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Herbert W. Armstrong
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Does God Exist?
by Herbert W. Armstrong
Can the existence of God be scientifically proved? Where did the first LIFE come from? Can we know whether God possesses MIND power?
LET'S FACE this question! Is it rational to believe in God? Is God merely a myth -- an invention of an ignorant, superstitious past? Many, today assume this.
Questioned God's Existence
With me -- and I hope with the reader -- I wanted to KNOW! I wanted to be SURE! I questioned the existence of God! Also I questioned the opposing doctrine of evolution. I did not seek to DISprove either. But I did research and carefully examine the evidences on both sides of this two-sided question. For this question is the very starting place for the acquisition of all knowledge. It is the FOUNDATION for UNDERSTANDING!
In my in-depth research into this question, starting [in the early part of the century], I emptied my mind of prejudice. I sought the TRUTH, whether it was what I wanted to believe or not.
There are the two possibilities of origins -- special creation by a Creator, God, and the theory of evolution. It has become intellectually fashionable to accept the evolutionary doctrine. It has won popular acceptance in science and higher education. Even many professing Christian denominations have accepted it, if only passively.
Yet, though in the minority, there still remain scientists, educators, and fundamentalist religious groups, as well as those in Judaism, who cling to belief in the existence of God.
Don’t Assume -- KNOW!
Many of these, however, especially among the more or less religious individuals, have merely assumed the existence of God. Why? Simply because they were taught it from childhood. It has been believed in the circles in which they have lived or associated. But few of these have proved it!
Of course, on the other hand, perhaps a vast majority who accept evolution, at least passively, were simply swept into that acceptance in college or university. It has become the scholarly "IN" thing. The opposite belief, special creation, has not been taught. They have probably not examined it. Too frequently proponents utilize the psychological ploy that it is a badge of scholarly status to accept evolution, and a stamp of ignorance or intellectual inferiority to doubt the hypothesis.
All of which goes to show that people in general believe what they do, simply because they have been taught it or because it has been accepted in their particular social environment. People want to belong! They go along with their particular group. In general, they believe what they have taken carelessly for granted -- without examination or proof!
Of course I know well, too, that people generally believe only what they are willing TO ACCEPT. In most instances people feel no compulsion to refuse what is accepted in their social or geographical environment. As one philosopher said, most dyed-in-the-wool evolutionists accept the theory because of their reluctance or unwillingness to believe in God.
As the book professing to be the Word of God says: "The carnal mind is enmity [hostile] against God: it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8:7). All the facts, positive evidence, rational reasonings and proofs in the world will never induce such a one to accept that against which he is prejudiced. For prejudice is a barrier to the entrance of truth into any mind.
I Found PROOF!
I was forced, on examination of the facts, to realize there is no proof for the theory of evolution. It is purely a theory -- a belief -- a faith, not based on proof. Though its zealous proponents push it onto the world as if it were proven fact!
I found PROOF of the existence of the Creator, God. I also found PROOF that the book called the Holy Bible is, in fact, the very inspired revelation from that all-intelligent, all-knowing God of the vital, necessary, basic knowledge and instruction, without which man is unable to solve his problems, prevent his evils, or live in PEACE, happiness, universal prosperity and abundant well-being here on earth. Man is the crowning product of his Maker. The Bible is our Maker's INSTRUCTION MANUAL He sent along with His product.
Which God?
An atheist wrote me: "We have the history of many religions, and many gods. Which one of these gods do you claim for your God -- and how do you know that He exists?"
That's a fair question. It deserves an answer!
Yes, my friends, I have a God.
The gods of some nations have been carved by men's hands out of wood, stone, or other existing material. The gods of some religions and individuals have been carved out of human imaginations and faulty human reasonings. Some have worshipped the sun or other inanimate objects of nature. All these gods are merely the created - most of them formed and fashioned by man, therefore inferior to man.
But He who did the creating -- He who brought everything that exists into existence, including all else falsely called God -- He who created all matter, force and energy, who created all natural laws and set them in motion, who created LIFE and endowed some of it with intelligence -- He is GOD! He is superior to all else that is called "God." He, alone, is GOD.
Creation is the proof of God!
But during the past two centuries especially, there has developed among God-rejecting men in the Occidental world the mental disease of theophobia. Two hundred years ago it appeared under the popular catch-phrases "deism" and "rationalism." Then it masqueraded itself under the appealing name "higher criticism." This pseudo-scholarship employed, as it advanced, such attractive titles as "progress," "development," and "evolution." It has appealed to the intellectual vanity of a world groping in spiritual darkness in an era of widespread diffusion of knowledge. Creation Without a Creator? The theory of evolution provided the atheist an explanation of a creation without a Creator.
