Compiling God's Code

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. Stephen Hawking ¹

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.
C.S. Lewis ²

Is there a God?

Most people will give you a quick answer, either yes or no, and move on to something else. That question is pretty straight forward, but, and this is a big but, you ask someone why he or she believes there is a God, and you will quickly find that most people don’t know how to handle that question. I would venture to say that most people don’t even want that question tossed out there. I mean, what kind of question is that? Where do I, or anyone for that matter, even start with “why do you believe there is a God?”

It’s certainly a question that people tip-toe around, and it’s seldom asked at work or even in a group of close friends. We can all explain why we voted for a certain candidate, or why we drink our favorite beverage, or why we like our favorite TV show. You ask a guy who is the best quarterback that played the game of football, and you’ll get long discussions about why Joe Montana is the best or why Peyton Manning might be the best, but drop that God bomb in a crowded room, and you will probably find yourself very alone.

But, why not ask that question? It’s a valid question. You should be able to explain why you believe in God. I bet that, for life-long Christians, they may have never really pondered that question. Oh sure, they might have wondered, now and then, if God existed, but when push came to shove, they clung to the belief that God was up there, somewhere, in Heaven looking down on us. They believed in God for as long as they can remember. For them, God might be as much a part of their life as mom and dad.

Yet, for those people who have recently found God, they might be able to give an answer to the question. I don’t know though because I belong to the first group, but I have to figure that at one point, if someone didn’t believe in God and then did believe in God, there must be a reason for that decision.

Where am I leading with all this? I’m going to tell you why I believe in God because I can only say with certainty what I believe, and besides, I’m the one writing here. After reading why I believe, I hope this stirs the desire in your soul to question why you believe in God because when you get to the heart of the matter, only you can decide if there is a God.

For all of this, I’m not going to include any scripture in answering this question since the very essence of the bible stems from the belief that God exists, so I can’t use the bible to prove God’s existence. That would be like reading you the poem, “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to prove there is a Santa Claus. Instead, I’ve chosen to include thoughts from other folks out there so that we can see how others perceive God.

God connects us and our souls with the physical laws of the universe.

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents – the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts – i.e., Materialism and Astronomy – are mere accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.
C.S. Lewis ²

For me, God connects all that is separated.

I’ve been reading a good book. It’s taken me a while, not because of the book but more because of my life. I like it. The title is “The Mind of God.” The subject matter covers science and the laws and mathematics that make up this universe. It’s an older book, and when I mean older, it’s not ancient, but science moves fast, and a lot of the subject matter is already outdated, but the book is worth reading if you like that sort of thing.

The author covers God in the book and where he does or doesn’t fit into the universe. I haven’t finished reading the book, so I don’t know the author’s final take on whether God exists, but for the most part there are scientific and philosophic debates on his existence, and it seems to lean more towards a universe without a God. (After starting this, I’ve finished it, and the author leans toward a meaning to the universe but not the God of the Bible.)

I enjoy the arguments given in this book on why God could exist or why God doesn’t exist, but I have a problem with the debate, and that problem is placing God within a human-defined box – a set of rules, laws, or assumptions. (Yes, I know, again with the boxes.) And it’s just not scientists that do this; people who believe in God also put him in their pretty little belief-designed box, but I will save that discussion for another time.

Right now, I want to explore the concept that science could somehow prove God exists. I love science. I have Einstein’s “Relativity.” I have Hawking’s book, “A Brief History of Time.” I have several others that I’ve read and want to read. I love physics. I love mathematics. I love Calculus. And we all know I love computers (some might say more than people). I also know that scientists are full of themselves and think they can figure out anything, that all of this that we call our universe fits into a neat bundle of laws and rules and nothing more.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that God is also intertwined within those laws and that he is as much mathematics as he is love. But this is where I think that science doesn’t get it. I believe that there is more to life than what can be measured and calculated. There are parts immeasurable. Sure scientists would argue they just haven’t discovered those laws yet, but I also don’t think they are looking for them either. That part of the world is simply dismissed. I’m talking about what I call our “soul.” You can also add love, hate, fear, ghosts (yes, I have experienced paranormal activity), premonitions, déjà vu, and whatever else you want to put in the realm of the spiritual. I recently got to listen to someone discuss this area, and he made the same point – that this aspect of our world is dismissed by science and by theology.

So I believe that God exists within the laws (and I’m not talking about the laws of burning goats and splattering blood on alters, I’m talking about the laws that govern everything around us), but he will never be solely defined by those laws because he lives outside them as well; I believe that it’s hard to define an apple – an apple – if you don’t include all aspects of that apple not just the skin and pulp but all its core and the energy that exists within the seeds. The problem I find with so many people’s definition of God is that they refuse to recognize the core and energy within the seeds of God. But, see, those aspects of God and of us are hard to measure and are still completely a mystery to us. Just like science can reveal what builds my body (the cells, atoms, electrons, DNA, and all that matter), it can never reveal who I am.

I respect Dr. Hawking as a scientist, but I must disagree with him on his interpretation or lack thereof of God’s spirit, and I find that statement (the one at the beginning if you skipped over it) incredibly insulting. Our brains far exceed computers, at least for now, but I think for all of our existence, computers will never be an equal to our brain because to keep growing artificial intelligence we must first grow our knowledge and understanding of implementing that task. That keeps at least one human ahead of a computer.

What Dr. Hawking fails to acknowledge is that we are so much more than ones and zeros. Maybe he is incapable of feeling emotions, so therefore, he is unable to understand that aspect of being human. I don’t know. Science can’t explain why you suddenly start thinking of someone and then you get a phone call from them. You might call it pure coincidence, but then, you know you felt something. It’s just easier to deny it than recognize it.

God exist whether or not men may choose to believe in Him. The reason why many people do not believe in God is not so much that it is intellectually impossible to believe in God, but because belief in God forces that thoughtful person to face the fact that he is accountable to such a God.
Robert A. Laidlaw ³

And that lies at the heart of the problem for scientists and acknowledging God. It’s so much easier to say that God doesn’t exist than to believe and have a portion of their world that is incapable of being fully understood. Blind faith goes against their nature of proving all aspects of this universe.

For me, the more I read about how my body operates and how the universe runs on a small set of rules that are short and simple, the more I believe in God, and on the flipside of that, the older I get and experience humanity, our good and our bad, the more I believe in God. For me, combining the loving and forgiving God with the logical and mathematical God creates a spirit that encompasses all areas of my world. I like Albert Einstein’s take on God.

I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. ⁴

Is there a God? I believe so, but not just because my momma said so, but because having a God, answers, for me, why this collection of physical laws and human emotions functions so well together. I have no proof of God, and I don’t believe we will ever have proof, but that is okay, because that’s what faith is for; I will go more into that another day.

One other thing, why the photo of the beans? In that photo is a face. It’s plain as day once you find it, but if you’re not looking for it, you would never know it was there. And that’s the final piece of the question, “is there a God?” You have to be looking for him, and when you find him, you have to be open to what you discover. I think Joan Osburne said it best in the song “One of Us.” If God had a face, what would it look like? And would you want to see, if seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets?

What I want to know is why you believe there is a God? So, give it to me, and let’s see where it takes us.

10 “Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
Psalm 46:10
English Standard Version (ESV)

1. Stephen Hawking Interview with the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Laidlaw

4. G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930), quoted by D. Brian, Einstein: A Life , p. 186.