After my first post, things took a different direction. My friend WORDS who comments regularly has challenged me to convert to atheism. (If you go to the first post on this blog and down to the comments, you can read the whole exchange.)
In WORDS' last comment, the implication was made that anyone who believes in God is, well, schizophrenic. Here's my reply in the form of a quote from an on-line article.
Let me begin with five traditional arguments for the existence of God. It may seem an unlikely starting point for this topic, but I think you'll see as time goes on that these arguments keep coming up. I'm not going to comment right away on whether these arguments are valid or not, but I will state them because throughout astrophysical literature these arguments are often referred to:
The cosmological argument: the effect of the universe's existence must have a suitable cause.
The teleological argument: the design of the universe implies a purpose or direction behind it.
The rational argument: the operation of the universe, according to order and natural law, implies a mind behind it.
The ontological argument: man's ideas of God (his God-consciousness) implies a God who imprinted such a consciousness.
The moral argument: man's built-in sense of right and wrong can be accounted for only by an innate awareness of a code of law--an awareness implanted by a higher being.
The author of this quote:
Dr. "Fritz" Schaefer is the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize and was recently cited as the third most quoted chemist in the world. "The significance and joy in my science comes in the occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, `So that's how God did it!' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." -U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 23, 1991
You can read his entire article here: http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/bigbang.html
or simply by clicking on the title of this post, "From the Beginning".
In the second part of the same lecture given by Dr. Schaefer, you can read this:
We shall begin with the philosophical aspects of A Brief History of Time, which really explains why it has sold so many copies. Stephen Hawking has stated, "It is difficult to discuss the beginning of the universe without mentioning the concept of God. My work on the origin of the universe is on the borderline between science and religion, but I try to stay on the scientific side of the border. It is quite possible that God acts in ways that cannot be described by scientific laws, but in that case, one would just have to go by personal belief."
When asked whether he believed that science and Christianity were competing world views, Hawking replied, "...then Newton would not have discovered the law of gravity." He knew that Newton had strong religious convictions.
So, three prominent scientists find faith in God to be a reasonable proposition. Even Einstein (although grudgingly and not admitting a personal God) eventually admitted the possibility of diety.)
You may not believe in God. I can't prove that God exists. Faith in God, however, is reasonable and that is the conclusion of people a lot smarter than I am. Or are Schafer, Hawking, Sir Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein all schizophrenic?
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