DOES GOD EXIST?

Stephen Hawking died recently at the age of 76. I coincidentally just happen to be 76 myself. He was a professed atheist from an early age and thought that science and God were not compatible. In fact, I believe that they complement one another quite nicely.

You might well ask, "Who am I to contradict the great man?" After all, I'm not even a Christian anymore. Don't get me wrong! I'm certainly not comparing myself with the great Stephen Hawking who was one of the cleverest individuals that ever lived. However, we shouldn’t assume that because he knew so much about physics and cosmology that he also had a handle on God too.

Why, when you think about it, should he know more than anyone else about God simply because he was a scientist albeit an eminent one? The Pope cannot prove, one way or the other, that God does exist so Stephen is way down in the pecking order.

No one has a conduit to God. We can’t ring him up and ask him (I'm using the masculine gender for convenience) whether he’s real or not. If we could, he probably wouldn’t take our calls anyway.

Hawking said of God, “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.” https://owlcation.com/humanities/Stephen-Hawking-Says-There-Is-No-God-Heres-Why

My mother who was Irish brought me up as a good Catholic boy. I went to Church every Sunday and believed everything the priests told me. They could have told me I was really a Martian and I would have believed them.  Like millions of religious people around the world, I was indoctrinated early on and would have remained so if reasoning and my own life experiences had not kicked in. Today, I am an agnostic which simply put means a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.

All religions in this world of ours are devised by man. Their followers will argue that their particular religion is God inspired. Theirs is the one true religion and the rest are merely mis-guided. Whatever! All I can say is that there is a hell of a lot of people out there that have got it wrong then if this is so. The problem for everyone though is picking out who has got it right! According to them, they all have!

I realize that in some countries, I could be beheaded for suggesting that the teachings of any particular religion are open to question. Fortunately, I live in Australia where one can speak one's mind without being persecuted for one's beliefs. 

One of the great ironies of religions, in general, is that they all profess to advocate love when they tend to breed intolerance instead. “If you don’t believe what we believe in, then you are our enemy and we must kill you!” When such perverted teachings exist, how can anyone think logically? 

In fact, any serious discussion about God needs to take place outside the confines of any church or any particular religious group because these types of institutions are biased from the start. The only true religion is theirs and everyone else is talking rubbish, or so they believe. The rest of us are just poor misguided fools.

No, I believe that in any serious discussion regarding the existence of God, all religions devised by man must be cast aside so logical reasoning can prevail. For that matter, scientific dogma must also be muted because it is quite meaningless when debating whether God exists? Scientists only interpret the laws that govern the Universe. They don’t set the rules. The scientists, by not acknowledging that a force beyond our understanding has created these laws in the first place, leave a hole in their thinking when it comes to discussing God.

The truth of the matter is that the more we learn about this world of ours and the galaxies beyond, the more arrogant and opinionated we humans seem to become. While we may think that we now have all the answers, we have none at all where God is concerned.

I am of the opinion that Hawking missed the point when he stated, “Before we understood science, it was natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation.” How, may I ask, does science do that? If anything, with every new discovery, it seems to me that it reinforces the notion that a grand design really does exist. Someone or something must, therefore, be responsible for its conception.

In Hawking’s book ‘The Grand Design’ Hawking’s talks about the “Theory of Everything” - one theory that unifies all. He also says, “My theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or God. Rather these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law.” Hawking goes on to explain that, "...we do not need a God who is outside space-time and who Himself was created from nothing to create the universe. God is superfluous". 

I'll leave the question of who created God, if God does truly exist, for another day. I have enough on my plate now trying to argue the case for God’s existence without that sort of distraction.

Are we to believe as Hawking did that everything in the universe was created by chance? That the laws governing everything are all really just randomly produced out of thin air? As thinking human beings, are we to seriously believe that someone once said before time began, “abracadabra” and it all came into being. But isn’t that what the God figurehead is to us anyway? The person that said the magic word.

