DOES GOD EXIST?

Genesis 1:1-3 (ESV)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Notes on the Scripture

Most scientists would agree that, in the beginning, the “earth was without form and void, and there was darkness everywhere.” It is generally accepted that the universe

had a beginning and, before that beginning — well, nobody really knows, exactly.

Nobody has a clue.

Scientists make important-sounding guesses, but their guesses are not science. As far as anyone knows, neither energy, nor matter, nor time, nor space as we know it even existed.

Human beings have a terrible habit of acting like they know things when they really don’t. Just a few hundred years ago, a renown physician would tell you, with utter assurance, that your illness was caused by an imbalance of humours, and should be treated by sticking leeches on you to remove excess blood. Scientists, like every other kind of expert, sometimes have a hard time saying “I don’t really know.”

Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist, declared that God does not exist. Because of his popularity and status as a famous scientist, an expert on the beginning of the universe, people seemed to think he had some sort of special insight into the issue. But he didn’t.

He did not actually understand his own area of expertise; he didn’t know whether there was a “Big Bang.” Even within the language of science, it is only a theory. And neither Hawking nor any other physicist has attempted a coherent proof of what existed before the Big Bang, or how or why it happened. Hawking’s own explanation was that, well, the universe just popped into existence!

This isn’t a diatribe against science, or all the wonderful things done by all the brilliant and hard-working people that have improved our lives so much. The point is: the opinion of Steven Hawking (or any other eminent scientist) on the existence of God has no more validity than that of a washerwoman. And even worse, these “science-knowledgeable atheists” pander to the bias of a world community that seems ever more eager to turn away from God.

What we Christians understand, that Hawking did not, is that God cannot be known simply with the mind. Spiritual knowledge cannot be found by mathematics. We can only find God with our heart and our spirit, and with the innocence of a child. We must pray for such people, that they may find the light of the Spirit so that their souls might be saved from their own pride.