But this misguided "rationalism" failed utterly to account for the origins of things and of life; and today the more candid among geologists and biologists confess that they do not know how life could have evolved from inanimate matter, through the simple life forms to the complex, interdependent species we see about us, finally to man. Lamarck's theory of "use and disuse," Darwin's "natural selection," and other theories have now fallen by the wayside, and "mutations" explain only the presence of varieties less fit to survive. Amazing New Knowledge of Science Now suppose we confine ourselves to facts!
What, then, has science actually determined?
Discovery and study of radioactivity during the past century has proved that there has been no past eternity of matter! Radioactivity is described as a process of disintegration. The atomic age is opening up new fields to explore. Soon after Madame Curie discovered the element radium, in 1898, it was discovered that radium, and the other radioactive elements as we know now, are continually giving off radiations. Has Matter Always Existed? So notice carefully what this now disclosed FACT of science means:
Uranium is a radioactive element heavier than radium. It has an atomic weight of 238.5. In decomposing, it gives off a helium atom, weight 4, repeated three times, and then the substance left is radium, atomic weight about 226.4. Radium, then, is simply the end product of uranium after it has lost three helium atoms. Then the disintegration continues in radium. And the final product of this process of radioactive disintegration is the element lead! Now of course this process requires great periods of time. The calculated half-life of radium is 1590 years - uranium much longer.
I have seen it myself, in the darkroom of an X-ray laboratory. A tiny portion of radium was placed on a mirror at the far end of a hollow tube, and I looked into this tube through a magnifying glass at the other end. Under this magnification what I saw appeared as a large, vast, dark sky, with thousands of shooting stars falling toward me from all directions. Actually what I saw were the emanations of tiny particles being emitted by the radium, greatly magnified.
We know, therefore, that there has been no past eternity of matter! When Matter Did Not Exist The radioactive elements in existence today have not yet been in existence long enough to have run their course, and disintegrated into lead. To have ALWAYS existed, without any definite time of starting in the past, this "life" period of radioactive elements long ago would have run its course. All radioactive elements would have long ago disintegrated into lead. Since these elements exist only for a definite span of years, and all the uranium, radium, thorium and other radioactive elements in the world today have not yet existed that many years, there was a time, prior to the duration of this span in the past, when these elements DID NOT EXIST!
Here we have definite scientific proof that MAT'TER HAS NOT ALWAYS EXISTED. Here we have definite specific elements which once, in the long ago, did not yet exist. Then there came a time, later, when these elements CAME INTO EXISTENCE. Evolution usually postulates that things come about GRADUALLY, through the slow-moving natural processes of the present. Try to imagine, if you can, something coming into existence out of nothing GRADUALLY! Can your mind entertain the idea?
I think not. No, I think if you are rational you will have to accept the fact of a special and necessarily instantaneous CREATION. And SOME POWER or SOME ONE had of necessity to do the creating. There is a cause for every effect. And in accepting that inevitable FACT, proved by the findings of science, of the existence of that GREAT FIRST CAUSE, YOU HAVE ACCEPTED THE FACT of the existence and preexistence of the Creator -- GOD! Where Did LIFE Come From? But how about the presence of life?
How did life get here? Science has learned some things about that, too.
The wisest of the ancients did not know what science makes available today. Thus it is demonstrated today that LIFE COMES ONLY FROM LIFE, and that each kind reproduces only after its kind (Genesis 1:25).
The works of Tyndall and Louis Pasteur, in the field of bacteria and protozoa, finally demonstrated scientifically once and for all in these more minute fields what Redi first demonstrated with larger organisms. All the advances of recent medical and surgical science in the treatment and prevention of germ diseases are based upon this great truth of the law of Biogenesis -that LIFE can come only from preexisting LIFE.
No fact of science stands more conclusively proved today. Life CANNOT come from dead matter. There is not one shred of truth from science to account for the presence of life upon the earth by any means other than a special creation by the great original first Cause -- God -- Who is life and the fountain source of all life! It is now absolutely certain, according to all that can be KNOWN from science -- according to all that is rational -- that it required A REAL CREATION to produce life from the not-living -- organic from inorganic matter. Life Only FROM Life One cannot rationally deny the existence of my GOD, unless he can account for the origin of LIFE without a Creator who, Himself, is Life! The Creator, therefore, begins to be revealed, by science and by reason, as a LIVING God -- a God in whom is LIFE, and who alone has imparted life to all that have it!
I could go further, and show you that what science has discovered about energy and its origin and the laws of conservation of energy, also proves conclusively that "the works were finished from the foundation of the world" (Hebrews 4:3), that the material creation is a completed work, which is not now going on!
