SECTION I: IS THERE A CREATOR?
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 inspite
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 hisd book "A Complete Treasury Of Stories"
, wrote that an astrophysicist once 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, "perefectly 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 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. But Kirschner convinced 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.
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