Chapter 5
Who or What is God?
We have considered some of the things that God has done, but who or what is He?
There are a number of concepts that will help our understanding and exploration of this important and crucial question.
Prime Mover
The dictionary would give the following definitions of a prime mover. A prime mover is aperson who is chiefly responsible for the creation or execution of a plan. For instance, George Stevenson was the prime mover behind the development and construction of the railways. William Wilberforce campaigning against slavery and Emily Pankhurst campaigning for votes for women are further examples.
A scientific definition is that a prime mover is an initial source of motive power designed to receive and modify force and motion as supplied by a natural source and apply them to drive machinery. For instance, we can consider a locomotive on a railway. Coal or diesel fuel goes in and the locomotive moves along the track. Or a generator in a power station fuel goes in and electricity comes out. In turn, this becomes the driving force for lighting, heating and motive power. A watch battery, the spring of a clock are other examples.
Cause and Effect
This leads on to cause and effect. Each of these forces has its own cause, and has a designer behind it. The engine was manufactured. The watch battery was manufactured. The watch spring was wound up. But does this go on forever or is there a prime cause? Does the creation story shed any light on this? (Pun intended!) The Bible account says, In the beginning, God. But who created God? If something created God, who created that something? In any case, if something had created God, God would be just an idol. And so we would have to go on. No, the only sensible answer is to believe that because of our understanding that everything created has a creator, that there must be a prime cause.
Science tells us that yes, there is a prime cause. Before the Big Bang there was nothing. The universe was created out of nothing. The Big Bang was the prime effect. But science can’t tell us what caused the Big Bang, or why God caused the universe to be created.
As the Bible says, In the beginning, God. God existed before creation. He has always existed. In terms of cause and effect, He is the ultimate Prime Cause. That is the only logical conclusion. There is no other. It cannot be proved but equally it cannot be disproved. However, it follows a logical path. We have a reinforcement of the reality of God. God Is! We build on this, and again, observe whether this leads to truth or falsehood.
Note that in all these examples everything that has been made had a purpose. It wascmade for a reason. Later we will examine in much more detail what God’s purpose was in creating matter, life and humankind.
The scientific evidence for the creation account does not stop there.
Genesis 1.9 says, in the beginning all the land was in one place surrounded by sea. Geologists have demonstrated that this was true. Continents and islands have been formed by what is called continental drift- that is, movement of tectonic plates under the sea, separating land masses in the process. Glancing at the globe, continents can be seen to be roughly fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Not bad for such an ancient document. That’s two fundamental truths in the first 150 words. And the whole Bible is about revealing God’s truth!
To put the vastness of the universe into perspective, our sun is just one of more than 100 billion stars (suns) in the Milky Way. It orbits some 25 thousand light-years from the galactic core, completing a revolution once every 250 million years or so. It and the rest of our solar system planets and moons, were created around 5.5 billion years ago. This fits comfortably with the statement in Genesis implying that the Earth was created at a later time than the creation of light and darkness.
Again, surprising that all this is found in such an ancient document. Truly inspired.
Is the Universe really 13.7 Billion Years Old?
One scientific method for the dating of fossils and minerals is based on what is called background microwave radiation. But it does not rely on one “clock” for its dating, but multiple clocks which endorse the reliability of the dating. These methods can give the age of the universe to an accuracy of something like 0.1%, allowing the conclusion to be drawn that the world did begin some 13.7 billion years ago.
But of the future, the Bible also talks about a world that is finite, a world that will end. It describes how this is going to happen. The following passage is just one example of such a prediction. “The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall down from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”
Though this is jumping a long way ahead, perhaps we should read it as a warning. Our everyday observations tell us that everything is doomed to decay. Everything is going to wear out eventually. Cosmologists tell us about black holes. A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong that huge masses of matter can be squeezed into a tiny space. Could planet earth at some point be attracted by the gravitational pull of a black hole. Does this begin to add plausibility to that being the end to the world? But what is under scrutiny right now is how we interpret what the Bible says about the beginning and development of the universe.