Next, then, let's examine whether the great FIRST CAUSE is a Being of intelligence, or merely some blind, dumb, unintelligent FORCE. Is Anything Superior to Your Mind? Look about you. You admit that the transmission of knowledge to your mind is limited to the channels of your five senses.
So now I ask you, do you know of anything that is superior to your mind?
Look at the planets coursing through the sky. Behold, in all its splendor, the entire cosmic universe, with its suns, its nebulae and galaxies. Yes, they are inanimate. They have no mind, no intelligence. They cannot do what you can do - think, reason, plan, and carry out plans according to private volition and will.
The human mind can know, think, reason, plan, and carry out its plans to execution. It can invent and produce instruments by which it may acquire knowledge of the vast universe, or of the minutest particle. By developing rockets and computers, man is able to send astronauts to the moon and bring them back alive. He can cause rivers to run backward, turn the forces of nature to serving human needs. And now he has learned how to release the energy of the atom, and utilize a power so vast that man is able at last to annihilate all life from the earth.
But there remains one thing no man ever has been able to do. He cannot build, make, produce, or create anything that is superior to himself!
A man can take existing materials and out of them build a house. An automobile is almost a living thing, but the intelligence and powers required to invent and produce it are superior to the thing produced. The Supreme Intelligence To suggest to you that anything you could invent, make, build, or bring into being could be superior in intelligence and ability to you and your mind would certainly insult your intelligence!
Now let me ask you candidly, do you honestly believe that any power or force of less intelligence than your mind produced YOU?
If you do not believe in my God, then you have only the alternative of believing that something less than your intelligence produced YOU -- that dumb, purposeless UNINTELLIGENCE brought into being your intelligence! The only rational possibility is to acknowledge that the very presence of the human mind is PROOF that the great First Cause is also the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE, infinitely superior to the abilities of mortal man! Suppose You Were Creator? Suppose that you could add to your powers of reasoning, planning, designing, the actual CREATIVE power, so that you could project your will anywhere to produce and bring into being whatever your mind should plan and desire. Then, suppose you undertook the designing, creating, fashioning, shaping, and setting in motion a limitless cosmic universe -- with planets and suns and nebulae and galaxies in all their splendor, each of these vast units being of such intricate and complex construction as the existing universe. On one of these planets you would plan and produce all the forms of life that exist on this planet -- and I do not mean reproduce, for there would be no present universe to copy. There would be worlds within a world, down to the minutest infinitesimal particles of matter we cannot even see by the aid of the most powerful microscopes.
Do you think your mind would be equal to the task?
Just stop and think.
Is it rational, then, to believe that any power or force lacking even human intelligence could have planned, designed, created, formed, fashioned, shaped, put together and set in motion the awesome universe we behold?
The First Great Cause who created matter; then, stands revealed as the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE and ARCHITECT OF THE UNIVERSE! The Miracle of Living Food But again I say, look about you! Here are human beings on this earth, composed mainly of certain, specific elements of matter - living, organic matter. These elements of life must be supplied and replenished through food, water, and air.
No man with all his ingenuity and science and laboratory facilities CAN PRODUCE FOOD! That is, he cannot take plain inorganic matter and turn it into the living substance we call food. But some Power, Force, Intelligence, or Being did in some way, at some time, start the process going -- a process far too wonderful for any man to devise or produce.
And so it is that out of the ground grows grass, and green leafy vegetables, and all other vegetables, and vines, and trees yielding fruit - each with its seed in itself, each through this seed reproducing after its kind -- and it is very good!
But when a marvelous little grain of wheat is planted in the ground, a plant develops and sprouts above the ground, and in some manner too wonderful for any human mind to understand or imitate, the elements drunk in through the roots from the ground are utilized by the life germ in the seed of wheat, and new grains of wheat appear.
During this process, the inorganic iron and other elements dissolved in the ground, drunk into the roots and carried up into the new grain of wheat, have been actually converted into organic matter which can be assimilated as food.
And this same marvelous process takes place in the growth out of the ground of all grains, vegetables, fruits and foods. When we eat animal meat we are merely consuming, secondhand, the vegetation which the animal ate.
MAN, with all his vaunted science, his technical laboratory facilities, with all his inventive genius, lacks the intelligence and the powers to produce a grain of wheat, or to convert inorganic matter into living food. Then is it rational to say that forces or powers exist, of NO intelligence, which have been able to produce this living miracle of food? Did not a far GREATER intelligence than man design, create, and supply man with all of this? Man's Intelligence Versus God's But now let's COMPARE the wisdom and intelligence of man with that of God who brought these marvels into being, and keeps them functioning.