Sorry, Stephen, but I think you were missing the point when you stated your views about God. For one, who created these physical laws that you mentioned? To my mind, one and one make two. That's basic arithmetic. If they didn’t the scientists wouldn't be in a position to work out anything because the laws of the universe are based on mathematics. Who wrote the laws that the scientists are busy working out is the real issue at hand? Take gravity for instance.

“Gravity is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915) which describes gravity not as a force, but as a consequence of the curvature of space-time caused by the uneven distribution of mass. The most extreme example of this curvature of space-time is a black hole, from which nothing—not even light—can escape once past the black hole's event horizon. However, for most applications, gravity is well approximated by Newton's law of universal gravitation, which describes gravity as a force which causes any two bodies to be attracted to each other, with the force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.”

Sure, Einstein cracked the Law of gravity but he didn't create the Law of gravity. It was lying in wait for the right person to come along and find the solution. The formula had been created by someone or something else. Einstein worked the formula out but he had nothing to do with its concept. Therein lies the key to a divine creator; the one who originated everything.

Sometimes, others will try to do our thinking for us. Religious bodies around the world have a history in this regard. The religious know-it-all will tell you that all the answers can be found somewhere in the Bible or some other Holy Book. They probably mean well but they forget that these holy books as they are called were written by man. They will insist that they are God inspired but cannot supply any proof of such because there is none.  We must all, therefore, take it on faith? The problem there is that whose faith are we talking about? There are so many religions in the world so which one is the right one?

Personally, I believe that God cannot be found between the pages of a book. To find God, I contend that one needs to reach beyond the written words of man. Evidence of a creator’s existence is all around us in nature and within us. We have but to look.

Think about this! If you were walking through a wood and you suddenly happen upon a hut that is situated in a clearing, what does that tell you? Someone has been there before you because the hut couldn't build itself!

If we want further evidence of a creator, we only need to look at the way our bodies are put together. Everything within and without is perfectly designed to function to its full capacity. Let's take a simple thing like our ears for instance.

"The human ear has three main sections, which consist of the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. Sound waves enter your outer ear and travel through your ear canal to the middle ear. The ear canal channels the waves to your eardrum, a thin, sensitive membrane stretched tightly over the entrance to your middle ear. The waves cause your eardrum to vibrate. It passes these vibrations on to the hammer, one of three tiny bones in your ear. The hammer vibrating causes the anvil, the small bone touching the hammer, to vibrate. The anvil passes these vibrations to the stirrup, another small bone which touches the anvil. From the stirrup, the vibrations pass into the inner ear. The stirrup touches a liquid filled sack and the vibrations travel into the cochlea, which is shaped like a shell. Inside the cochlea, there are hundreds of special cells attached to nerve fibres, which can transmit information to the brain. The brain processes the information from the ear and lets us distinguish between different types of sounds."

To call such 'simple' as I did before is to do their design a complete injustice. Note that word 'design' by the way. Are we to believe that such a complexed structure just originated by mere chance as some would have us believe?  

Certainly, things can go wrong with the design from time to time. Hawking’s own body, for instance, is a testimony to this. Yet, despite his physical disabilities, he attained immortality. Few of us will ever achieve what he did in science, but we all still have the capacity to think for ourselves, and not let him or anyone else do our thinking for us. We have a mind of our own and we can reach our own conclusions about God. 

Does God exist? On the balance of probabilities I believe there is a strong case for believing that God or some other force is real enough. The evidence is irrefutable.  

If there is a grand designer, then it begs the question, “Why then create us if we have no purpose to fulfil?” Further, if God created us for a purpose, why only give us one life in which to achieve such a purpose? Surely, that can't be right! How can babies that die in childbirth, for example, fulfil their purpose? How can young men and women that die in wars, and by other means, also fulfil their purpose? It's bad enough having three score years and ten to find one's purpose without having our lives cut short through circumstance. Is it fair that some have a short lifespan in this world whilst others live to be very old? What sort of God would that be? Hardly one that is fair and just!

