Does God Really Exist? The Evidence

Uganda Today: Does God Really Exist? The Evidence.

By Oweyegha-Afunaduula

There is no question that has been asked everywhere on the globe far more frequently than the question “Does God Really Exist?” The high frequency reflects one human value known as “Curiosity”. It also reflects the human vice of doubt although doubt might be useful when pursuing the truth.  To fit in the world well, one must be curious enough to gain sufficient reason and information to say NO or YES from an informed vantage point to the decisions of others or to one’s own decisions or to what is dictated by the environment. The constant question leading to the question “Does God Really Exist?” is “How did we and other beings, and indeed the whole universe, of which we and other beings – living and nonliving – are integral to, come into existence?”

There are two sciences that compete in explaining how the universe and all beings came to be:

1) Creation Science (based on The Theory of Creation expressed as the Word of God); and 2) Evolutionary Science (based on Charles Darwin’s Theory of The Origin of Species, or the Theory of Evolution). Those who accept The Theory of Creation reject the Theory of Evolution, and those who accept The Theory of the Origin of Species, reject the Theory of Creation. The complexity of the human-initiated debate of God’s existence reflects the limits to our knowledge of and reasoning about things that are beyond human imagination. Imagining God has proved a difficult challenge that Man has faced since he began to be aware of his own existence and the existence of other beings. There is always a new generation of people, especially among scientists and homosexuals doubting or even dismissing the existence of God.

The Theory of Evolution explains that we have not always been human beings, but evolved from more primitive beings that existed billions of years ago. It explains certain “difficult to explain” stages in our evolution by evoking the Theory of “Missing Links’ to other beings; mainly the Apes. According to evolutionary scientists, the progression of human evolution took billions of years, through numerous extinctions, to produce the humanity we are now part of, and expressed in diverse clans and cultures. It includes academic Man, Homo sapiens academicus, which I belonged to from 1991 to 2009 as a lecturer of Zoology and Environmental Science at Makerere University, Uganda. However, there is also the startling idea, that first appeared in scientific form in 1931, in a paper by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian civil engineer-cum-cosmologist, Catholic priest and Astrophysics Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, near Brussels (I visited the University in 1995, when I was invited to deliver a paper on Environmental Refugees in Africa): The Big Bang Cosmology and, hence, The Big Bang Theory, accepted by nearly all astronomers, many scientists and most homosexuals today, was a radical departure from scientific orthodoxy in the 1930s, which was driven by evolutionary science.

While Pope Pius XII referred to the new theory of the origin of the universe as a scientific validation of the Catholic faith, Lemaître said his theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. His was a physical point of view and saw his theory as predicting the expansion of the real universe of galaxies that observations were only then beginning to suggest. Therefore, in opposition to God’s creation, humanity is divided between evolutionary Theory and Big Bang Theory.

The Theory of Creation, which stresses the centrality of God in the creation of everything, except God, explains that the creation act of God took place in 6 days and then God rested on the 7^th day after pronouncing that everything He created was GOOD. He never used Best or Excellent to describe what he created. By the time he rested, the whole Universe was in place. I credit biochemist Dr. Duane Gish, who, in 1963 together with others, founded the Creation Research Society, and then went on to provide evidence for divine creation, long before he died on 6^th March 2013.

Over the years, he participated in over 300 formal debates with evolutionists and, by all accounts, he won them all. Soon evolutionists were publicly appealing to fellow evolutionists all over the globe not to debate with Duane Gish on creation and evolution because they would be miserably defeated. He disliked confrontations, but he valued and exploited the chance to present creation’s evidences. Christian university campus groups reported “a great harvest of souls” following the debates that the biochemist-turned-divine creation’s apostle effectively won for God and proved that even scientists can be God’s agents the same way Saul turned Paul did. His books “Evolution? The Fossils Say NO!”, Evolution? The Fossils Still Say NO!”, “A Creation Scientist Answers His Critics”, “Evidence Against Evolution”, “Dinosaurs: Those Terrible Lizards, and “Dinosaurs by Design”, to mention but a few, greatly weakened evolutionary reasoning against divine creation.