The grain of wheat GOD causes to grow out of the ground is a perfect food. But, like other perfect gifts from God, man fails to value the priceless perfection of the all-wise God, and, undertaking to improve on God's handiwork, perverts, pollutes, and defiles it! Every bit of God's perfection man's hand has ever touched, it would seem, he has besmirched, spoiled and polluted!
And the poor, defenseless grain of wheat is no exception! Into flour mills of human devising go the millions of bushels of healthful wheat. Yes, the sugar refiners do the same thing to sugar; and nearly all foods on the market for human consumption today have gone through man's factories and suffered from man's processes until they have been devitalized, depleted of their health-giving requirements, and turned from foods into slow-acting poisons! And these foodless foods with which man has tampered in lust for profits have produced in human bodies a whole series of diseases of which our forefathers of a few generations ago never heard! Result: Today human beings drop dead before their time with heart failure, others die with cancer; the population suffers rheumatism, arthritis, diabetes, kidney diseases, anemia, colds, fevers, pneumonia, and thousands of other diseases. We respond to the toothbrush and toothpaste ads and frantically brush our teeth, but our teeth keep decaying and we lose them beginning at an early age because of lack of calcium and fluorine in our diet.
Whose intelligence is higher -- that of the GOD who provided every perfect need for every living thing, or that of greedy, gullible, God-rejecting humans who in the interest of bigger profits and more luxuries for themselves have ROBBED the very foods God created and gave us, of their health and body-building values? "There Was No Watchmaker" I needed an accurate watch with a very plain dial for timing broadcasts. The only kind that filled the need was a railroad watch. I have one -- the very finest railroad watch made, a 23-jewel watch.
But it does not keep perfect time. Once or twice a week I have to adjust it a second or two, if I want to be sure it is accurate to the second. I set it by the master clock of my city, or any city, which is always found at the Western Union. But even this clock does not keep perfect time. Once or twice a week it must be adjusted a second or two by the master clock of the nation, by telegraph, from the Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C. There at the Naval Observatory is the Master Clock of the U.S.A. But this great master clock of the United States is not perfect, either. It, too, must be adjusted and corrected occasionally.
Yes, it is corrected by the MASTER CLOCK OF THE UNIVERSE -- up in the skies -- by astronomers! Up there in the heavens is the great Master Clock that NEVER makes a mistake -- is always ON TIME -- never off a fraction of a second -- the heavenly bodies coursing through the skies!
Now you, sir -- my doubting friend! If I show you my fine precision 23-jewel railroad watch and tell you that it was not made in a factory after all -- in fact, it was not designed, planned, put together, by any watchmaker at all -- that it just sort of HAPPENED -- that the iron ores just brought themselves up out of the ground, refined themselves, formed and shaped themselves into the delicate little cogs and wheels and other pieces; the silicon just came of its own accord out of the earth and turned itself into the glass crystal; the gold case just refined itself, shaped itself; the cogs and wheels and scores of little parts just assembled themselves together in that case, wound themselves up, and started themselves to running and keeping almost perfect time -- well, if I should try to tell you anything like that, you'd tell me I'm crazy or a fool, would you not?
Certainly! You know that the presence of that watch is RATIONAL AND POSITIVE PROOF of the existence of a watchmaker, or watchmakers, who thought it all out, planned it, formed it, shaped it, put it together, and started it running. Master Clock of The Universe But then you, Mr. Skeptic -- you look up into the great vast sky at the MASTER CLOCK of the universe, which never misses a second -- the perfect watch by which we must constantly set all our imperfect man-made watches -- and you tell me, "That all just HAPPENED! There was no Great Watchmaker! No Master MIND thought out and planned that vast universe, brought it into being, set each star and planet in its own exact place, and started the myriad heavenly bodies coursing through space, each in its prescribed orbit, in its orderly precision. No, it just fashioned itself, put itself together, wound itself up, and started itself running. There was no Intelligence -- no planning -- NO CREATION -- NO GOD!"
Do you say that to me?
If you can, I answer that I do not respect your intelligence. And the God I acknowledge replies to you, "The FOOL hath said in his heart, There is no God!" (Psalm 14:1; 53:1.)
If you can look about you, and observe how intelligently PLANNED and executed is everything in nature, and in plant and animal life - everything we see except the bungling, botching, polluting of God's beautiful handiwork by the clumsy hand of God-ignoring-and-rejecting MAN -- and then say you doubt the existence of an all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator GOD, then I do not have much faith either in your rational processes or your sincerity as a seeker of the TRUTH!