"Does God Exist?"
Ian A. Juby
In the June, 2005 Opineon, the editor sent out the provocative question "Does
God Exist?" and asked for our responses. What was I going to do, say
"no?" So, here's the article:
“Does God exist?”
Absolutely! Where I see a computer program, my intelligence deduces
intelligence in the program - I recognize that there was a programmer.
Where I see design, my intelligence deduces intelligence in the design.
It takes intelligence to recognize intelligence.
I would think it ludicrous for someone to try to convince me that (for example)
a barstool formed without a creator. In fact, it is an insult to the
intelligence to suggest anything but it was created by a creator!
Everybody who looks at it knows it had a creator.
Imagine that - I walk into the room and start railing on you for your ridiculous
beliefs:
“What? You’re trying to tell me that this barstool had a creator?
Haha! What kind of a fool do you think I am? Just where is this
‘creator?’ I don’t see them around here! Have you seen this person
that supposedly built it? Created it out of dirt and other things they
found in the ground?”
Intelligence detects the invisible Creator:
Would it not be ridiculous for me to absolutely refuse to believe in that
creator unless I saw this “creator” with my own two eyes, and watched them
create the barstool? Does the creator not have a personality?
Perhaps the creator wants me to search out him and deliberately hides himself
from me - to see if I really want to know him? The artwork can reveal
a lot about the artisan.
While some might criticize me for absolutely refusing to believe that
a barstool formed by random, natural processes, with no creator involved,
I would contend (and I think justifiably) that it is perfectly sound and
scientific reason to conclude that a barstool had a creator - whether I saw
that creator perform their act or not.
The Creator, detected in design:
So let’s take a look at life. You have incredible complexity in even
the “simplest” of lifeforms. The lowly bacteria (like E-coli) have
a propulsion system that blows the doors off of our most modern technology.
They essentially have an electric motor built into them. I have a giant,
moving model of this motor. I have yet to convince someone that the
model constructed itself, or that it formed by natural processes - yet I
am expected to believe that the bacteria it is modeled after was formed by
natural processes!
Our DNA has essentially 3.2 billion lines of “code”, a program which instructs
the machinery in our bodies how to build us. But a program is useless
without something that makes use of the program! (i.e. a computer)
In this case, it is essentially an entire factory that seeks out its own
energy and stores it, and seeks out its own raw materials for building other
factories and fixing itself (using the DNA code which tells the factory how
to repair itself and build other factories)!
In our cells, the DNA provides the instructions on how to build the protein
synthesis systems (PSS)- but the proteins the PSS makes are needed to make
the DNA! You can’t have one without the other! The PSS makes
the proteins for the energy systems, but the energy systems provide the energy
for the PSS to function, all the while the PSS produces proteins for the
cell membrane, but it’s the cell membrane that holds the whole “factory”
together, including the PSS!
Where there is design (in the cell and its co-dependent parts, or the motor
in a bacteria), there is a designer. Where there is a program, there
is a programmer. This is good, rational, perfectly legitimate science.
Yet, when it comes to “God”, we choke on it! While I mean no offense
to my evolutionary friends, all to often I see scoffers deriding the “intelligent
design” movement as “unscientific.” As I’ve just demonstrated, it is
perfectly scientific - we all do it every day. Then these opponents
of intelligent design turn around and support the SETI project - a project
searching for signs of intelligence from outer space!
Intelligence is used to detect intelligence, and they haven’t seen the forest
- not because of the trees blocking their view, but rather because they don’t
want to see the forest! It has nothing to do with science, it has everything
to do with personal belief and desire.
As a fellow human being, I understand all too well the questions we all face,
especially intelligent people.
Oh yes, there is a “God.”
Ian A. Juby
pres of the International Creation Science SIG: www.icssig.org