Duane Gish (1981 https://www.icr.org/article/summary-scientific-evidence-for-creation) gives a summary of the evidence for divine creation. He said that the Creation model is at least as scientific as the evolution model and is at least as nonreligious as the evolution model. In any case religion is of human, not divine, origin. He writes that scientific evidence both for creation and evolution can and must be taught to students without any religious doctrine, whether the Bible or the Humanist Manifesto. “Creation science proponents want schools [and universities] to teach all the scientific data, censoring none, but do not want any religious doctrine to be brought into science classrooms”, he said. Duane Gish (1981) states that “the scientific model of creation, in summary, includes the scientific evidence for a sudden creation of complex and diversified kinds of life, with systematic gaps persisting between different kinds and with genetic variation occurring within each kind since that time.

The scientific model of evolution, in summary, includes the scientific evidence for a gradual emergence of present life kinds over eons of time, with emergence of complex and diversified kinds of life from simpler kinds and ultimately from nonliving matter. The creation model questions vertical evolution, which is the emergence of complex from simple and change between kinds, but it does not challenge what is often called horizontal evolution or micro-evolution, which creationists call genetic variation or species or subspecies formation within created kinds”.

According to Duane Gish (1981), the creation model includes the scientific evidence and the related inferences suggesting that:

• The universe and the Solar system were suddenly created
• Life was suddenly created
• All present living kinds of animals and plants have remained fixed since creation, other than extinctions, and genetic variation in originally created kinds has only occurred within narrow limits.
• Mutation and natural selection are insufficient to have brought about any emergence of present living kinds from a simple primordial organism
• Man and apes have a separate ancestry.
• The earth’s geologic features appear to have been fashioned largely by rapid, catastrophic processes that affected the earth on a global and regional scale (catastrophism).
• The inception of the earth and of living kinds may have been relatively recent.

On the other hand, Duane Gish (1981) submits that the evolution model includes the scientific evidence and the related inferences suggesting that:

• The universe and the solar system emerged by naturalistic processes
• Life emerged from nonlife by naturalistic processes
• All present kinds emerged from simpler earlier kinds, so that single-celled organisms evolved into invertebrates, then vertebrates, then amphibians, then reptiles, then mammals, then primates, including man
• Mutation and natural selection have brought about the emergence of present complex kinds from a simple primordial organism.
• Man and apes emerged from a common ancestor
• The earth’s geologic features were fashioned largely by slow, gradual processes, with infrequent catastrophic events restricted to a local scale (uniformitarianism).
• The inception of the earth and then of life must have occurred several billion years ago.

Below I evoke my own experiences, the thoughts of David Kovalevich (2022) in his “Is God Real? How do we know he is real?” and the thoughts of Marilyn Adamson’s in her “Is there God?” to entrench further the evidence for God’s existence.

Human experiences of God have occurred over time. Studies show that many people have spiritual, religious or mystical experiences, and that they almost always have positive effects in their lives. These experiences, strange as they may seem to the rest of us, do not seem to have been the result of mental illness, drugs, epilepsy or any other “abnormality” ( https://www.is-there-a-god.info/clues/human-experience/).

My own experiences of God occurred in form of visions when I was in Nairobi, Kenya, in the very early 1980s studying for a Masters degree in Zoology (The Biology of Conservation). I had no prior knowledge that they would occur to me in sleep. They were eight in total but I will only detail three of them. They occurred in succession one day after the other. I have written about these visions elsewhere. I am mentioning them again for the purposes of this particular article on “Does God Really exist? I characterize the visions as:

• The Vision of Fire Falling from Outer Space
• The Vision of a White Lion Falling Gently in a Net from Outer Space
• The Vision of Disappearing Mountain and Emerging Straight Path

 

The Vision of Fire Falling from Outer Space

When I went to bed I slept soundly. But then the phenomenon of fire falling down from outer space manifested itself in my mind. I was with my longtime friends, Charles Kawagga, who lives in London. A hole appeared and then fire started to descend from it in one interconnected flame. It was coming towards us. At first, I thought it was going to burn us to ashes. But NO. Whoever sent it wanted to lead us to safety. We were in a forest. We did not know how we happened to be there. When the fire, stretching from outer space, reached us we noticed it was not hot at all but a friendly fire.

