God Archives - Page 151 of 151 - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

April 19, 2017July 15, 2021

Gathering to Worship

We get emails rather regularly from people denigrating worship. Some come from people who attend a church but “don’t get anything from going.” Others are from skeptics and atheists who describe worship as “a supreme waste of time and energy.” Both of these responses are at least in part due to a failure to understand what worship is and its purpose. What is the point of gathering to worship?

The biblical concept of worship is not having an entertaining service by a skilled performer. James tells us in James 1:27, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted by the world.” The purpose of worship is to help us do that and to be strengthened by our time together so that we can serve.

The Church we read about in the Bible did several things as acts of worship to equip themselves to do God’s will. Our problem seems to be that we don’t always understand how that happens.

PRAYER- We are told to pray (Philippians 4:6; 1 Timothy 2:1; Colossians 4:2; Ephesians 6:18). Our prayers are not to inform God or to build up His ego. Prayer is vital for us to learn to focus on something beyond ourselves and to be able to petition God to help us have the strength to do what He calls us to do.

GIVING- We are also told that giving is an act of worship (1 Corinthians 16:2; Acts 20:35; 2 Corinthians 9:7). The giving is obviously not because God, the creator of all things, needs our money. Learning to give cheerfully is a grace that helps us learn how to get the most out of life in relationships and our attitudes. The best of love, sex, work, learning, and security comes when we learn how to give.

SINGING- Singing is another part of worship to help us get the best out of our relationships with each other and God. Singing is not to entertain ourselves or God but to express our joy, unity, and fellowship (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16; Romans 15:9; and 1 Corinthians 14:15).

COMMUNION- Our personal connection to God and to one another as we struggle with the problems of life is supported by our communion service, remembering the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16 and 11:23-28).

Gathering to worship is not to be entertained, but to participate. It isn’t to admire one another’s talents, but to be blessed with the opportunity to tap into a power beyond our own, and to learn how to live in a way that fulfills our purpose in existing. If someone is not “getting anything out of it,” the reason is that they came with the wrong expectations and for the wrong purpose. Gathering for worship is meaningless only if we do not have a relationship with God.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

April 13, 2017October 6, 2018

Design Discovered in Insect Migration

It is easy for humans to minimize the design that is needed for life to exist on Earth. How do you feed massive numbers of birds, especially in the spring when winter has taken away most of their food sources, and their food needs are maximized as they lay eggs and feed baby birds? In the past scientists have shrugged their shoulders and imagined that there are food sources we don’t recognize that fill this gap until the summer season generates sufficient seeds and insects to sustain the growing populations. Similar problems exist for many other animals like bats that depend on insects for their nutritional needs.

In the April 2017 issue of Scientific American (page 84), there is an interesting report about previously unknown migrations of insects. We have known about monarch butterflies for some time, but this study by British researchers shows that migrations of insects are massive. Over southern Britain alone there are 3.3 trillion insects migrating. That is an average of 3200 tons of bugs moving through the skies over Britain every year. The study also reports that similar patterns have been observed in Texas, India, and China.

The complexity of this migration is astounding. Insects don’t live long enough for one bug to complete the migration. Researchers found that in some cases six generations were involved to complete a migration. The insects do not just get randomly blown about. They travel in a well-programmed pattern taking advantage of wind direction and speed. The elevation at which they fly to get the strongest support for their journey is carefully chosen. For a number of reasons, spring migrations are different from fall migrations.

We have much to learn from insects. Solomon made reference to ants as an example for us to learn from in Proverbs 6:6-11 and 30:24, 25. In our modern times, we see an amazing design that allows for the feeding of birds, bats, and other forms of life that need insects to survive. Constructing a chance model for all of this takes a huge amount of imagination. Recognizing God as the intelligence that gave this migration pattern to insects makes what we see just another example of knowing there is a God through the things he has made (Romans 1:20).
–John N. Clayton © 2017

March 26, 2017April 10, 2019

The Laws of Physics

“Science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview. Even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a law-like order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us.”
–Paul Davies, Templeton Prize Address, May 1995.