Creation or Evolution
The Evolution Argument
In his consideration of life in all its forms, Charles Darwin in 1859 published his famous book, On the Origin of Species. Post-Darwin, this treatise has been widely accepted and creation theory has become unfashionable. Plants and animals can easily be demonstrated as having adapted to change in circumstances. Evolutionism can take us part of the way in terms of why things are what they are, but it is not unreasonable to say that evolution by adaptation is part of the creation process.
Darwin himself was acutely aware that there were many things which his theory could not explain. He was perfectly prepared to live with these unresolved tensions. He believed that there was enough evidence available to suggest that his was the best explanation of what he observed. Given this faith in his theory, he felt he could cope with the obvious difficulties of contradictions, anomalies and loose ends and he was convinced that subsequent scientists would find explanations.
But this has not been borne out in practice. For instance, evolution theory has little to offer when asked to show the missing links between species. No fossil or other evidence has been able to throw any light on this. Indeed strata upon strata of fossil evidence shows in the lower layers, dinosaur skeletons lie alongside the skeletons of creatures which are still around today. Fossil evidence shows records of death, not evolution. And from what, forinstance, did the dinosaurs or the simplest living organisms evolve?
The Wonders of Nature
There is so much more which cannot be explained by evolution theory. The Arctic Tern, one of the longest migrators on the planet, makes a trip from the summer breeding grounds in the arctic all the way around to the Antarctic in winter and back every year. It travels a mind-boggling 44,000 miles in a year (by way of comparison, Earth’s circumference is just under 25,000 miles).
The monarch butterfly migrates in the millions to leave their summer breeding grounds in northeastern United States and Canada and travel upwards of 3000 miles to reach over-wintering grounds in Mexico. But they do not return. It is a new generation which returns northwards.
Are these practices and habits really the product of evolution- if so, what has been the evolutionary process, or are they the product of an intelligent designer, a creator?
Furthermore, we can consider the mating instinct and courtship rituals that we so often see on nature programmes. Surely it is by intelligent design that fish, birds and animals, in fact every living creature knows exactly what to do and has known what to do from the very beginning. It is such an unlikely act! How could this possibility be down to evolution?
One intriguing example is the silverfish, an insect only 12-18mm long. There is evidence that it has been around for 400 million years. It can live for up to a year without food or water. (No sign of evolution to or from other creatures, by the way). Its mating habits are fascinating. Before silverfish reproduce, they carry out a ritual involving three phases, each of which may last over half an hour. In the first phase, the male and female stand face to face, their quivering antennae touching, then repeatedly back off and return to this position. In the second phase, the male runs away and the female chases him. In the thirdphase, the male and female stand side by side and head to tail, with the male vibrating his tail against the female. Finally, the male lays a spermatophore, a sperm capsule coveredin gossamer, which the female takes into her body via her ovipositor to fertilise her eggs. The wonders of “nature!” If you wish to take a short diversion I invite you to read the whole article in Wikipedia.
However, who can deny the archaeological findings relating to predecessors of humans as we know them, the species Homo Sapiens. Although there are no missing links, we see a progression of humanoids from Neanderthal man through Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens. It would be quite reasonable to suggest that God took two of these and implanted in them a soul, a spirit, transforming them into God’s image. We can observe that at the present stage of archaeological discoveries, it was to Homo Sapiens that the first cave drawings are attributed.
Further Endorsement of the Creation Argument
We have spent considerable time looking at cosmological, scientific and archaeological endorsement of the biblical creation story, but there is considerably more that we can examine. We can also show evidence from microscopic foundations, which needs a little scientific explanation.
If you do not want to get too scientific and are comfortable with the explanations I have presented so far, then feel free to skip the rest of the chapter.
Atoms, Elements and Molecules
An atom is the smallest constituent unit of ordinary matter that constitutes a chemical element. Atoms of different chemical elements can combine together to make molecules. For instance, a molecule of water combines two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, that is what we mean when we say water is H2 O.
It is here that we have to delve a little deeper into science, but thankfully not too deeply. Although all this is taught in science lessons at high school, the implications may not have been realised at the time.
