware of which contains intelligent life, let me aim my directives to it. As I have mentioned more than several times in this blog, there has to be a reason for the existence of the universe and for our planet. Inanimate matter (the universe) and even physical life could not have created itself just from some random force/s without rhyme or reason. The universe and life itself are too well organized, including planet earth. Anything in life that spontaneously occurs without a designer is not organized, and most often has no constructive purpose. The universe and intelligent life have a multi-complex designer: Almighty Jehovah God. It just can’t be any other way and still make logical sense. With all that has been said, along with all the down-to-earth logic that is presented herein, it would seem extremely foolish for any intelligent skeptic or doubter not to believe and live as required by the flawless law of God’s love. When doubts arise concerning the existence of God, because of life's many challenges and disappointments, this paragraph is, without a doubt, excellent evidence that there must be a God.

Comments concerning this off-the-wall post would be appreciated. I would also love skeptics to poke holes in this theory. Nevertheless, if genuine Christians don’t agree with all the above, that is okay. I would understand, and wouldn’t put up an argument. Remember, I am presenting this section to somehow get “nonbelievers” to give our great God some serious thought, if nothing else. If anyone desires more information on this timely subject, click on Table of Contents #109: Creation, Evolution and Intelligent Design.

4 comments:

Jay said...

Oh Al! Where is your child like faith? This statement “is the realm
where my God evolved. Yes, God evolved,” (where’s the scripture) Has this approach worked in any conversions for you? I would like to know. When you put the word evolved with God. To me this means He was something less then before and became something better and improved. The word says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. . For me it is just as easy to believe He was always the same God just as He will always be God. Our minds may not be able to compute this or at least mine dosn't, so that is when our faith kicks in and we can except it. I’ll be praying for you Al.. Jay

JC said...

Response to this comment is answered in blog #123.

Anonymous said...

Bless you, Al.
Yes, I do see some holes in your argument. But, as a relatively uneducated individual, I feel I don't have the place to poke them myself. My faith is faith-based!! I am still doing research to develop arguments to stump the hardest skeptic. I think that what you said is a step in the right direction. If you can get a non-believer to simply accept that we have an all-powerful Lord who is concerned with only LOVE, you have accomplished something. Who cares if some nitty-gritty scientific facts are innaccurate?

The way our amazing God works is this: He will poke a miniscule hole in your heart in order to let some of His love filter in. (Can this be accomplished by a silly web-log? Sure!) Once the Lord has this first point of entry, He will continue to chip away at that pinhole (through testimony?...) until He has fully penetrated the now-believer's heart and can pour in all the glory and goodness that He has to offer. And that is when one falls to the floor in a fit of worship and praise.

Note: this is the schpeal my now-fiance gave to me before I was saved. His testimony was the pinhole in my heart. I was baptized only 2 months later.

Al, keep up the Lord's work.

farmer99 said...

i was going to use soft language to try to convince you of truth, but since you are a man of tough words i will use those instead.
how long will you strain at a knat and swallow a camel? all of you seem to have zeal for the lord but you are all decieved in calling on a name that has no power! the name of jesus is not even 800 years old. it was never heard until the kjv. before that it was iesous, before that yeshua, before that yashua. none of which are right. christ had a hebrew name. which i guarantee you have never heard or spoken so that you can not answer in aa way that reflects the truth. if you spoke the truth it would cause conviction in those who hear it. let me state a few facts which i promise will cause conviction of heart because they are truth. christ said i came to take away the sin of the world! then why is there so much sin? is it not because we have cast off his name? christ said as he was being delivered to death that now is the prince of this world cast out, we read in rev he is cast into the bottomless pit for one thousand years with a great chain holding him. (the chain was needed because the bars were broken) after the thousand years he is loosed for a season to decieve the nations. so shortly after he is loosed we are given a bible that has completely ommitted the name of christ, but you can still read the names of the demons in there original form and they know when they are called because it is by there name that they are known. so if you still believe that there is salvation in another name than the one given by god to christ then read acts 4:12. if you are convinced by the truth to call upon his real name i guarantee you also will hear a new name as i have. you will understand why the bible contains contradictions. you will begin to see that it is not understood even by the most devout scholars. if you do not believe what i am saying think on this. why is it that to worship jesus you break almost all of the ten commandments? something that is not done if you call upon his real name. you portray god as a dead man on a cross (graven image). you change his name. (name in vain). you changed the day of worship (from saturday). etc, etc, etc. if after reading this you are determined to know the real god get ahold of me i will reveal many other lies told under the guise of christ. heres another tidbit to prove that i know what i am saying is truth. i will tell you the true meaning of 666 the number of the beast, which even though many have speculated, none have fallen on the truth. 666 has a twofold meaning. first on the 6th hour of the night christ was betrayed, on the 6th day he was crucified, on the 6th hour of the day god left him and the sun went dark for 3 hours. blowing a hole in your theory that christ is god. (god can not leave himself). second meaning of 666 is. in the year 666 was the first translation of the scriptures that changed his name. did you know that dec. 25th was always the day of worship for the greek goddess diana whose day of worship was sunday ( the day of the sun). instead of saturday (the day you sat). if you have any conviction say so renounce your idol and i will reveal many other truths which have not been uttered for almost a thousand years.