From: tjohn@elaine.ee.und.ac.za (THIAGARAJ JOHN : THIRD)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: DOES GOD EXIST?  (different from previous posting).
Date: 14 Aug 92 09:45:27 GMT
Organization: Electronic Eng., Univ. Natal, Durban, South Africa


I hope we can have a sensible discussion on some of the proofs presented 
below.
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		 Can the existence of God be scientifi-
		cally proved?  Where did the first LIFE
		  come from? Can we know whether God
		         possesses MIND power?



LET'S FACE this question! Is it rational to believe
in God? Is God merely a myth - an invention of an
ignorant, superstitious past? Many today assume
this.


                 I Questioned God's Existence

With me - and I hope with the reader - I wanted to KNOW! I
wanted to be SURE! I questioned the existence of God! Also I
questioned the opposing doctrine of evolution. I did not seek
to Disprove either. But I did research and carefully examine
the evidences on both sides of this two-sided question. For
this question is the very starting place for the acquisition
of all knowledge. It is the FOUNDATION for UNDERSTANDING! 

In my in-depth research into this question, starting 56 years
ago, I emptied my mind of prejudice. I sought the TRUTH,
whether it was what I wanted to believe or not. 

There are the two possibilities of origins - special creation
by a Creator God, and the theory of evolution. It has become 
intellectually fashionable to accept the evolutionary doctrine. 
It has won popular acceptance in science and higher education. 
Even many professing Christian denominations have accepted it, 
if only passively.
    
Yet, though in the minority, there still remain scientists,
educators, and fundamentalist religious groups, as well as those
in Judaism, who cling to belief in the existence of God.
Don't Assume--KNOW!

Many of these, however, especially among the more or less
religious individuals, have merely assumed the existence of God.
Why? Simply because they were taught it from childhood. It has
been believed in the circles in which they have lived or
associated. But few of these have proved it!
    
Of course, on the other hand, perhaps a vast majority who accept
evolution, at least passively, were simply swept into that
acceptance in college or university. It became the scholarly "IN"
thing. The opposite belief, special creation, has not been widely
taught. It has not been objectively examined. Too frequently,
proponents utilize the psychological ploy that it is a badge of
scholarly status to accept evolution, and a stamp of ignorance or
intellectual inferiority to doubt the hypothesis.

All of which goes to show that people in general believe what
they do simply because they have been taught it, or because it
has been accepted in their particular social environment. People
want to belong! They go along with their particular group. In
general, they believe what they have taken carelessly for granted
- without examination or proof!

Of course I know well, too, that people generally believe only
what they are willing TO ACCEPT. In most instances people feel no
compulsion to refuse what is accepted in their social or
geographical environment. As one philosopher said, 
most dyed-in-the-wool evolutionists accept the theory because of
their reluctance or unwillingness to believe in God.

As the book professing to be the Word of God says: "The carnal
mind is enmity [hostile] against God: for it is not subject to
the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8:7). All the
facts, positive evidence, rational reasoning and proofs in the
world will never induce such a one to accept that against which
he is prejudiced. For prejudice is a barrier to the entrance of
truth into any mind.

			I Found PROOF!

I was forced, on examination of the facts, to realize there is no
proof for the theory of evolution. It is purely a theory - a
belief - a faith, not based on proof. Though its zealous
proponents push it onto the world as if it were proven fact! 
    
I found PROOF of the existence of the Creator God. I also found
PROOF that the book called the Holy Bible is, in fact, the very
inspired revelation from that all-intelligent, all-knowing God, of
the vital, necessary, basic knowledge and instruction without
which man is unable to solve his problems, prevent his evils, or
live in PEACE, happiness, universal prosperity and abundant well-
being here on earth. Man is the crowning product of his Maker. The
Bible is our Maker's INSTRUCTION MANUAL He sent along with His
product.

			Which God?

An atheist wrote me: "We have the history of many religions, and
many gods. Which one of these gods do you claim for your God - and
how do you know that He exists?" 

That's a fair question. It deserves an answer! 

