I told my family I don't believe in God.?

Question

I told my RELIGIOUS family I don't believe in God and he is not real. It's make-believe. He's all fake. It's just like Santa Claus & the toothfairy. Also, there is no scientific proof god exist. I also told them how the sun was created and Earth and all that.

Now, my family call me a devil and im NOT normal, my sister believes in god and they call her angel. My family hates me now & my grandmother cries all day.

Answer 1

I experienced the same sort of problem when I first lost my faith in God. My family wasn't highly religious, but they still had a lot of faith in their imaginary friend. They always said that they would support me in all of my decisions, but apparently there was an exception for religion. Don't bother posting in R&S because that section is full of ignorant people. I posted a question there and someone removed it because I didn't believe in God. I even apealed it and they still refused to put it back so I don't even bother with R&S anymore. They are rude and ignorant so don't bother there.

I would love to say that what your experiencing is only temporary, but unfortunately it isn't. Well, it wasn't for me. I used to have a very strong bond with my family but now we hardly talk. I'm basically and outcast now, and I can't wait to move out of the house. Its been years sense I first came out and said I didn't believe in God but time does not solve this problem. I am very proud of you for telling your family because a lot of people don't have that level of courage.

Don't bother trying to show them that God doesn't exist because they just won't listen and will block you out. There is no point in challenging their faith because "God" has turned every man that believes in him to a blinded, ignorant person.

I can't really offer any advice except not to back down. Everyone in this country has a freedom of faith and your family has no right to take that away from you. Whether you want to believe in God or not is your choice, not their's.

Calling you a devil is not acceptable. That is just rude and pathetic. But seeing as God doesn't exist, the devil doesn't exist either so their just comparing you to their imaginary friend's enemy.

I am a former Methodist. The Methodist faith is a protostant Christian religion. The first step I took was breaking away from organized religion. I refused to go to church. I still believed in God, but I refused to take any part in organized religion. Then I was faced with a choice... to choose science or religion because my family refused to only except one. I chose science because science is factual and religion is ficticious. And although it has been difficult, it will work out for me in the long run just like it will for you. You have come to realize that God is just like santa clause and the easter bunny... they are all fake, imaginary things.

You are right, there is no proof of God... actually, there is no evidence of God. People like to say "well there's no proof of God but there's no proof he doesn't exist." Why would you need proof that he doesn't exist when there is no evidence supporting him anyway?

Your sister may be called an angle, but she is one that is fooled by an imaginary friend, not you. You are obviously more intelligent to know that there isn't a God.

Your family is probably going to pull the guilt trip on you. Saying, "you are a misguided sole and we will pray for you." which is load of bull. Just don't listen. If they are getting mean and violent, you should contact someone. If they are damaging you psychologically, this is not normal, and is not acceptable and action should be taken. If they are just going to call you a devil and abnormal, just ignore them because it is obvious they are wrong.

I am sorry, but I really can't do that much for you, but I will be happy to support you through this. If you have any questions about my experience or need to guidence, feel free to email me and I'd be happy to help you. I wish you the best of luck and you should be very proud of yourself. If you want something to cheer you up, search for "George Carlin on religion" on YouTube. It is hilarious and I'm sure you will agree with what he has to say. Its one of my favorite videos on YouTube.

Answer 2

Well I dont see if any other answers are going to help, my answer may not help. I could be rude and say  "Well I told God I don't believe in you." But...I do believe in you.

Out of all the religions in the world started by all the different people, there is only one who has said and historically proven His ability. You can visit and rest assured the remains are still there of all other religous starters, or they are alive today meaning their religion does not cover history. Except One...there is only ONE EMPTY TOMB ! And that is only a branch of other relgions.

     Trace the Jewish religion, it goes back to God. Trace the Muslim religion, it goes back to the same God. Hey how about tracing the Protestant religions, guess what? Same God. Catholic religion....you guessed it same God.

Your questions and doubts prove there is a God and He is talking to you. Are you listening?

Answer 3

Tough one...

I also don't believe in god ( that's what atheism is) but my family don't either.

I think the only thing you can do is stick to your beliefs, try and find as much about God and the univere as possible (check out my links), and try and persuade your family, but don't be too pushy, let them believe what they want to believe, and try and see if they'll accept a truse.

(ie if you don't mention god they won't either, and 'can we just get on with our life')

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

I don't think they hate you.. However if there is NO god than you need to spend as much time with them and the people you care about. It doesn't hurt to not say anything sometimes. It is hard to be different so "Name your god and bleed the freak". Its a price your going to have to pay the rest of your life think like everyone else and be safe in the pack or think for you self. I made my choice BTW i believe in god and I think if your family truly did they'd know that god loves everyone regardless. Remember some it comes down to be yourself by yourself. Try to patch it over with your family. I should add don't try to get them to abandon there faith that is just like me trying to make you have faith doesn't feel good huh?

Answer 5

That sucks, really.  But you can't just force yourself to believe what they want you to.  Once they get over the shock, I bet it'll get better.  Don't push your views on them.  Telling them you're an atheist is one thing, telling them they believe in the equivalent of the tooth fairy (true or not) is another.  Be respectful.

Remember, they're the ones still stuck on primitive mythology.  You're the future.  Keep fighting the good fight.

Answer 6

Tell your parents to watch these videos and go to this website!

http://video.rationalresponders.com/vide...

http://video.rationalresponders.com/vide...

http://video.rationalresponders.com/vide...

http://www.rationalresponders.com/

Also tell them that they need to study evolution, the formation of our solar system and the formation of the Universe! And that they need something called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

And there are books like 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins.

Answer 7

Built into many religions is a self defense mechanism for non-believers, or for those who turn away from the faith. In the Catholic

Church it was Expulsion from the Church.

Don't worry. The idea is to realize that what you believe is "WHAT

YOU  BELIEVE." What others believe is their business, and your

best possible decision is to exit the area when conversations about

beliefs begin. There is no right or wrong...There are no proofs...If

there were, there would not be lots and lots of religions and

theoretical dieties.

No one knows all the answers to all the questions except the trained clergy representatives who have been schooled in responding to these kinds of questions through references to books written hundreds of years ago when people had far less scientific knowledge than they do today. If fact for many, many years actual educations were witheld from the masses to preclude the elevation of the mind to a reasoning level so that people could look about themselves and begin to comprehend the vastness of the Earth and Space. Most people still cannot handle the facts involved with the study of space and the Universe so they take short cuts and rely on theories, stories, myths,and explanations provided by church representatives. The only thing forcing you to pay them any attention is the social pressure they are able to exert upon you if you display signs of non-acceptance.

It is futile to argue with church goers - no matter what church they attend. It is simply a waste of time. spend your time wisely by

getting the best possible education you can achieve, and then get some more. The world is at your finger tips to learn about and explore. People who argue about what was here before the beginning and what will be here after the end and simply wasteing your valuable time.    

Answer 8

Your future relationship with your family depends on how fundamentalist they are. Things could be worse.  If you were a Muslim under Shira law, you would be executed for this. Or what do you think it would be like if one of Fred Phelps' grandsons confessed to being g*y?

If your family is extremely religious, you may well suffer anything from contempt to outright hatred.  I've seen it before.  If I were you, I would lay low.  Don't try to disprove God.  You can show all the evidence you want for an entirely natural world, but that will have no effect on them except to make them more hostile toward you.  If everybody was capable of thinking rationally and if people valued evidence more than authority, religion wouldn't exist any more.

You can't win, but if you can subdue your need to enlighten them, you might survive.

Gorgeous, you may not be aware that the creationist perversion of information theory is not supported by any molecular biologist or IT expert.  And that big of a cut and paste is rude.

Answer 9

I believe Dave M worded it perfect.

