THE EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD PART 2

 

In our last lesson, we began looking at the external evidence for the existence of God. I started out by defining what the scientific method is and how dangerous it can be when we rest all our hope on it because anything not proven by it cannot exist, which rules out God. I also talked about how the origin of the universe and humankind by means of evolution cannot be properly labeled, a hypothesis, theory, or a fact no matter how many scientists try to push that false notion.

 

We discussed the cosmological argument, which states that every creation must have a creator because our universe did not come from nothing. Then we begin to briefly look at the teleological argument, which states that every design must have a designer. We looked at several facts about our sun, earth, and moon and how everything is just right so that life on earth can exist. Though we only looked at a few of these facts, in my opinion, these were enough to show that there is a specific design of the placement of our planet and how it moves. The odds of just one of the details we looked at happening by accident would be high, but when you consider all the complexity of just our galaxy, there is no way it all happened by accident by means of some explosion.

 

In our lesson today, we will look at some more of the details about the design of our earth to show just that, that it was designed.

 

The Earth has a protective blanket known as the atmosphere. It is composed of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and .03% of carbon dioxide. The rest is made up of water vapors and other gases. This balance is essential to life on earth. For example the atmosphere on Venus is too thick to sustain life and Mar’s is to thin.

 

  • Our atmosphere scatters light waves to cause them to be more evenly distributed.
  • It captures solar heat so that it does not escape too rapidly, which helps regulate our temperatures. Without an atmosphere, the nights would become very cold as soon as that sun went down.
  • As mentioned in our last lesson, the ozone layer helps protect us from harmful UV rays from the sun.   
  • It also causes falling objects like meteors to burn up before they hit the earth. Without the friction caused by our atmosphere, we would get hit with these meteors every day.
  • The upper part of our atmosphere contains ions which makes it possible for us to have radio communication.
  • Our atmosphere has 5 layers. The stratosphere is a 30 mile stretch where there is no weather so our jets will fly in this layer to avoid any of the weather made below it.

 

You tell me, does our atmosphere sound like it happened by accident or does it appear to be designed for the earth and its life?

 

I also mentioned in our last lesson that the precision of our universe allows us to predict to the day when astronomical events will happens such as solar eclipses and it allows us to make a rocket land on the moon or other planets right where were we want them to.

 

Well, consider this bit of history. Before 1846 Neptune was unknown because it could not be seen with then naked eye.

 

In the early 1800’s two scientist, John Adams in Great Britain, and Jean Leverrier in France, working independently, had noticed strange behavior in the orbital movements of the planet Uranus. They surmised that perhaps the gravitational pull of some unknown planet was affecting Uranus.


Working strictly on paper using mathematical calculations, each man, unaware of the other’s work, predicted where the invisible planet should be. In 1846, Johann Galle of the Berlin Observatory made a search for the hidden body. He discovered it less than one degree from the predicted location.

 

This historical fact emphasizes the mathematical precision of our universe, which offers more proof that it had a precise design. Who was the great mathematician that put this all together? Well, I know who it was, it was God.

 

One unbelieving scientist, Dr. Edward Friedkin, a physicist, has confessed:

 

“It is hard for me to believe that everything out there is just an accident … it seems likely to me that this particular universe we have is a consequence of something which I would call intelligent.”  

 

I really like it when I see scientists like this man admit that while science is very helpful to us and has caused us to learn about a lot of things, it does not give us answers to everything including the origin of our universe or the nature of an eternal being like God. As Solomon wrote in:

 

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.

 

I have a lot more evidence to present to you from other areas such as our oceans, the human body, and animals, but for the rest of our time today, I am going to point out some of the scientific foreknowledge from Scripture that goes hand and hand with what we have learned from astronomy.

 

Astronomy is the study of the planets and the stars together with their movements and relations to one another.

 

 

 

The Innumerability of the Stars (Jer. 33:22; Gen. 22:17).

 

Jeremiah 33:22 'As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the descendants of David My servant and the Levites who minister to Me.' "

 

This scripture tells us that the stars cannot be numbered just like the sand cannot be numbered.  Since ancient times people have been fascinated by the stars, and many astronomers have tried to count them.  In 150 B.C. Hipparchus estimated that there were less than 3000 stars. Three centuries later Ptolemy counted 1,056. According to our modern day scientists, we can see sea around 4000 stars with the naked eye and there is an estimated 100 septillion stars in space that we cannot see with our naked eye. Ironically this is their same estimate of the number of grains of sand we have. Way back in the time of Jeremiah before we had the ability to see beyond our naked eye, God reveled to us that the stars could not be numbered. Even more impressive than this is the fact of what God can do according to,

 

Psalm 147:4 He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name.  5 Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite.

 

Not only can God count the stars He knows them by name.

 

1 Corinthians 15:41 There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.

 

Now I want you to remember even though this was being written in the 1st century, they still did not have the technology to explore the stars with any detail because all they had was their own two eyes. Now I want you to go out tonight and look up at the sky and observe the stars. When I did this, I could tell that some stars were brighter than others while others seemed slightly smaller or larger than others. But many of the stars to the naked look exactly the same. This within itself tells me that when Paul wrote this that it wasn’t from his own observation but that he was given this information from God because just as the verse says every star differs from one another and not one is the same. We know that now, but there is no way Paul could have known that for sure without God’s help.

 

Another interesting scripture comes from:

 

Genesis 1:14 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years;  15 "and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so.  16 Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.  17 God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth,  18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

 

In these verses, Moses tells us that the sun the moon and the stars were designed to divide the day from night and were to be for signs and for seasons and days and for years. They were to provide light to the earth. But what I want to specifically point out is that the sun was considered to be the greater light and the moon the lesser light. What is significant about this is the fact the writer called the sun the greater light and not the greatest light.

