God: His Attributes Revealed in His Creation?

[sanctus]

Rev. Dr. D. Melja
Does God exist? If so, what are His attributes? Is He a God of Love? Is He an angry God? Is He passive and complacent? Has He revealed His demeanor at all? Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle, a first century theologian, wrote to the Christian Church at Rome, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). According to Paul, if we make an unbiased investigation of the world around us, we can determine God's existence and His attributes by merely observing the things of nature. In essence, by examining creation we can discover the Creator.
God: Necessity or Convenience?
Is God necessary, or merely convenient? 20th century science successfully proved with certainty that the universe is not eternal -- that it did have a beginning. An eternal universe is contrary to our Natural Laws (laws that remain unbroken within the observable universe). Furthermore, beginning with Einstein's Theory of Relativity, science has determined that space and time are intertwined. So much so, in fact, that they are no longer separate concepts, but referred to as the "space-time continuum." Once upon a time, there was a time when there was no time. Thus, explaining our origins by pointing to the eternal existence of the universe is no longer a valid position. Now, there are only two options to answer the riddle of the existence of all things: Either Someone made the world, or else the world made itself. The first option is summed up by this formula: Matter + energy + information = concept and design (creation). The alternative is expressed by this formula: Matter + energy + time + random chance = complexity and apparent design (an incredible accident).
God: Concept & Design Revealed!
Do we see God's handiwork? Over several millennia, mankind has developed an appreciation of the beauty and complexity of the universe. However, it wasn't until 1953, with the discovery of the structure of DNA molecule by James Watson and Francis Crick, that mankind finally began to understand the incredible design that permeates all life. Anyone who truly investigates the mystery of the DNA molecule -- this incredible micro, digital, error-correcting, redundant, self duplicating, information storage and retrieval system, with its own inherent language convention, that has the potential to develop any organism from raw biological material -- understands that life is the result of concept and design. Information Science tells us that concept and design can only result from a mind. Therefore, a Creator is the scientific default for all that we see. Unless mankind is able to identify a natural mechanism by which the universe could have created itself, a Creator is necessary.
God: Validated by Scientific Endeavor
In an attempt to disprove the necessity of God, graduate student Stanley Miller performed the famous Miller-Urey "spark and soup" experiment in 1953. Miller based his experiment on observations made by Harold Urey in 1952 regarding necessary atmospheric conditions for Spontaneous Generation of the "building blocks" of life. The ironic result of Miller's work was the validation of the Creation argument. Urey demonstrated that the presupposed atmospheric conditions of primitive earth were lethal to the "building blocks" of life. Oxygen destroys amino acids. However, without oxygen to deflect UV light, UV destroys amino acids. Thus, life can't develop as a result of Spontaneous Generation with or without oxygen. Geology indicates oxygen has always been a part of earth's atmosphere (every layer of strata, including the lowest layers, consist of oxidized rock). Furthermore, Miller demonstrated that Spontaneous Generation creates material lethal to life's "building blocks." The Miller-Urey experiment produced 85% tar, which is poisonous to life. Actually, Miller's experiment only produced amino acid "building blocks" in very small amounts (approximately 1.9% of the total product), but they themselves were harmful to life due to their structural makeup. The principle of "chirality" requires that all amino acids in proteins be 'left-handed', while all sugars in DNA and RNA, be 'right-handed'. Miller's experiment produced roughly equal amounts of left and right-handed material, thus establishing the mathematical absurdity of creating even the basic elements of life from a "spark and soup" process. Miller also demonstrated the necessity of information in his designed process. Miller performed the experiment twice, once under "natural" random conditions, and a second time using a manmade "trap" to keep the resultant amino acids from being zapped and destroyed by subsequent sparks. The first test, which represented "natural" random chance, produced no amino acids. Thus, science, even in an attempt to disprove God, further demonstrated the necessity for a Creator.
God: His Attributes
So what are the attributes of this Creator God? First of all, the Natural Law of Cause and Effect states that an effect is always less than its cause. If all of the energy in the universe came from God, it stands to reason that God is all-powerful (Omnipotent). If all the combined knowledge of mankind is the result of God, it's logical to propose that He is all-knowing (Omniscient). If everything we see originally came from an unseen God, it holds that He exists outside our physical dimensions (Transcendent). If all humans were created by God to be personal beings, then God must be a personal being Himself. So what does this Omnipotent, Omniscient, Transcendent, Personal, Creator God want from mankind? Surely, man was created for a reason. What is it that all personal beings want? The answer: a personal relationship with other personal beings.
God: His Purpose for Creation
Interestingly, the Bible describes God as an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Transcendent, Personal Creator who wants a personal relationship with mankind. However, mankind is separated from God by sin, a result of His gift of freewill. Furthermore, the Bible tells us that there must be retribution for mankind's crimes against God -- the breaking of His Divine Law. But that's not fair. We did not create ourselves with this ability to sin. We should not have to pay the consequences. Well, what would be fair? If God paid the penalty for us? "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10). "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

 

[s_lone]

Interesting read...

