2. Who Is God ? God Under Scientific Views

GOD UNDER SCIENTIFIC VIEWS

VIRTUAL LIFE:

Do you realize that the more civilized the farther people get away from real life to live virtually? Do you ever search inside yourself, thinking hard to see how you are living a virtual life like mayflies irresistibly attracted to flames? You are adventuring in an indefinite life and let someone, not you, decide on your fate.

Look, is real money used in the stock exchange, or your labor is exchanged for unreal things, to buy just numbers on accounting books?

Human beings live on their potential. The invisible potential is what has real values.

Dollar billionaires do not lead much real life: their houses, cars and food are only trivial.  

Where is their unlimited wealth stored? In banks, shares … And they are just numbers.

Long time ago precious metals were stored as wealth. Later bank notes were issued by governments and they hardly could be used to wrap things. Trust in governmental institutions is also unreal. Governments decide on values on your behalf, despite your will. Today people carry out transactions on electronic wallets, which record virtual numbers on computer memory.

Let us perform some more analysis in the domain of digital technology:

Movies, television, internet, smart phones …, all lead us into unreal worlds. Unreal things occupy most of real time, and little by little turn themselves into reality.

One server sends signals, received by millions of terminal computers, of the same contents programmed by anyone. Digital games with invented trembling stories, offering free rides throughout the universe wherever your mind can imagine, look like real. Real and unreal things become messed up with time: looking real or unreal. Human life is just unreal dreams.

Some people claim: this life is unreal, but is just the games programmed by super aliens from outer space. Or Nietzsche spoke more impressively: Human beings are just imitating monkeys God created to entertain Himself in His too long existence. (“Thus spoke Zarathustra”, Nietzsche).

Then what is dreams, and what is reality? Is human life just a dream? Where are we between existence and nothingness? At last anyone of us may become philosophers like Descartes, asking oneself and saying: “I think, therefore I am.”

One thing is sure that dreams must be rooted in reality. God is the eternal reality. Thoughts of God are the core of reality and human life.

1. CONCEPTS OF GOD IN PRIMITIVE TIMES

   At the dawn of mankind, people lived on hunting, gathering food, and lived in caves. The mind was immature, the culture primitive, even barbaric to compare with contemporary standards.

   The thinking is concrete. There were very few abstract words. No writing. The instinct almost controlled all everyday activities.

   For a solid foundation of a particular human society, the nature had formed in humans some basic indispensable factors:

1. An appropriate body:

Upright standing position and longer legs help free the hands. The brain developed enough to exchange information, memory with large capacity of storage, all of which result in the ability of thinking and forecasting, calculating and creating.

• Thinking mind and language:

Thanks to the ability of receiving, exchanging and storing information easily through language, to the ability of thinking and creating, the mankind little by little accumulated knowledge and science, and harnessed natural forces, in order to exploit and control every thing.

• Conscience:

Conscience is the natural innate ability in each person’s soul, to recognize the good from the bad and behave accordingly in the society. Conscience is universal in everyone and in every people. Everywhere or in whatever people, every person has the same concept about the good and the bad, such as no stealing, no telling lies, no killing other people, filial love for parents, gratitude towards those who do good to them, etc. Conscience is an inner impulse to help people do the good and stay away from the bad: when someone does something wrong or right, his conscience feels guilty or happy.

Of course conscience can be distorted partly under the influence of education, culture, and ages … However, in general, conscience is like a good seed sown in everyone’s heart.

Law of nature that the strong defeat the weak is gradually replaced by the sense of justice, integrity, ethics and responsibility, which exist only in human societies.

Conscience is the original feature of rational human beings. In primitive people conscience started to develop, was still simple and somehow affected by social institutions.

• Religion and superstition:

Primitive human societies consisted of individual members endowed with freedom and creativity, gathered into active population, accelerating the evolution course, and waking up the world of living creatures after a very long sleep. Evolutionists claim that multi-celled organisms appeared one billion years ago and human beings were formed much later, only 200,000 years ago.

At this time, awareness of self and concept of gods in human beings were formed.

Similarly, the fetus knows nothing and remembers nothing, and a child at the age of two only feels the life vaguely. His first thought, expressed in language, is the words “ma-ma” or “pa-pa.”

