Humankind has always been plagued with questions that we cannot answer. Some of them we might figure out if we think long and hard, like, “Does the light remain on after we close the refrigerator door?” That question has stumped many people since the invention of the refrigerator.
Other questions are equally as difficult but have been resolved, e.g. “Is the world flat?” or, “Who shot J.R.?” or, “Was the JFK assassination a conspiracy?” Okay, I take it back; some questions haven’t been answered to everyone’s satisfaction. Other questions are philosophical and not supposed to be answered, like, “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a noise?”
On a more serious note, I have been confounded by 3 questions that I would like to put to the Creator. The first question is simply, “What is life?” I recently read about an archeological excavation that uncovered some date palm seeds that were over 2,300 years old. They planted some of them and guess what – they sprouted and grew. So imagine this, you have two seeds that are each 2,300 years old and you examine them exhaustively but cannot, with any scientific measurement, determine which will grow and which is dormant. Even more dramatic is unthawing a mouse that had been frozen solid in liquid nitrogen. There is no measurement that you can make to determine whether the frozen creature is dead or alive until you thaw it out and watch it run off. So God, tell me what is life?
The second question I would ask the Creator is, “How does force propagate?” We’ve all played with magnets and seen how they can act on other magnetized material from a distance. The interesting thing is that there can be absolutely nothing, nada, null, zilch, naught between two magnets and they will act upon each other. The same is true of gravitational forces – nothing between – no protons, no electrons, no pi mesons, no quarks, no nothing; and the two masses will still exert gravitational pull on each other. Scientists are prone to theorize when they don’t know how something works so they have come up with theories about curved space time continuums and strings; all of which is to say that they don’t know but because they think that they’re smarter than God then they feel obligated to provide an answer. I’m not too proud to say that the Creator is smarter than the creature. Therefore, when I am able, I will ask God, “How does force propagate?”
Einstein struggled with this question, but try as hard as he could he was never able to come up with a “Unified Field Theory”. If Einstein had been a Theist instead of a Deist then he might have been able to better decipher the mysteries of the universe. Francis Collins, in his book The Language of God, describes the decoding of human DNA in the Genome Project. He made a comment that Einstein believed that God created the Universe and formulated all of the physical, chemical, and mathematical rules that govern existence. It was then left to humankind to decipher them. On the other hand, Francis Collins, who is a theist, believes that our Creator is alive, well, and actively involved in His creation. The success that Collins achieved in unraveling the human genome is attributable, in part, to his strong belief in God, and the guidance which he received from prayer. As an interesting side note, Collins maintains that most evolutionists believe in the “Big Bang Theory” but cannot provide the cause of the “Big Bang”; ergo, they are by default Creationists.
The third question causing me consternation is this, “Why does water reach its most dense state at 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Centigrade)?” The ramifications of this phenomenon would prohibit life if it were not true. If water behaved according to the rules of other liquids it would continue to increase in density until it changed phases from liquid to solid. If water were to behave this way then ice would not float and would form from the bottom up. If ice were denser than water then the bottom of the Arctic Sea would be frozen and all aquatic life in these regions would be eliminated. We would have a perpetual ice age. In addition ice would not be able to break down rocks and soils by its freezing and thawing action. This very simple phenomenon appears to be deliberate by Intelligent Design and I would like to know why.
As Yoda might say, “The questions are many. The answers are few. The Force be with you.”
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