God means everything to those who believe in him.  So if you tell your family that you don't believe in him you are going to get a negative reaction.  I can understand how someone would want proof of God's existance but you simply are not going to get it.  If he does exist, which personally I believe he does, then he doesn't want you to have proof.  He wants your decision to be based on faith.  You have nothing to lose by believing in God.  You can still believe whatever you want about science and still believe in God.  But the choice is yours and no one can say otherwise.  I personally don't see how the universe could have materialized from nothing in an event called the big bang, even though I do believe the big bang did happen.  Even scientifically there is no logic to how the universe formed.  Fact is that everything in this universe DOES exist and it had to come from somewhere.  Whether it be matter or energy, it sure as h**l didn't come from nothing.  But it is ok to believe whatever you want to believe.  I have respect for everyone's beliefs.  And your family should respect your decision too.

Answer 10

Just understand the people are afraid to die god was invented by humans as a way to live forever, Religion has evolved over the years

but it has many similarities with all religions in the past and the present. Just tell your family you don't believe in religion and its stories I guess? Think of it this way even if god is just imaginary you still have no clue about the universe we no nothing therefore creating a entity that explains everything is only natural. Now we have more knowledge

about space but still really no nothing about the physics of the universe time etc...

Answer 11

where R you from?

Might as well told them about the big bang

haha

tell them if they have seen god

ask them for proof

Answer 12

are you looking for comfort?

<BZZZT>  wrong answer.

family is overrated.

(give them time, maybe they will come around)

Answer 13

Me still got question for u...u dont believe in God....coz u got proof (scientifically) tht there is no God..anyway how far are u into science? Can u tell scientifically 2 proove how the universe come from nothing...not even a BIG BANG...but merely simplest unit? I will be very glad if u tell me tht.....u can mail me to discuss further coz am really interested in science too....Down here is some proof about information theory that proving God must be there.....i just copy it from somewhere.....sure is pretty long But try to read with patient and using scientifically common sense.

INFORMATION THEORY

Q: If information has to come from a Mind (God), then where did God come from? Who made God?

A: Asking "Where did God come from" is a lot like reading a John Grisham novel and saying "This book has lawyers and judges and secretaries, but what page is John Grisham on?"

The answer of course, is that John Grisham is not in the novel at all. He lives outside of the novel. He wrote it. He created the time line, the story and the characters. The novel is a book with a finite number of pages, a beginning and an end. But John Grisham lives a life that extends far beyond that book.

Similarly, God lives outside of space and time. He created space. He created time. He is confined to neither of these things. It's somewhat of a stretch for most of us to imagine that, but a physicist or mathematician will attest that it's entirely reasonable. There is nothing absurd or illogical to speak of dimensions outside of space and time; in fact additional dimensions are necessary to rationally explain the universe. String theory in modern physics defines 11 dimensions, four of which we experience.

Human experience, without exception, is that all effects have causes. There are no uncaused causes. The inevitable conclusion is that the laws of physics explain how the universe operates but they don't explain how it got here. All explanations require an "eternal" ingredient. The existence of anything at all demands an uncaused cause. So we never escape the question 'where did it all come from.'

A purely physical explanation (i.e. materialism, or an atheistic belief that says that there is no such thing as a metaphysical world) relies on as-of-yet undiscovered principles of physics. It requires faith, if you will, that someday we'll discover a way for matter and energy to come from nothing.

Another problem faced by materialistic explanations is entropy. Entropy says that the universe is cooling down, that energy is being converted from usable forms to unusable forms, and that this process is irreversible. Processes with entropy happen, by definition, over a finite period of time. An infinitely old universe with entropy would now be cold and dead. Once again, the universe can't be infinitely old. It had to have a cause.

So science as we know it now cannot possibly explain this. The only logical explanation is a cause outside of space and time - which of course is consistent with the definition of God that theists have held for thousands of years.

Science does not refute this; in fact a truly scientific assessment of the facts is that all purely materialistic answers to the origins question blatantly violate the laws of physics.

Q: How do you define information?

A: The dictionary definition (computer science case in particular) will suffice: "Processed, stored or transmitted data."

From Wikipedia:

Information is a message, something to be communicated from the sender to the receiver, as opposed to noise, which is something that inhibits the flow of communication or creates misunderstanding. If information is viewed merely as a message, it does not have to be accurate. It may be a lie, or just a sound of a kiss. This model assumes a sender and a receiver, and does not attach any significance to the idea that information is something that can be extracted from an environment, e.g., through observation or measurement. Information in this sense is simply any message the sender chooses to create.

This view assumes neither accuracy nor directly communicating parties, but instead assumes a separation between an object and its representation, as well as the involvement of someone capable of understanding this relationship. This view seems therefore to require a conscious mind.

information is dependent upon, but usually unrelated to and separate from, the medium or media used to express it. In other words, the position of a theoretical series of bits, or even the output once interpreted by a computer or similar device, is unimportant, except when someone or something is present to interpret the information. Therefore, a quantity of information is totally distinct from its medium.

What's important here is 1) information always involves a sender and a receiver; 2) an encoding / decoding mechanism; 3) a convention of symbols ("code") which represent something distinct from what those symbols are made of. A paragraph in a newspaper is made of ink and paper, but the sentence itself may say nothing about ink or paper.

It may be very helpful here to point out the difference between a pattern and a code. Patterns (snowflakes, crystals, hurricanes, tornados, rivers, coastlines) occur in nature all the time.

A code is "A system of signals used to represent letters or numbers in transmitting messages." Examples of code include English, Chinese, computer languages, music, mating calls and radio signals. Codes always involve a system of symbols that represent ideas or plans.

All codes contain patterns, but not all patterns contain codes. Naturally occurring patterns do not contain code.

Q: But information CAN arise naturally - the gravitational constant, Pi (3.14159...), the speed of light, or strings of molcules like C7H5NO4 (Benzine).

A: None of these things contain coded information (see above for definition of information). Gravity is gravity. It is a force. But it contains no code or symbols. When we measure it and quantify it (or even speak of it) we assign code and symbols so we can understand it, but in and of itself, it contains no information.

Pi is a relationship between the diameter of a circle and the circumfrence. The number 3.14159 is a way of expressing Pi, based on a human-designed encoding/decoding system (numbers, base ten) but the relationship between the diameter of a circle and the circumfrence itself is not coded information. The same can be said of the speed of light. The speed of light is the speed of light, it represents nothing other than itself.

A molecule, such as Benzine, is just a molecule. When we describe it with symbols like C7H5NO4 we are using an encoding / decoding mechanism to describe it, but Benzine itself contains no code, and it is not an encoding / decoding mechanism. It represents nothing other than itself. Information is different from benzine because it represents something OTHER than itself.

If I arrange pebbles on the driveway to spell your name, those pebbles represent you. As such they now encode information, and possess a property they did not possess before I spelled your name with them. They now contain information.

Q: DNA is not a code, DNA is just a molecule

A: Francis Crick received the Nobel prize for discovering DNA. The following is from the first paragraph of Francis Crick's Nobel lecture on October 11, 1962. Note his use of the word "code" and "information," emphasis mine:

"Part of the work covered by the Nobel citation, that on the structure and replication of DNA, has been described by Wilkins in his Nobel Lecture this year... I shall discuss here the present state of a related problem in information transfer in living material - that of the genetic CODE - which has long interested me, and on which my colleagues and I, among many others, have recently been doing some experimental work..."

The following quotes are from atheist Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker:

"Every single one of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire computer.

"Each nucleus, as we shall see in Chapter 5, contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica put together. And this figure is for each cell, not all the cells of a body put together."

Having quoted Dawkins here, it's interesting to note that neither he, nor any materialist has ever provided any scientific (i.e. empirical, testable, falsifiable) explanation for the origin of information. For a very interesting and extensive read on this subject, read "The Problem of Information For The Theory of Evolution" by Royal Truman. If you carefully trace every reference and rebuttal to this article on the internet, you'll discover that not one person has ever supplied a scientific response to the questions raised here, nor provided any examples of materialistic processes that produce coded information.

No naturally occuring molcule possesses the properties of information. Nature does not produce any kind of code, encoding/decoding mechanism or symbolic relationships at all; everything in nature represents only itself.

