DeeGeesLifeBlog ~ Life as Art ~ Or is it Heart?

The atheist relies not on an experience but on an idea, or pseudo-idea, of God: if God existed, He would have such and such characteristics; but if He had those characteristics He could not allow etc. His judgment of incompatibility, in fact, is based on a judgment of implications. Or rather, what he wants to say is that if the word ‘God’ has any meaning – of which, indeed, we cannot be certain – it can be applied only to a being who is both completely good and completely powerful. ~ Gabriel Marcel

Dr. Hugh Ross has been mentioned within these pages on numerous occasions; Christian physicist, astronomer, and author with a terrific blog, Reasons to Believe, through which he and his colleagues illustrate how science and Christianity can be very compatible.

More than that, Dr. Ross uses science to demonstrate the truths of Christian faith.

The Ring Galaxy with a span of 100,000 light years, is 600 million light years away from Earth…

In his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) famously reasoned for the existence of God by pointing to “the chains of effecting causes that exist in the world. Things here are produced by their causes; these causes in turn were produced by their causes, and so on. Ultimately, there must be a first cause….”

During a Reasons to Believe conference a few years ago and in answer to a question posed to him from one of the attendees referencing the above St. Thomas Aquinas quote  (“how could you say God just existed without something creating him? I’d like to hear your answer on that”)  Dr. Ross posited this:

“Cause-and-effect can only happen in our Universe of space and time. For if we say that X caused Y, X must have happened some time before Y.

“But the Creator of the Universe cannot Himself be contained in that Universe. That means the Creator is outside our Universe of space and time, which in turn means that the Creator, the First Cause, is outside of time and, therefore, has no cause.

“As St. Thomas Aquinas put it:

“Where there is motion, there is a mover, and ultimately a first mover, itself unmoved. This is God … Ultimately, there must be a first cause which is itself uncaused. This is God.“[end]

The question of course, is truly beyond the extent of human comprehension. How could God the Supreme Being always have existed? The answer is unknowable in this life. All I know is that the Universe – right there in front of us – is incomprehensible as it is!

I believe that many of us when we were young, and familiar with, say, The Twilight Zone series, wondered at least one time: Why am I in the body I am in? Why was I born at the time I was? Why not in some other century? Why not to some other parents?

Why is God God? Why am I me? And why does God have the prior claim?

Perhaps Gabriel Marcel (quoted at the start) has a partial answer: We are not “problems” but, actually, “mysteries.” And the only thing we can do is participate in the mystery.

For me, the fact of a Supreme Being is not the problem. The Universe, on the other hand, more than 99.9% empty space, is literally, nothing. The stars and planets in it had to have a Cause by an Intelligence. But my natural reason stops right there. This Intelligence is a Divine Person. But I cannot know that from my own human reason; I can only know it by way of Revelation. And Revelation must be true, because there is nothing in Nature or mere human existence that could have dreamt it up.

Repeat – an entity not constrained by time need not have been created. 

The best cryptic answer I’ve found to date exists in this clip of a 2004 debate in Daytona Beach, Florida, where Kent Hovind went up against atheists Jim Strayer, Luther Reisbig, and Reinhold Schlieter. This clip is a powerful three and a half minutes of Hovind answering Schlieter and his question. Absolutely stunning!

For those interested, the full two and a half hour debate is readily available on YouTube.

Participate. In. The. Mystery.