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Extracts from Chapter
1:
God for Nothing – or God for You?
All are but parts
of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man"
I think you'll agree that fish are
not the smartest creatures on this earth. They have small brains and
their vision only gives them a strange outlook on life. Just imagine
what it must be like to be one for a moment. Because you now have an
eye set on either side of your head instead of both facing forward,
the view you see through each eye is completely different. Your world
is now split into two apparently unrelated views. Sadly, the two flat
views of opposite river banks are separated by a black void that never
lets you link these images together in order to achieve
three-dimensional vision. In one view you see your favourite bank, the
place you head for shelter when the current gets strong and you risk
being swept helplessly away. The other view shows you a bank that is
just as real but you don't care for it too much because you fear its
unknown dangers. Anyway, why bother with it when you only need to know
about the safe and familiar bank opposite, the one that has always
provided you with shelter in a storm.
Human beings, with their superior
three-dimensional vision to give them depth, and powerful brain to
give them the capability of thought and reasoning, must surely soar
much higher on the scale of intelligence. Yet… could it be there
is something of the fish in all of us? One view of creation is given
to us by science, and we see the logic of gradual development from the
'Big Bang' and evolution of the species - but the other view, given to
us by religion, is of a world created spontaneously by God. So what
are we to do, given these two conflicting views? Some simply swim to
the most attractive bank and ignore the other. Others try to hold on
to the vision of both, but find they have to keep them well separated
within their mind: because there still remains a murky area between
the two views that logic tells us must surely merge. Can we ever lock
these two visions into a single stereoscopic panorama in which each
view has a natural place, or must we for ever suffer this debilitating
schizophrenia? I think we can, and this book aims to show you how.
It is natural for people to polarise
towards one end or other of what I call the 'spectrum of belief'. At
one end lies natural evolution and science, and at the other, divine
creation and God. In the middle there are many who would dearly love
to embrace both aspects but who find this grates with their personal
integrity. The beguiling pull of science has with it the strength of
logic, experiment, research and evidence. Yet the tantalising pull of
creation and God is more reassuring, for it would seem to make life
more meaningful and potentially offer hope of life after death. Today
it is hard for many people to believe in the Holy Bible - especially
when they open it at Genesis and begin reading what seem like
fairy-tales about creation. After all, surely everyone knows the 'Big
Bang' was responsible? Nor does the tradition that science and
religion are in direct opposition help the undecided to come to any
comfortable conclusion.
The result of all this is that many
of those in need of something more satisfying than science often look
for alternatives to religion. For don't we all need meaning in life? I
hope to show you don't need to look any further than the Bible, and
this need not compromise your 'faith' in science - or logic. I want to
help you to climb to a high place in the middle ground that actually
looks down on both science and religion - and see 'both are good'.
A few years ago I was pleased to see
a television documentary that gave a hearing to some scientists who
were becoming more inclined to believe in God. The trouble is that
discovering new 'Laws of Science' can addle the brain into thinking
these explain the phenomena under investigation: when all they really
do is to formulate rules of association. By contrast, during the same
programme, a prominent biologist made it plain biology had everything
wrapped up very neatly and he confidently stated there was no place in
his thinking for God. There is little doubt the results of the Human
Genome Project and pioneering work in the field of genetic engineering
will make this attitude all the more prevalent. Especially with
scientists working on developing man-made organisms in the hope of
'creating' life. Yet such scientists are only really modifying the
genetic structure of an existing organism, so they are still using a
building block they did not create. Never forget this, for they surely
will.
If a man built a house of stone in
the middle of a desert where there existed nothing but sand, it would
seem remarkable. If he built it alongside existing pyramids using
stone taken from these, it would be less than remarkable since he
would then only be reusing existing building blocks. Such is the case
with the scientist who rearranges the building blocks of an existing
organism - although this is far greater folly, given that the results
of this are totally unpredictable... unlike that of building a house
of stone. Who know what perils meddling with genetics may release? Man
never 'creates' anything, any more than a painter 'creates' a picture:
the latter, for example, merely rearranges some paint molecules. So
let's get back to basics here; if we can't do that while considering
creation, when can we? My definition of 'creation' is the production
of 'something' from 'nothing'. In our world, only God can achieve
that. We can only do it - literally - in our dreams.
It is a relief, therefore, that there
are some scientists who do recognise the fact that nothing would have
been possible in the first place without some kind of creative power;
they do see a need for God. Equally, I believe more and more
Christians and would-be believers would feel religion had a much
sounder foundation if it could formally recognise and embrace modern
scientific knowledge. Theologians and scientists cannot continue with
blinkered beliefs for much longer if they are to retain credibility.