DNA, on the other hand, represents a complete plan for a living organism. DNA is an encoding / decoding mechanism that contains code, or language, representing the organism.

Q: Someone could discover a naturalistic process that produces information, maybe tomorrow.

A: In theory, yes, they could. Non-belief in God must surely rest on a sort of faith that such a process exists and will be discovered someday.

Is there such a process? All we can say is that none has ever been discovered. No known exception exists. We can say that information never comes from naturalistic process in the exact same way that we say that there are no exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics, or the law of gravity, or the speed of light.

Maybe someday, someone will discover an exception to thermodynamics and entropy.

Maybe someday, someone will discover an exception to the law of gravity.

Maybe someday, they'll find an exception to the speed of light.

If someone were to ever discover any of these things, he or she would surely become the Nobel Prize winner of the century.

But to say right now that there is an exception to any of these laws of physics is to make a patently unscientific statement. Everything we know about thermodynamics and the conservation of matter and energy requires a causal agent outside of space and time.

And everything that we presently know about information and DNA requires a Mind, because there is no known mechanism by which natural processes produce information.

Thus we have airtight inductive inference that DNA originated from a superintelligence:

1. All languages, codes, protocols and encoding / decoding mechanisms that we know the origin of come from a mind - there are no known exceptions

2. DNA is a language, a code, a protocol, and an encoding / decoding mechanism

3. Therefore DNA came from a mind.

Q: What Does Information Theory Tell Us About God?

A: What's unique about information theory and its special way of addressing origins question (compared to, say, physics or astronomy) is that although humans can never create matter and energy or re-create the Big Bang, all of us create information every day.

The Big Bang is a barrier that Einstein proved we will never see beyond; we can only determine that it had a cause outside of space and time. But the creation of information, the creation of languages and codes, is something we're all intimately familiar with.

You create information every time you talk to somebody. The creation of information begins with a desire, which lead to an idea, which you express in words, which you break down into sounds and letters when you speak or write. In that order. The way you and I design a paper airplane or a car, or remodel a kitchen is no different.

In other words, language and design are always a top-down mental processes - not something that nature does "bottom up." So not only does Information Theory prove the existence of God, it also tells us something about God's nature - that God is conscious, God is personal, and God communicates and speaks.

This is 100% consistent with the observation that the one element common to ALL designs is that they are represented symbolically by ideas and language before they are implemented in reality. Anything that is represented by language before it is built is designed.

God is a designer. God thinks and speaks in order to build.

With that in mind, it's especially prescient that Genesis One says "And God Said... let there be light," etc etc. Note that creation itself is a product of words that are spoken. Then the book of John expands on this, connecting the creation of all things with Jesus Christ: "In the Beginning was the WORD. And the WORD was with God and the WORD was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything that was made."

What we have here is a theological statement that Jesus is both the verbal expression of God and the essence of God at the same time. In Christian theology, God himself is the essence of words, language and expression. The Biblical theology of God squarely matches everything that information science tells us about reality.

Articles:

If You Can Read This, I Can Prove God Exists - The same communication technology that gave us our modern digital age shows that language is proof of the existence of God, and that all evolution is driven by intelligent processes.

The Atheist's Riddle - "So simple, any child can understand; So complex, no atheist can solve." An airtight inductive proof for the existence of a Superintelligence.

The Intelligent Evolution Quick Guide - Proof that DNA was designed by a mind; a 21st century update to Paley's design argument, and 3 kinds of evolution - all on a single sheet of paper.

New Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God - a landmark presentation by Dr. Hugh Ross on the convergence of modern astronomy with ancient theology

Perry Marshall vs. 30+ Skeptics: From August 2005 to the present, I have successfully advanced the Information Theory argument for Intelligent Design on Infidels, the world’s largest atheist discussion board.

Software Tool:

The Random Mutation Generator - Paste text into the box and MUTATE it! A useful tool you can play with that visually demonstrates that random mutation can only destroy information, not create it

Click Here to Download MP3

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New Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God

A Seminal Presentation by Astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross, given in South Barrington, Illinois, April 16, 1994

Click here for printable copy in PDF

Editor's note: This lecture was selected not in spite of being more than 10 years old, but because it is more than 10 years old. Virtually every statement and inference given in this speech has been reinforced and further validated during the last decade by measurements from the COBE Satellite, the Hubble Telescope, and advances in physics and astronomy.

The hallmark of a truly reliable scientific theory is that it is thoroughly testable, scientifically falsifiable, and makes accurate predictions. Dr. Ross's origins model has stood the test of time for nearly two decades, literally receiving further validation on a monthly basis as physics and astronomy journals publish new papers. I believe you'll enjoy this ground-breaking information from Hugh Ross.

___________________________

New Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God

"The Discovery of the Century" -Stephen Hawking

I want to take you back to almost two years ago, April 23, 1992. On that day, a discovery was announced that, in the words of the British physicist Steven Hawking, “…is the discovery of the century, if not of all time.” This is remarkable because Steven Hawking has a reputation for understatement.

Michael Turner, from the University of Chicago, says the significance of this discovery cannot be overstated. They have found the Holy Grail of cosmology. As to how holy of a grail we're talking about, George Smoot, who led the team of 30 American astrophysicists who made the discovery said, “What we have found is evidence of the birth of the Universe. It's like looking at God.”

Frederick Burnham, a science historian, said in response to this discovery, “The idea that God created the Universe is a more respectable hypothesis today than at any time in the last 100 years.”

The reason I'm starting with these quotes is because anything that is being called 'The greatest discovery of the century' and anything that makes belief in God more credible that it's ever been before, is something that every Christian should be apprised of and equipped to share with his friends at home, in the neighborhood and at work.

The Day They Found 90% of the Universe

Now, what exactly was it that these astronomers discovered? They found 90% of the universe. Any day that you find 90% of the universe is a red-letter day. What they essentially found was a new kind of matter. For a couple of years, physicists have suspected that the universe must have a different kind of matter.

Ordinary matter is the stuff that we're used to. Electrons, protons, neutrons, everything we see here on planet Earth is made up of ordinary matter. Ordinary matter is a property that strongly interacts with radiation, so it's rather easy for astronomers to detect the stuff.

But we found the problem, which was this: In 1990, the cosmic background explorer satellite proved that the universe is extremely entropic. In fact, the universe has a specific entropy measure of 1,000,000,000. Entropy measures the efficiency with which a system radiates heat and light, and the inefficiency in which it performs work.

The universe is by far the most entropic system in all existence. To give you a point of comparison, a burning candle has a specific entropy of two. A burning candle is something we realize is very efficient in making heat and light, and very inefficient in performing work. The universe is far more entropic than a candle, by many orders of magnitude.

But it led to a problem. If the universe has that high a degree of entropy and all matter strongly interacts with radiation, and the radiation left over from the creation event measures to be incredibly smooth, then the matter likewise should be that smoothly distributed. But it isn't.

As you look at the galaxies and clusters of galaxies, rather than being smoothly distributed like the radiation form the creation event, it's clumpy. Astronomers wanted to know why. We have proof that the universe was created in a hot, big, bang due to the incredible entropy, but how do we explain the galaxies?

The discovery of exotic matter explains the clustering of the galaxies. Exotic matter does not strongly interact with radiation, and because it doesn't, it can clump independent of the radiation. Since it doesn't really matter in gravity whether the matter is exotic or ordinary, the laws of physics still apply.

Two massive objects will attract one another under the law of gravity, and if one of those massive objects is made of ordinary matter and the other is made of exotic matter, they will still attract.

Once exotic matter clumps, it can draw ordinary matter to it, and hence we can have the universe we see today. The radiation from the creation event is still very smoothly distributed, but the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are clumped.

April 23, 1992 was the first detection an astronomer made of this type of matter. Since that time, there have been seven other independent detections of this exotic matter. If you're interested, you can read all about it in my book, The Creator and the Cosmos, which was published a few months ago.

In this back issue, we describe the set of discoveries that established the existence of exotic matter which led to the conclusions from the scientific community that we now have conclusive proof that the universe was indeed created, and that's why we say that we're looking at the face of God.

