by
Dr. P.C. Simon
Millions of us go through life without any understanding
of the purpose of our being here, what we are supposed to do
during our life time, what happens after death, is there a
soul that survives death, and what happens to the soul
eventually, and for that matter what is the purpose of
creation.
There is no easy answer to these mysteries but every
question has an answer. Only those who search unceasingly
and passionately will find the answers.
Before we can investigate the purpose of creation we have
to establish that there is a Creator. No one has provided
unassailable proof that a Creator exists. I prefer the word
"Creator" because of the abuse of the word "God" by
thousands of religions alleging that the word means what
they say and everyone else is wrong. However, I will use the
word "God" because it is shorter. God's existence is
founded on belief. Christianity opposes any investigation to
prove God's existence, insisting that it must be accepted
on faith alone and that faith is not amenable to reason.
Therefore, in the church's eyes, reasoning is inappropriate
to prove the existence of God.
When St.Thomas Aquinas tried to prove the existence of God
by reason, the church stopped him from pursuing his inquiry
in spite of his belief that reasoning can operate within
faith.. To have unassailable faith we must reason and prove.
But belief is changeable when we realize that our belief
is wrong. My belief about a bogey-man changed when I became
an adult.
Knowledge also is changeable but that is when we become
more knowledgable. Therefore to know is better than to
believe without knowledge. To know, we must investigate,
find out, check our findings, and repeatedly arrive at the
same answer. We have to search until we find and continue to
search to make sure that our findings are true. By avoiding
to investigate, we will not find out the truth.
All advances in civilization and science are the result of
investigation. It is after repeated probes that we have
built up our present understanding of the universe; that the
sun has planets and the earth is 92,957,000 miles away from
the sun and the universe is expanding, that quarks, gluons
and atoms are the foundation of all that exists, that
diseases can be cured by genetic manipulation, that new
materials can be created, and much ,much more.
Similarly, we have to investigate the existence of a
creator. Some scientists argue that the universe came by
itself and was not created. If so, it was self-created and
the universe itself is the creator. In any case, there is a
creator.
Morris Mandel in his book "A Complete Treasury Of
Stories" , wrote that an astrophysicist had an orrery, a
replica of the sun and its nine planets with their celestial
distances and speeds of motion reproduced in exact
proportion. The orrery could be set in motion by cranking a
shaft. An atheist friend, seeing this replica, asked who
made it. Kirschner casually replied, "No one." His friend
repeated the question and again received the same answer.
His friend was insulted and said, "Do you think that I am
such a fool as to believe that this was not made by
someone?"
Kirschner replied, "This is just a replica. Many times
when I told you that the original was made by a Creator, you
did not believe and began to argue to prove me wrong. Yet,
you cannot believe a small model could have originated
without a maker." Recently, Dr. Walter Bradley,
professor at Texas A&M University, wrote an article,
"Scientific Evidence for The Existence Of God". He
concluded this well documented article without providing any
evidence saying, "While Scientific evidence for the
existence of God cannot be made, there is compelling
evidence that such belief is perfectly reasonable". Many
Christian theologians are also of the same opinion. But, for
me, "perfectly reasonable" is not good enough for the most
important subject in the universe affecting billions of
human beings who lived and died and the billions that will
be born and perish. We must persist and keep on searching
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until we find the proof. If we persist we will .
-------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY:
The existence of a creation is proof enough for the
existence of a creator. Moreover, Kirschner proved to his
atheist friend that there is a Creator. In the next
section, we will investigate the nature of the Creator so
that we can understand the purpose of Creation.