Yes, my friends, I have a God. 

The gods of some nations have been carved by men's hands out of
wood, stone, or other existing material. The gods of some
religions and individuals have been carved out of human
imaginations and faulty human reasoning. Some have worshipped the
sun or other inanimate objects of nature. All these gods are
merely the created - most of them formed and fashioned by man,
therefore inferior to man. 

But He who did the creating - He who brought everything that
exists into existence, including all else falsely called God - He
who created all matter, force and energy, who created all natural
laws and set them in motion, who created LIFE and endowed some of
it with intelligence - He is GOD! He is superior to all else that
is called "God." He, alone, is GOD. 

CREATION IS THE PROOF OF GOD! 

But during the past two centuries especially, there has developed
among God-rejecting men in the Occidental world, the mental
disease of theophobia. Two hundred years ago it appeared under the
popular catch-phrases "deism" and "rationalism." Then it
masqueraded itself under the appealing name "higher criticism."
This pseudo-scholarship employed, as it advanced, such attractive
titles as "progress," "development," and "evolution." It has
appealed to the intellectual vanity of a world groping in
spiritual darkness in an era of widespread diffusion of knowledge.

		
		Creation Without a Creator?

The theory of evolution provided the atheist an explanation of a
creation without a Creator. 

But this misguided "rationalism" failed utterly to account for
the origins of things and of life; and today the more candid
among geologists and biologists confess that they do not know
how life could have evolved from inanimate matter, through the
simple life forms, to the complex, interdependent species we see
about us, finally to man. Lamarck's theory of "use and disuse,"
Darwin's "natural selection" and other theories have now fallen
by the wayside, and the "mutations" theory explains only the
occurrence of varieties less fit to survive.


                Amazing New Knowledge of Science

Now suppose we confine ourselves to facts! 

What, then, has science actually determined? 

Discovery and study of radioactivity during the past century has
proved that there has been no past eternity of matter!
Radioactivity is described as a process of disintegration. The
atomic age is opening up new fields to explore. Soon after
Madame Curie discovered the element radium, in 1898, it was
discovered that radium, and the other radioactive elements as we
know now, are continually giving off radiations.

		
		Has Matter Always Existed?

So notice carefully what this now disclosed FACT of science
means: Uranium-238 is a radioactive isotope of uranium with a
mass number 238. In decomposing, it first gives off an alpha
particle (which is the nucleus of a helium atom). This is
followed by two beta-minus emissions, then by two more alpha
particle emissions. The substance left is an isotope of radium
with a mass number of 226. Radium, then, is simply the end
product of uranium-238 after this disintegration process. Then
the disintegration continues in radium. And the final product of
this process of radioactive disintegration is the element lead!
Now of course this process requires great periods of time. The
calculated half-life of radium is 1590 years - uranium much
longer.
    
I have seen it myself, in the darkroom of an X-ray laboratory. A
tiny portion of radium was placed on a mirror at the far end of a
hollow tube, and I looked into this tube through a magnifying
glass at the other end. Under this magnification what I saw
appeared as a large, vast, dark sky, with thousands of shooting
stars falling toward me from all directions. Actually what I saw
were the emanations of tiny particles being emitted by the
radium, greatly magnified.

We know, therefore, that there has been no past eternity of
matter!


                    When Matter Did Not Exist

The radioactive elements in existence today have not yet been in
existence long enough to have run their course, and disintegrated
into lead. To have ALWAYS existed, without any definite time of
starting in the past, this "life" period of radioactive elements
long ago would have run its course. All radioactive elements
would have long ago disintegrated into lead. Since these elements
exist only for a definite span of years, and all the uranium,
radium, thorium and other radioactive elements in the world today
have not yet existed that many years, there was a time, prior to
the duration of this span in the past, when these elements DID
NOT EXIST!
    
Here we have definite scientific proof that MATTER HAS NOT ALWAYS
EXISTED. Here we have definite specific elements which once, in
the long ago, did not yet exist. Then there came a time, later,
when these elements CAME INTO EXISTENCE.

