There Must Be Something More

88 | Does God Exist?

Perfect love. Perfect love. Perfect love.

I remembered. I smiled. I faced the crowd. Fear not.

"Does God exist?" I said, reading from the slide. "The universe had a start--what caused it?"

The audience was silent. Dead silent. Turned out Principal Powell just had to scrape something off his shoe. 

I smiled. "Scientists are convinced that our universe began with one enormous explosion of energy and light, which we now call the Big Bang. This was the singular start to everything that exists: the beginning of the universe, the start of space, and even the initial start of time itself.

"Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, a self-described agnostic, stated, 'The seed of everything that has happened in the universe was planted in that first instant; every star, every planet and every living creature in the universe came into being as a result of events that were set in motion in the moment ofthe cosmic explosion...The universe flashed into being, and we cannot find out what caused that to happen.'

"Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in Physics, said at the moment of this explosion, 'the universe was about a hundred thousands million degrees Centigrade...and the universe was filled with light.'

"The universe has not always existed. It had a start...what caused that? Scientists have no explanation for the sudden explosion of light and matter."

"Well, there's no scientific theory for that yet!" A girl from the Science Committee stood up. She had frizzy brown hair and a white lab coat on her. She pointed a finger and looked me in the eyes.

"And that's the problem," I said in a calm and polite tone. "Scientists have tried to investigate it for hundreds and hundreds of years but they never get to a conclusion. But the Bible says about it clearly. The Bible makes sense."

"No, it doesn't!" She retaliated.

"Please wait until the speaker finishes," Principal Powell stood up to say. The scientist girl looked fazed and quickly sat down.

I was stunned. I tried not to make too a big deal about it and moved on with my slides.

"So," I said, "does God exist? The universe operates by uniform laws of nature. Why does it?"

I clicked on the remote and the slide appeared. A time lapse clip of nature played. It showed the night sky in Alaska, sunsets in Hawaii, and sunrises in Chicago. I turned to the crowd and they were all smitten by the views. 

If you think creation's beautiful, I thought, then God must be extravagant. The Creator is always better than the creation.

I moved on to another slide. "Much of life may seem uncertain, but look at what we can count on day after day," I said, "gravity remains consistent, a hot cup of coffee left on a counter will get cold, the earth rotates in the same 24 hours, and the speed of light doesn't change -- on earth or in galaxies far from us.

"How is it that we can identify laws of nature that never change? Why is the universe so orderly, so reliable?

"'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. This astonishment springs from the recognition that the universe doesn't have to behave this way. It is easy to imagine a universe in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in whichthings pop in and out of existence.'

Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said, 'Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle.'"