I would like to give you 5 reasons for why I believe in the existence of God. Let me give you five things in 5 M mnemonic.
Mathematical nature of the universe
Moral nature of the humanity
Marvelous fulfillment of Bible prophecies
Miraculous life of Christ
Meaning of Life
Each one of these 5 facts bring God closer and closer.
Mathematical nature of the universe……..A God who is incredibly wise
Moral nature of the humanity …….A God who is holy
Marvelous fulfillment of Bible prophecies…..A God who intervenes
Miraculous life of Christ ……..A God who cares
Meaning of Life…….A God who fulfills
You can remember these five things on your five fingers of one hand. That’s easy, you will never forget. These five things bring God from outside the universe into your very heart.
First the mathematical nature of the universe. Every electronic device is a witness to the fact that our universe is a mathematical storehouse of information. Every computer testifies to the fact that universe is mathematical in nature. Every computer is an evidence for the existence of God. Let me build my case with some introduction.
We are living in the age of information propelled by computerization of every imaginable human activity. Once upon a time, we would not know what was happening in our neighboring town. Today we can see live broadcasts from anywhere around the globe, in fact even from the space. Once upon a time, we would send a few telegrams in a lifetime. Today we send numerous text messages in a given day. Once upon a time, telephone was a luxury limited to wealthy people. Today almost everyone keeps a cellphone.
Birds,
Drums
Telegrams
Telephones
Radio
Television
Internet
the age of information is moving with a dizzying speed. Every known human institution now under the purview of computers.
What is your social security number?
Where do you live?
How old are you?
Where did you go to school?
Where do you work?
How much money do you have in your bank account?
Someone, somewhere has all that information.
What medications do you use?
What diseases you have?
What is your cholesterol level?
Who is your doctor?
Where is your pharmacy?
Someone, somewhere has all that information.
The police are making certain convicts wear GPS devices like ankle bracelets. These ankle devices send information to the police in live. At any given moment, they would know your exact location. If you are in a vehicle, they would know how fast you are driving, where you are going.
We have people who go to gambling with their computers. They gamble based on game theory and probability. Which horse is going to win, which dice is going to win, gambling based on information.
Stock markets gush out a ocean of information every second.
Politicians are turning to pollsters and data miners. How many voters in a town? What are their political sympathies? What are they posting on facebook? What are they tweeting? Politicians want to spend their money wisely based on information gathering and data mining.
Innumerable satellites are revolving around our planet, collecting, processing, organizing and disseminating countless amounts of data.
The most fascinating thing about it is all information is sent in the form of a binary code, 0s and Is, 0s, and 1s.
Emails
Documents
Photos
Videos
Music
Songs
video games
Web pages, you name it, they are all communicated in this binary language. This is an amazing testimony to human ingenuity: Things so complex are built upon simple binary language.
Information has this amazing property: You can transmit it irrespective of the medium. You can see this even in the nature. Take DNA in biological cells. DNA stores biological information. The two strands of DNA molecule store the same biological information. Each strand is made up of four nucleobases: Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine, ATGC. All biological structures are created using the information carried over these four nucleobases. The information processing that happens in DNA and other cellular processes is far far more sophisticated than the computer programs written by our most brilliant software engineers. The information technology of a simple biological cell is far complex and advanced than a supercomputer.
Not just biological cells, the whole universe is an information processing system. The universe is like a gigantic computer. John Wheeler said, It from Bit.
John Archibald Wheeler was an American theoretical physicist. His dates were between 1911 and 2008. He popularized the term black hole and made many great contributions to astrophysics. He famously said “It from Bit, every it – every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself. What we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions. All things physical are information-theoretic in origin, and this is a participatory universe”
What a profound statement! Everything in the universe is information. Every it is a bit. John Wheeler says, everything in the universe is processing information. And the whole universe is like a computer – a cosmic information-processing machine.
If the universe has information, how shall we understand this information? Human beings have been trying to understand the nature through reasonable thinking. Things have changed drastically since Aristotle came on the scene. His dates were 384 to 322 BC. With an insatiable appetite for knowledge, he explored all areas of life from plants, animals, physics, astronomy, poetry, theater, music, linguistics, rhetoric, mathematics, logic, ethics, metaphysics, politics and government. I wonder, how did he get time to explore all those areas of life? He has something to say about everything. He is called the First Teacher.
Around 350 BC, Aristotle started to systematize human thought. At the core of his logic is this wonderful idea: Human beings can think systematically. That’s groundbreaking and breathtaking idea: the world would never be the same again: We can visualize our thinking, we can systematize our thought. The systematic logic.
His systematic logic enormously impacted the Western Civilization and beyond. From 350 BC it remained supreme until about 150 years ago. Then came George Boole. He lived in England between 1815 and 1864. He was a great mathematician and logician. His logic, which is called Boolean logic laid the foundations for the information age. He took Aristotle’s systematic logic and converted it into symbolic logic. George Boole taught that any values can be pared down to yes or no, true or false, 0 or I.