Every atom and every molecule- that is the constituents of every solid, liquid or gas, every living thing- be it microbe, gene, plant or animal in all its variety- is composed of three building blocks. These particles are named as protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons carry a positive charge, electrons a negative charge and neutrons are neutral. A positive and a negative charge attract each other like the electrostatic attraction observed when a balloon is rubbed against hair- the hair stands up on end. In the case of atoms, they are kept apart because the electrons rotate around the nucleus of protons and neutrons. Where does an electron get its energy from to keep rotating? Why doesn’t it slow down and eventually stop? What actually is an electron? Good questions, but answering them would take us into the depths of advanced physics, which is far from the intentions of this book. Scientists are still delving into the existence of subatomic particles. But God Knows! It will suffice our purpose just to repeat that from these three fundamental building blocks all matter is constructed. In the same way that bricks or stones, windows and doors can be used to construct a simple pillar or a magnificent cathedral, our three constituents protons, neutrons and electrons are used to construct every atom in the universe- from hydrogen, through to substances like nitrogen, alcohol, mercury, carbon, sulphur or lead examples of all gases, liquids and solids.
It all depends how the electrons are arranged- and they are arranged with the greatest precision. For instance, hydrogen, which is the lightest substance known, comprises one proton as the nucleus, and one electron spinning around it. Oxygen has 8 protons, 8 neutrons and 8 electrons. The metal iron has 26 protons, 30 neutrons and 26 electrons to balance out the protons.
But electrons do not rotate around a nucleus in a random manner. They are arranged in groupings which govern how they will combine with other elements to make molecules. To say that it just happened or it was in a random manner would be a similar probability to a whirlwind rushing through a scrap yard and producing a Boeing 737. No, deliberate, intelligent design is the only realistic answer!
DNA
Getting really scientific, DNA is a large molecule present in every living organism which identifies its uniqueness and contributes to what each generation passes onto the next. I do not want to go into any more detail here, but it would be a fascinating study in itself. Such a large molecule could not have been the product of chance.
Finally, although science does not have all the answers it has told us some amazing things and it has come to some amazing conclusions. There is so much space inside each atom imagine perhaps the space around our solar system of the planets orbiting around the sun. We are told for example that if all the space were removed from the molecules that make up every human being who had ever existed on earth we removed then that matter would occupy a space less than a sugar lump!
The fact is that there is nothing that exists throughout world history that does not have an intelligent source, a maker, a designer, an inventor, a developer! So why should life, in all its forms- microbes, atoms, plants, animals, humans be any different?
Chapter 6
Exploring the Bible Further
Continuing into Genesis 4, we read that Adam and his wife had another son. She said that God had given her a son to replace Abel, whom Cain killed. She named him Seth. Seth had a son whom he named Enoch. It was then the people began using the Lord’s holy name in worship.
Here we have our first difficulty. Where did the other people come from? We can only assume that the historic timeline is incomplete, missing out generations over many years. But this is peripheral to our main thesis.
The Covenant with Noah.
In Genesis chapters 6-9, we read that Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. But the world had become corrupt, disordered and full of violence. Because of the corruption God said to Noah that He would destroy the whole earth.
He instructed Noah to build a big boat- the Ark- to contain Noah and his family and representatives of each living species. He would flood the whole earth destroying every living creature and make a fresh start with Noah and his family.
Genesis 6:1-8 contains some puzzling statements. We read of giants on the earth who were descendants of human women and heavenly beings? The great heroes and famous men of long ago? What are we to make of all this? It comes within the definition of mythology, tying in with Greek mythology, of giants and men with superhuman qualities. Myth or fact? We will never know. Whatever the truth in this, God put a stop to all that through the cataclysmic flood which followed. Noah and his family were spared, the evil in the world was destroyed.
He also gave the promise that He would never do it again and as a reminder He chose the rainbow, then seen as a super-natural event. We today may be able to explain through the medium of elementary physics the cause of rainbows, but each time we see a rainbow, we can be reminded of God’s promise that such a flood would never happen again. And there’s no getting away from the beauty of the natural spectacle. So often the weather forecasters show pictures of rainbows, complete arcs, or the place where the end of the rainbow touches land. I can’t wait for the grandchildren to ask the question so that I can bring God into the conversation. God even created the natural laws as a means of maintaining order.
The description of the flood is Myth. The symbolism of the rainbow is Myth. Thus these early chapters offer not a historic statement, but an interpretation of the universe, of history, and of life itself, in terms of the involvement of an entity which is “other”.