I don't have much problem with the "there is a God" part in the sense that I don't believe myself in the big random accident. I see deep intelligence in all little bits of this world we live in.

I have a harder time with the "attributes of God" part. The author jumps very quickly to conclusions that serve his Christian faith. Not that I have a problem with that but I don't see his conclusions as being so evident.

 

[talloola]

The first option is summed up by this formula: Matter + energy + information = concept and design (creation). The alternative is expressed by this formula: Matter + energy + time + random chance = complexity and apparent design (an incredible accident).

The thorough mixture of ingredients which were brought together when the earth was born, and then
over time evolved to a point that, allowed plants/people/animals, etc. to begin to develope is not
an "accident", ask any gardener, or scientist, if you want that complex explanation.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Ah sanctus, still trying to establish that theism must be the logical default position, I see. It doesn't work. You've presented just a rather elaborate restatement of the old and logically flawed God of the Gaps argument (with bits of the equally old and flawed Argument from Design thrown in): what we do understand, we have acceptable naturalistic explanations for, what we don't understand, Rev. Melja wants to assign to god, which doesn't really explain anything in any scientifically useful way. Rev. Melja's argument also uses some concepts and information that are about 50 years out of date. The current scientific consensus, for instance, is that the pre-biotic earth did not have free oxygen in its atmosphere. Science has made some progress in understanding these matters in the last 50 years, you know.

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life . It's a pretty good summary of current knowledge.

More to the point, if you actually look more closely at the biological world, what you see, assuming you can understand it, is evidence that a non-directed process like natural selection is going on. From a design point of view, most of nature's handiwork is pretty sloppy. Any first year biology major, for instance, could design a much better eye than the one evolution's given us. The light sensing rods and cones are behind a layer of tissue and blood vessels and point away from the direction the light comes from. Cephalopods (squids and octopuses) have much better eyes. Their rods and cones are in front of the layer of blood vessels and point toward the light, which at the very least would mean that a diabetic cephalod, if such there be, wouldn't go blind as a consequence of diabetes. What are we to conclude from that? That god likes cephalopods better than humans? Or that there's no design involved? The latter seems much more likely to be correct.

 

[Kreskin]

How do we know our "universe" isn't the equivalent of an exploding zit off of the ass of something much bigger? (Sorry to get so technical on everyone).

 

[Tonington]

Millers experiments did show that organic compounds can be made under conditions thought to resemble early Earth conditions. There is skepticism of his results as his experiment used continuous electric charges. There are other explanations for how the amino acids may have arrived on Earth. It has been shown that meteorites contain amino acids, and the amino acids can survive impact. The Murchison meteorite which landed in Australia sometime in the 60's contained many amino acids found on earth, and even some not found on Earth. Other researchers have shown that amino acids can be formed from other compounds abundant on Earth, like hydrogen cyanide and ammonia, which result in adenine, the nucleotide base used by RNA and DNA, and also used in cells as a component of ATP (energy for the cell).

 

[Dexter Sinister]

How do we know our "universe" isn't the equivalent of an exploding zit off of the ass of something much bigger? (Sorry to get so technical on everyone).

I think I'd have chosen somewhat different terminology ;-) , but if the stuff currently at the fringes of physics turns out to be right, you may not be far off, at least in principle. A recent book called The Cosmic Landscape by Leonard Susskind (a theoretical physicist of some renown, at least among theoretical physicists) goes into considerable detail about it, but the essence of it is that what we call the universe is but one of many pockets in a much larger whole he's dubbed the megaverse. It's another version of the old parallel universes theme, but with a difference: it's not just a speculation born out of attempts to make sense of quantum theory, this is what string theory appears to be pointing to quite explicitly. The pocket universes are born in random quantum fluctuations and the laws of physics won't be the same in all of them, we just happen to live in one whose laws permit life as we know it to develop. (And how could we be anywhere else?) String theory in fact seems to be suggesting there's somewhere around 10 to the 500th power of these pocket universes.

But substitute "quantum fluctuation" for "exploding zit" and "megaverse" for "ass of something much bigger," and you've essentially got it. Good call.

 

[s_lone]

Dexter,

According to these theories, could this go both ways? If our universe is only but one tiny part of a megaverse, could our universe be the "megaverse" of many many universes? Could an atom or any smaller particle from my body be a universe?

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Dexter,

According to these theories, could this go both ways? If our universe is only but one tiny part of a megaverse, could our universe be the "megaverse" of many many universes? Could an atom or any smaller particle from my body be a universe?

