Forget the selfie. For proof of God, read this.
First of Two Parts
HE’S done it again: delivering the most effective and farreaching exhortations about God in the country in decades.
After stirring up millions of Filipinos with his “stupid God” remark, President Rodrigo Duterte delivered two more lines sure to give unprecedented attention and probably devotion to the Almighty.
First, he promised to quit if critics could prove God existed by coming back from the dead with
Days later, the President said sorry to God during a visit by Eddie Villanueva, founder of Jesus Is Lord congregation, who called for a public apology to the Almighty.
The preacher argued that people took Duterte’s statements as referring to the God all believers worship, not just Catholics. In response, the President said in an
“If it’s the same God, I’m sorry. Sorry, God. I said, ‘ Sorry, God.’ … If I wronged God, He would be happy to listen to my apol
not remember past hurts. Why?
good, and not bad.”
Like his initial invective to heaven, Duterte’s latest lines, both selfie proof and “Sorry, God,” surely got many times more Filipinos pondering Him, His existence, and, most Christian of all, His forgiveness and wish for man’s goodness, than any Church pronouncement one remembers.
And like the derisive comment on original sin, discussed in last Sunday’s column, Duterte’s demand for proof of God gives the Church an unprecedented opportunity to argue for His existence and actually be listened to, as this column too shall expound.
When science proves God
While one doesn’t take the selfie request seriously, this article cites signs of the Creator’s existence and work, which, like selfies, are products of 21st century science and technology.
Yup, modern science, often blamed for making people deny God, has actually made astounding discoveries in recent decades that make it hard not to believe.
A good compendium of such faith- affirming findings is “The
Case for the Creator” by bestselling journalist and atheist-turnedChristian Lee Strobel. With Yale master of laws and University of
investigative and public service journalism awardee and former legal affairs editor with the Chicago
Tribune employed his formidable truth- seeking abilities to see if there was evidence for Christian beliefs, over which he had had intense debates with Leslie, his wife for over three decades.
What he discovered converted him back to Christianity, and produced his top-selling tomes, The Case for Christ, The Case for
Easter on the Resurrection, The Case for Faith on Christianity, and the subject of this column, The Case for the Creator. The ex-atheist also became a teaching pastor in two of America’s largest churches, situated in the Chicago and Los Angeles areas.
Coincidence or design?
So, what scientific knowledge did atheist and investigative journalist Strobel, who reported on countless court cases and criminal evidence for Chicago’s leading broadsheet, find that proved God exists and made the universe?
In a word, coincidence. Cosmic coincidence, to be precise.
As science discovered and Strobel discussed, there are many impossibly exact properties of the cosmos which all came together not only to bring forth the universe as we know it, but also to life itself.
If any one of these properties had been every a zillionth of a fraction off from its current measurement, most substances, let alone stars, planets and life forms, would not come into being. That these hugely improbable parameters all happened was a cosmic coincidence so impossible to attribute entirely to chance.
Philosophy professor Robin Collins, who triple-majored with near- perfect marks in physics, mathematics and philosophy, told Strobel: “Over the past thirty years or so, scientists have discovered that just about everything about the basic structure of the universe is balanced on a razor’s edge for life to exist. The coincidences are far too fantastic to attribute this to mere chance or to claim that it needs no explanation.”
One expert counted more than 30 separate physical or cosmological parameters needing extremely precise calibration for the universe to sustain life. So said philosopher
article, “Evidence for Design in
Nobel- awarded physicist Steven Weinberg, an avowed atheist, cites just one that, by itself, already amazes him in the way it is exactly calibrated to make life possible. Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity includes the cosmological constant, a value for the energy density of empty space. Thus, if one could remove all matter from the cosmos, there would still be energy in empty space. The value for that is the cosmological constant. Weinberg noted in his book A
Designer Universe? that this value can be positive or negative, “but
physics] one would guess that this constant should be very large. … In fact, astronomical observations show that the cosmological constant is quite small.”
- able occurrence, matter could clump together to form galaxies, stars, planets and living things.
- tesimally too big and positive, no clumping. And if it were the tiniest bit too strong and negative, it would reverse the expansion of the universe and cause it to collapse.
How improbable is it that this constant is at its current value?
has conservatively been estimated to be at least one part in a hundred million billion billion billion billion billion. That would be a ten
He put it another way: “Let’s say you were way out in space and were going to throw a dart at random toward the Earth. It would be like successfully hitting a bull’s eye that’s one trillionth of a trillionth of an inch in diameter. That’s less than the size of one solitary atom.”
That’s just one cosmic setting. We’ll look at other astounding occurrences next Sunday, then face the question: Chance coincidence or divine design?