If you’ve ever felt like there is no way you could ever believe that there is an all-powerful creator of this massive universe (God), I totally understand. I can hardly believe it myself. I am not going to try to convince you that there is a God, after all there is no way to know that for certain. I will just present how I began to think that there might be more out there than what is visible or for that matter even knowable. We can only look at the incomplete evidence and then we need to make up our own minds.
The first 20 years of my life I do not remember giving God’s existence much thought. My family did not go to church, and I was too busy having fun and getting into trouble. It was not until I was 19 years of age, and met my wife, that I ever set foot in a church. I went to church just to be with her. They talked about God in church, and I guess that would be the first time I even gave the existence of God much thought.
I was then shipped off to Vietnam, and I guess that would be the first time I prayed, not that I believed there was a God, prayer just came naturally in that situation. After Vietnam I got married and with the government’s help, I went to college on the GI bill. I majored in Electrical Engineering and therefore I took a lot of courses in math and science. For whatever reason this led me to begin to doubt the existence of God. I struggled with the reality of God’s existence for about a year and then one night in bed I decided that I just could not make myself believe that there was some all powerful being out-there somewhere. So, I decided there was not a God, and I was comfortable with that for about 25 years. My wife continued going to Church taking our two children with her. I told them I’m glad you believe, but I just can’t.
After our kids left the house my wife and I had more time on our hands and my wife got involved with a network marketing group, which had weekend seminars followed by a kind of religious revival. At one of these revivals the
minister did an alter call, where he said come on down and say some words and it will make a new person out of you. Well more out of “I will show him”, I went down and said those words. And guess what, I got all emotional and began reading the Bible and going to Church. The minister was right, saying those word did change my life. For the next 20 years I accepted that God existed and that made me a much happier person. But, I kept having nagging doubts, especially when I would read the Old Testament.
After my retirement I had a lot more time to research my nagging doubts, so I began reading books that tried to show how the Old Testament was scientifically and historically accurate. Many of my Christian friends and family told me that the Bible is the inspired and infallible word of God. I began to find out there were many Christians that believed that the bible is the literal word of God. When I would read the bible as the literal word of God, this made me doubt the existence of God even more. After a few years of reading and studying I stopped trying to prove that the bible is historically and scientifically accurate. I turned my focus to looking for evidence of God in science.
My first big revelation was quantum physics. MIT has a free online class and I began trying to understand quantum physics. What I found was that for me, God is easier to believe than what physics says is the reality of our world. What physics suggests is that there are many more spatial dimensions than what we can observe, light is eternal (light travels at light speed and time stops at the speed of light), time can stop in a black hole, electrons can be in two places at the same time. For me this all says that there are things that I cannot get my head around. From what I have read, no one understands how quantum physics works and no one can understand how God works. I know this sounds simple minded, but it led me to accept that there is a God and there must be better evidence than, “the bible says so”.
One of the most common arguments I have found for the existence of God is the cosmological argument, which asserts that everything that exists must have a cause, and that the cause of the universe must be God. Another argument is the teleological argument, which suggests that the complexity and order of the universe and living organisms imply the existence of an intelligent designer. Others point to religious experiences or personal encounters with the divine as evidence of God’s existence. Some argue that the existence of morality and a sense of purpose in life points to the existence of a higher power.
The strongest physical evidence I have found that God exists is the Shroud of Turin. I have come to believe that it is the cloth that Jesus was wrapped in after his Death. In my opinion the cloth shows an image of Jesus as he was
being resurrected. The cloth is the most scientifically studied artifact we have, and it is in existence today. The only plausible explanation, offered by scientists, for how this image was created is that the body of Jesus emitted high energy ultraviolet light. This light would have been emitted from the body, and caused the linen to be discolored in a way that created a negative three-dimensional image. Note there is no way to know if in fact the image of the man on the cloth is that of Jesus, but the fact the man on the cloth had been scourged, beaten, crowned with thorns, crucified, and pierced in the side, all leads me to believe it was Jesus. I have begun a post titled “Who is this Man” which will go into more detail. I have come to believe that God created this image specifically for this generation we are now living.
So, what does it mean if the shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus? For me it means that God is real and that God Loves us. In one of the videos, I watched on the shroud, they did a forensic analysis on the scourge marks and
all the painful tortures that Jesus endured. I asked myself, why someone would voluntarily go through such a painful ordeal. I asked myself would I go through it for my wife and children? Well maybe. It occurred to me that someone would only go through something like that for someone they Loved dearly. Was it necessary? Only if you wanted to show human beings that you were God and loved them very much.
I have come to believe that God is real and that God Loves all of us. I believe God knows we are challenged by the things in this world, and God knows we need to be challenged so that we can show the courage and fortitude God
knows we have within us.