On April 24, 1992, I was on the radio with three other physicists to discuss this discovery. A couple of the gentlemen were from George Smoot's team, but the one that I was most curious about was Geoffrey Burbridge, who I had as a professor while I attended the University of Toronto, and who I knew to be an atheist.

Physicists Join "The First Church of Christ of the Big Bang"

I was wondering how Geoffery was going to respond to the news of this discovery. The first words out of his mouth were a complaint, and they were that as a result of this discovery, his peers in physics and astronomy were rushing off to join the First Church of Christ of the Big Bang.

What encouraged me about Jeffrey's statement was that even Jeffrey, as an atheist, recognized the equation, Big Bang = Jesus Christ. If you prove the Big Bang, you prove Jesus Christ. I want to briefly explain to you how that follows and I want to reveal something to you that leads to that.

Why Big Bang = Jesus Christ

It's something that's probably more beautiful than anything that you've ever seen living here in Illinois . Or for that matter California or where I grew up, British Colombia, which I think is the most beautiful place in the world.

I want to show you something that far transcends the beauty of even the scenery that we see on this planet Earth. [Shows Einstein's singularity equation.] But, then what could possibly transcend the beauty of equations of physics? For those of you who are starting to break out into a cold sweat, this will be gone in less than a minute and I'll never show you another one again.

I thought that you might be curious of the equation that convinced Albert Einstein that God exists, that God created the universe. This equation falls under the theory of general relativity. For those of you who have a background in calculus, you'll recognize this term here as an expression for acceleration.

What Einstein had done was to drive the equation for the acceleration of the entire universe. On the other side of the equation, you see four physical constants. I don't really have to explain them to you, except to point out that they all have positive values.

Four well-known physical constants with positive values, yet there's a minus sign in front. That immediately tells us that the entire universe experiences negative acceleration. The universe is decelerating. That was a tremendous challenge to the theology of his day because in the 200 years previous to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, academic scientific society was operating on the premise that the universe was static.

Belief in a Static Universe Led to Darwinian Evolution

That was really what fostered the birth of Darwinian evolution, the idea that the universe is static, infinitely old and infinitely large. Static, in that it maintained the conditions essential for elements to assemble themselves into living systems, as Emanuel Kant reasoned, long before Charles Darwin came up with a theory.

Emanuel Kant longed to come up with a theory of biological evolution but he didn't have the biological data to develop it. Nevertheless, he laid the philosophical foundation that if the universe is infinitely old and infinitely large and static, maintaining the ideal chemical situation for life chemistry to proceed, then one can posit that the dice of chance is thrown an infinite number of times and in an infinite variety of ways.

If you have infinite throws at the dice of chance, then any matter of complexity would be conceivable - even something as complicated as a German philosopher. But this equation challenged that very notion by saying that the universe is not static; it decelerates.

Einstein was well aware that the term for pressure (P) in the universe is rather tiny compared to the term for mass density (represented by the Greek letter Rho ). It's divided by a huge number - the velocity of light squared. You've got this extremely small number divided by a huge number. This means that for all intents and purposes, we can ignore that “3P/C²” relative to the density. We can drop that term out, and then we have something much simpler to solve.

Proof that the Universe is Not Static, but Expanding

It's still a non-linear differential equation, so it's not all that easy. But Einstein was able to perceive and demonstrate that, according to this equation, the universe not only decelerates, it positively expands. Hence, the Big Bang. How so? Normally, I demonstrate this for audiences by bringing a grenade, but they no longer let you take grenades on airplanes.

I only do that demonstration when I'm on TV or in California, so you're just going to have to pretend that I've got a grenade here in front of me. If I were to pull the pin from the grenade, you'd feel a few effects. One being that the pieces of the grenade would expand outward from the pin. That's positive expansion.

Those outwardly expanding pieces of the grenade would inevitably bump into obstacles into this room. When they collide with those obstacles, they slow down. That's deceleration. After a grenade has exploded, a physicist could make measurements of the positions and the velocities of the pieces of shrapnel, and through the equation Velocity = Distance/Time, he could calculate the moment that the pin was pulled on the grenade.

We can do the same thing with the galaxies in the universe. We can measure their positions and their velocities and calculate the moment that the “pin” was pulled on the entire universe.

As Einstein pointed out, the significance is that the universe has this moment of pin pulling. It has a beginning. Through the principle of positive fact, if the universe has a beginning, it must have a beginner, hence the existence of God.

To his dying day, Einstein held to his belief that as the result of the verification of his theory of General Relativity, God exists. (Good book on Einstein's extensive discussions of religion and theology: Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology by Max Jammer -Ed) God created the universe and God is intelligent. Today, we don't deny that God is personal. Einstein died too soon.

If he had lived to the late 1980's, he'd have seen direct scientific proof for the personality of the creator. But he acknowledged as a result of the confirmations of his equations and his theory that God is transcendent. That God exists, he is intelligent, he is creative and he is responsible for the universe.

But he didn't know the details of that transcendence. The details of that transcendence had to equate to a deeper solution of those equations of General Relativity. They are non-linear, which means they're hard to solve.

Stephen Hawking and Friends Solve The Equation

By 1970, three British astrophysicists had combined to produce a deeper solution of the equations of General Relativity. They culminated the paper, The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology, published in 1970. You should all go get it - its exciting reading.

It closes with the Space-Time theorem of General Relativity, which states that if the universe is governed by the equations of General Relativity, not only are we faced with an ultimate origin, we are all of the matter in the universe, and all of the energy in the universe. But we're faced with a coincident ultimate origin for even the dimensions of length, width, height and time.

Even Time Itself Was Created

As Steven Hawking, one of the three authors, boasted many years thereafter, we proved that time was created. We proved that time has a beginning. But through his contacts with certain Christians like his wife Jane, who's an Anglican, as a friend of mine from Cal Tech, Don Page, who had daily Bible studies with Steven and Jane Hawking while he was doing research pointed out, if you prove that time has a beginning, that it was created, it eliminates all theological possibilities but Jesus Christ.

Of all world religions, only Judeo-Christian theology says Time has a beginning

Why? Because if you were to open up the Holy books of the religions of the world, only one of them would describe God as a being that creates the universe independent of time, space, matter and energy.

The other Holy books describe God as creating within time. The Bible states that God creates independent of time. That's the difference.

Some verses that you might be familiar with: The first verse which states, “In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth…” The Hebrew words for heavens and Earth literally refer to the entire physical cosmos of matter, energy space and time. The universe.

Hebrews 11:3 makes it more specific stating, “The universe that we detect was made from that which we cannot detect.” We can make detections within matter, energy, length, width, height and time, but not beyond.

Eight places in the Bible tell us that God created time. I'll give you two examples: 2 Timothy 1:9 which states, “The Grace of God that we now experience was put into effect before the beginning of time” and Titus 1:2 which states, “The hope that we have in Jesus Christ was given to us before the beginning of time.”

The three things that the Apostle Paul was saying in those two verses were that time is beginning, that God created the time dimension of our universe and, most importantly, that God has the capacity to operate through cause and effect before the time dimension of our universe even exists.

Your friendly neighborhood physicist will tell you that time is defined as that dimension or realm in which cause and effect phenomena take place. What the Apostle Paul is telling us in these two places and in the six other portions of Scripture, is that we are confined to a single dimension of time.

In fact it's worse than that. We're confined to half of a line of time. Time, for us, is a line that goes forward only. Have you ever noticed that you cannot stop or reverse the arrow of time? No matter what you do, it just keeps going forward in one direction.

Any entity confined to half of the line of time, must have a beginning and must be created. I can walk home tonight, and that's it. It's the simplest, most rigorous proof of the existence of God.

We're confined, and the entire universe is confined to half of the line of time. Therefore, the universe must be created and we must be created. But God is not so confined.

When I present this evidence to atheists, their most frequent response is the same one I got from both of my sons when they were three years of age. It's, “If God created us, then who created God?”

