A Practical Man's Proof of God The purpose of this brief study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective. To do this, we are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is real. If you do not believe that you exist, you have bigger problems than this study will entail and you will have to look elsewhere. [more]
A Help in Understanding What God Is
To help the reader comprehend the nature of God, I would like to borrow an analogy from the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott.* Abbott was a mathematician and the model is geometric in nature. It was originally written in the 19th century for the purposes we are using it for here. Flatland is the story of a man who lives in a two dimensional world--like a sheet of paper. In the surface of the paper there is only length and width-there is no such thing as thickness. You and I are three-dimensional beings-we have length and width and frequently considerable thickness. You cannot get me, a three-dimensional being, into a two-dimensional sheet of paper. You can draw a front view of me (a portrait), but that is not the whole me. You can draw a top view of me which because I am bald, ends up being three concentric circles, but that is not the whole me. If you and I were to look at the man in Flatland, we would see him as a .... [more]
What Was the Cause of the Beginning? It is assumed that the reader has read the first two booklets in this series, one titled A Practical Man's Proof of God and the other A Help in Understanding What God Is. In these two booklets, we have established that all scientific evidence supports the fact that there was a beginning, and that the beginning was caused. We have also shown that the creator of time, space, and energy has to be something that is outside of time, space, and energy. The nature of the cause cannot be in the three-dimensional physical world in which we live and must be outside of time to have created time. [more]
Who Created God?
One question which inevitably comes up in a discussion of this nature is what is the origin of God? If God created matter/energy, and designed the systems that have propelled matter into its present arrangement, who or what accomplished that for God? Why is it any more reasonable to believe that God has always been than it is to say that matter has always been? As Carl Sagan has said, "If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?" (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, [New York: Random House, Inc., 1980], p. 257). [more]
Why I Left Atheism
Of all the lessons that I present concerning the existence of God and of all the material that I try to make available to people to learn about God's existence, the present lesson, "Why I Left Atheism," is the lesson in the series that I frankly do not like to present. I guess none of us like to look back in our lives to a time when we made poor judgments and foolish mistakes--when we took rather really idiotic positions--and admit this, especially to people we are not well acquainted with. I present this lesson, however, because it is my fervent hope and prayer that perhaps by exposing my mistakes and by pointing out the things that were a part of my early life, some who might be following the same paths (to a greater or lesser extent) might not make those same mistakes. [more]
God's Revelation in His Rocks and in His Word
This paper is a part of the Does God Exist? program which was begun in 1968 by John Clayton as an attempt to show that intelligent, scientifically literate, thinking people can and should believe in God and in the Bible as His Word. Your author, John Clayton, is a science teacher who began his teaching career in the public schools of South Bend, Indiana, in 1959 and has taught physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and physical science since that time. Since I was an atheist for many years and came to believe in God through my studies in science, it frustrated me to see students and parents who viewed faith and science as enemies. [more]
The Problem of Human Suffering
Almost every time that I am involved in a lectureship on a college campus or a similar place I have people — young people usually — who will come to me and say, “Well all right, you’ve shown us that there is some evidence for God’s existence, but if there is a God and if He is a loving and merciful God, how do you explain the problems of suffering and death and all the tragedies that happen to people?” Why is it that these things occur? I believe any question that man can ask has a reasonable answer — at least an answer that is as consistent with God’s existence as it is in opposition to God’s existence. And so, in the problem of human suffering and the problem of death and tragedies — things that happen to all of us — there are answers. [more]
The Whiner's Guide to Chemotherapy
This is the epilogue for those of you who flip to the end of the book. I did make it! I'm 62!!! The exclamation points are because I didn't think I would see 50. God is so awesome! God would be awesome even if I had not seen 50, but it is amazing how He has made my cancers turn out for good--both mine and His. It feels great to feel great! Thank You, God! [more]
The Real Jesus of History
Was the real Jesus of history one and the same as the Christ of faith whom we read about in the New Testament and worship in the church? Was Jesus really raised from the dead? Is he really the divine Lord of lords? Or is it possible that the portrait of the divine Son of God is an exaggeration, at best, or a complete fabrication, at worst, of the original Jesus? Could the one whom Christians worship be merely a mythological creation or is he real?
These questions have exercised many great minds and have been the dominant issue in New Testament studies during this century. Between 1910 and 1950 approximately 350 lives of Jesus were published in the English language alone. Since then the numbers have increased significantly.Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are taking up their pens to paint a portrait of Jesus. [more]
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