The Bible would say to us, in the symbolism of the Ark, that God considers that there is enough goodness in this ordinary humanity to make it worth his while to save it. Punishment for wrongdoing there must be. God’s judgement is inevitable. But after the flood comes the rainbow, the symbol of his promise that He would never again cause a flood to cover the earth.
It is saying that a world which chose evil and not the good that God required is abhorrent to him and He destroyed it, starting again from scratch with Noah and his family. An all powerful God. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living, ever present God.
More Ant-ics (Sorry about that)
Recently I have been fascinated by ants nesting in our garden, accessed from under patio stones, oblivious to the human presence. Some were growing wings in readiness to make a new nest. They were settling on the windows. Some were finding their way into the house. We were prepared for an invasion. Drastic action had to be taken to remove their nests. I had to “play God” as a judge, taking total control, eliminating them by pouring water down into their nest and flooding them out. Truly this was a thought provoking moment. As far as the ants were concerned this was a super-natural event, just as the flood had been in Noah’s time.
Cultural and Scientific Endorsement of the Flood
In looking at the credibility of all this, we may note that great flood stories abound in the writings of primitive cultures across the world, each with their own explanation as to the cause- too many to conclude that a major flood did not happen. There are so many as to endorse the historical plausibility of the story! But as Myth, the Bible story, of the flood was attributed to God the Creator.
Apart from these flood stories from across the world, a recent scientific discovery has found fresh water deposits beneath the earth’s surface in porous rock, about half a million cubic kilometres, enough to cover the surface of the Earth. If on the surface of the earth,only mountaintops would be visible. These reserves in fact have been tapped into, in the United States of America, providing irrigation and hence fertility for the American prairies.
Turning to the book of Psalms, a book of poetry, song and worship, we read in Psalm 33,6 “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; He puts the deep (the oceans) into storehouses.” I find it truly amazing that this was described over 3000 years ago.
Where does this leave us? Even if it did not happen just as it is written in the Bible, I reiterate, the writers saw that the history was not merely a sequence of events but the unfolding of a purpose. So, I say again, we must not ask the question, is it true, but what truth does it contain? The answer is simple. Again we see that God hates corruption and will punish those responsible, to the extent of wiping out (almost) the whole of his creation, even the whole of it had He thought it appropriate.
Moreover, God uses those who He can trust to help him achieve his plan.
Again we are reminded that we are dealing with a God who is powerful beyond measure.
We are dealing with a God who cares about his creation and those who He has created.
We see again that He is a God showing both justice and mercy.
To summarise, although we can accept the initially unlikely stories as authentic, justified by the supporting evidence, we must be reminded that we are not dealing with a history book, or a science book, but a book of theology – a book about God. That is another way of saying we are not looking for accuracy, but truth about our place in the universe.
However there are so many issues that cannot be definitively proved. For these we must rely on faith and trust. I used the terms earlier. The criterion will continue to be, “does the acceptance by faith lead to truth or error?” In the New Testament definition I repeat that faith is believing something you hope for, believing a promise. My desire is to give reassurance that we can trust those who make the promises, and at the right time take a step of faith. As one writer put it, faith is spelt R-I-S-K-!
But so far, nothing has suggested that the statement is not valid- far from it, background research has reinforced the statement, “In the Beginning, God.” Simply, it has not been disproved, So it is fair to continue building on it as a valid premise, reassured by the continuity of the unfoldings story.
Chapter 7
The Verdict
And there I rest my case. I leave it to you, the reader to come to your own conclusion. However, I believe that I have demonstrated beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt that:
● God exists.
● God is the creator of the whole universe.
● God is a God whocares about his creation.
● God is present among his people.
● God has a purpose for each and every one of us.
We have seen examples of signs and wonders as God’s supernatural miraculous power breaking into the natural world of man and doing what is impossible by natural physical laws.
Decide for yourself. If you agree, read on. If you haven’t made up your mind yet, perhaps parts 2 and 3 will give more reality checks and evidence of God’s nature and help you come to a more informed conclusion.
There you have it. That completes my examination of the foundations of the Christian faith. Hopefully you will have some assurance of the authenticity and plausibility of the story so far.
We will move on in Part 2 to some of the building blocks from which the lighthouse is built, the creation of a nation from one man, Abraham, and his family.
