Nowadays, many people use science to say that God does not exist, that He did not create the universe. And yet, as science demonstrates, it takes even more faith to believe that the world happened by chance and was not created by God, than to believe that God is the one and only Creator of the universe. This is explained in the following article, posted in French on the website www.leverbe.com, reproduced with their kind permission:
by Simon Lessard
One day I asked an old gentleman, "How do you know whether God exists or not?" With a smirk, he took a small blade of grass between his fingers and said to me, "Look at this! All scientists on earth are not even able to do that!" Not stupid, the old gentleman!
Having a first knowledge of the existence of God is not very difficult.
Imagine that on the far side of the moon, we discover a fully automated factory of smartphones. Are we suddenly going to exclaim:
"Wow! It's amazing what chance has done!" Surely not! In a much more rational way, you'd be like, "Um, I imagine some people came here to build this factory."
Or, if you are walking on the beach and suddenly come across a wonderful sandcastle. Are we going to say to ourselves, "It's amazing what chance has done with the wind and the water?" Well no! You will rather say that a very intelligent and skillful person has surely been there.
So why, when we observe a cell, a tree, an eye or a man, which are all infinitely more complex than a sandcastle or a telephone, do we say that there it is completely different and that chance alone explains all this without any intelligence? However, it is obvious that nature is not an invention of men. Where does the world around us come from? Where do we come from?
Believing in chance as the cause of everything beautiful and organized in the world is basically less rational than thinking that a powerful and intelligent being called "God" is behind it all. Why? Because everything that has a complex order always comes from an intelligence. Whether it's a castle, a telephone, a novel, or a blade of grass!
By chance, if I shuffle a deck of four playing cards, they might fall in order: jack, queen, king, ace. But this is a very simple order. I have a one in 24 chance of that happening. But if I take a full deck of cards, what are the chances that all 52 cards will fall in order by chance?
It is so unlikely that even if we managed to stir very quickly, say once per second, it would take at least not 14 billion years, but 1 followed by 50 zeros times 14 billion years to arrive on average to this combination!
But, did you know that a single DNA code is like a deck of billions of cards? However, scientists estimate that our universe has existed for about 14 billion years. It is very, very, very little time to explain that chance can produce orders of such complexity.
It is, basically, mathematically so improbable that it is much more rational to think that there is another cause at the origin of all these beautiful things that we see.
In addition, according to the laws of physics, mixing increases entropy and promotes disorganization. In short, the more we stir, the less we build, the more we destroy!
How long would it take us to put a deck of cards in order? About two minutes if we're quick enough. An intelligence can do in two minutes what chance cannot do in 14 billion years. In fact, we cannot even be certain that this will happen in an unimaginable number of years, so much greater than that of the approximate age of the universe!
If a teenager leaves his bedroom in the greatest disarray in the morning, and when he arrives from school, he finds it perfectly clean and orderly, he will not say to himself: "How lucky I am. I left the window of my room open and the wind has all folded my laundry and arranged my books in alphabetical order in my library!" He will rather logically think that his mother who loves him very much has been there, right?
All of these examples are based on a truth that underlies all science: every effect must necessarily have a more perfect cause. That is to say, the more perfect cannot be produced by the less perfect, or put more simply: the more does not come out of the less.
Let's take other examples. If someone enters his house and hears music in his brother's room, then surely there is a cause for the music he hears. He doesn't think music appears by magic. Even if he doesn't see any speakers or musicians, he knows that one or the other is somewhere in the house.
Same thing if we see a frame hanging on the wall of a friend's room: we may not see what is holding this frame to the wall, but we are sure that there is something fixing it there. Maybe a nail, some rope, some glue, but definitely something.
Or, if we see the hands of a watch moving, we can be sure that there is a small hidden motor, because the hands do not move by themselves. Finally, if we see light in a room, there must be a source for this light: a lamp or the sun. In short, for every effect there must be a cause, even if our eyes or our other senses do not see this cause.
But we must go still further and see that this cause must be greater than its effect.
Let me explain. The light in the room cannot be brighter than the light source. The lamp or the sun will always be brighter than the room it illuminates. Otherwise, we fall back into magic, into effects without a cause. Only the superior can explain the inferior. Rabbits don't come out of hats; there's always a magician's trick!
So if I'm in an extremely bright room and I only see a 30 watt bulb, it's not that more light has come out of nowhere; it's definitely that there must be another source of light that I do not know yet. Otherwise, more would come out of less, and that's as stupid as saying that something comes out of nothing, that the rabbit comes out of the hat. It is the destruction of all logic and all science.
If we sometimes have the impression that more comes out of less, it is because there are always other causes that we do not see well. A tree grows from a seed, but not just from a seed! And if man is from stardust, then he certainly isn't just from stardust either, just like a phone isn't just from a machine and some metal, but needed many designers, engineers and designers for machines to make it!
But when I look at nature which is so complex and marvelously organized, when I look at man who is alive, conscious and intelligent, is it rational to say that all of this comes from nothing, that all of this comes only from chance and of matter?
What? Order comes from disorder? Life would come from the non-living? Consciousness and intelligence would come from matter which is neither conscious nor intelligent? Isn't it strange to think that it would have taken less intelligence to create the universe than it does to understand it?
To say such a thing is to affirm that the more would come from the less, that something would come from nothing, that the universe would appear without cause, as if by magic, like a rabbit coming out of a bag. Even crazier than magic, because at least in magic there is something; there is a magician!
To talk like that is to talk irrationally and unscientifically. Again, only the superior can fully explain the inferior. We can not emphasize this enough.
We can say that we do not know the cause perfectly, but we cannot deny that there is a cause and that this cause must be superior to what it produces.
Now, God is precisely this cause that we certainly know imperfectly, but that we know all the same as the creator at the origin of the whole universe, the great artist who is more alive, more conscious, smarter and more beautiful than all the works He creates.
There are several other ways to discover that God exists, and we could take the time to answer several good objections. But, in the end, we always come back to this basic principle: every effect must have a superior cause; the more does not come out of the less or, as the philosophers say: being does not come from nothingness. And you don't need a doctorate to understand that!
To say that God exists is neither unscientific nor irrational. It is not a belief of the past. On the contrary, it is the most logical and intelligent position that can be defended today and always. In a way, it takes more faith to be an atheist: you have to accept to believe the impossible!
I have always marveled at the fact that throughout history, and still today, almost all of the greatest thinkers and scientists have recognized the existence of God. Louis Pasteur said: "A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him."
As Albert Einstein once said, "Every scientist must have some sort of religious feeling, because he cannot imagine that he is the first to conceive of the incredibly delicate facts he observes. In the unimaginable universe is revealed an infinitely superior intelligence."
Simon Lessard