God: Not Confined by Time

My sons and the atheists are assuming that God is confined to time in the same way that we are. But the Bible and the equations of General Relativity tell us that the entity that brought the universe into existence is not confined in time like we are, or the way that the universe is.

God can move and operate in at least two dimensions of time. In two dimensions of time, time becomes a plane, like a sheet of paper, length and width. In a plane, you can have as many lines as you want and as many directions as you want.

It would be possible for God to dwell on a time line running through a sheet of paper that's infinitely long, and that never crosses or touches the timeline of our universe. As such, God would have no beginning, no end and he would not be created. Sound familiar?

Why the God of Modern Physics Matches the God of the Bible

Both John Chapter One and Colossians Chapter One make that claim about God; He has no beginning, no end and He is not created. The Bible is the only Holy book that makes that statement about God.

What I've done for you in these few minutes is to establish the doctrine of the independent transcendence of the Creator. But we can go beyond this abstract, rigorous proof of the existence of the God of the Bible. It's Jesus Christ because we proved that the Creator must be an independent, transcendent being.

What I've discovered, even on the University campus, is that audiences much prefer tangible proof for the existence of God, to the abstract proof of the existence of God.

Today we have that, thanks to the efforts of astronomers in measuring the universe. Ours is the only generation of man that has ever lived to witness the measuring of the universe. This wasn't the case 15 years ago.

Measuring The Universe

Ours is a privileged generation because we have seen the measuring of the universe. The theological significance is that if you can measure the universe, you are measuring the creation. If you can measure the creation, you are measuring the Creator himself. Not all of his characteristics, of course, but many that are theologically significant.

What we've discovered in measuring the universe is that the third assumption of Emanuel Kant; that we have infinite time, the universe is static and that we have an infinite supply of building blocks for life isn't true.

We proved that the universe isn't static, that time isn't infinite. It's finite. The age of the universe is only 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 seconds (10 to the 18th power).

We also discovered that we do not have an infinite supply of building blocks. In fact, we discovered that it takes exquisite design to get any building blocks at all. Molecules, without which, life is impossible.

Atoms must be able to assemble in the molecules in order to gain sufficient complexity for life chemistry to proceed. That applies to any conceivable kind of life.

The Extreme Precision of Physical Constants

Unless the force electromagnetism takes on a particular value, molecules won't happen. Take the nucleus of an atom. There's an electron orbiting that nucleus. If the force electromagnetism is too weak, the electron will not orbit the nucleus.

Electromagnetism

There won't be sufficient electromagnetic pull to keep that electron orbiting the nucleus. If electrons cannot orbit nuclei, then electrons cannot be shared so that nuclei can come together to form molecules. Without molecules, we have no life.

If the force electromagnetism is too strong, the nuclei will hang onto their electrons with such strength that the electrons will not be shared with adjoining nuclei and again, molecules will never form. Unless the force electromagnetism is fine-tuned to a particular value, the universe will have no molecules and no life.

Strong Nuclear Force

We also have a problem in getting the right atoms. Now take a neutron and a proton. Protons and neutrons are held together in the nucleus of an atom by the strong nuclear force, which is the strongest of the four forces of physics.

If the nuclear force is too strong, the protons and neutrons in the universe will find themselves stuck to other protons and neutrons, which means we have a universe devoid of Hydrogen.

Hydrogen is the element composed of the bachelor proton. Without Hydrogen, there's no life chemistry. It's impossible to conceive of life chemistry without Hydrogen.

On the other hand, if we make the nuclear force slightly weaker, none of the protons and neutrons will stick together. All of the protons and neutrons will be bachelors, in which case the only element that would exist in the universe would be Hydrogen, and it's impossible to make life if all we've got is Hydrogen.

How sensitive must this strong nuclear force be designed for life to exist? It's so sensitive that if we were to make this force 3/10 of 1% stronger or 2% weaker, life would be impossible at any time in the universe.

Mass of the Proton and Neutron

We also have a problem with the protons and the neutrons themselves. The neutron is 0.138% more massive than the proton. Because of this, it takes a little more energy for the universe to make neutrons, as compared to protons. That's why in the universe of today we have seven times as many protons as neutrons.

If the neutron were 1/10th of 1% less massive than what we observe, then the universe would make so many neutrons that all of the matter in the universe would very quickly collapse into neutron stars and black holes, and life would be impossible.

If we made the neutron 1/10th of 1% more massive than what we observe, then the universe would make so few neutrons, that there wouldn't be enough neutrons to make Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, etc. These are the elements that are essential for life. So, we must delicately balance that mass to within 1/10 th of 1%, or life is impossible.

Electrons

With electrons we see an even more sense of the balance. In order for life to exist in the universe, the force of gravity must be 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0... (10 to the 40th power) times weaker than the force of electromagnetism. It's essential that the force of gravity be incredibly weak compared to the other three forces of physics.

Gravity

Yet planets, stars and galaxies will not form unless gravity is dominant in the universe, so the universe must be set up in such a way that the other forces of physics cancel out and leave gravity, the weakest of the forces, dominant.

It's necessary for the universe to be electrically neutral. The numbers of the positively charged particles must be equivalent to the numbers of negatively charged particles or else electromagnetism will dominate gravity, and stars, galaxies and planets will never form. If they don't form, then clearly life is impossible.

The numbers of electrons must equal the numbers of protons to better than one part of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0... (10 to the 37 th power). That number is so large that it's difficult for laymen to get a handle on it. So I compare that number with another very large number - the national debt.

The National Debt

The national debt stands at $5,000,000,000,000. One way to visualize this is to imagine we cover one square mile of land with dimes piles 17 inches high. We can pay off the entire national debt with a pile of dimes 17 inches high in one square mile.

That's truly a lot of dimes. Out national debt problem is serious. But to get 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0... we would have to cover the entire North American continent with dimes, but 17 inches high won't do.

We'd have to cover the entire North American continent from here all the way to the moon. That's a 250,000-mile high pile of dimes covering 10,000,000 square miles, and you'd have to do that with a billion North American continents from here all the way to the moon. That is one chance in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0... (10 to the 37 th power).

To give you an idea, imagine that in those piles of billions of dimes, there's one dime colored red. If you were to randomly shuffle your way through those billions of dimes blindfolded, and you choose one dime, the odds that you would pick up that one red dime is one chance in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0... .

God's Fine-Tuning vs. Man's Fine-Tuning

Another way of looking at this incredible fine-tuning of the universe in this one characteristic is to compare it with the very best that we humans have achieved. It's not built yet, but towards the end of this year, a machine will come online at Cal Tech. This machine will have the capacity to make measurements to within one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 to the 23rd power). The best machine man has ever designed.

But the very best machine that man has ever designed, with all of our money, technology and education, falls one hundred trillion times short of the level of fine-tuning that we see in just this one characteristic of the universe.

Purposefully, I didn't choose the best example. In my book, The Creator and the Cosmos, I describe two other characteristics of the universe that are much more fine-tuned than the balance of electrons to protons. Some of these characteristics reveal more than what I've described here.

If the universe is fine-tuned in one part to the 10 to the 37th power, one part in 10 to the 40th power and one part in 10 to the 55th power on three different characteristics, then that tells us that God must be personal; that He's not only transcendent, he's personal!

God: 100 Trillion Trillion Times More Precise than Man

Why do we say this? Because only a person is capable of fine-tuning to the degree that we've observed, and that person must be orders of magnitude more intelligent and creative than we human beings. One hundred trillion times more intelligent and creative than we human beings, just based on that one characteristic. But he's also creative and loving.

Earth: An Insignificant Speck?

When I was a young man, questioning the holy books of the religions of the world, I knew God must exist because of the Big Bang. There's a beginning, there must be a beginner. But I doubted that God was personal and caring because I felt that planet Earth was just an insignificant speck in the eyes of a God that created a hundred trillion stars. What could we matter to such an awesome God?