Even if friendly, we started to run away from it as fast as we could. It came after us but never tried to overtake us. Instead, it was scotching the earth leaving behind it a black trail as it burnt the vegetation in its way. It seemed to me that the interest of whoever sent the fire was not to harm us but to drive us from the forest to somewhere else. After running for a long time, we saw a huge house with steps leading to a big door, which was locked. We run faster, but never getting tired, until we reached the house and climbed the steps. Then we saw the door opening. We entered and stood in the corridor. When we looked back, we saw that the fire had stopped right at the first step of the house. Then we saw it going back and every space it left turned green. It raced fast until it started to go up. It disappeared into the hole it had emerged from. Meanwhile we remained in the corridor. Although we saw very many rooms, none was opened for us. Suddenly I came back to my senses and realized I was in bed. I switched the light on, awakened Jane my wife and told her what I had experienced. She was amazed and remains amazed to this day just as I remain amazed. How could this happen without some unseen being involved.

The Vision of a White Lion Falling Gently in a Net

The next day I went to bed and expected to enjoy my sleep. It was not to be. Along the way, I found myself alone in a desert, which was unusually not hot although it was daytime. Then I saw a hole forming in outer space. I wondered what was going to happen this time round. I saw a white net emerging out of the hole.

It started to descend down towards where I was standing. There was no other person or any other living thing in the desert. Then as far as I could sense with my eyes, I noticed that there was a living white animal lying on its right-hand side in the net. Initially I could not make out what species of animal it was. However, as the net stretching all the way from the hole in outer space approached, I saw clearly that it was a white lion. Its eyes were wide open, unblinking and unlike those of lions I had seen in Ruaha National Park in Tanzania because they were full of sympathy and compassion. The Net landed very close to my feet with the lion fixing its eyes on me.

Even if we were now two in the desert, and I was not scared at all after realizing it was a friendly lion, I decided to walk away from it. I must have walked some five kilometers to nowhere, when I noticed that the lion was as if it was still near me and looking at me with unblinking gracious eye. The next time I looked back I saw the net withdrawing with lion still looking at me back to outer space. It disappeared into the hole from which it had emerged. Then I realized I was all alone in an expansive desert. I came back to my senses, switched on the light and awoke Jane to narrate the experience to her. She was amazed the more. She still is.

The Vision of Disappearing Mountain and Emerging Straight Path

The next day I went to bed praying nothing disturbed my sleep again. I was wrong. After sleeping for sometime, I had a vision in which I found myself at the tip of a mountain. Suddenly a transparent being that resembled my brother Zerubeabel Mwavu, who was slain in by thugs in Jinja in 1976, and who died believing God exists, appeared behind me and said, “My brother you are in trouble. I have been sent to help you escape danger. If you follow what I tell you will be perfectly safe. First, don’t look back”.

However, even if I did not look back, I could still see he was the one. Then he said, “You will walk away from here”. I asked, “How can I walk away from the summit of the mountain. I will just tumble over and die!” He said, “You will not die. Just take your first step and you will see what happens”. When I took the first step, the mountain started to disappear and its place a plain appeared. A path, with two dark trenches formed.

Then Zerubbabel said, you will walk that path. Don’t look sideways, otherwise you will fall into either of those dark trenches. And don’t look back either”. Then he bid me farewell. I started to walk. At first, I feared a lot. But I had to walk to safety. It was a very long lonely walk before in the horizon I saw a very beautiful place full of all types of plants. I walked faster but just as I took one step into the beautiful place, I came back to my senses, switched the light on and narrated everything I saw to Jane my wife. She was amazed even more. But this time round she said, “It must be God in al these visions of yours. He wants you to serve him”.

David Kovalevich says experiences such as those I went through often leave people with a strong sense of awe and wonder, and they often feel that they have been in touch with something divine. This is precisely what my wife, Jane, convinced me was the case. Even today Jane awes about those visions.

