Skilled in the word of righteousness (Hebrews 5:13) Part 7
Written by: Yeow Chin Kiong
When we read, interpret and decide to act upon the contents of any written or printed document,- including those in digital format,- the most important consideration is of its source.
A formal letter by the governing authorities requiring you to pay a fine must be urgently acted upon. Not so if the document bears an agency logo and name that makes no sense and also has errors of spelling, grammar and facts, strongly implying that the entire document is joke, a ruse or a scam. The authorities do not act so irresponsibly, but at least you must, at the outset, be convinced that the authorities actually exist who have acted responsibly in their communications in the past.
To believe that the Bible is the word of God necessitates a belief that God exist as One who possesses the intention of of communicating. The COSMOLOGICAL argument explains that entities (i.e. “things”) exist, as opposed to NOT exist, because an all-knowing and all-powerful God created those entities out of nothing in the first place, God being the First Cause of everything that has ever existed, exists or will exist. But the Cosmological Argument does not speak directly about the Creator’s PURPOSE or INTENTION in having created existing things out of nothing. It does not say anything about His purpose or intention for doing it, much less that He intended to communicate with humans in some form or manner. This necessary aspect of God is explained by the TELEOLOGICAL Argument for God’s existence,- the argument from design (i.e. TELEOS meaning “purpose” or “end”), evidence of which is found from the entities which exists (i.e. the COSMOS).
God did not merely create and sustain the existence of the elements (of the Periodic Table, a human construct for understanding our universe) as such, the basis of all existence that we, as humans, experience throughout our lives. God created everything around us,- as far as we can discern,- with a purpose and intention, evidenced in their precise operations and interaction according to laws of physics. God did not merely create sand, rocks and boulders (which, in any case, though inanimate, have purpose in the environment and ecology). He also created complex, fine-tuned, operational SYSTEMS like planetary orbits, sub-atomic entities which form elements which interact (or not) among themselves, as well as so-called “nature’s cycles” such as the water cycle, the carbon cycle and the oxygen cycle, and,- most intricate os all,- life or biological existence. God did not merely creat water, sand and rocks, He created humans who had the intellect to make mortar and cement with which they could build houses purposed for shielding them from the emvironment, enabling them to enjoy life. To greatly summarize the Teleological Argument: if humans can have the intelligence to build purposeful houses, can we intelligibly deny the existence of an intelligent designer who designed and created man with such intelligence with which to build houses and more? As Hebrews 3:4 says, “For every house is built by someone, but he who built all things is God.”
In the beginning of the 19th century, the English clergyman William Paley, building upon prevous arguments from the days of the Greek philosophers, wrote a book with the self-explanatory title, “Natural Theology or Evidences of The Existence And Attributes Of Deity” (1802). In it, he famously expounded the “Watchmaker Argument,” which goes, if we find a working watch in the forest, knowing the mechanical complexity of such a device and the function it was designed and constructed to perform, it would be necessary to infer that a watchmaker (and, one might add, a watch designer) existed to bring such a complex instrument into existence, fit for purpose, (i.e. telling time. Extrapolating from the watch analogy, biological life is a massively complex entity, involving many built-in processes acting in sync to produce energy, grow and alter, reproduce, and adapt to the environment just to survive. All of life’s organs were designed,- and are self-maintained to be,- flora or fauna, or anything in between. There had to be a First Cause that designed life and applied the laws of physics to the elements to construct the organs and systems to be triggered (animated) to function co-operatively as life which could move, self-energise and reproduce. We have not yet touched upon the unimaginableness of the design and construction of the DNA double-helix encoding system which makes up the “instruction manual” for all life’s processes.
The Teleological Argument is today well-served by the fine tuning we see all around us. By “fine tuning” is meant the characteristics of nature are excellently and precisely configured for life on earth, including of mortals. To the point, if planet earth were merely the first or second planet from the sun, humans would burn to death if not artificially unprotected from the Sun’s heat. But, if we are too far from our sun, the earth would be too cold to permit life-forms. Happily, the earth is just the right distance from the sun to support life as we know it! Given the very many laws and constants of the physical universe, without the fine tuning of conditions of nature, it is improbable that we can continue to exist. It all amounts to the undeniable fact that human beings generally have just the right conditions to exist as if they were purposed for human existence. The question is, by Whom? And also, towards what end?