Mass of the Universe

Astronomers have discovered that the total mass of the universe acts as a catalyst for nuclear fusion and the more massive the universe is, the more efficiently nuclear fusion operates in the cosmos. If the universe is too massive, the mass density too great, then very quickly all the matter in the universe is converted from Hydrogen into elements heavier than iron, which would render life impossible because the universe would be devoid of Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, etc.

If the universe has too little mass, then fusion would work so inefficiently that all that the universe would ever produce would be Hydrogen, or Hydrogen plus a small amount of Helium. But there again, the Carbon and Oxygen we need for life would be missing.

What does this tell me about the Creator? That God so loved the human race that he went to the expense of building one hundred billion stars and carefully shaped and crafted those hundred billion trillion stars for the entire age of the universe, so that for this brief moment in time, we could have a nice place to live.

It's the same logic that my five and eight year old sons use on me. They measure my love for them by how much money I spend on the gifts that I buy for them. We can use the same kind of logic to draw the conclusion that the God who created the universe must love we human beings very much, given how much he spent on our behalf.

We live in a Special Solar System, Too

We can extend this argument of design from the universe to the solar system itself. When we look at the solar system, we discover that we have a heavenly body problem. It's not that easy to get the right galaxy.

Life can only happen on late born stars. If it's a first or second-generation star, then life is impossible because you don't yet have the heavy elements necessary for life chemistry. There's a narrow window of time in the history of the universe when life can happen.

If the universe is too old or too young, life is impossible. Only spiral galaxies produce stars late enough in their history that they can take advantage of the elements that are essential for life history, and only 6% of the galaxies in our universe are spiral galaxies. Of those 6%, you must go with galaxies that produce all of the elements that are essential for life. It's not that easy.

Besides Hydrogen and Helium, the other elements are made in the cores of super giant stars. Super giant stars burn up quickly; they're gone in a just a few million years. When they go through the final stages of burning up their fuel, they explode ashes into outer space, and future generations of stars will absorb those ashes.

Births & Deaths of Multiple Stars Required to have Metals in Earth's Crust

When those stars go through their burning phase, they will take that heavy element ash material. This time when they explode, they make a whole bunch of material, capable of forming rocky planets and supporting life chemistry.

But we want these supernovae exploding early in the history of the galaxy. We don't want them going off now. If the star Cereus goes Super Nova, we're in serious trouble because it's only eight light years away. It would exterminate life on our planet.

We observe in our galaxy that there was a burst of Super Nova explosions early in its history, but it tapered off to where it isn't a threat to life that is now in existence. The Super Nova explosions took place in the right quantity and in the right locations so that life could happen here on Earth.

What does location have to do with it? Life is impossible in the center of our galaxy, or in the heel of our galaxy. It's only possible at a distance 2/3 from the center of our galaxy.

Mormon Astronomy - Accurate or not?

That's why I'm not a Mormon. Mormons tell us that life originated on a master planet right smack at the center of our galaxy. That's probably also why I've never met a Mormon astronomer.

The stars at the center of our galaxy are jammed so tightly together that the mutual gravity would destroy the planetary orbits. Moreover, their synchrotron radiation would be destructive to life molecules. But we don't want to be too far away from the center, either. If we get too far away, then there aren't enough heavy elements from the exploded remains of supernovae to enable life chemistry to proceed.

There's one life essential element that the supernovae do not make, however, and that's Fluorine. Fluorine is made only on the surfaces of white dwarf binaries. A white dwarf is a burned out star. It's like a cinder in a fireplace, just glowing.

Orbiting this white dwarf is a star that hasn't yet exhausted its nuclear fuel. It's an ordinary star, like our Sun. The white dwarf has enough mass relative to the ordinary star orbiting around it that it is capable of pulling mass off of the surface of the ordinary star and dragging it down so that it falls on its surface. When that material falls on the surface of the while dwarf, it ignites some very interesting nuclear reactions that produce Fluorine.

We need a white dwarf binary whose gravitational interactions between the white dwarf and the ordinary star are such that a strong enough stellar wind is sent from the white dwarf to blast the Fluorine beyond the gravitational pull of both stars, putting it into outer space, so that future generations of stars can absorb it. Then we have enough Fluorine for life chemistry.

A Trillion Galaxies - but as far as physicists know, only ours can support life

Two American astrophysicists concluded about a year ago that rare indeed is the galaxy that has the right number of this special kind white dwarf binary pair in the right location, occurring at the right time, so that life can exist today. The universe contains a trillion galaxies. But ours may be the only one that has the necessary conditions for life to exist.

The right star is needed. We can't have a star any bigger than our Sun. The bigger the star, the more rapidly and erratically it burns its fuel. Our Sun is just small enough to keep a stable enough flame for a sufficient period of time to make life possible. If it were any bigger, we couldn't have life on planet Earth. If it were any smaller, we'd be in trouble, too.

Smaller stars are even more stable than our star, the Sun, but they don't burn as hot. In order to keep our planet at the right temperature necessary to sustain life, we'd have to bring the planet closer to the star.

Tidal Forces

The physicists in the audience realize that when you bring a planet closer to its star, the tidal interaction between the star and the planet goes up to the inverse fourth power to the distance separating them. For those of you who are not physicists, that means that all you have to do is bring that planet ever so much closer to the star, and the tidal forces could be strong enough to break the rotational period.

That's what happened to Mercury and Venus. Those planets are too close to the Sun; so close that their rotational periods have been broken, from several hours to several months.

Earth is just barely far enough away to avoid that breaking. We have a rotation period of once every 24 hours. If we wait much longer, it will be every 26 or 28 hours, because the Earth's rotation rate is slowing down.

Going back in history, we can measure the time when the Earth was rotating every 20 hours. When the Earth was rotating once every 20 hours, human life was not possible. If it rotates once every 28 hours, human life will not be possible. It can only happen at 24 hours.

Speed of Earth's Rotation

If the planet rotates too quickly, you get too many tornadoes and hurricanes. If it rotates too slowly, it gets too cold at night and too hot during the day. We don't want it to be 170 degrees during the day, nor do we want it to be below –100 at night, because that's not ideal for life.

We don't want lots of hurricanes and tornadoes, either. What we currently have is an ideal situation, and God plays this. He created us here at the ideal time.

We need the right Earth. If the Earth is too massive, it retains a bunch of gases such as Ammonia, Methane, Hydrogen and Helium in its atmosphere. These gases are not acceptable for life, at least, not for advanced life. But if it's not massive enough, it won't retain water. For life to exist on planet Earth, we need a huge amount of water, but we don't need a lot of ammonia and methane.

Remember high school chemistry? Methane's molecular weight 16, ammonia's molecular weight 17, water's molecular weight is 18. God so designed planet Earth that we keep lots of the 18, but we don't keep any of the 16 or the 17. The incredible fine-tuning of the physical characteristics of Earth is necessary for that.

Jupiter Necessary, too

We even have to have the right Jupiter. We wrote about this in our Facts and Faith newsletter a few issues back, but it was also discovered by American astrophysicists just this past year. Unless you have a very massive planet like Jupiter, five times more distant from the star than the planet that has life, life will not exist on that planet.

It takes a super massive planet like Jupiter, located where it is, to act as a shield, guarding the Earth from comic collisions. We don't want a comet colliding with Earth every week. Thanks to Jupiter, that doesn't happen.

What these astrophysicists discovered in their models of planetary formation was that it's a very rare star system indeed that produces a planet as massive as Jupiter, in the right location, to act as such a shield.

We Even Need the Right Moon

The Earth's moon system is that of a small planet being orbited by a huge, single moon. That huge, single moon has the effect of stabilizing the rotation axis of planet Earth to 23½ degrees. That's the ideal tilt for life on planet Earth.

The axis on planet Mars moves through a tilt from zero to 60 degrees and flips back and forth. If that were to happen on Earth, life would be impossible. Thanks to the Moon, it's held stable at 23 ½ degrees.

Just as with the universe, in the case of the solar system, we can attach numbers to these. In this case, I've chosen to be extremely conservative in my estimates. I would feel justified in sticking a few zeros between the decimal point and the one. I would feel justified in making this 20 percent, 10 percent, for example, and on down the line.

