Is There a Creator?

However much we may be absorbed in the affairs of living, at some stage in our lives, everybody, however fleetingly, wonders whether or not there is a God and if so – where is He? Even the adamant atheist-somewhere deep down in the recesses of his mind – is unsure if his assertions are correct or not.…

Logically, it is impossible to know for certain whether or not there is a God, for intellect and thought cannot perceive Him. Yet, through reason, it is possible to approach the subject. Mystics say that the amazing diversity, complexity, order and organisation in the universe has not come into being by chance. There is a supreme intelligence behind it all. Modern science may have discovered and described something of this incredible order, but cannot understand its origins. The existence of this order tells us something.…

When we look up in to a clear night sky, we can see thousands of stars. Yet with only a few exceptions, all the stars are members of our own local galaxy and represent far less than a billionth of the stars in the physical universe. Were we to look with a powerful telescope into the dark spaces between the stars, we would find myriads of tiny luminous points. But these tiny points are not stars. They are entire galaxies. And only those that are close enough to be seen.

Our local galaxy, the Milky Way, is an average sort of galaxy, possessing about 400 billion stars or suns. Some others contain even a thousand billion stars. And like over 90 percent of galaxies, the Milky Way is arranged in an orderly flat spiral disc, with arms as in a whirl or vortex. The stars circle around the centre of this whirl; planets orbit around the stars; moons orbit around the planets. Yet, the moons, planets, stars and galaxies are ordered in such a way that they never collide with one another, though if they had happened to be much closer, then long ago they would have all fallen into each by the force of gravity.

In the heart of matter itself, the same processes are at work. Intensely active points of matter – subatomic particles – circle and pirouette around each other following laws which man can hardly comprehend. Yet the same subatomic processes are at work in far off galaxies. Everything – at all places in the physical universe – bears witness to a repeating and universal order.…

In living creatures, the order is even more complex and fascinating. Each cell teeming with highly organised activity. There are hundreds of thousands of interactions of various kinds every second. And not only are they all integrated with each other, but the entire living creature functions as a whole, with all its cells in harmony with each other.…

Yet there is more. Scientists, intrigued by all the order and organisation, have identified several thousand apparent coincidences in the natural world, without which neither life nor the physical universe could exist. …

The discoveries of science do not, in themselves, prove the existence of a God. Mystics would agree, for such evidence – however powerful – is only circumstantial, requiring human interpretation. All the same, such facts are proof of something bigger than chance as the overall controlling force in the material world. Before forming an opinion, therefore, of whether or not there is a God, it is wise to know something of the physical universe which He is supposed – or supposed not – to have created. Does it bear witness to a Designer? And the answer is: it does.
_{John Davidson, The Gospel of Jesus}