If they do, they both lose out: church congregations will continue to
dwindle, and adherents of science will lock themselves out of any
future beyond the grave.
. . .
Science seems to
explain so much we are conditioned to think it will eventually explain
everything. It ‘explains’ creation itself, calling
it the ‘Big Bang’. It ‘explains’ how things
evolved, how even we evolved from the resulting primordial soup, and
that, apparently, rules out our direct creation by God. Yet
does it really explain anything? Let us firstly consider the
theory – in simple terms.
The Big Bang Theory
tells us a violent explosion took place at one point in space, when
energy and matter came into being – incredibly dense matter –
and the whole mass began expanding through space in what we call ‘time’.
It is believed the temperature during the first one-hundredth of a
second after creation was well over one million, million degrees
centigrade, no less. After that first one-hundredth of a second it had
already cooled to a mere one hundred thousand million degrees
centigrade, cool enough for the basic elements of matter to form: what
the scientist calls ‘elementary particles’. All very well,
and amazing that we can even conjure up such figures about creation,
but the bottom line is this. Who lit the blue touch-paper that created
this Big Bang? Could such a thing have been mere chance, or is it not
much more likely it was caused by some super-intelligence? If it was
mere chance, how come this led to such a wonderful creation and not
just a short celestial firework display?
Many people,
including eminent scientists, do believe this cosmic spark was purely
a matter of chance. So consider this, while we have firework displays
in mind. Imagine you are at such a display and have just seen one of
those big rockets exploding high in the sky: all coloured lights, and
tangible ‘big bangs’. What do you consider the odds to be
that one such display might occur by chance? Might one occur outside
your window right now, for example? Think hard! Can you seriously
credit that possibility at all? Does it not take a fireworks ‘creator’
to produce such a display? Yet this is a minuscule representation of
the Big Bang. So if you cannot accept this as even a remote
possibility, then why give any credence to the possibility of the Big
Bang happening spontaneously – by chance – in the middle of
nothingness? Our universe didn’t exist before the Big
Bang. So what brought about the conditions that permitted it to take
place? Where did the energy come from that made it possible in
the first place – and still sustains its existence now?
This is an example of how our ‘logical minds’ can be almost
subliminally influenced to accept illogical concepts.
You don’t need
to be a scientist to employ a bit of logical thinking. You don’t
even need paper: just a comfortable chair. I’ll bet no one who
thinks creation happened by chance would honestly expect a firework
display to so happen – yet this is on an infinitely smaller scale
than creation by chance. We tend to just ‘accept’ rather
than ‘think’. Many of the things we have accepted as fact in
the past have entered our minds unchallenged, and they lurk there,
ready to shape our future perceptions – rightly or wrongly.
Ready-shaped opinion is regularly swallowed by us all, thanks to the
media – but it is not digested. Most of us do not realise
this – although politicians do. They know if they tell the masses
something often enough they will begin to accept it as fact. The same
happens with science.
. . .
Let us talk about
beauty within creation for a moment: but don't tell me beauty is
merely in the eye of the beholder, or skin-deep.Beauty permeates all
of creation and it goes far deeper than the skin. Millions of
different species delight us with their beauty. How many ugly plants
or flowers do you see? Yet survival of these does not actually require
beauty. Furthermore, although many examples of a particular species
abound, identical living entities are extremely rare. Every tree is
different and every flower. They weren't created by some celestial
production line that generates identical plastic flowers. Even man's
nearest approach to such creative genius, using genetics, involves
copying (cloning) or modifying existing organisms.
A true creator - one
who produces something from nothing - must always operate within more
dimensions than his creation, or that creation could not come into
being: otherwise you are simply reusing material that already exists.
So the creator of our world must exist in - and have knowledge of -
dimensions which are beyond our experience. Time itself was our
Creator's invention, and so was energy and space. He controlled the
forces that generated the Big Bang. From that moment, matter expanded
as a result of its interactions, spilling out into the void of space…
expanding… cooling.
Chapter 3 will show
there is good evidence within the Bible that God utilised a far more
efficient scheme than instantaneously creating a living universe: he ‘programmed’
it through his own laws to evolve and sort out its own ‘best
practice’. That is how he ensured its impressive stability. The
Great Architect was therefore very keen on his creation ‘evolving’.