We Even Need the Right Number of Earthquakes

I've got so many characteristics here, and I let the Californians know that you have to have the right number of earthquakes. Not too many, not too few, or life is not possible. I share them with my wife, who doesn't like earthquakes, but I just tell her that when you feel a good jolt, that's when you have to thank God for his perfect providence.

At Least 41 Fine-Tuned Characteristics, to have One Planet that Supports Life

The bottom line to all of this is that we have 41 characteristics of the solar system that must be fine-tuned for life to exist. But even if the universe contains as many planets as it does stars, which is a gross overestimate in my opinion, that still leaves us with less than one chance in a billion trillion that you'd find even one planet in the entire universe with the capacity for supporting life.

This tells us that we're wasting valuable taxpayer money looking for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Worse than that, we're wasting valuable telescope time. In the words of William Proxmyer, “It would be far wiser looking for intelligent life in Washington than looking for it in other galaxies.”

Planet Earth: Not an Accident

It also tells us that God wasn't wandering throughout the vastness of the cosmos saying, “Wow, that's the best one, I'll use that”. No. With odds this remote, we must realize that God especially designed and crafted, through miraculous means, planet Earth, so that it would support life and human beings. Planet Earth is not an accident; it is a product of divine design.

I would also say that's true of life on Earth. The fossil record testifies of life beginning on planet Earth 3.8 billion years ago. Over those 3.8 billion years, we have more and more species of greater and greater complexity and greater and greater diversity. But there's no fossil tree. We have no evidence for the horizontal branches.

Peculiarities in the Fossil Record

All we have is evidence that a certain species exists for a certain period of time without significant change, which then goes extinct to be replaced at a different time with a radically different species, with no connection from the previous species to the next one.

What the textbooks don't mention is that there's been a reversal of this fossil tree; it's only true up until the creation of man. Since the creation of man, the whole thing reverses. As time proceeds, we have fewer and fewer species with less and less diversity and complexity, and it's the land mammals that are being impacted in the worst way.

There were 30,000 land mammals on planet Earth when God created Adam and Eve. There are only 15,000 remaining today. In just a few thousand years, 15,000 species of mammals have disappeared.

Admittedly, man has a lot to do with that.

As Paul and Ann Erlich pointed out in their book on extinctions, though, even if we were to get rid of every vestige of humanity and civilization on planet Earth, a minimum of one species would still become extinct every year. How many species do we see appearing?

No New Species

Paul and Ann Erlich say we have yet to document the appearance of a single animal species in the world of nature, and in the vast majority in the world of species, we cannot even detect any genetic movement. It's a virtual zero.

The Bible offers the perfect explanation for this. For six days (periods of time), God created. On the seventh day, he rested. For six days, he replaced the species that were going extinct with more complex and diverse species. For six days, he created through special, miraculous means, the evidence of which we clearly see in the fossil record.

But the Bible tells us that when He created Eve, He ceased from his work of creating new species of life. God is at rest. We're now in the seventh day, where God is resting from his work of creating. All we see today is the natural processes. The natural processes tell us that the planet is heading to a culmination in death.

When Will God Create Again?

Revelation 21 tells us that the very instant that God conquers the problem of evil in man, he will create again. There is an eighth day of creation coming. It's exciting to think about the fact that God may have many weeks of creation planned for the future. We're simply through the first week.

Can you imagine what's going to happen in the second, third of fourth week, etc? It would be exciting news if we could be a part of that work with him.

Creation vs. Evolution?

Whenever I discuss this whole issue of creation evolution, everyone wants to talk about what we know the least about - the origin of man. You know the story. We begin with a primitive bipedal primate species, and wind up with an advanced character.

The truth of the matter is that the evidence of the bipedal primates that God created before Adam and Eve fills only one coffin full of bones. We don't have a lot of evidence. It's not like the dinosaurs. In no case are any of those bi-pedaled primate finds more than 30% complete; that's the most complete fossil find that we have.

Fossil Record: Not a Fraud!

Some Christians like to claim that this is all fraudulent, but that's not true. There are bones. They can be seen in museums and they are definitely bipedal species. But they existed long ago. They are extinct, and there's no relationship between those bipedal primates and human beings.

The Bible tells us that God created only one species of life on planet Earth that is spiritual in nature: Adam and Eve, and their descendents. All other species of life are either body only, or body and soul, like the birds and the mammals. Only the human species is comprised of body, soul and spirit.

You can go to any secular anthropologist and ask him to provide you with the most ancient evidence for spirit expression. They will confess that the most ancient evidence dates back to only 8,000 to 24,000 years ago. In the form of a moral code or religious relics, the most ancient finds have been these primitive Venus Idol figurines from 10,000 years ago.

What's the Biblical date of the creation of Adam and Eve? The genealogies are useless for giving us the creation date of the universe or the Earth, but they are effective for giving us the creation date of Adam and Eve. It was the very last event on the sixth day of creation.

I should say only slightly effective because there are gaps in the genealogy. The genealogies of Luke and Matthew contain names that are not in Genesis 5, but the best Hebrew scholars that I've spoken to say that it's about a factor of ten.

When Did Man Appear?

Six thousand to 60,000 years ago, God created Adam and Eve. That 6,000 to 60,000 encompasses the secular date of 8,000 to 24,000. Even at this most controversial level, we have so little data to work with that we see fundamental agreement between scientific evidence and the words of the Bible.

I close with a quote from Revelation 3:8, “See I place before you an open door that no one can shut.” In my book, The Creator and the Cosmos, I have a whole chapter filled with quotes from astronomers and physicists in response to this evidence.

Fine Tuning of the Universe: Proof Positive of the Existence of God

Let me read you one from the British cosmologist, Edward Harrison, who says, “Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God. The design argument of William Paley updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence for theistic design. Take you choice: blind chance that requires an infinite number of universes, or design that requires only one.”

Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline towards the theistic or the design argument, and for good reason. It's because the appeal to an infinite number of universes where ours by pure chance out of that infinite number takes on the conditions essential for life, is committing the gamblers fallacy.

To Assume it Happened By Chance = "The Gambler's Fallacy"

You're assuming the benefit of an infinite sample size, when you can only provide evidence for one. Let me give you an example. If I were to flip a coin 10,000 times and it were to come up heads 10,000 times in a row, you could conclude that the coin has been fixed with a purpose to come up heads. That's the rational bet.

But the irrational better would say that conceivably, two to the 10,000 coins could exist out there. And if those two to the 10,000 coins are like my coin, but all getting different results than I see here, then this coin could be fair.

It's the gamblers fallacy because you have no proof of the existence of those other coins or that they take on similar characteristics of the coin that you're flipping, and you have no evidence that those coins are producing different results.

The equations of General Relativity guarantee that we will never discover another universe. God may have created two, but we'll never know about it because the equations of General Relativity tell us that the Space-Time manifold of universe A will never overlap the space-time manifold of universe B.

Other Universes? No Way to Know

That means we will be forever ignorant about the possibility of other universes, because the sample size will always be one. Therefore, the appeal to infinite chances rather than to the God of the Bible is the gambler's fallacy.

Q&A from the Audience

Moderator: Okay, I know what you're thinking. Why didn't he tell us something that we don't already know? Right? Why do we keep doing all this mental cotton candy stuff, why don't we get to something deep?

Actually, I'm sure there are a lot of questions, so I'm going to make my way around with the mike, and I'll try to get around to the sides. We want to give you the chance to ask Dr. Ross some questions, and we'll do that for about 20 minutes.

If we have any spiritual seekers here, who have some questions, I'm especially interested in your perspective.

Why do we need earthquakes? Can you explain that a little more?

Hugh: Before I begin, let me just say that if you think of a question two hours from now, the ministry I work for, Reasons to Believe, maintains a daily hotline. You are welcome to call, two hours per day, to ask your questions. The number is [phone], 5:00pm to 7:00pm Pacific Time. You are also welcome to write, and we'll respond to your questions in writing. The service is available, free of charge, to anyone who'd like to take advantage of it. [Website is www.reasons.org – ed.]