David Kovalevich evokes the following arguments to argue for God’s existence:

1. The Argument from design, which states that the world is so complex and orderly that it must have been created by an intelligent being, to argue for the existence of God. He says, “The universe is like a watch, and it is impossible to believe that such an intricate piece of machinery could have come into existence by chance. This points to the fact that God created the universe”.
2. The Argument from Miracles, which states that miracles are evidence of God’s power and presence in the world. “Miracles are events that do not have a natural explanation, and they point to the fact that there is something beyond our understanding at work in the universe.
3. The Argument from Prophecy, which, states that many people throughout history have accurately predicted future events. These predictions could not have been made without the help of divine intervention, which proves that God exists and is a personal God who is involved in human affairs.

Marilyn Adamson, in her article “Is there God?”, gives six ix straightforward reasons to believe that God is really there. Let me list them so that you can think seriously about them:

1. The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today.

• The Earth’s size is perfect
• Earth is the only known planet equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life.
• The Earth remains this perfect distance from the sun while it rotates around the sun at a speed of nearly 67,000 mph
• The Earth rotates on its axis, allowing the entire surface of the Earth to be properly warmed and cooled every day.
• Water colourless, odourless and without taste, and yet no living thing can survive without it.
• Water is a universal solvent allowing various chemicals, minerals and nutrients to easily dissolve and be carried throughout our bodies and into the smallest blood vessels.
• Water freezes from the top down and floats, so fish can live in the winter.
• The human brain simultaneously processes an amazing amount of information.
• The human brain takes in all the colours and objects we see, the temperature around us, the pressure of our feet against the floor, the sounds around us
• The human brain keeps track of the ongoing functions of your body like your breathing pattern, eyelid movement, hunger and movement of the muscles in our hands
• The human brain functions differently than other organs. There is an intelligence to it, the ability to reason, to produce feelings, to dream and plan, to take action, and relate to other people
• The human eye can distinguish among seven million colors. It has automatic focusing and handles an astounding 1.5 million messages simultaneously

One thing is true, as Marily Adamson emphasizes: The universe has not always existed. It had a start. Scientists have no explanation for the sudden explosion of light and matter. All of the sciences – molecular biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc – hinge on the consistent laws of nature. “How is it that we can identify laws of nature that never change? Why is the universe so orderly, so reliable?”, asks Adamson “The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics”. Indeed, Adamson cites Physicist Paul C. Davies, to drive her point home “…to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical law”. It is difficult to ignore the existence of a superior intelligent power behind such order. “All of our ability to discover, solve problems, is made possible by the orderly laws of the universe that never change and can be measured with precision”, adds Marilyn Adamson and then cites Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, thus: “Why nature is mathematical is a mystery…The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle”.

You will have noticed that most of the people supporting to the existence and realism of God are not from the Arts or Social Sciences but the Natural sciences fields. It marvels that scientists who would otherwise deny the existence of God are the ones convinced that God exists without experiments!

There is further evidence of the existence of God from the genetics of our bodies. In every cell of our bodies there exists a very detailed instruction code, much like a miniature computer program. There is no program without a programmer. A computer program is made up of ones and zeros, like this: 110010101011000. The way they are arranged tell the computer program what to do. The DNA code in each of our cells is very similar. It’s made up of four chemical units, called nucleotide bases, that scientists abbreviate as A, T, G, and C. These are arranged in the human cell like this: CGTGTGACTCGCTCCTGAT and so on. There are three billion pairs of these letters in every human cell. DNA instructs the cell. DNA is a complex, arranged program telling the cell to act in a certain way. It is a full instruction manual. How did this information program wind up in each human cell? These are not just chemicals. These are chemicals that instruct, that code in a very detailed way exactly how the person’s body should function. Natural, biological causes are completely lacking as an explanation when programmed information is involved. You cannot find instruction, precise information like this, without someone intentionally constructing it.

Scientist prove things by doing experiments. They have never tried to prove that God exists because they have no way to determine it by doing experiments. And it does not make sense what scientific findings about our material world or Universe reveal about God. As David Kovalevich (2022) puts it, any cosmic system is consistent with God. Indeed, Biochemist Duane Gish did everything in his life to use his brain to demonstrate that Creation Theory is not just a theory but the truth that God exists and is real. I, a Conservation Biologist, have assembled all the evidence for you in this article. It shows that acknowledging God is nondisciplinary.

 

 

 

.