Evolution usually postulates that things come about GRADUALLY,
through the slow-moving natural processes of the present. Try to
imagine, if you can, something coming into existence out of
nothing, GRADUALLY! Can your mind entertain the idea?
    
I think not. No, I think if you are rational, you will have to
accept the fact of a special and necessarily instantaneous
CREATION. And SOME POWER or SOME ONE had of necessity to do the
creating. There is a cause for every effect. And in accepting
that inevitable FACT, proved by the findings of science, of the
existence of that GREAT FIRST CAUSE, you have accepted the FACT
of the existence and preexistence of the Creator - GOD!


		Where Did LIFE Come From?

But how about the presence of life? 

How did life get here? Science has learned some things about
that, too.

The wisest of the ancients did not know what science makes
available today. Thus it is demonstrated today that LIFE COMES
ONLY FROM LIFE, and that each kind reproduces only after its kind
(Genesis 1:25). 

The works of Tyndall and Louis Pasteur, in the field of bacteria
and protozoa, finally demonstrated scientifically once and for
all in these more minute fields what Redi first demonstrated with
larger organisms. 

All the advances of medical and surgical science in the treatment
and prevention of germ diseases are based upon this great truth
of the law of biogenesis - that LIFE can come only from
preexisting LIFE. 

No fact of science stands more conclusively proved today. Life
CANNOT come from dead matter. There is not one shred of truth
from science to account for the presence of life upon the earth
by any means other than a special creation by the great original
first Cause - God - who is life and the fountain source of all
life! It is now absolutely certain, according to all that can be
KNOWN from science - according to all that is rational - that it
required A REAL CREATION to produce life from the not-living -
organic from inorganic matter.


                       Life Only FROM Life

One cannot rationally deny the existence of my GOD, unless he can
account for the origin of LIFE without a Creator who, Himself, is
Life! The Creator, therefore, begins to be revealed, by science
and by reason, as a LIVING God--a God in whom is LIFE, and who
alone has imparted life to all that have it!
    
I could go further, and show you that what science has discovered
about energy and its origin and the laws of conservation of
energy, also proves conclusively that "the works were finished
from the foundation of the world" (Hebrews 4:3), that the
material creation is a completed work, which is not now going on!
Next, then, let's examine whether the great FIRST CAUSE is a
Being of intelligence, or merely some blind, dumb, unintelligent
FORCE.


		Is Anything Superior to Your Mind?

Look about you. You admit that the transmission of knowledge to
your mind is limited to the channels of your five senses.
So now I ask you, do you know of anything that is superior to
your mind?

Look at the planets coursing through the sky. Behold, in all its
splendor, the entire cosmic universe, with its suns, its nebulae
and galaxies.

Yes, they are inanimate. They have no mind, no intelligence. They
cannot do what you can do - think, reason, plan and carry out
plans according to private volition and will.

The human mind can know, think, reason, plan and carry out its
plans to execution. It can invent and produce instruments by
which it may acquire knowledge of the vast universe, or of the
minutest particle. By developing rockets and computers, man is
able to send astronauts to the moon and bring them back alive. He
can cause rivers to run backward, turn the forces of nature to
serving human needs. And now he has learned how to release the
energy of the atom, and utilize a power so vast that man is able
at last to annihilate all life from the earth.

But there remains one thing no man ever has been able to do. He
cannot build, make, produce, or create anything that is superior
to himself!

A man can take existing materials and out of them build a house.
An automobile is almost a living thing, but the intelligence and
powers required to invent and produce it are superior to the
thing produced.


                    The Supreme Intelligence

To suggest to you that anything you could invent, make, build, or
bring into being could be superior in intelligence and ability to
you and your mind, would certainly insult your intelligence! 

Now let me ask you candidly, do you honestly believe that any
power or force of less intelligence than your mind produced You? 