Where did the laws of physics come from? Are they our laws or nature’s laws? Did Newton’s inverse law of gravitation come into existence because of the culture in which Newton lived? According to Davies, to suggest that is “arrant nonsense.” The laws are extracted through experiment and mathematical theory. The laws are not something that our culture presses upon us. They are God’s message to us.

In his presentation, Davies asked why we have these laws instead of some other set of laws. He raised the question of why this set of laws works for us. The laws seem to be contrived, fine-tuned, and formulated so that life and consciousness can exist. Some scientists suggest that there are multiple universes where different laws are present and different sentient beings survive due to those laws. They are making a creative response to this question; but not only is the suggestion un-testable, it also conflicts with the obvious complexity of the laws that work in our universe. Here in the twenty-first century, we are still finding new laws and new understandings that clarify what has been given to us by past scientists.

Dr. John Barrow in his Templeton address observed, “In the history of science new theories extend and subsume old ones. Although Newton’s theory of mechanics and gravity has been superseded by Einstein’s and will be succeeded by some other theory in the future, a thousand years from now engineers will still rely on Newton’s theories. Likewise religious conceptions of the universe also use approximations and analogies to help in grasping ultimate things.”

We suggest that the Psalmist’s statement, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork” (Psalms 19:1), will still be quoted and be relevant should Earth survive for a thousand years.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

March 25, 2017October 6, 2018

Antony Flew and the Failures of Modern Atheism

Antony Flew was one of the most famous atheists of the twentieth century. He wrote over thirty books opposing religion and was a professor at the University of Keele and at Oxford, Aberdeen, and Reading. Flew changed his mind about the existence of God because he said, “You have to go where the evidence leads you.” In his final book There is a God he describes the failures of modern atheism:

1) Atheists refuse to engage the real issues involved in the question of God’s existence.
2) Atheists do not address the central grounds for positing a divine reality.
3) Atheists fail to address the issue of the origins of rationality embedded in the fabric of the universe, of life understood as autonomous agency, and of consciousness, conceptual thought, and the self.
4) Atheists show no awareness of the fallacies and muddles that led to the rise and fall of logical positivism. The “new atheism” is nothing less than a regression to the logical positivist philosophy.
5) The excesses and atrocities of organized religion have no bearing whatsoever on the existence of God.

You find more details on each of these points in Flew’s book. Atheists try to suggest that only the ignorant and uneducated believe in God, but the evidence is to the contrary. Flew is just one example of people with extraordinary intelligence who see the evidence and base what they believe on that evidence.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

January 5, 2017April 22, 2024

The Design of Frogs and Toads

One of the books in our children’s series shows the design of frogs and toads. Re-reading that little book, written at a child’s level, motivated me to look into some of the unusual things about these amphibians. Of the 7,537 species of amphibians, 6,631 are frogs and toads.

The Old Testament Hebrew word “min” (translated as “kinds” in most translations) is not the same as the English word “species.” “Kind” has a much broader meaning. We find the same concept of “kinds” in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 15:39, the writer tells us that there are four kinds of flesh – the flesh of men, of beasts, of fishes, and of birds.

We suggest that changes due to environmental pressures have caused frogs to speciate to enable them to adapt to their individual environments. Frogs living in trees don’t need the same equipment functioning in the same way as frogs in a pond, in a sand dune, or in a cold place. This factual evolution is seen in most animals, but very clearly in the frogs. We still have much to learn about this. Toads and frogs have an organ called a “Bidder’s organ,” the purpose of which is unknown. It is present in all toads in early development but only in the males in adulthood.

Some frog behaviors are amazing. The Tungara frog, which is common in South and Central America, is a good example. During the mating season, the female releases a protein that the male collects on his feet. When he has collected a sufficient amount, he begins kicking his feet vigorously producing a foam into which the eggs are placed to grow into tadpoles.

Other frogs produce a similar foam, but by completely different methods. Researchers are trying to learn how the frog acquires this ability, but it is pretty obvious that it isn’t acquired in stages. The genome may tell us whether it is built into the frog’s DNA or whether it is a learned behavior, but it appears to be genetic. To program a code takes intelligence and purpose, and chance explanations are difficult to justify. The design of frogs and toads shows evidence of a Designer.

Data from Discover magazine, July/August 2016, page 74.