Primitive people, with immature intellect, did feel what they belong to: from their origin to their existence, influence on their life. It was not themselves, nor animals or plants which were inferior to them; it was the mighty power from invisible gods: mountain god, river god, thunder god …

Therefore, religion was a natural and essential aspect that could be found in these phenomena:

• Totem worship, polytheism, offerings to the dead.
• Magic.
• Fortune telling, interpretation of dreams, horoscope.
• Witches, necromancers.

Primitive people believed in the afterlife, in immortal souls and had vague concepts about one God, the beginning source, who exerted direct influence and decided everyone’s fates. Do you think if this evolutionary sequence, this spectacular progress, happened at random or was guided by a supreme mind?

1. CONCEPTS OF GOD IN ANCIENT TIMES

Almost all big religions appeared in ancient times and continued to exist until today.

The common consensus: ancient times started in 4,000-5,000 years BC, when there were writings, and ended in the fifth century CE (AD) with the collapse of the Roman Empire. In this period the intellect had developed and the mankind had built brilliant civilizations found in archaeological traces and in history books. Due to geographical distance, the cultural exchange was only local and not strong. We can cite the following civilizations:

• Mesopotamian civilization: Near the Euphrates River and the Tigris River, about 3,500 years BC. Cuneiform writings in wedge shape.
• Egyptian civilization: Near the Nile River, about 3,000 years BC. Hieroglyphic writings.
• Indian civilization: Near the Indus River, about 2,500 years BC. Indian characters.
• Yellow River civilization: Near the Yellow River, about 2,500 years BC. Kanji characters.
• Polytheism:

The number of gods adored in the ancient times is estimated to be tens of thousands of gods, the more, and more diverse in the older times, especially in Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations.

It was understandable for us today: Nature was still not discovered and many secrets could not be explained in ancient people view. What cannot be explained must come from gods: god bird, god crossbow, god bull, and the giant devastating wave from nowhere was called god wave.

Pandemics, diseases, poor harvest, and famine caused human life to be precarious. Rudimentary knowledge brought fears, and the helplessness caused human beings to turn to gods.

Will we someday know everything, freed from all fears, and become mighty in order not to pray to anyone else?

• Pantheism:

Pantheism is the concept that identifies god with things in the universe: sacred or from gods. Pantheism is the belief system that existed at least from 2,500 years BC.

Brahmin (Hinduism), Buddhism and Taoism are particular pantheist religions, which interpret the world as a giant system of which human beings are the smaller universes.

Atharva Veda says: “Only His breath is enough for the vitality of the whole giant universe, for its creation, and His perfect control lies there in each tiny individual”. (thuvienhoasen.org)

Vajur Veda also says: “The universe finds itself in Him and already exists in Him. Like the oak tree exists there in its seed, or the fruit is there in its seed sprout, ready to flourish and develop, visible things are there in Brahman and all germs begin in Him”. (thuvienhoasen.org, Bà La Môn Giáo và triết học Phật Giáo. Như Thị).

Buddhism claims that the ultimate reality is Suchness (Tathata), the impersonal truth. It is the ultimate eternal principle, from which all we experience are formed. All kinds of human evolution and interdependent co-arising cannot get out of Tathata.

God in Taoism lies in the concept of Tao. Laozi says: “There was something mysterious and original that existed even before the universe. It was quiet, invisible, entire and invariable. It lived forever everywhere in its perfect form and everything was born of it. I do not know what name it is. I call it “Tao”. This means to say that this world was formed from “Tao” (Tao Te Ching).

 Tao was the origin to form everything, the essence and the way everything should follow, the reality without beginning and end, the total of rules that control the evolution and changes of everything. It is magical and follows the nature.

“Tao produced one, one produced two, two produced three, three produced everything”. It means that everything is of the same essence, and this visible world is Tao as well. Gods are men and men are gods.

• Monotheism:

The cult of one only God, who created everything from nothingness and is the Lord of species. He is in person, which means His essence is separated from the creation.

In general, this is progress in human awareness. Monotheism is considered by many to be the specific cosmology of three big religions: Judaism, Christianism and Islam, whose forefather was Abraham, who lived about 2,000 years BC.