In response to your question about earthquakes, without earthquakes or plate tectonic activity, nutrients that are essential for life on land would erode off of the continents and accumulate in the oceans. After awhile, life would be impossible on land, though you'd still have life in the oceans.

Thanks to earthquake activity, that stuff in the oceans gets recycled into new continents. We see here on earth precisely the right number and intensity of earthquakes to maintain that recycling, but not to such a degree that it's impossible for us to live in cities.

If it's any comfort to you, the risk of earthquake damage here in Chicago is greater than it is in Los Angeles . But that's only because we have stiffer building codes.

How do you account for the difference in time as described in Genesis for creation in a week, versus the vast span of time you describe since the Big Bang?

Hugh: You need to get a copy of my book Creation and Time that was just released a few days ago. In it, I point out that the idea that the days of creation in Genesis One are six consecutive 24-hour periods arose from the King James translation, not from church history or tradition.

Augustine & other Church Fathers: "Day" in Genesis is a long period of time

If you read the early fathers of the church, the vast majority of them adopted the view that these days of creation were long time periods, not 24-hour periods.

Why King James? The English language is the largest vocabulary language that man has ever invented. There are 4,000,000 nouns in the English language. The Hebrew language, by contrast, is one of the most noun poor languages that man has ever invented.

English vs. Hebrew

So, the English reader has a difficult time appreciating that in the Hebrew Old Testament, there are very few words to describe periods of time. The Hebrew word Yom, for “day long” can mean 12 hours, 24 hours or a long time period. You have to examine the context, to determine which of the three definitions to use.

Incidentally, we have the same problem with the word “heaven”, for which the Hebrew language has three different definitions. In Genesis One, you have to examine the context in order to determine which heaven is being used in which place. That's why Paul referred to the third heaven. So you'd know which one he was talking about.

Day 7: No Evening & Morning

I didn't know Hebrew when I first read the Bible. But I immediately recognized that they must have been talking about a longer period of time, because there is no evening or morning for the seventh day. Notice that the first six days are closed off with an evening and a morning. The seventh day is not, and there's a good reason for that.

When you read into the Bible, Psalm 95 and Hebrews 4, you discover that God's seventh day, the day of rest, is still proceeding, through the present and on into the future. Live your lives so that you will enter God's seventh day, day of rest.

Seventh Day is Now

We're still in the seventh day. If the seventh day is a long time period, then the first six days must likewise be long time periods. I also saw as a 17 year old that the fact that we're in the seventh day answers the enigma o

Answer 14

Well, I firmly beleive that faith and science are capable of coexisting.  There is no way to prove God doesn't exist, and even if you meet God, a true skeptic might think they are hallucinating, or think it was just some technoloical trick.  So, there is no way to prove there is a God either.  Perhaps that's why it is so aptly named "faith."  

On the other hand, I don't think the centuries and generations of trying to find out how the universe came into existence is necessarily on the wrong track either.  

I think there is a "middle ground" you and your family can make, if you and they are both open to each others views.  Perhaps, if you are willing to accept that there "might" be a God, and not flat out deny that possibility, they would be willing and understanding of your views on how the universe was formed.  Who knows, even if the big bang theory is 100% accurate, that doesn't prove that God didn't "create" the big bang, right?

It's a highly philosophical question, and many people just a few centuries ago used to get burned at the stake for being proponents of the scientific method, if it conflicted with the teachings of the faith.

Answer 15

it sounds like you went way over the top. why did you basicly belittle everything they hold dear? you could have handled it differently.

it sounds like both sides said thing you didnt mean, so you should both apologize. and maybe you should take the initiative.

Answer 16

ok now think for min......who created u... now u would say it was a chance that u  came into being...orrr u were the part of big bang theory...like for example if some says the car came by a chance or by a so called theory...so u would probably say...this complicated car with every part right into its place came automaticly...like see the robots with artificial inteligence ...so one can say they came of their own...so it would make u say him stupid....dont take examples of the universe level instead only make yr self thnk of yr own body....each and every part ...yr brain...yr 4 chambers heart with so many valves working on thier exat timings....frm where that complicated code of yr body came which doesnt allows yr nose to grow as long as yr arm....any one with habit of thinking would noy say IT JUST happened......today night think about it with no hard feelings frm my side.their no such think which came of it,s own in this universe....see things around u....who made them

Answer 17

God is real and you have picked the most dangerous time not to believe for we are in the shadow of the apocalypse.

3 ways to prove God exists:

I. First: You exist.

If matter-energy can NOT be created, but here we all are 'existing'. This implies the very hand of God leaving every atheist staring in the mirror asking themselves, "But how?"

II. Second: Big Bang and other cosmological evidence.

If you truly understand quantum mechanics then you will know that the Big Bang theory requires a creator by fiat. Think of the universe in reverse until it's small enough to be completely described by quantum mechanics alone. In order for the universe to start unfolding into what we see now, our universe's specific wave function had to be brought into existence as a certain possibility out of an infinite number of other possible wave functions that had to collapse or at least decohere. At this fuzzy nanoscopic beginning, this required a 'Prime Observer' to enable this and set the expansion of the universe into motion and those initial conditions became the very facets of physical law. What we refer to as this finely tuned 'reality'. This need for an 'observer' comes from the basic quantum mechanical concept known as Shrodinger's Cat. Also, we must remember that the universe is being said to have come from nowhere which implies an act of 'creation'. This expansion of the universe is also alluded to 11 times in the Bible: Job 9:8 ; Psalm 104:2 ; Isaiah 40:22 ; Isaiah 42:5 ; Isaiah 44:24 ; Isaiah 45:12 ; Isaiah 48:13 ; Isaiah 51:13 ; Jeremiah 10:12 ; Jeremiah 51:15 ; Zechariah 12:1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6d...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_functi...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoherence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang

The Bible also alludes to the soon coming Big Rip:

Revelation 6:14 ; Isaiah 34:4 ; 2 Peter 3:10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_rip

III. Third: The fulfillment of hundreds of Biblical prophecies.

For instance here is one that was prophesied almost 2 millennia ago, yet has manifested itself now. Revelation 13:16-18

http://www.verichipcorp.com/

To see one become fulfilled soon in 2 Thessalonians 2:10-13 ,

google/youtube: "Project Bluebeam"

Type III 'Aliens' and fake 'messiahs' just in time for 2012!  Many will be fooled...

Later, ask yourself how we knew in advance.

Answer 18

You said to your family that scientifically God do not exists but just ask to one of a scientist yourself.

Because you are not only one who thinks God´s not there but many other leatherheads are also there.

Now you are thinking that God is not there and the result is there, you are not happy, your granny cries whole day, parents call you devil.

Just believe me to believe in God once!!! And Check out the result then!!

Answer 19

<<What should I do?>>

You could try to relax a bit.  Just because you don't believe in this or that, there's no reason to try and tell other people not to believe it.  Respect their right to hold their views.  Eventually, perhaps they'll do the same for you.

Answer 20

Its ok Your family will get over it! So hows it feel being the devil?

Answer 21

there has to be a god Crater because we can only break this down so far and some one or some thin had to start it all in motion i don't need to see a baseball bat to know it hit me in the head man

Answer 22

Delvin .    Is that a made up nick name..or your Christian name ? Sounds kinda strange to me.  It has devil written all over it .

No offense intended !

Answer 23

well... wow brave... that is a RELIGIOUS family you said...

and they call you D****... is that really true that you don't believe?

well if it's true why?... are you feeling depressed now? I think you are, you said your family hates you...

that's gotta hurt or something... you know whatever I tell even if I read to you the whole Bible and on yourself you still don't believe, I think I can't do anything to make you believe... It's up to you, That's why God( if you believe...) gave us free will, He lets us make choices... now I think you should explain to them that they should respect what you believe and let you make your own choice... give them time tough...

well goodluck on you...