Bertrand Russell called him, ‘the father of pure mathematics’
His father was John Boole. He built his own telescope and used it to teach astronomy to his son. In his shop, he hung a sign through the window: ‘Anyone who wishes to observe the works of God in a spirit of reverence is invited to come in and look through my telescope’. He encouraged his son to study Euclid and mathematics. George Boole became a prodigy in mathematics. In 1854 he wrote his famous book, The Laws of Thought. This book later influenced Charles Babbage, who designed the first computer and Claude Shannon, who designed the first digital circuit. Claude Shannon took the symbolic logic of George Boole into semiconductors.
In the year 2015, Google released a Google Doodle on 200th birthday of George Boole. On their home site, Google wrote, ‘without George Boole, there’d be no Google!’
When you see the logic gates in a semiconductor, it has a long story. It is a triumph of human logic. The systematic logic of Aristotle transforming into symbolic logic in the hands of George Boole and becoming semiconductor logic in our electronic devices. It’s the same old logic, only the medium has changed.
The same old logic! But where did it come from?
George Boole asserted that the laws of logic could only come from a “Supreme Intelligent Cause”. He argued that because the laws of logic are immaterial, unchangeable, consistent, timeless and spaceless, they point to a Divine Mind, which is immaterial, unchangeable, consistent, timeless and spaceless. He said, “I firmly believe, for the accomplishment of a purpose of the Divine Mind”.
The universe is running on the laws of logic. Laws of logic cannot be born without a mind. Therefore, laws of logic point us to a mind, a divine mind. George Boole called this ‘Superior Intelligent Cause’.
Boole believed that we are living under this divine mind. One sunday, Boole was walking to a church with his friend. They were running late. His friend prompted him, ‘walk, we are running late, we will miss the worship’. Boole replied, ‘we won’t, God is not limited to the church, look up, the heavens are perfused with the mind of God. We can worship God as we walk to the church’.
George Boole died in 1864 when he was just 49 years old. He was buried in the Church of Ireland cemetery in Cork. A commemorative plaque was placed inside the adjoining church. A verse from Psalm 119 was inscribed on this plaque:
“For ever O Lord Thy Word is settled in Heaven”
What an appropriate verse to describe a life that believed in the laws of logic that are settled in heaven by a divine mind!
Then comes Charles Babbage. He was deeply influenced by George Boole. Babbage was a mathematician and an engineer. We call him ‘the father of the computer’. He lived in England between 1791 and 1871. During those years, mathematical calculations would be a tedious, backbreaking work. Babbage complained to his friend, John Herschel, famous astronomer, ‘I wish to God these calculations could be done by a steam engine’. A steam engine to do the math! Babbage described his work as throwing logic into the wheels. How can you throw logic into the wheels of a machine? First he got trained in mathematics.
In 1810, Charles Babbage enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Trinity College, Cambridge: this was the college of Isaac Newton and Charles Babbage. Both held the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge.
He designed Difference engine in 1822 to compute values of polynomial functions. After difference engine, starting from 1837, Babbage worked on designing the analytical engine. He was not able to complete its construction, but the analytical engine was essentially the first programmable computer and its software was written on punch cards. The symbolic logic of George Boole now going to turn the giant wheels of Babbage’s analytical engine, to use, Babbage’s words, ‘to throw the powers of thought into wheel-work’.
People flocked to see Babbage’s difference engine. They asked Babbage, ‘Does God exist?’. Babbage would show his difference engine as an argument for the existence of God.
The Earl of Bridgewater left 8000 pounds for the publication of arguments in defence of existence of God. The President of the Royal Society used these funds to oversee the publication of papers focusing, ‘On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation’. These papers were called Bridgewater treatises. In 1837, Charles Babbage wrote a paper entitled Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. In this paper, Babbage used his machine, the very first computer this world had ever seen, to defend the existence of God.
His argument goes like this: My difference engine works due to the power of mechanical energy, but also through the power of logic. Did it arise by itself? Did it create itself? Did it assemble itself? It did not. It came from my labors. It came from my wisdom. It came from my logic. It came from my intention. It came from my design. It can from my purposes. Universe is like a gigantic difference engine. How can you believe that it came forth without the labors, the wisdom and logic of a divine mind? How can you believe it came forth without intention, without design, without purposes of a Creator?
Why the difference engine rather than nothing?
Why the universe rather than nothing?
Babbage updated design argument through his difference engine. If William Paley used watch to argue for the existence of God, Charles Babbage used the very first computer to argue for the existence of God. Babbage saw God as a programmer who defined the entire future of the universe at the time of the Creation.