Probably not. I've never seen the matter raised in any discussion of the subject, so I'd assume the theories don't point that way. On the other hand, the idea's no more outlandish than the pocket universe/megaverse idea itself, so maybe the answer's yes.

I'm inclined to think it's no, though. There are issues of scale relating to things like the Planck length and the Planck time (the smallest possible intervals of length and time, according to quantum theory; explanations here: http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae281.cfm * ) which would preclude a regression to smaller pockets and megaverses. The laws of physics aren't expected to be completely different in different pocket universes, the differences are in the 30 or so so-called "constants of nature" that govern the strength and range of forces, the speed of certain sub-atomic processes, stuff like that. All the pockets will contain the same variety of basic particles and forces and fields, but the interactions among them will differ in strength and speed. Physics has been looking for a century for a unified theory that explains (among other things) why those constants have the values they do, without success. There's no theoretical reason why they should have any particular values, and no way to predict them, they all have to be measured in the laboratory. String theory essentially says they have all possible values in different pocket universes. In other words, there is no solution to the equations that specify them, instead there are about 10^500 solutions that cover all values for them.

*The first sentence at that link is not correct, quantum effects dominate well before we get to things as small as the Planck length, but it does correctly define the terms.

 

[Toro]

If God exists, he'll zap me a clubhouse sandwich onto my table, pronto!

 

[sanctus]

Interesting read...

I don't have much problem with the "there is a God" part in the sense that I don't believe myself in the big random accident. I see deep intelligence in all little bits of this world we live in.

I have a harder time with the "attributes of God" part. The author jumps very quickly to conclusions that serve his Christian faith. Not that I have a problem with that but I don't see his conclusions as being so evident.

Might very well have to be put to matter of perspective. In other words, self-evident to the Church and/or its membership since that is the focus we centre in upon.

 

[Northboy]

Ah sanctus, still trying to establish that theism must be the logical default position, I see. It doesn't work. You've presented just a rather elaborate restatement of the old and logically flawed God of the Gaps argument (with bits of the equally old and flawed Argument from Design thrown in): what we do understand, we have acceptable naturalistic explanations for, what we don't understand, Rev. Melja wants to assign to god, which doesn't really explain anything in any scientifically useful way. Rev. Melja's argument also uses some concepts and information that are about 50 years out of date. The current scientific consensus, for instance, is that the pre-biotic earth did not have free oxygen in its atmosphere. Science has made some progress in understanding these matters in the last 50 years, you know.

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life . It's a pretty good summary of current knowledge.

More to the point, if you actually look more closely at the biological world, what you see, assuming you can understand it, is evidence that a non-directed process like natural selection is going on. From a design point of view, most of nature's handiwork is pretty sloppy. Any first year biology major, for instance, could design a much better eye than the one evolution's given us. The light sensing rods and cones are behind a layer of tissue and blood vessels and point away from the direction the light comes from. Cephalopods (squids and octopuses) have much better eyes. Their rods and cones are in front of the layer of blood vessels and point toward the light, which at the very least would mean that a diabetic cephalod, if such there be, wouldn't go blind as a consequence of diabetes. What are we to conclude from that? That god likes cephalopods better than humans? Or that there's no design involved? The latter seems much more likely to be correct.

Well, after we get the planet back in order, maybe that will be a future lesson....shaping nature...

 

[Dexter Sinister]

If God exists, he'll zap me a clubhouse sandwich onto my table, pronto!

I presume you're kidding, but just in case you're not (hard to be sure without a or ;-) ) you should know that no religion has ever suggested god works that way. He helps those who help themselves, in every description of him I've encountered. So you'll have to make your sandwiches yourself. Ever heard Bill Cosby's routine about Noah? After a setup in which Cosby explains how exhausted Noah must be trying to build the ark and collect all the animals and the supplies they'll need, and how difficult a job this must be for a man 600 years old, he has Noah struggling to get the last pair of animals into the ark, a couple of hippos, when god interrupts him. The dialogue goes something like this:

God: NOAH!
Noah: WHAT!
God: You need to bring in another hippo.
Noah: WHY?
God: Because you've got two males down there, you need to bring in a female.
Noah: I'm not bringin' nothin' in. You change one of them.
God: C'mon, you know I don't work like that.

There's some kind of truth there... ;-)

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Well, after we get the planet back in order, maybe that will be a future lesson....shaping nature...

It's late at night and I'm tired and perhaps not thinking as clearly as I'd like to, and this is a little off topic, but it seems to me there's a real tragedy in that statement. We have the means and the knowledge to save ourselves and our planet, in our hands, right now. What we don't have is the will.

 

[vinod1975]

Go on dexter , have a good tight sleep and then come back