Judaism calls this God Yaveh (Dn 9:14). God is identified as the only invisible Highest One, the beginning of everything. He is individual and transcendent. Everything was created by Him.

About the 14^th, 15^th centuries BC, Moses was entrusted by God with the task of saving the Jewish people from the slavery in Egypt. The information we have about his mission is in Torah (the Pentateuch), the Jewish Old Testament.

Moses encountered God, in the form of flames in a thorny bush and asked what his name was to tell the people. He answered him: “I am who I am” (Ex 3:14), meaning He exists by Himself. When leading the people out of Egypt into the desert, God showed the people his presence in the form of a column of cloud to show them the way.

God is invisible and of no figure. Human mind cannot imagine Him.

The God in Judaism is the God in Christianism.

Jesus told us more: God is in three persons, but only one God: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit” (Mt 28, 19).

Islam calls the God of Judaism Allah, the supreme God, the only one, in self existence and absolute power.

God revealed the book of Qur’an to Prophet Muhammad, in which one paragraph says: “In the Name of your Lord who created. Created man from a clot. And your Lord is the Most Generous. He who taught by the pen. Taught man what he never knew.” (Qur’an 96:1-5)

1. GOD OF SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES

From the 5^th century AD, when the Roman Empire had collapsed, many people thought it was the dark period for human intellect.

However, in fact, in the first Middle-Age centuries, wars and conflicts brought cultural interference between the East and the West.

In the middle Middle-Age centuries, western academic started to blossom. Universities like Bologna (1088), Oxford (1096), Cambridge (1209) …, and main branches of science were founded with active supports from the Catholic Church. Mathematics made new progresses with the advent of algebra and decimal factors. Mechanic clocks were made and astronomy research was done thanks to concave spherical lens, etc.

1. Popularity of empirical sciences:

With considerable developments in human intellect, abstraction, analytical mind, reasoning, forecasting and the help of archive libraries and printing houses (Gutenberg 1430), scientific thinking penetrated into all fields of intellectual life. People did not accept as true anything that was ambiguous, imaginary or guessing. Everything should be verified and systemized in a reasonable way to be trustworthy. Nothing could be true other than mathematics and sciences developed in line with it.

Experience could say nothing if there were no observation, measurements, tests and verification.

1. Astronomy:

Outstanding was the heliocentric theory by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), a Poland clergyman, who claimed that the sun was the center of the solar system, not the Earth as people thought until then.

Gallileo Gallilei (1564-1642) developed this shocking and disputed opinion of Copernicus’. He was condemned by the Church, who decided that the idea was from devils and witches.

• Empirical physics:

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) claimed that nothing existed other than things that followed rules. God was a metaphysical concept that could not be measured.

Therefore, to many people, God was only some imaginary superstition due to ignorance.

• The Church’s regrettable mistakes:

Together with secular governments, the Roman Catholic Church, in a long time, colluded with kings and aristocrats, to take full power in its hands: conquer peoples and dominate the whole European Middle-Aged social culture. The Church alienation led to many mistakes: strict, oppressive, obstinate and cruel.

Clergymen were educated rigidly, not to be intellectual, but to be stubborn in protecting traditions by any reasons, interpreting the Bible childishly, and enjoying the confidence to master all truth. Whoever did not think as they did should be devilish, heretic and mistaken. They even made use of tribunal power to kill dissidents, turn the Church’s structure into an oppressive ruling machine, not an educational medium. This was the period of degradation in Roman Church’s structure: secularized and far from Gospel teachings.

Catholic authority focused too much on Church’s appearance, secular fame and profit, ceremonial manners, rigidity, not the inner spiritual contents. In contrast with the simple mainstream catechism were deductions, supposed to be highly superior, but in fact, strange from real life, useless and binding.

In general, the image of a pure God was turned into nothing more than a cheap lowly idol. Religion became an enchanting sleeping pill, serving the ruling class on the front seats.

• God of atheists:

Too frustrated with guesses, superstitions, gullibility, which led the mankind into stagnation, corruption, failure, and slavery, atheists considered themselves as liberators, as progressive scientists. This era lasted into the 18^th century in Europe and is called the Enlightenment Age, whose climax was the 1789 French Revolution.

