A Mind Of My Own

Consciousness drifting in a sea of revelations.
Treasures of wondrous discovery, shrouded in mystery.  Pride and arrogance hide my heart from understanding and death beckons.
Let wisdom from God reveal truth, so I may find life.

The mind struggles to discern the truth from fantasy. Knowledge is ambiguous. Theories, hypothesis, beliefs, and philosophies are subjective. Facts and evidence lack objectivity due to controversial interpretations. We decide our truth from our own choices, which are often unduly influenced by social, cultural and authoritarian issues. Seeking truth requires gathering knowledge with an open mind, avoiding biased opinions and letting my own reasoning be my major guide to my conclusions. In contemplating creation, believing in God as creator is a decisive act that immediately put me at odds with the non-believing scientist. Believing in God is a major influence in my life and I believe that the truth and reality of this is worth exploring.

There is a need to boldly proclaim my reasoning for belief in God as creator. It is not from fear, or brain-washing, or a need for conformity, but rather a honest attempt at seeking the truth. I realistically see God’s hand in creation. I find evidence of creation by God clear and indisputable. How in the face of such a controversial topic do I presume insight over the many scholarly unbelieving minds? There are many reasons that I can not deny my beliefs. Most of these involve the discoveries of design in creation.

The intelligence of the design in creation is so visible and apparent that it is hard for me to imagine the resistant (hardened) mind that can't acknowledge this. Everything I studied led to more complexity and mysteries, and even more implication of intellect and purpose in design. Science was led down an unfathomable path as the universe became vaster and the theory of the big bang, the nucleosynthesis of elementary particles, black holes, dark energy and matter created additional unsolved puzzles. The complexity of life exploded with new discoveries in the physiology of the body and brain and the Human Gnome Project (HGP). I have given some substance to my belief in God in my articles on the relationship of the photon to the eye (Visions of Creation), the science of cosmology (So Large, so Majestic), and life (Life: God’s Perfect Design), but the reality of my belief in God lies is in the finer details. Here are a few of the more significant and decisive details:

The search for a beginning of the universe became very complex. The accelerating expansion of the universe and cosmic background radiation (CBR), and discoveries from 'eyes', like the Hubble telescope, illuminated the big bang theory of the initial creation of everything (which really does infer a causER of the effect) . To speculate that creation is mindlessly developed is foolish in view of the fact our brilliant mind can't even come close to figuring out how things initially started from nothing.

 

The fact that almost all elements are made from the stardust of supernovae is amazing. All life needs these elements. The excessive energy for nuclear fusion to create the heavier elements was problematic and the explosion of a star was a miraculous solution. Lucky for man that when we created a car we didn’t have to wait for steel, glass, rubber and refined fuel to randomly and spontaneously appear.

The genetic mapping of Man (Human Genome Project) and other life is revolutionizing our understanding of genes. A new world of discovery into how genes function in health and disease has changed the language of genetics with terms like: PCR, Microarrays, Genomics, Proteomics, Pharmacogenetics, etc.. I believe that the creation of DNA, as the ONLY template for life, implies there is only ONE powerful, creative God. No scientific explanations even come close to understanding how such complexity developed from the chaos of elements and we are only on the frontier of how they work.


My brain controls who I am. Nothing matches the ingenuity and complexity of the brain of Man. A new age of neurobiology is exploding with studies of the biochemistry of the brain, mapping brain functions, cognitive studies, and behavioral genetics. A neural network in the brain surpasses the complex network of galaxies found in the cosmos. The gift of intellect is a path to believing in God. This capacity to believe is rational and reasonable. I do not believe in blind faith.

Perhaps the most significant factors of belief in God lies in what we don't know. The questions and gaps in human knowledge are numerous and leave blank spaces that for now are best explained by divine creation. Science may have answers to some of these but they will be like DNA, which explained the mechanism for hereditary, but left a bigger hole to explain DNA. Here are a few:

Where is the evidence for “strings” and “membranes’, parallel and multiverses, other dimensions, the sparticles of supersymmetry, the Higgs-boson, the MACHO’s?
Where are all the missing links of evolutionary theory?
Where do the laws of physics come from?
What is gravity, time, photons, neutrinos, dark energy and matter, a singularity ?