If you do not believe in my God, then you have only the
alternative of believing that something less than your
intelligence produced YOU - that dumb, purposeless UNINTELLIGENCE
brought into being your intelligence! The only rational
possibility is to acknowledge that the very presence of the human
mind is PROOF that the great First Cause is also the SUPREME
INTELLIGENCE, infinitely superior to the abilities of mortal man!


		Suppose You Were Creator?

Suppose that you could add to your powers of reasoning, planning,
designing, the actual CREATIVE power, so that you could project
your will anywhere to produce and bring into being whatever your
mind should plan and desire. Then, suppose you undertook the
designing, creating, fashioning, shaping and setting in motion a
limitless cosmic universe - with planets and suns and nebulae and
galaxies in all their splendor, each of these vast units being of
such intricate and complex construction as the existing universe.
On one of these planets you would plan and produce all the forms
of life that exist on this planet - and I do not mean reproduce,
for there would be no present universe to copy. There would be
worlds within a world, down to the minutest infinitesimal
particles of matter we cannot even see by the aid of the most
powerful microscopes. 

Do you think your mind would be equal to the task? Just stop and
think. 

Is it rational, then, to believe that any power or force lacking
even human intelligence, could have planned, designed, created,
formed, fashioned, shaped, put together and set in motion the
awesome universe we behold?

The First Great Cause who created matter, then, stands revealed
as the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE and ARCHITECT OF THE UNIVERSE!


                   The Miracle of Living Food

But again I say, look about you! Here are human beings on this
earth, composed mainly of certain, specific elements of matter -
living, organic matter. These elements of life must be supplied
and replenished through food, water and air.
  
No man, with all his ingenuity and science and laboratory
facilities, CAN PRODUCE FOOD! That is, he cannot take plain
inorganic matter and turn it into the living substance we call
food. But some Power, Force, Intelligence, or Being did in some
way, at some time, start the process going - a process far too
wonderful for any man to devise or produce.

And so it is that out of the ground grows grass, and green leafy
vegetables, and all other vegetables, and vines and trees
yielding fruit - each with its seed in itself, each through this
seed reproducing after its kind - and it is very good!

But when a marvelous little grain of wheat is planted in the
ground, a plant develops and sprouts above the ground, and in
some manner too wonderful for any human mind to understand or
imitate, the elements drunk in through the roots from the ground
are utilized by the life germ in the seed of wheat, and new
grains of wheat appear.

During this process, the inorganic iron and other elements
dissolved in the ground, drunk into the roots and carried up into
the new grain of wheat, have been actually converted into organic
matter which can be assimilated as food.

And this same marvelous process takes place in the growth out of
the ground of all grains, vegetables, fruits and foods. When we
eat animal meat we are merely consuming, secondhand, the
vegetation which the animal ate.

MAN, with all his vaunted science, his technical laboratory
facilities, with all his inventive genius, lacks the intelligence
and the powers to produce a grain of wheat, or to convert
inorganic matter into living food. Then is it rational to say
that forces or powers exist, of NO intelligence, which have been
able to produce this living miracle of food? Did not a far
GREATER intelligence than man design, create, and supply man with
all of this?


                 Man's Intelligence Versus God's

But now let's COMPARE the wisdom and intelligence of man with
that of God who brought these marvels into being, and keeps them
functioning.
   
The grain of wheat GOD causes to grow out of the ground is a
perfect food. But, like other perfect gifts from God, man fails to
value the priceless perfection of the all-wise God, and,
undertaking to improve on God's handiwork, perverts, pollutes, and
defiles it! Every bit of God's perfection man's hand has ever
touched, it would seem, he has besmirched, spoiled and polluted!

And the poor, defenseless grain of wheat is no exception! Into
flour mills of human devising go the millions of bushels of
healthful wheat. Yes, the sugar refiners do the same thing to
sugar; and nearly all foods on the market for human consumption
today have gone through man's factories and suffered from man's
processes until they have been devitalized, depleted of their
health-giving properties and turned from foods into slow-acting
poisons! And these foodless foods with which man has tampered in
lust for profits have produced in human bodies a whole series of
diseases of which our forefathers of a few generations ago never
heard!