The alternative – to individually create every microbe, leaf,
fish, bird, creature and human being, does not bear thinking about;
nor does it bear logical consideration. It is plain to see how
smoothly Nature operates, so how could God – its creator –
have operated so crudely? This beggars belief and does him a great
injustice. I believe he used far more sophisticated methods than that.
Why, even human beings do better: through cloning. What scientist
would consider building living things tissue by tissue? Why did he
make creation so big? Why begin a dynamically evolving system
part-way through its cycle? This is no more than a ‘chicken-and-egg’
theory of creation. Surely it was much better for him to set-up the ‘laws’
and then crank-up the process from the start: at what we know of as
the Big Bang? That way, everything evolves ‘naturally’ from
the basic elements, life evolves in superb balance with its
environment, and ‘Life’s Little Instruction Book’ is
kept in a safe place: in the genes. (It is such a pity that scientists
now choose to meddle with ‘God’s building blocks’.)
This is surely the way the ultimate architect would go about matters.
Scientists claim they
consider all known possibilities but, in truth, they are often
inclined to exclude any that are not deemed palatable. They frequently
ridicule bold new ideas that go against the current trend of thinking
– often to swallow their words years later when, after due
thought and calculation, they fully embrace them. From my own research
days, I know how tempting it is to ignore apparently rogue results
that go against the latest ‘pet-theory’. Yet it is often
such results that are some of the most important clues to new
discovery. So why couldn’t it have been God’s plan for
things to evolve naturally? It would certainly have been a good plan:
a master-stroke, in fact! Instead of ‘natural evolution’, we
could then call it ‘divine evolution’. What the Big Bang
describes is a process of evolution. Could it not be, as a result of
God’s plan, that even Darwin ‘evolved’?
Some might say
evolution goes against biblical teaching, but Chapter 3 will show this
is definitely not the case. The Bible tells how God interacted
with both Man and his creation in Old Testament times, and we are
given to believe its authors were inspired by God. Could he not have
interacted – by employing a bit of personal fine-tuning –
during the process of evolution, in order to shape the greatest thing
in his creation: namely mankind? I aim to demonstrate he did –
as part of his ‘perfect plan’ for us.
. . .
The different
branches of science gradually grow closer and closer, and the ultimate
goal is to tie them all together into a satisfactory ‘theory of
everything’ – or ‘Grand Unified Theory’ (GUT). I
call it their ‘GUT-reaction’ there is a Creator! The real
result would be to prove creation is a single, cohesive whole –
as if this were not already obvious. I believe deriving a Grand
Unified Theory would be the same thing as proving there is only one
creator. If different bits of creation were the handiwork of different
creators – or different competing gods – they could
not interact so smoothly. So there is only one creation, and only one
creative and intelligent consciousness could evolve a single, stable
system embodying consciousness itself. That creative force must exist
outside the dimensions of this creation – namely space and time –
so what’s wrong with calling this creative consciousness ‘God’?
The processes of
science are not adequate to help us understand creation. I think your
armchair is far more useful. For example, scientists study sub-atomic
particles and make mathematical models of so-called ‘string’
structures they believe represent the heart of matter, these being
incredibly small (10-33 cm). They hope this will help to
reveal the mysteries of creation. Yet would studying a fragment of
canvas under a microscope help us to understand the brilliance of a
painter like Monet? Surely it is better to stand back and look at the
picture as a whole in order to fully appreciate it? At the other end
of the scale, looking through space with the Hubble telescope, or
exploring it with space probes, can also do very little to help us
understand the nature of the Creator – even if it is like looking
back through time. We need to step back from creation in order to
understand it, not use microscopes or telescopes through which we can
merely observe particular parts of it.
The fact is that in
order to understand creation better, we should not study outer-space
(which term I shall take to embrace the entire physical
world), but instead focus on what I will term ‘inner-space’
– the ‘space’ of the mind. Even mathematics
cannot penetrate here, although you can, and without any great
inconvenience – and still from the comfort of your armchair. I
hope this book will help a lot with that. However, a word of warning
before I go much further. While you may remain in your chair, be
prepared to wear your thinking-cap!
I have a friend who
is a very skilled computer programmer. He knows only meticulous order
in a computer program will make it perform without fault. He doesn’t
believe in God for a moment, and he thinks Christians are to be
pitied, as unreal. Yet, though he might otherwise be perfectly
logical, does it not defy logic for a programmer to assume he can
create and maintain perfect order in a computer program within a world
which holds its order together purely by chance? I submit to you there
is a master programmer – a Great Architect – behind both the
creation and the maintenance of our world, and without him, there
would be no world.
These are the reasons
why I believe that since everything clearly interacts in our stable
world, it must have come from a single creative force. That works for
me. Doesn’t it for you? So let’s not beat about the bush.
Let’s call that force ‘God’.
. . .
Fortunately, there
were some very famous scientists who believed in their hearts there
must be a Creator. Even Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who formulated
the theory of relativity – one of the most profound intellectual
accomplishments in the history of Man – had this conviction.
Being Jewish, he did not believe in a personal God in the Christian
tradition, but he did say he was overwhelmed by the order and
organisation of the universe and believed this demonstrated there was
a Creator; he also said: "The scientist’s religious feeling
takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law,
which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with
it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an
utterly insignificant reflection."
Werner von Braun
(1912-1977), the father of space science, wrote: "The vast
mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the
certainty of its Creator. I find it as difficult to understand a
scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior
rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to
comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science."
Here, here! You need to be a very brave scientist to make a statement
like that, since such confessions are liable to lead to you being
ridiculed among your peers. In fact, you probably need to be really
famous in order to have the courage: like Einstein and von Braun. I
admire these great scientists who boldly spoke out against the trend.
But where have all the brave scientists gone now? If, as I believe,
there is a ‘superior rationality’ behind creation (as von
Braun puts it), then just ponder on the unimaginable power of the
entity that controls it all. Tremble at the thought!
What an irony it will
be if science eventually does come up with a ‘Grand Unified
Theory’: a mathematical model that, in their eyes, ‘explains’
everything in creation. It will, no doubt, show that the ‘chance’
existed for our world to come into being as we know it – even if
in all other ‘chances’ it would not have done so – and
hence it, and we, are the mere products of chance. Some chance! When I
discussed this with a mathematician, he conceded that anything
could come about by chance: hence this world. I then pointed out that
there therefore must be a chance that it was created by a
single intelligence: God. To this he had no reply. He later suggested
this world might consist of no more than his personal
consciousness and perception, including the existence of me.
Yet if so, his consciousness includes a hugely complex amount of data
about God, considering he does not care to believe in one! Why? Is he
just wrong, or does this prove his underlying need for God? Do you
remember what I said earlier about the temptation for the scientist to
be selective in his choice of data? Any model that takes into account
everything, and is based on chance, must also take into
account the chance of a single, creative consciousness. Any true
unification cannot ignore this concept.
. . .
Extracts from Chapter
3:
Creation and Evolution
The visible marks
of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works
of creation that a rational creature who will but seriously reflect on
them cannot miss the discovery of a deity.
John Locke, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"
(1690)
Most people rally,
unthinkingly, to one or other end of the ‘spectrum of
belief’: stretching from natural evolution and science to divine
creation and God. In the middle ground lie those thinkers who
would like to embrace both aspects but who find this goes against
their personal integrity. For such people, the convincing arguments of
science embrace the strength of logic, experiment, research, and
evidence we are inclined to believe. Yet the pull of creation and God
is also strong – for this would seem to be more meaningful and
potentially offer greater hope – yet it is hard for most of us to
just accept what the Bible says at face value. This is where I set out
from: the middle ground, with my logical senses pulling me towards
science and my heart pulling me towards God and some deeper meaning in
life. Have you also found it a difficult stretch? By the grace of God,
my researches led me to higher ground from which I could stand and
look down on both ends of the spectrum of belief and see both were ‘good’
(to borrow from the phraseology of Genesis). I hope, through this
book, to help more people find their own position on this higher
ground in order that they can also see both science and the Bible are
‘good’.
There are so many
stumbling blocks in the Bible and some of these are major hurdles to
the modern mind. This was certainly the case for me, and the very
first chapters of Genesis contained most of them. This is perhaps not
so surprising, given these chapters contain information on the most
difficult subject for man to understand, even today: the creation.
If I couldn’t find these chapters credible, then what chance the
rest of the Bible? Did the first few chapters contain myths,
fairy-tales, fiction or fact? The only certain ‘fact’ seemed
to be how most religions preferred to skip lightly past these
mysteries, accepting them to be mainly myth or difficult-to-interpret
allegory. Yet if we are to believe the authors of the Bible were
divinely inspired, why should we start out on the first few pages and
fight shy of what they tell us? Have we considered them deeply enough
– especially in the light of modern knowledge? If we can find
they have more meaning for us today, wouldn’t this strengthen
their credibility rather than reduce it? Time, perhaps, to
reconsider... and reflect.
