For me, Christianity is satisfying intellectually, emotionally, and passes the road test of life.

Here I will deal with the intellectual stuff, as I see it. I do not know everything, nor do I claim too either, but I hope you enjoy what I have written.

Firstly, Does God exist?

Rene Descartes is famous for his quote: “I think, therefore, I am.”

I prefer, “I think, therefore, God is”.

When I wake up in the morning, I realize that I exist.  If I exist, why should it be so difficult or surprising to consider the possibility that God exists.  Quite frankly, I am surprised that I exist.  However, I cannot deny my own existence.  The fact that I exist, leads me to search for God.

The fact that one of us exists makes it more likely in my humble opinion, that both of us exist.  It does seem arrogant, to assume that God does not exist, it seems more humble to assume that he does, and humility I think has value. However, I accept that this is a matter of opinion. 

Secondly,

As an imperfect student of human biology, I have come to appreciate the incredible complexity of the molecules that exist inside the human body, and how they interact with each other to perform their tasks.

For example, the sodium and potassium pumps (that are responsible for the consumption of 25% of all energy expenditure inside the body) will only transport sodium or potassium molecules, which are selected by their exact size and shape.  Any molecule that enters the pump, which does not conform to the exact requirements will not be passed or pumped through…. given the tiny size of the potassium and sodium molecules ,these pumps are a typical example of the amazing precision at a atomic level that exists throughout the body.

You may wish to believe that these pumps and all the other incredibly complicated molecules occurred by accident, but personally I think it unlikely.

The big bang theory suggests that the universe has a finite beginning.  In other words, the idea that there was a beginning does echo the theological explanation in the Bible.  Furthermore, the idea that “evolution has had an infinite amount of time” is not supported by the big bang theory, and I suggest that it takes more faith to believe that the complex human body evolved than to believe that it was designed.  The famous physicist Stephen Hawkings has suggested that the chances that evolution occurred within the time available are fantastically low. 

The famous example, justifying evolution, of the monkey sitting at a typewriter with infinite time available being able eventually to produce a complete set of works of Shakespeare does no longer apply, the famous monkey with no longer has infinity in which to work.

And what started and drove evolution anyway. I mean, why evolve? The laws of physics and nature that describe the life we see do not explain what started it all, merely the parameters. For example, the laws will describe precisely the speed, momentum, distance traveled of a rock rolling down a hill, but not what pushed it off the summit in the first place. If life is a series of dominoes, who knocked over the first one?

Thirdly

But none of these reasons convinces me, in reality, about God.  They are more like clues to his existence.

It's actually, the problem of evil, or should I say, the existence of evil that convinces me about the reality of God.

If a lion eats a zebra it might be sad for the zebra, but the Lion is just doing his job.  There is no guilt, no accusation, it's simply the strong eating the weak.  And that, we are taught, is how evolution occurs.  The stronger DNA is selected, the weaker DNA does not survive.  Lions that cannot hunt also cannot survive and their DNA is deleted from the gene pool.  Weak zebras are eaten, strong zebras avoid being eaten, and their DNA, presumably better, is passed on.

But if a man bullies, steals, manipulates, or any other adverse behavior towards another human beings or animals, we humans do not see it as merely being the strong eliminating the weak, rather, we believe that behavior to be wrong, furthermore, we believe in justice.  When Hitler invaded Poland, and murdered all those he considered to be inferior, we humans considered this to be pure evil.

If life was just an accident, then Hitler's actions would not be a crime, it would just be the strong man, doing his job in strengthening the gene pool.  And that's actually, how he saw it.  He was trying to build a super race.  A famous philosopher called Nietzsche suggested not only that God was dead, but that based on Darwin's observations of natural selection for strengthening the gene pool of a species, that it was perfectly reasonable to attempt to strengthen the human gene pool by eliminating the weak.

But even a child knows what is fair and what is not from a very early age.  And fortunately, most of us agree that Hitler's actions do not make him a strong man, but actually a criminal.  We also believe in justice, punishment for crime.  Are these beliefs some recent bizarre byproduct of evolution, a system that has apparently spent millions of years strengthening the strong by eliminating the weak, suddenly, back flipping and now supporting the weak against the strong?  That makes no sense to me.

So I believe, unfortunately, in evil.  And you don't need to look too far to see it.  Read any newspaper, watch the television news, look inside your own family or even yourself, and I'm sure you will find examples of bad things that you wish had not happened.  Jesus Christ explains, in Mark 7:20,  that evil arises from inside the human heart, and he lists several examples of evil, such as murder, theft, adultery, evil thoughts, malice, greed, amongst lots of others,(see the Atheist Challenge).

And the same applies to justice.  Humans believe in justice, just ask any victim of crime.

 So, if you believe that Hitler was a criminal, it also means that you have a standard, a measurement of moral behavior that he fails to measure up against.  Evolutions’ only standard is strengthening the gene pool, which was Hitler’s justification for his actions, building a super race, based on the Aryan race. If you have any other standard, then clearly, you do not believe in evolution, life occurring by accident.  Clearly, it means you believe in God.

Let me repeat myself, because it is so important.  This is the reason fundamentally why I believe in God.  If you believe there is a standard of human behavior on which basis you can decide whether someone is evil or not, then you must believe in God.  Evolution, fundamentally, does not care.  If life was just an accident, Hitler cannot be a criminal, just another lion or jackal, doing his job.

You might argue that evolution would allow the sacrifice of some members of a species for the greater good, but that seems impossible without an external (separate from each individual member of the species) controlling coordinator, which of course evolution denies the existence of.

There is no “evil” without God.  If you believe in evil, and justice, then you are automatically a believer in God.

But you ask, how could a good God make or permit evil to exist? It’s actually a function of free choice, a loving God gives his creation (or parts of it) the option of choosing good or evil, with consequences for either option. Better than just creating machines, don’t you agree? Good and evil is the measurement scale, descriptions of these consequences, which maybe loving or painful. You can’t have choice without results, and the scale we use to measure these is the moral scale, the scale of good and evil, a bit like the pH scale for measuring acid and bases in chemistry.

There is so much pain in the world you say, all as a result of this decision of God to create us. God claims in the Bible to be able to heal and fix all the pain, something that each person can test for himself by seeking to have their own pain healed through the process described in the Bible. The principle is that Love can defeat any amount of pain. And that’s why God bothered to create the world, even though He knew it would go “off the tracks” for a while.

The question then becomes automatically, where does the standard lie that we should apply to human behavior.  And funnily enough, early in the Bible, a standard is set when Cain is punished for the murder of his brother Abel, and the Law of Moses is handed down, indicating a standard to humans, (see The Moral Standard section).

Just as every location on the planet is referenced (compared) automatically by general agreement to both the Equator (for latitude), and to Greenwich in England (for longitude) giving a precise definition to each and every location, allowing trouble free navigation, similarly, I believe God is the reference point for moral behaviour.

So do you believe in moral standards?  Are you a believer in God?  Do you wish to follow the clues further? You need to seek, search out the answers, not just to accept what you are told.  Jesus Christ tells us in the Bible : “he who seeks will find, he who knocks, the door will be opened to him”.  I wish you well in your search, and I hope you do not object if I point you towards the Bible, something that has stood the test of time as a place to look for the answers to the important questions.  There are many other philosophies and religions, which clamour for your attention.  Your task is to sift out the truth from the decoys.  Jesus Christ also said that “the truth will set you free”, that seems to be a reasonable standard by which to test the various ideas you will encounter.

Read on if you wish, and also see what the 40 authors of the Bible written over a period of 1500 years consistently agree is the truth, which withstands the road test of life.

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