 

Again, I ask you to make your own observation by just using your own two eyes. When you see the sun, it would appear to be the brightest object in our universe, but thanks to our high powered telescopes and modern technology we now know that there are many stars that are bigger and brighter than our sun. There is no way that Moses or anyone else living during that time could have know that, which tells me that God did not allow Moses to call the sun the greatest light. 

 

Now I want to share with you a passage that is used sometimes to show scientific foreknowledge:

                                                  

Psalm 89:35 Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David.  36 His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me.  37 Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.

 

In this passage, God refers to the seed of David as being like the moon in faithfulness. It is interesting that the Psalmists would refer to the moon as a witness.  Why a witness?  What does a witness do?  Does he not testify of something that he has seen or heard?  Likewise, the moon is a witness of the Sun’s light on the earth.  The moon itself contains no natural light source.  The light that the moon gives off is a reflection (witness) of the Sun’s light.

 

Now if this is what is being meant in our passage it gives another example of the scientific foreknowledge of the Bible. However this verse could simply be saying that the moon serves a witness in that it was created and established by God and if God can make the moon be established forever, he can certainly make the kingdom of David last forever as well. While we should be eager to find scientific foreknowledge in the Scriptures, we need to understand that sometimes there may be more than one possible meaning of the text like the one we just looked at.    

 

In Hebrews 11:3, the writer tells us that the worlds were framed by the word of God and

 

Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,

 

The Bible teaches us that the God made the Universe and that we have no excuse for not knowing that it was made by Him. Even if we didn’t have the Bible, we could tell that the Universe was created by someone because once you start seeing how mathematical precise our universe it should be clear that it had a designer. Some scientists cling to the Big Bang Theory. They believe that about 20 Billon years ago all matter existed in a small dense and hot mass called an “cosmic egg” that exploded 10 Billion years ago creating the universe as we know it. No one seems to know where this cosmic egg came from, so I guess you could say that haven’t been able to find the cosmic chicken yet. The Big Bang Theory has many problems that cannot be overcome.

 

For example, an explosion could never produce the precise universe that we live in. For instance, you cannot blow up a paper factory and make it produce a book. You cannot blow up a bunch of lumber and expect it to turn into a house. It just doesn’t make any sense.

 

For instance, when you explode a fire cracker its paper is shot in random directions and the same thing would have happened in space. There is no way that an explosion could have just accidentally produce planets and solar systems that are in perfect balance.  

 

As Morris states:

 

If the universe started with an explosion, one would expect that all matter-energy should have been propelled radially from the explosion center—consistent with the principle of angular momentum. It would not be expected that the universe would be characterized by the curving and orbiting motions that are commonly observed, e.g., the revolution of our earth around the sun (cf. Morris 1984, 150).

 

Now let’s look at a few more passages.

 

Isaiah 40:22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;

 

Isaiah tells us that the earth is a circle. This word “circle” in the Hebrew has the idea of roundness. Yet it has only been few centuries ago since some scientist thought the earth was flat. Men throughout antiquity thought that the earth was held up by Atlas or perhaps by four elephants standing on a giant turtle.”

 

While not all men in the ancient world believed some of these far-fetched views about how the world was held up, many did.

 

 As Dehoff notes, “The ancient Greeks and Romans were the most advanced peoples in their time, yet they believed that the earth was held in place by poles or by the neck of Atlas.  Others believed that Atlas had the earth on his shoulders.  Some said that the earth floated on water and should one go too far out on the sea he would surely perish”

 

It wasn’t until the 15th century that some brave souls set out to sea and sailed around the world proving that the earth was not flat but round. Yet we see that Isaiah knew this information a long time ago, which show the Bible to be correct once again.

 

Let’s take a look at one last one:

 

Job 9:8 who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea;  9 who made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south;

 

This verse is teaching us that God alone stretches out the heavens, but what I want to focus in on is the fact that God made this constellation known as Pleiades. Amos 5:8 declares this as well.

 

Job 38:31 "Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?

 

Here we find out that God is the one who has the power to bind the cluster of Pleiades.  Pleiades appears in November and is located above Orion’s left shoulder. Pleiades is also know as the 7 sisters. What is so awesome about this is the fact that the Bible speaks of Pleiades as being bound. Yet it has just been a recent discovery that the stars in Pleiades are gravitationally bound to one another.

 

It completely amazes me how the Bible has so much scientific foreknowledge even though that is not its purpose. Those who are skeptical of God’s  existence and the validity of the Bible obviously have not honestly considered how accurate the Bible is when it speaks about scientific information that could have not have been known by its writers.

 

Now I don’t expect anyone to believe in God based on one or to two instances where the Bible is correct on scientific foreknowledge information. However, I would expect someone to believe in God when they see that the Bible is correct over and over again with its scientific facts that could not possible of been known by its writers.

 

Also, when you consider that when the Bible does talks about scientific matters that it is never wrong, it should cause you to pay attention. I do not know of any other book in existence like the Bible that was written by around 40 different people from 3 different continents over a 1600 year period, yet when these writing are brought together to form the 66 books we have now, not only do they contain many facts about science that are true, these books do not contain any errors about science or history nor does the information they provide contradict each other. Instead, the entirety of the Bible flows from beginning to end in harmony.  

 

Personally, I love examining information like this because it deepens my faith and causes me take a step back and admire the infinite power of our God. As David states in,

 

Psalm 19:1  The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.  

 

Our God is an awesome God. In our next lesson, we will examine even more evidence for the existence of God.