Genesis presented
many enigmas for me, and the following list of ‘Twelve Great
Enigmas’ illustrates this very clearly. I imagine that a number
of these enigmas may ring true for you, also.
- Is creation, as described in
Genesis, in complete disagreement with modern scientific belief?
- Did it take 6 literal days
(Genesis 1) or 10-20 thousand million years (Big Bang theory)? (Hey,
why do people worry about a little difference like this?)
- Why does the Bible provide us with
two creation stories: in Genesis 1 and 2? (Some people
regard the second account as a ‘recap’: but why did its
authors do that and thereby confuse the first account? Many
theologians take them to be alternatives. Yet why should the
Bible offer us alternatives? What sense is there in this? Were the
authors ‘inspired’ or not? If they were inspired, as is
generally believed, then how come they offer us two contradictory
accounts? If they were not inspired, did they just make-up two
possibilities to choose from? Did they just record two alternative
myths for posterity? Were they unsure which one was correct and so
included them both? Did they just make them both up? I found all
this uncertainty, right at the beginning of the Bible, very
off-putting.)
- Why does the second of these
creation stories begin at verse 5 of Chapter 2 – and not, more
tidily, at verse 1? (This seems strangely disorganised compared with
the rest of the Bible. Is there a clue to be found here?)
- Was Man instantaneously ‘created’
(as we normally assume is implied in Genesis 1) or formed from dust
(as Genesis 2 indicates)?
- Why was Eve taken as a rib from
Adam (Genesis 2: 21-22)?
- Why did God tell Adam not to eat
from the ‘tree of knowledge’ when he was given a powerful
brain (Genesis 2: 16-17)? (Doesn’t that seem a bit perverse?)
- We are told ‘the tree of life
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ stood in the
middle of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2: 9). So which was really
banned: knowledge or life? (Surely not knowledge,
since God gave Man a brain with which to think?) Would the fruit of
the tree end his God-given immortal life? (If so, what point was
there in creating Adam and Eve as immortal in the first place?) Why
include trees with mythical properties if the text is literal?
- What is all that ‘temptation’
and ‘talking serpent’ stuff about (in Genesis 3)? Why the
incongruous ‘talking serpent’ – another mythical
touch – when all other animals presumably behaved quite
normally? (We don’t read of Adam or Eve having conversations
with any other creatures!)
- Who were the ‘heavenly beings’
(Genesis 6: 2)? How do they differ from the race of man already
mentioned? (These were the beings that Eric von Daniken claims were
‘spacemen’ in many of his books, by the way! So is he
right? Were they from another planet?)
- How come there were ‘cities’
in these early days of the Bible, when man was only just increasing
in numbers? (Cain went to live in the ‘land of Nod’ –
Genesis 4:16 – east of Eden, and later built a city that he
named after his son, Enoch – Genesis 4: 17).
- Was Noah really able to save every
animal and bird from a Great Flood that covered the world – by
taking breeding pairs of them all into his ark? (Come on – some
boat!) Did all the other living creatures on the planet really
perish in the Flood?
Frankly, that’s
a whole lot of baggage to take with you when you first try to get to
grips with the Bible. No wonder many people with a modern outlook
start out to read the Bible but very quickly come to the conclusion it’s
just a fairy tale. For the rest of us, prepared to look a little
deeper, to ignore such enigmas is to be selective in our acceptance of
the Bible. What else to believe or disbelieve? I want to help remove
those early seeds of doubt. That’s difficult, given there can be
no certain answers to any of these questions. Despite knowing this, I
worked away at these enigmas over a period of many years and what
follows represents the best answers I can come up with. I hope you
will find them both logical and thought provoking. At least they
provide some answers – and logical ones – where usually
there is only a resounding silence. You might disagree – it’s
always easy to do that – but if you try come up with something
more believable, equally logical, and still in line with science, I
think you will also find it rather time-consuming. God gave us a mind
with which to think. Jesus spoke to us in parables so only those who
wanted to see would see, and only those who wanted to hear would hear.
If you want a deeper understanding of creation and the Bible, clearly
God wants you to work at it too.
Of course, we don’t
really need to know the answers to enigmas such as those
listed. We can have faith without that. Yet it sure helps a doubting
mind to know some logic can be brought to bear on such topics. See
what you think as I attempt to unravel all the above mysteries. It’s
a tall order – but an interesting challenge!
. . .
To find out how
this challenge is met... you'll have to read the book!
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