Not enough faith

I look around me, and I just don’t have enough faith NOT to believe in You, Lord. The very existence of this Universe defies Newton’s laws of motion and the laws of thermodynamics. If for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, as stated in Newton’s third law, didn’t some Force have to cause the Big Bang? – or whatever the origins of the Universe are? I put a rock on a table once and sat there, waiting for it to move by itself. It never moved. I got bored and left.

In a isolated system, matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Yet, here we are : )

And if every closed system tends toward entropy – in other words, tends to fall apart into chaos – what caused subatomic particles to collect together to form atoms, the atoms to clump together into molecules, and those molecules to join together to make the Earth, stars, and planets and the rest of the night sky… And us? This is order forming out of chaos – the opposite of entropy.

There are underlying patterns and cycles throughout the Universe. Our Sun rises and sets every 24 hours. The Earth cycles through its seasons like clockwork. The Fibonacci sequence appears over and over again in nature. Stars are born, live, and die just like us. Each generation of stars is made in part from the “star stuff” of previous generations – just as the atoms and molecules, previously used by other beings, flow through our bodies – rivers of matter used and reused.

The mathematical odds of the order in our universe being a result of chance are so infinitesimal, it’s beyond my imagination. It would have to be fortuitous coincidence heaped upon fortuitous coincidence for billions of years for us to be here! The multiverse theory seems even more improbable without some Force behind the creation of them all.

Have you ever seen a little kid bowling for the first time? They push the ball with two hands. It slowly rolls down the alley until it comes to a dead stop in the middle. That’s because there wasn’t enough initial force to overcome the ball’s inertia and the friction acting upon it. Now imagine that the kid’s bowling ball starts to roll faster and faster toward the pins – picking up speed without any visible force acting upon it. You would have to assume there was a downward slope to the alley. Otherwise, there would be no explanation for the ball’s acceleration… Yet this Universe is expanding at an ever accelerating rate. If the universe’s expansion was a result of the energy released in the Big Bang, one would expect the universe to be decelerating. Scientists, as of yet, cannot explain what force is causing the accelerated expansion. They call it “dark energy” for lack of a better description. I’m just saying… ; )

So… if I can get past how all matter and energy exist, I’m still left wondering why I can ponder all of this. Why do I have consciousness? Our sentience is not explained by any current theory of chance. Humans are far more than the sum of their parts. We can create, learn, reason, analyze, visualize, remember and reflect on the past, and project into the future. We have complex language, with which we communicate thoughts, feelings, and ideas to other humans. We have a broad range of emotions – chief among them being love and hate. We don’t live by instinct. We think and feel our way through life. As much as I loved seeing KoKo the gorilla learn how to use sign language or like imagining intelligent dolphins saying “So long, and thanks for all the fish”, no other living being comes close to this level of human consciousness.

I could go on, but the upshot is that I just don’t have enough faith to believe that all of this and we exist by chance. To me, that takes a bigger leap of logic then to believe in an Intentional and Mindful Creator. A godless Universe contradicts science and math more than the existence of a Supreme Being.

Having faith means one believes in something that can’t be proven true. I can’t prove of Your Existence to others, Lord – though I know You Are with me. Someone once said something to the effect that “if I can believe in our existence, I can believe in anything.” That’s basically what I’m saying here. Our very existence is ridiculous to begin with! And without You, God, it makes no sense at all!

“The heavens declare the Glory of God;the skies proclaim the Work of His Hands.Day after day they pour forth speech;night after night they reveal knowledge.They have no speech, they use no words;no sound is heard from them.Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,their words to the ends of the world.”Psalm 19:1-4