Science developed without interruptions in every aspect, and highlights were atheist movements in 19^th century.

1. Dialectical materialism:

Karl Marx (1818-1883), Friederich Engels (1820-1895) claimed that the universe is a unity of matter existing objectively. Space, time and movement are forms of existence, inherent properties of matter. Material world exists forever, is not born and does not die. Consciousness is a form of matter as well.

• Evolutionism:

Charles Darwin (1809-1882): Every species is born naturally, not by any god. Inorganic life evolves into mono-celled organism, low-level creatures, and high-level creatures with intellectual ability like human beings through natural selection, competition for survival, adaptation. The mankind came from evolving apes. (On the Origin of Species, 1859).

• Scientists who believe in God’s existence:

There were scientists without faith in metaphysical world and the widespread secularization movement in societies: religion is superstitions, corruption, enslavement, limitation of freedom, which civilized mankind should liberate themselves from. But many scientists were humble, recognizing that human intellect was nothing in front of the immense mystery of nature and God’s greatness.

Typically, they are:

1. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630):

This seminary Graz professor lived at Gallileo’s time. Kepler was a German mathematician and astronomer, one of the representative figures of the 18^th century science revolution. He discovered laws of movement of celestial bodies, known as Kepler laws. He invented the reflecting telescope (also Kepler telescope).

He believed that God created the world in a plan that human mind can recognize. Based on Kepler laws of planet movement, Newton formulated the theory of universal gravitation.

• Isaac Newton (1642-1726):

He was the English mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He proposed three laws of motion and the universal gravitation, known as the foundation of classical mechanics. Newton is considered by many as one of the greatest scientists.

Beside his dedication to science researches, he spent most of his time studying the Bible. Newton believed in one only transcendent God who created this universe and who cannot be denied when we look at and admire his miracle work. He said: “I see God through my telescope”.

• Louis Pasteur (1822-1895):

Pasteur, a Frenchman, is known as the father of biology, with discoveries about vaccination principles, microbial fermentation … He proved that autogenous theory, undertaken by scientists before him, was wrong. He is also honored as the father of contemporary medicine, a genius who invented vaccines for rabies, anthrax, and sterilization method … He was a scientist who always believed in God: “The more I do science research, the more I believe in God”.

In addition to the above typical scientists, we cannot ignore other contemporary scientists of genius such as:

• Faraday (1791-1867), a chemist and physicist with huge contribution to electronics and electro-chemistry.
• Dalton (1766-1844), a famous chemist in the field of nuclear theory.
• Maxwell (1831-1879), a mathematician and physicist with researches in electrostatics and magnetics leading to the prediction of radio waves.
• Mendel (1822-1884), a Catholic priest and the father of genetics.

And many more other scientists … For them religion does not contradict science, but on the contrary, like Einstein said: “I have never encountered anything in my science that contradicts my religion”.

1. THE GOD OF CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE: 20^th-21^st CENTURIES
2. The errors of classical evolutionism:

The classical evolutionism, claimed by Darwin, one of its promoters, in his book “On the Origin of Species” was like a tornado blowing up the 19^th century science in the boiling atmosphere to reject many outdated notions. For the past 150 years, this theory was easily accepted by many because of the convincing arguments based on archeological proofs and empirical observations.

Today this theory has become weak because there has been new scientific evidence that contradicts its hasty and careless conclusions, more of guessing than of science. The main points which are being disputed are puzzling problems of how to explain these phenomena:

• In thermodynamics, the energy conversion process leads to a loss, not a gain in energy.
• A design must be complete in some mind that arranges it, not the result of nature.
• In biology: Like only comes from another life and one species comes from the same species.
• In genetics: Mutation can only result in degeneration, not in advancement.
• Many fossils of hundreds of million years ago are no different from the same species living today.
• Many collected archaeological specimens have been proved to be unreliable or fake.

Many scientists believe that the classical evolutionism will die out as a foolish misleading theory in the history of science. Darwin, the father of this theory, doubted himself as well. Scientist Ernst Chain, Nobel-winner in Physiology or Medicine. Said: ‘I would rather believe in fairy tales than in such unfounded guesses of evolutionism.”