Result: Today human beings drop dead before their time with heart
failure, others die with cancer; the population suffers
rheumatism, arthritis, diabetes, kidney diseases, anemia, colds,
fevers, pneumonia and thousands of other diseases. We respond to
the toothbrush and toothpaste ads and frantically brush our teeth,
but our teeth keep decaying and we lose them beginning at an early
age because of lack of calcium and fluorine in our diet.

Whose intelligence is higher - that of the GOD who provided every
perfect need for every living thing, or that of greedy, gullible,
God-rejecting humans who, in the interest of bigger profits and
more luxuries for themselves, have ROBBED the very foods God
created and gave us, of their health and body-building values?


                     "There Was No Watchmaker"

I needed an accurate watch with a very plain dial for timing
broadcasts. The only kind that filled the need was a railroad
watch. I have one - the very finest railroad watch made, a
23-jewel watch.

But it does not keep perfect time. Once or twice a week I have to
adjust it a second or two, if I want to be sure it is accurate to
the second. I set it by the master clock of my city (or any U.S.
city), which is always found at the Western Union office. But even
this clock does not keep perfect time. Once or twice a week it
must be adjusted by a second or two to the master clock of the
nation, by telegraph, from the Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C.
There at the Naval Observatory is the master clock of the U.S.A.
But this great master clock of the United States is not perfect,
either. It, too, must be adjusted and corrected occasionally.

Yes, it is corrected by the MASTER CLOCK OF THE UNIVERSE - up in
the skies - by astronomers! Up there in the heavens is the great
master clock that NEVER makes a mistake - is always ON TIME -
never off a fraction of a second - the heavenly bodies coursing
through the skies!

Now you, sir - my doubting friend! If I show you my fine precision
23-jewel railroad watch and tell you that it was not made in a
factory after all - in fact, it was not designed, planned, put
together, by any watchmaker at all - that it just sort of HAPPENED
- that the iron ores just brought themselves up out of the ground,
refined themselves, formed and shaped themselves into the delicate
little cogs and wheels and other pieces; the silicon just came of
its own accord out of the earth and turned itself into the glass
crystal; the gold case just refined itself, shaped itself; the
cogs and wheels and scores of little parts just assembled
themselves together in that case, wound themselves up, and started
themselves running and keeping almost perfect time--well, if I
should try to tell you anything like that, you'd tell me I'm crazy
or a fool, would you not?

Certainly! You know that the presence of that watch is RATIONAL AND
POSITIVE PROOF of the existence of a watchmaker, or watchmakers,
who thought it all out, planned it, formed it, shaped it, put it
together and started it running.


                   Master Clock of the Universe

But then you, Mr. Skeptic - you look up into the great vast sky at
the MASTER CLOCK of the universe, which never misses a second -
the perfect watch by which we must constantly set all our
imperfect man-made watches - and you tell me, "That all just
HAPPENED! There was no Great Watchmaker! No Master MIND thought
out and planned that vast universe, brought it into being, set
each star and planet in its own exact place, and started the
myriad heavenly bodies coursing through space, each in its
prescribed orbit, in its orderly precision. No, it just fashioned
itself, put itself together, wound itself up, and started itself
running. There was no Intelligence - no planning - NO CREATION -
NO GOD! 

Do you say that to me? 

If you can, I answer that I do not respect your intelligence. And
the God I acknowledge replies to you, "The FOOL hath said in his
heart, There is no God"! (Ps. 14:1; 53:1.) 

If you can look about you, and observe how intelligently PLANNED
and executed is everything in nature and in plant and animal life
- everything we see except the bungling, botching, polluting of
God's beautiful handiwork by the clumsy hand of God-ignoring-and-
rejecting MAN - and then say you doubt the existence of an all-
wise, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator GOD, then I do not have
much faith either in your rational processes or your sincerity as
a seeker of the TRUTH!

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The above was taken from the booklet "Does God Exist?" published by
The Worldwide Church of God.  Original text by Herbert W. Armstrong
(1892-1986).
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc