Yes, God exists
The most important question in a man’s life is Does God exist? This is a crucial question because what a person believes about human origin and destiny will condition that person’s life style and affect one’s ultimate destiny.
Sir Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton had skilled craftsman that built him a scale model of our solar system which was then displayed on a large table in Newton's home. Not only did the excellent workmanship simulatew the various sizes of the planets and their relative proximities, but it was a working model in which everything rotated and orbited when a crank was turned.
One day while Newton in his study, a friend came by who happened to be also a great scientist. Examining the model with enthusiastic admiration, he exclaimed: "My! What an exquisite thing this is! Who made it?" Without looking up from his book, Sir Isaac answered, "Nobody."
Stopping his inspection, the visitor turned and said: "Evidently you misunderstood my question. I asked who made this."
Newton, no doubt enjoying the chance to teach his friend a lesson, replied in a serious tone, "Nobody. What you see here just happened to assume the form it now has."
"You must think I'm a fool!" retorted the visitor. "Of course somebody made it, and he's a genius. I want to know who he is."
Laying his book aside, Newton arose and laid a hand on his friend's shoulder, saying:
“This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; yet you, as an atheist, profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion.”
The Creator of Life
There are overwhelming evidences to believe that the unseen God does indeed exist, because one can observe the signs and the physical results of His creation. One can see these signs in the technical perfection and intricacy of the structure of atoms, solar systems, galaxies, and living cells. They all have a similar design of a nucleus and objects rotating around it. This similarity or repetition in their design reveals that the Designer or Creator of these physical objects is the same, regardless of their size or function.
Humans, animals, and birds have many repetitive features because they all share the Earth’s common environment. On the outside they have symmetrical organs - two hands, two or four legs, two eyes, two ears - all arranged symmetrically. Hair, feathers, and scales are also arranged symmetrically. Even the colored designs on the wings of the butterfly are arranged symmetrically! The internal organs of humans and animals are arranged to use the space inside efficiently. The human left lung has fewer lobes so that it can accommodate the heart, which nestles inside it. Nearly every species, from cow to chicken to human, has its heart on the left. No one really knows the exact mechanism that pushes the cells of the heart to the left during the embryonic stage. No one really knows the exact mechanism that pushes the cells of the ears to each side of the head during the embryonic stage. Etc.
Developing an embryo is more complex than building a skyscraper. In a skyscraper, a supervisor reviews the drawings and instructs workers where to go and which construction material to use. Bit by bit, from the foundation up, the building takes shape. In a living body, the workers are the construction materials, and both are living cells. Each cell has a copy of the master plan inserted into its nucleus in the form of the DNA. Just as the construction supervisor cannot send the roofers before the foundation is poured, cells have to appear at the right time in the right place. Depending on its function, each cell reads a different part of the genetic code from the DNA. Some cells become specialized as proteins, fat or muscle. Others act like conduits signals, carrying messages to other cells. Such signals play a big role in establishing the structure and location of any organ. This is not a simple process, but a very complex one that embryologists have no detailed answer as to why and how.
A human being develops from a single cell, the zygote, which forms when a female egg is fertilized by a male sperm. Immediately after fertilization, the zygote also rotates about the center of the egg. No one knows why! Is it possible that this Law of Repetition represents an act of worship or submission to the Will of God? How else can anyone explain this phenomenon that is valid for the tiny atom and zygote, the midsize solar system as well as the colossal galaxy?
The practice of pilgrimage in Islam follows the same above Law of Repetition. Two million Muslims perform pilgrimage in Mecca each year by circling the Kaabah (the house of Allah) and praising God. Thereby the Kaabah can be looked at as a nucleus and the Muslims are the smaller creatures that rotate around it.
Life is as complex as the universe, and if the last chapter provided you with a dose of spiritual experience, this chapter will supply you with another dose. The factories, inside your 100 trillion cells, will bewilder you. The length of the DNA in your body, which exceeds the distance between the Earth and the Sun, is incomprehensible. The optimal structural design of the birds’ bones attests to an Omnipotent Creator. Yet the evolutionists want to convince everyone that we have gone from hydrogen to human! In doing that, they are introducing the following definition of the hydrogen gas:
“Hydrogen as an odorless, tasteless, flammable, invisible gas which, if given enough time (say 10 billion years), becomes people!”
Again, as you read this chapter, keep asking questions: Who, Why, and How, you will have only one logical answer: “God is the Mighty Creator and He made it His Way." What exactly is life, and how and where did it begin. Scientists’ answers to these questions are changing as discussions and theories pour in from fields as diversified as oceanography and molecular biology, geochemistry and astronomy. Did life start as organic soup in a warm pond, or under the hellish skies of a planet, unknown to us, racked by volcanic eruption and threatened by comets and asteroids. Then the intruders from outer space may have delivered the raw material necessary for life. The basic concept of evolution is that life started spontaneously, here on Earth or on an unknown planet, and took a very slow process to evolve from atoms to amino acids to proteins, to cells, to fish, to amphibian, to reptile, to mammal, and finally to human. This idea is very similar to some monster like Frankenstein, pieced together from different dead elements and jolted into life by lightening bolts.
Proteins are the building blocks of living organisms. They make up much of the structure of all life forms. At the atomic level, a protein molecule consists almost entirely of a handful of elements - hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, and most importantly carbon. Because carbon easily forms multiple bonds with as many as four other atoms at once, it acts as a kind of glue cementing together the pieces of life’s complex molecules. The reason that carbon bonds so easily is that it has relatively few electrons. In a carbon atom, electrons orbit a nucleus in what may be thought as concentric shells. In all atoms, each shell may hold certain number of electrons. The inner shell accommodates as many as two, while the next one can hold eight electrons. But a carbon atom has only six electrons; two electrons in the inner shell and four in the next, leaving four vacancies in the outer shell. Proteins are large complex organic compounds, made up of twenty different kinds of smaller compounds called amino acids. Large protein molecule consists of hundreds of thousands of amino acids. One protein differs from another in its number, sequence, kind, and arrangement of amino acids. A peptide is a two or more amino acids kept together by a chemical bond called the peptide bond. Hair and fingernails are proteins that differ because of amino acids. Hemoglobin is a blood protein made of 4 chains of amino acids. The twenty different kinds of the amino acids can form an almost endless number of proteins, 2.5E18 or 2.5 billion billion. It is estimated that the number of kinds of proteins in a human body ranges from 10,000 to 50,000.
It is hard to imagine that a human being starts as one single fertilized egg. It grows and develops inside its mother until birth. At birth, a baby is made up of over 60 trillion cells. As early as 1900, scientists knew that chromosomes were located inside the nucleus of a cell. They also knew that chromosomes carried hereditary information in complex molecule called DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is named for the sugar deoxyribose, which it contains. However, the structure of the DNA was not known until 1953, when scientists suggested a model for DNA. That model looks like a twisted ladder with rungs, made up of four nitrogen bases. One molecule of DNA may contain 20,000 pairs of these bases.
When a cell is divided and replicates itself, by a process called mitosis, the DNA molecule must also make exact copies of them. First, the DNA molecule comes apart like a zipper being unzipped. The two halves of the DNA separate between the base pairs. Then new bases, from the contents of the nucleus, attach to each half like puzzle pieces. Thus two identical DNA molecules are formed. Like a biological librarian, DNA preserves the information needed to fashion the protein molecules. A similar compound called RNA, short for ribonucleic acid, helps turn these instructions into reality. No evolutionist can be sure how or when DNA and RNA first emerged on Earth. The key to the DNA-RNA partnership is a shared language, spelled out along the DNA strands in three-letter “words” called codons. A codon is made up of the bases of three successive DNA nucleotides. The most common codons simply specify a particular amino acid.
If codons are words, genes are the sentences they form, beginning with a special initiator codon and ending with a terminator. A gene’s message consists of a list of required amino acids, arranged in an order needed to make a particular protein. DNA’s genetic messages are readily duplicated by messenger RNA, a molecule that effectively assembles itself during the copying process. Incorporating DNA’s instructions in its own structure, the messenger RNA then travels out to the machinery of the outer cell, where it begins the manufacturing of a specific protein molecule by following the recipe it carries.
To translate genetic information into proteins, living organisms follow a complex manufacturing process. Work begins as a strand of messenger RNA enters the cell’s protein assembly area, carrying a genetic code for a particular protein. The messenger RNA goes on its way through the watery interior of the cell in search of a structure called the ribosome. Typically a millionth of an inch across, these sophisticated protein assembly machines are equipped both to read the messenger RNA’s orders and to carry them out.
Once the messenger RNA docks at a given ribosome, the ribosome looks for the beginning of the RNA message, then attaches there. Messenger RNA proceeds to wiggle through the ribosome, allowing it to read the RNA codons in sequence. For each codon, the ribosome chemically signals to the transfer RNA, a type of RNA, whose job is to deliver a single amino acid. When the transfer RNA arrives, carrying the required amino acid, it touches down just long enough to unload its amino acid. Then, the ribosome links the incoming amino acid to a growing peptide chain. This process is remarkably efficient even in a bacterium; one ribosome can attach twenty separate amino acids to a peptide chain every second!
After the final codon has been read and its message obeyed, the ribosome releases a finished peptide chain into the cell. The peptide’s electrochemical properties will quickly wrap it and other peptides into the folded arrangement that forms a particular protein molecule. The molecule’s work will depend on its identity: the protein known as collagen provides structural support in bone and ligaments, for example, while proteins called antibodies fight disease.
Assuming that all of the above was self-developed without the Hand of a Mighty Creator is analogous to believing that a monkey randomly throwing pieces of brick, iron, wood, and glass over a long span of time to make a magnificent high-rise building!
It is extremely hard to believe that a biology teacher explaining the above process without getting excited. This is not a simple process. Yet, this is a simple proof that God exists, and He is the Only One that can design this process.
The Creator of Universe
From time immemorial, people have wondered at the starry heavens. On a clear night, the beautiful stars hang like shining jewels against the vast darkness of space. The parade of sunrise and sunset, the changing phases of the moon, and the silent convoy of the stars across the black dome of heaven have long proven a spectacle and a puzzle. The spectacle has inspired the artist, the musician, and the poet. The puzzle has intrigued philosophers and scientists. Just what is out there in the space? What is the meaning of it all? How did it start? Is there life out there? We don't know. But, who has any idea of what God can do?
The spectacle of the heaven above charges the believers with humility and faith. They realize that they are a grain of dust on a grain of dust on a grain of dust. Yet, God gives us the intellect to contemplate all of this. The recent Hubble telescope discovery increased the estimates for the known galaxies from 10 billion to 100 billion, with each galaxy containing billions of stars, and perhaps planetary systems. When we discover new galaxies, stars and planets, this should make us aware of how great God is, and how little we know. God simply revealed some of his magnificence.
One does not really need to understand the cosmic or biological Big Bang to believe in God. Any simple-minded person can arrive at the same conclusion by asking who, why, what, and how about the simple things that he encounters in his daily life. For example, why the world does not get very hot or very cold for people to perish by burning or by freezing. Who is adjusting the weather on Earth? Why trees come out after planting small seeds? What makes my heart beat?
How can I face the frustration of life?