Two famous palaeontologists, Lecomte du Noüy, a Catholic believer, and Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest, undertook the new evolutionism called “telefinalism,” based on the 19^th–century classical evolutionism by Darwin.

• The new evolutionism by Lecomte du Noüy (1883-1947) and Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955):

The intellectual mankind’s evolution proceeds into depth, mainly in the mental and cognitive development. The mankind is forming a class of superior God-like people. This evolution is orientated toward a clear goal, the mankind’s perfection of mentality and cognition, whose highest point is Omega. Teilhard de Chardin called this process Christianization.

Today the widespread coverage of the internet in a highly globalized intellectual background has proved that Chardin’s concept of noosphere, which he predicted half a century ago, is right.

God invites and leads the evolution work miraculously. Human beings use the freedom and self-command given by God to gradually restrain their vile instincts and live a noble life far from self-lust and worth the lofty human dignity.

In this process, according to Noüy and Chardin, the freedom and personal contribution are essential. God only invites and never forces us. How important and precious our freedom is! It contributes to the success or failure of the whole creative work.

Freedom is the mankind’s most precious and also most dangerous thing. It calls for self-command and self-responsibility for self-behavior.

The more state-of-the-art the advanced science and technological inventions are, the more responsibility is required. Today science and technology have developed uncontrollably and proved to be extremely dangerous. A proportional level of morality is required to maintain the balance. If not, self-destruction is something inevitable.

Einstein was once asked how the third world war would happen when many countries possess nuclear weapons which can destroy all life on Earth. He calmly replied he did not know, but certainly in the fourth world war men would throw stones at each other. It means the mankind will start again from the beginning. Many scientists wonder what caused the destruction of many brilliant ancient civilizations that once appeared on Earth.

May this destruction happen to us? It is very likely if we expel God out of our life.

• Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) relativity theory and Heisenberg’s (1901-1976) uncertainty principle:
• Einstein:

 The famous equation E=MC²: Matter is just a form of energy. This formula has changed energy view and created modern technologies today. Energy cannot be generated by itself or from nothing, but only be transferred from one form to another. For example, dry logs turn into heat when burned. Nuclear bombs are made according to this equation.

Einstein also proposed relativity theory in which time and space are interchangeable forms of perception.

• Heisenberg:

Promoting the uncertainty principle: Elementary microscopic particles are both particles and waves.

Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s theories were outstanding representatives which turned upside down all notions of the old intellectual and scientific background, based on Euclidean mathematics and Newtonian classical physics, and which laid the groundwork and led the world into the new era of quantum physics.

From now on the mankind stepped into a new adventure to discover a completely new nature, extremely rich and extremely miraculous, where scientific methods are all ineffective.

• The failure of science and the information technology (IT) revolution:

Many of the tales which we once considered to be fictitious, superstitious or legendary have turned into real things. The quantum world has unveiled us unimaginable absurd miracles which have now turned into undeniable truths.

1. Astronomy:

With modern telescopes men turned their eyes to galaxies of billions of years far away and discovered black holes where there is no time and space. If there is no time and space, how can we form perceptions and how can science exist?

• Dark matter and dark energy:

The visible world live in only accounts for a small percentage of the whole reality. Around us are dark matter and dark energy, a different world that we cannot figure out.

• Quantum world:

The existence is very real, where scientific laws we are applying are just nonsense. With quantum physics we can be at many places at the same time; the past, present and future become one.

Scientists have applied quantum theory to make super computers which can process data millions of times faster than ordinary computers.

CONCLUSION:

• A transcendent power must be accepted for the evolution if this evolutionism exists.
• Science does not contradict faith, but on the contrary thanks to God’s existence scientific knowledge has its intrinsic value and is explainable. Science requires God.

   André-Marie Ampère said: “How great is God and our science is just trivial”.

   Blaise Pascal said: “In front of the choice of theism or atheism, the wise choice is theism because we will lose nothing”.

   However, the faith in One God is not a choice under pressure like Pascal’s argument. It is an invitation which we accept with clear freedom of mind, and with the piety we feel from real life.