In his autobiography, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, Babbage wrote, “I may now state, as the result of a long life spent in studying the works of the Creator, that I am satisfied they afford far more satisfactory and more convincing proofs of the existence of a supreme Being than any evidence transmitted through human testimony can possibly supply”
Babbage used to throw lavish dinner parties in London. His guests would include Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens etc. They were enthralled by the difference engine. They never saw something like this. One day a very intelligent woman saw Babbage’s machine. She was Ada Byron Lovelace. She was the daughter of famous English poet, Lord Byron. She met Babbage through a common friend at a party. She was captivated by Babbage’s machine. She was a mathematician herself. Augustus De Morgan was an expert in symbolic logic, he encouraged Ada to study mathematics and focus on applied logic.
She started to communicate her ideas in her correspondence with Babbage. She told Babbage, ‘Your machine is not just a calculator, not just a mathematical device, you can make it do lot more than calculations’.
Your machine can do lot more than calculations: That is one of the greatest ideas in the history of technology. It unleashed digital revolution, the world would never be the same again.
She described herself as God’s prophet. She imagined the computer revolution that would unfold one hundred sixty years later. She wrote an universal algorithm for Babbage’s machine. Today we call her the first computer software engineer.
She said, ‘math is spiritual’. She argued that just like the universe is run by a set of immaterial, spiritual mathematical laws to perform its diverse functions, a set of mathematical laws can run an analytical machine, the word for computer in her time. She described her life’s quest was to love truth and God. In one of her letters to Charles Babbage, she wrote,
“My own uncompromising
principle is to endeavour
to love truth and God
before fame and glory”
Conclusion: So, we’ve seen three individuals who created the computer. George Boole, Charles Babbage, and Ada Lovelace.
George Boole gave a symbolic form to logic.
Charles Babbage created the first computer.
Ada Lovelace wrote the first software program.
They came to the table with three different components, which are essential and interconnected.
George Boole’s logic
Charles Babbage’s hardware
Ada Lovelace’s software
You need all three to make a computer.
A computer cannot arise without logic, hardware and software. The naturalist believes that matter came first, then the logic. It’s like saying hardware came first, then the logic. No computer designer would first create hardware, and then sit down to figure how to run the hardware. He or she first thinks logically and then think how to make a software and then finally the hardware. He thinks about both hardware and software before he constructs the computer.
Can a computer arise by itself? Can a personal computer arise without a creator like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? If the universe is a computer, how can it arise without a Creator?
Bill Gates would first imagine a computer in a logical way, he intends to create the computer, he then writes a software for his computer, and then finally hardware. Please notice that intention. No machine can arise without intention of a creator.
The atheist believes that the universe came without a logical mind, without intention, without design, without purpose.
No computer can arise by itself. In the same way, the universe cannot arise by itself.
No computer can arise without a creator. In the same way, the universe cannot arise without a creator.
No computer can arise without intention. In the same way, the universe cannot arise without intention.
No computer can arise without a personal mind. In the same way, the universe cannot arise without a personal mind.
Our computer is grounded in logic which is a product of human mind. Your laptop is driven by logic. Symbolic logic began through a great Christian mathematician, George Boole.
George Boole, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace: You got three individuals doing three different tasks. For the universe, God performed all three tasks. He formulated the logic, He created the matter and he created the laws of physics. He is both the logician and the engineer.
The universe is like a computer. Your computer is a product of logic. This universe is a product of logic.
Evolutionists commit a big fallacy: starting with ingredients rather than designer.
How do you explain DNA? They say, it starts with carbon.
How do you explain life? They say, it starts with water.
How do you explain logic? They say, it starts with matter.
That’s not the right order.
Logic precedes the matter.
Logic precedes your computer. Logic precedes the universe.
Mind precedes the matter.
How to explain an apple computer? You start with Steve Jobs, not some metal in a metal store.
How to explain a PC? You start with Bill Gates, not some silica on the sea shore.
I love chicken curry. How do you explain chicken curry? You don’t start with salt or pepper or chicken. You start with the chef.
How to explain a book? You don’t start with ink and paper. You start with an author.
How to explain DNA? You don’t start with carbon, You start with the author of life.
How to explain a computer? You don’t start with a metal. You start with a designer with a logical mind.
How to explain the universe? You start with a Creator with a logical mind. In Christian faith, this Creator came to our world in the person of Christ. We saw the face of God in the visage of Christ. He died for our sins and rose again from the dead. When we put our faith in Him, He will become our Lord and Savior.
Every computer is an evidence for the existence of God, because the logic that is driving your computer directly came from the mind of God. By arguing against an intelligent creator, atheists are going against the reason. That’s why I believe, atheism makes no sense.
Paul Kattupalli MD
References
Pioneers of the Computer Age: from Charles Babbage to Steve Jobs
By Abdul Montaqim
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
By James Gleick
Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case
By Frank Turek
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the …
By Walter Isaacson
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
By Charles Babbage