I'll tell you what I think for what it is worth, bearing in mind that this is only my personal opinion and carries no weight whatsoever.

The evidence at hand suggests to me that we are all on a spiritual journey. Our life in this world is but one of many. Therefore, whatever lifecycle allotted to us on this planet is totally irrelevant. We are all destined to complete our journey through time and space until we reach the spiritual level set for us.

Probably, the nearest approach to this way of thinking in conventional religion is Buddhism. The Buddhists believe in karma and so do I.

“Karma literally means action or doing. Any kind of intentional action whether mental, verbal, or physical, is regarded as Karma. It covers all that is included in the phrase "thought, word and deed". Generally speaking, all good and bad action constitutes Karma. In its ultimate sense Karma means all moral and immoral volition. Involuntary, unintentional or unconscious actions, though technically deeds, do not constitute Karma, because volition, the most important factor in determining Karma, is absent. Karma does not necessarily mean past actions. It embraces both past and present deeds. Hence in one sense, we are the result of what we were; we will be the result of what we are.”

Consider the power of the mind as such. This was never more evident than in the life of Stephen Hawking. He was an example for all of us of how the mind can triumph over the body. However, he used his mind to look outward towards the stars. He and many others consider death as a finality because our bodies crumble away when we die and the life force is therefore extinguished. Certainly, the body is no more but what about the life force that inhabited it? Why should that die too? It came from somewhere, one assumes, so why shouldn’t it go on when our physical form can no longer function. After all, the mind is not a physical thing in and of itself!

Many of you have been present when or shortly after a child has been born. We all know how the physical body of that child came into being. A man and a woman had sex and she conceived. However, where did the life force, the mind, come from that uses the physical brain to think with? The genes come from the parents but the mind emanates from elsewhere. And, if it comes from elsewhere, it must surely go elsewhere when someone dies. Isn’t that a reasonable assumption to make? For that matter, where do our traits come from? Some say from the parents but good and bad exists in all people despite their genes and upbringing.

Let’s also consider this. If our lives have no purpose, why are we born (psychopaths excluded) with a conscience? Why are we able to differentiate between good and bad?

If there are no repercussions for the evil we might do in this world or some reward for the good we do, what’s the point of our having a conscience to start with? If what we do in this world is meaningless, it puts Adolf Hitler who basically murdered millions of people on par with you and me. That whole idea is repugnant.

Good and evil do exist in this world and they will go on existing. We can’t physically see such but we know they exists. How we deal with them when they come our way will, I believe, make a difference to our journey through this world and the next.

Life is a conundrum that we must all endeavour to solve in our own way. It’s not really important whether you satisfy yourself that you have found the answer. I believe that it’s only important that you live a good life and do as little harm to others as you possibly can, and be there when others may need you. At the end of it all, I guess it’s about love, not hate.

People think that life is all about gathering wealth, power, and fame when such things are really meaningless in the scheme of things. The only things of true value that you leave behind when you die are your deeds, good and bad. They are the things you will be remembered for with advantage if they be good ones. On the other hand, if you have lived a life of wickedness, you will be remembered for your vileness. You will advance spiritually or retrogress accordingly depending on the life you have led.

With every day that passes, my final journey gets a little closer. Does death hold any fears for me? None at all! If there is a life after death, I haven’t done anything in my life so bad as to warrant my being afraid of the consequences when I pass on. On the other hand, if nothing exists beyond this world, then there is nothing to be afraid of anyway. I'm good to go! Are you?

I’ll leave you with the words of a Vietnamese woman’s journey from war to peace:

“I can only say what I myself have learned; that life's purpose is to grow. We have time in abundance, an eternity, in fact to repeat our mistakes. We only need to correct them once, however, to learn our lesson and hear the song of enlightenment; to break the chain of vengeance forever. If we can do this personally, no matter how many others follow, our hearts will at least find peace.” Le Ly Hayslip.