God's Existence: Deeper Thoughts for Greater Insights (eBook)

Introduction

The purpose of my first book, God’s Existence: Truth or Fiction? The Answer Revealed, was to show clear evidence of how science proves the existence of God. My book showed how older civilizations had beliefs in many gods to better explain and account for events in people’s lives. We cited examples with Greeks, Romans, Vikings, and even tribal cultures. We also discussed Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory to explain why humans felt the need to have gods. Then we presented a significant sample of sciences to substantiate the evidence of God’s existence. Those sciences included botany, zoology, anatomy, astronomy, chemistry, and physics, plus mathematics. We did not intend to cite all sciences or to write an enormous volume of scientific facts. A clear sample of sciences provided sufficient evidence in our view.

This book aims to probe more deeply into thoughts about God, the Bible, creation, and evolution. In contrast to the previous book, this book provides more interpretation of scientific facts, evidence, and exploration of thoughts that need to be considered. These thoughts will give us deeper insights that may offer more revelations that we should think about as human beings and as we evaluate our own individual theology. Our aim is to discuss the issues in this book more analytically rather than emotionally or ideologically. Some people on various sides of the issues tend to be very adamant and inflexible about certain beliefs. Our aim is to look for the truth in the middle of the diverse thinking of many people. We are simply going to explore ideas and see what insights they might reveal to us. Our intention is not to prove these ideas are true but to think outside the box and to enjoy the process.

Besides looking at the scientific evidence, we will look at sections of the Bible for more accurate interpretations. The purpose is to seek a fuller understanding of the Biblical passages. This review is not intended to be a comprehensive study of the Bible, but a review of selected passages. As we review some Biblical verses, we need to always keep in mind several Biblical verses. One is briefly presented in John 8:31-32: If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. This is why we need to search for the truth in all things. How can we truly be free if we don’t know the truth about all things? Doesn’t that include our faith, life, people, family, friends, politics, education, and everything else in life? How can we exclude any knowledge about anything? Unless we know all things, we will remain imprisoned in our ignorance and human inabilities. God has no such limitations. Therefore, he is totally free to know all truth. We seek the truth and the freedom it offers. Is God afraid of the truth? Is Jesus afraid of the truth? Of course not! Neither fear the truth, but both want us to learn the truth. We humans should not fear the truth either.

Another verse is 1 Corinthians 3:19 that tells us, For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. God already knows that human wisdom is erroneous and foolish. God wants us to learn and grow and build our knowledge. The more we learn and grow, the more we build our knowledge to free us from limitations that hinder our understanding and progress. One final passage to remember is Isaiah 55:8-9, in which God says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. God is so far superior and more powerful than we are that we are probably as small as a grain of sand. Now, let us focus on the Bible and ask some important questions.

Questions We Need to Ask

When we read the Bible, we need to ask some basic questions as we start to examine the Bible. One of the first questions we need to know is: Who wrote the Bible, but more specifically, the Old Testament? Did God himself write the Old Testament and the whole Bible? Of course, the answer is no. We know God did not write the Bible including the Old Testament. People did. Haven’t Christians claimed the Bible is “the inspired word of God?” In other words, haven’t Christians freely claimed that God inspired people to write the Bible? That is the view of most Christians, I would say. Why was the Old Testament written in Hebrew? Was it because the writers of the different books of the Old Testament spoke Hebrew? Why was the New Testament written in Greek? Is it possible the writers spoke Greek instead of Hebrew? While the identity of the writers might be subject to debate or question, the fact is that all the writers were human beings—not God! My aim is to focus on the first two books of the Old Testament instead of writing about the rest of the Old Testament or even the New Testament.

Who was the only perfect human being to ever exist on earth? Christians believe the only perfect human being was Jesus Christ. That means the writers of the Old and New Testaments were imperfect or flawed human beings. What do we know about human beings? We know ALL human beings make mistakes or errors. That further means anything they wrote can be flawed or mistaken in some verses. If, as some Christians assert, the Bible is infallible, that claim appears to be false and disrespectful of God. Because the humans who wrote and others who translated the Bible were flawed, it means the Bible is flawed as well. This should not disturb us at all. We must not feel that such a possibility means the entire Bible is totally false. It just means we must follow 1 John 4:1, which warns us “to test the spirits” and discern whether or not the verses come from God. We need to verify the truthfulness of even the Scriptures. Do these errors disprove the Bible or God? No, of course not.

Mistakes in the Bible simply mean we need to evaluate them and better understand them. Are the mistakes about events, places, or people? Do the errors impugn the validity of the teaching about behaving righteously? I suggest all the teachings about behavior remain unblemished and still hold true and valid. The Bible remains the inspired word of God in spite of the fact that the writers may not have discerned the word of God correctly. So, what if a particular fact is erroneous? In my previous book, I pointed out that the apparent contradictions between the Bible and science result primarily from three major factors: misinterpretations of the Bible, misinterpretations of science, and misinterpretations of both the Bible and science. In addition, in this book, we will find that the writers themselves might have exaggerated, embellished, or mis-written statements because of events that occurred at the time the writers actually wrote the books of the Old Testament. What events happened when the writers lived—or even in the years before they wrote the Old Testament books? Do we even ask that question? In addition, we need to realize that translators sometimes made mistakes. Should that surprise us? Why? If we human beings are fallible, then what we say, write, or preach can be fallible as well. For those reasons, instead of gullibly accepting statements or claims by other people—scholars or not—we need to check out, thoroughly examine, and test claims to find God’s truth—NOT your truth or my truth, but God’s truth. Of course, that means we as individuals and collectively need to test statements and claims even from the Bible, if we truly want to know God’s truth.

What is the purpose of the Bible including the Old Testament? The Bible is not a history book, although it contains a lot of history. It does not present every detail of history. It skips chunks of history that are not relevant or material to its purpose. What is remarkable is that archaeologists, historians of antiquity, and paleontologists have made so many discoveries over the years that have verified much of what is cited and described in the Bible. That reinforces the validity of the Bible in significant ways. Likewise, the Bible is not a science book that relates facts of science. Science has increased our knowledge so much since the days the writers of the Old Testament wrote the Old Testament books. We all know that to be true. So, let’s NOT assume that people who wrote Genesis several THOUSAND years ago knew more than people know in the twenty-first century. Such an assumption is definitely absurd—let alone insulting to God.

Why did the authors of the Old Testament write the Old Testament in the way they did? Is it possible they wrote about creation and the first generations from Adam and Eve to Noah for a reason? Is it possible the authors wrote about the beginning of the earth and universe to give people a sense of, and an understanding of, how the world started and how they came into being? It is important to explore these ideas.

In writing this book, I felt it would be important to explain some extensive thoughts about these questions and ideas. By sharing these thoughts, it may help us to better understand some important issues and to learn that various criticisms do not undermine the sacred book called the Bible. By looking at the truth, we remove our chains of ignorance and gain more fulfillment with the real words inspired by God. It is not the purpose of this book to attack or to destroy anyone’s faith, belief in God, or acceptance of the Bible including the Old Testament, but to strengthen our faith, belief in God, and our acceptance of the word of...