The Science of God - how a lover of physics found the truth in Christianity

Chapter 4

I was at peace, yes. But I still had questions. Christianity is funny that way. It allows us to find that internal peace even when our brains aren't fully on board with the program. That's called grace.

I was working at a Ford facility in Dearborn at the time, not a half mile away from Greenfield Village, where some of Michigan's great men of science were memorialized for all time. It's a place to see some of remarkable achievements, from giant locomotives to little lightbulbs. And, or course, cars. Lots of cars.

The Ford campus had a lot of green areas to walk and eat lunch outdoors, which I'd begun doing as soon as the weather permitted. Shortly after Promise Keepers, I was sitting alone at a picnic table under beautiful old oak trees that surely stood there during Henry Ford's time. And I asked myself, maybe prayed, "Where did anything begin?"

That's a big question. And it was answered in a small way.

Almost immediately, an acorn dropped onto the table in front of me. I know, I was sitting under an oak tree. Had it been a cactus in the desert, I might call it a miracle. But we'll just assume I was in the right place at the right time. I picked up the acorn and rolled it in my fingers, then looked up at the giant tree from which it fell. A few things occurred to me:

1. The giant tree produced millions of those acorns over its life.
2. The giant tree was once a little acorn.
3. The little acorn I held may one day be a giant tree.

Not an Earth-shattering revelation, I realize. But it lead to the next logical question: which came first?

Yes, the old chicken-and-egg question. Again, nothing new.

I also had a pencil in my pocket. I took that out and studied it as well. Where did the pencil come from? Yes, from a pencil factory, who bought the wood from a lumber mill, who cut down trees, and...you get the picture.

But why? I couldn't shake that question. The pencil, the tree, the cars, the giant locomotives, they were all matter. And matter is the stuff that matters, right? Why is there matter? It had to begin somewhere.

Yes, I know. The Big Bang. When the universe contracted to the point to where it exploded outward, spawning entire galaxies throughout light years of open space. We know the story.

Yet no one can tell us why. Why did it happen in the first place? What was before? Anything?

So, again, why is there anything?

All this pondering did not convince me of the existence of the God of the Bible. Here's what it did convince me of:

Pretending there is no God, and I were able to show you how the universe began, you wouldn't believe it. Got that? Our brains, no matter how high our IQ, are simply not capable of understanding the origins of the universe. We cannot even comprehend its current size. So, feel free to tell me that my god did not create the universe.

But no one can argue this: no matter what the truth is, if I could show it to you, you still wouldn't believe it.

Given that, let's begin our debate over which unbelievable truth we are most willing to accept.