I believe that God exists and is my Creator. I believe that the knowledge of God comes with the understanding, received in my heart, from the evidences I have seen and heard. Science has extended my sight and broadened my knowledge of the scope and wonder of creation and is material to my belief in God. While the vision of creation assures me of the reality of God, it is the Bible that leads me to the identity of God. Here I "Lean not on my own understanding" Proverbs 3:5, but rely on God to give me wisdom.

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Vision Of Creation

"Seeing you will see and not perceive" Matthew 13:14

The unexplained mysteries of the universe cry out for the intellect of Man to find answers. The more we know the more complex the mystery, and many times we revise what we think we knew. The world of absolute truths is invisible to the mind searching for concrete, conclusive evidence. We are forced to rely on theories and beliefs to find peace with our ignorance. In my attempts to find meaning in my life, I have searched the world of science and religion. My intellectual journey has brought me to a strong belief in God as my creator, and with my study of the Word of God, I have found a faith in Jesus Christ as my savior. I have found that when you believe in God, it is a precursor to the need to seek out the purpose of His creation. The foundation of reasonably accepting God’s role in creation was a mind process to me. It starts with the beginning.

In an instant, with a burst of energy, the newly formed masses accelerated outwards at incredible speed. The clock was started as creation marched forward through space. Soon the universe lit up as photons of light illuminated the darkness. The spectacle of God’s creation was on display, awaiting the eyes of Man to see.
The mysterious photon is of little significance without the creation of eyes. The photon lifts us from a blind species living in darkness, isolated from much of our environment that surrounds us. Even as it is hard to reconcile the existence of a photon, except to provide light to see, it is equally as hard for me to understand the complex creation of the eye, except for the purpose to see the wonder of God’s creation. The visions of the wonders of God’s creation are not the only revelation of the eyes, but many of the wonders of scientific discovery are revealed by our sight and the enhanced "eyes" we have developed. These are most apparent by the very large of cosmology and the telescope, and the very small of the microscopic world in biology and tools of quantum physics. The scientific process of observation is the foundation of much of our theories in physics and other sciences. Suffice it to say that without our sight much of our observable discoveries would not exist and we would be left "in the dark".

The belief of non-believers of God is that creation occurred by random, spontaneous means, from natural forces, and exist without a divine purpose. With so much of our life dependent on sight, it is hard to believe the formation of the photons (light) as having no purpose and are another lucky, accidental coincidence for the eyes of Man. The concept of purpose of the photon in relationship with the other fundamental forces (electromagnetism, weak and strong interactions, gravity) and particles (the Standard Model) of quantum physics is mysterious and confusing, but by it’s very complexity infers a strong purpose as part of creation. Also, the idea of the speed of light ( c ) as a constant in our universe and a purposeful tool of astrophysics (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity- E=mc2), and the photon as a controversial wave or particle phenomenum with no mass, adds to the mystery and the concept of purpose of the photon. The creation of light ("Let there be Light") certainly does not seem arbitrary and with no purpose. Perhaps even harder to explain without purpose is the eye. It is easy to know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but why light would exist without eyesight, especially eyesight backed by a reasoning mind, defies explanation. To me this represents a special relationship between light and vision that gives purpose to each. The animal and even the plant kingdom have photo-sensing abilities. Indeed, many types of eyes exist in the animal kingdom. Man has not explained or revealed good explanations or evidence for the evolution of the eye. To me it rationally goes like this. How do you create the genetic code for the components in the brain to interpret sight without having simultaneous genetic codes for all the physical components of an eye? Show me the steps, and also the evidence of these steps. Have them occur randomly and without purpose (survival?) and let me decide rationally of your possibility as compared to the belief of a purposeful creation by God so we can "see" the wonder of His creation. Of course this is a simplification of the problems in explaining the evolution of the eye (note: I am not necessarily an opponent of evolution). The anatomical and mental structures involved in sight are as complex as the physics of the photon. Putting these together is one of the factors that led to my belief in God’s role in creation.