In the Beginning
November 17, 2007
What the Church says: God is, was, and always will be; God is Alpha and the Omega– the Beginning and the End. He was not created; God just is. God created the Heavens and the Earth, knitted our innermost being while in our mother’s womb, and gave life to every creature and being in existence. God is the Creator, Designer, and Master Craftsman of all the wonders the eye can see. God is the very ‘uncaused‘ that caused the universe and the world that we live in. His existence cannot be denied as doing so would create the very paradox that to deny something is to acknowledge first that it exists and then that it does not (ie. I cannot say a Minotolo exists or does not exist until I establish that it does exist).
What they say: If God just ‘is’ and has always been, then why can’t we use the same argument for the existence of man? That the earth and its creatures just ‘are’ and always have been? Why is one argument good for the Christian but not for others (an idea explicated by Carl Sagan an adopted by atheists and agnostics alike). After all, since there is no concrete proof of ‘God,’ how can we say that He existed post-creation and that creation was not before Him?
I can freely say that a Minotolo does not exist because it does not– not because it does, and I choose to deny it. I do not first have to admit that something exists in order to say that it doesn’t; all I have to do is call you an idiot for thinking that a Minotolo exist. You have to define a Minotolo before telling someone it exists so that I can then again call you an idiot and prove that a Minotolo is actually something totally different or still does not exist.
What I say: The first problem that atheists run into in using an argument such as the Earth always being just as God always has been is that they are trying to compare a holy deity to an anthropomorphic (like man) being. In other words, we are comparing apples and parachutes. The Bible tells us that God is a spirit (John 4:24) and that God never was man. It tells us that God is in a whole other dimension by saying that He is beyond time (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8) and is in fact in control of time (Acts 1:7). How can we even begin to compare the Creator of time to imperfect man???
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
Revelations 21:4 tells us what Heaven will be like– the Heaven that God offers to us and where He is seated on His thrown. Such a place is like the antithesis of what we have created here on Earth. How can we compare what we have created to what God has created?
To simply state that there is no evidence of God is like a hollow excuse; all I would have to contend is that there is a God then and I would be right? It is science that for every effect there is a cause, and this argument has been used by the Christian community to show that creation (effect) came by means of God (cause). Atheists will say then what caused God, but what they forget is that there has to be an ultimate uncaused; moreover, that there has to be a ‘first domino’ to knock down all the others, and God is that domino.
You don’t have to call me an idiot for saying a Minotolo exists; you merely have to discuss with me what a Minotolo is**. Once I have told you what a Minotolo is and you still don’t believe me, you can deny that exists, but that doesn’t have to mean that it doesn’t. But if I say to you that I have seen a Minotolo, how can you who have not seen it say it does or does not exist? In the same turn, I can say I have seen God, but you denying His existence does not make it any less true or that God does not exist.
**I will dive further into this ‘idea’ in further posts, but being at work at the moment, I cannot. For the sake of the topic, though, I did want to touch on it briefly.
Tags: God, Alpha and the Omega, uncaused, atheists, agnostics, holy deity, anthropomorphic
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