The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, March 30, 1998, Page 5, Image 5
_____. monuAi, iTinrv^n uv, m l/aili nLDivADAAn m raul o To believe, or not to believe Big-bang theory, evolutionary quirks suggest existence of a supreme being MALCOLM KASS is a senior chemical engineering major and a Daily Nebraskan colum nist I’m surviving on one hour of sleep. I have a test tomorrow. My car just died. And to top it all off, I am justifying the existence of a supreme deity - in short, GOD - in a 22-inch column for a university newspaper. Oh yeah, I’m wearing sunglasses. Hit it I intend to validate for the believers of the world that we are not absolute masters of our domain, but guided organisms created by an all-powerful being. I assure my audi ence that I will probably not be able to per suade even one of you. However, since Klaus suckered me into writing this column, I’ll give it my damndest... I mean, my dam dest. There are many weapons of choice used to crush the hopes of the masses and destroy a belief in God. They point to evolution, and science in general, as the cornerstone for their logic and to undermine religious thought. However, with information presented to us about evolution and our universe from mod em science, weaknesses in the atheist argu ment arise, stemming the belief that science is the answer for everything. First... the big bang. The big-bang theory claims that approxi mately 10,000 million years ago, all the mat ter in the universe was crunched to a point of infinite density and no size. Then the universe went “kaboom” in a ferocious explosion and the universe started to expand, and it is still expanding today. This expansion occurs because the force of explosion was much greater than the force of gravity to pull the universe back together. Gravity is slowing this process, however. Thus, questions arise. Will the force of gravity, which slows the expansion, eventu ally slow the universe to a stop and reverse the process? Will the universe collapse in upon itself? Since the universe contains only about 10 percent of the matter necessary to generate enough gravitational force to recol lapse, the universe apparently is expanding forever, to the ends of time. Because our universe apparently has a beginning and no cyclic process of expan sion and contraction, no scientific explana tion is applicable. This is a great weakness in the atheist argument. The instant our universe was bom neces sitated a God, beyond science and reason. It is as if God, with a snap of her “fingers,” decided to create everything. Why? I have no idea and I am not about to fathom the mind of God. However, the big bang is just a commonly accepted theory, just as evolution is just a theory; but to ratio nalize a question of this magnitude, we must use what is known, and God lies as the mother of our universe. The second explanation for God’s exis tence delves into the realm of human evolu tion. Humans are unique, and, because of dominant human behavior, we have come to dominate our planet. In comparing evolutionary marvels to the other species of life that have dominated our planet, such as the dinosaurs, human evolu tion is flying by at “Speed Racer” velocities. Dinosaurs arrived on the scene about 230 million years ago and existed for 165 million years. However, within those 165 million years, dinosaurs didn’t exactly evolve like bonkers. Actually, they evolved very little. Humanity’s ancestors have existed for approximately 5 million years and went from being chimp-like creatures to creators of thinking computers. Also, the great ani mals of the Earth have generally been either very large, like the dinosaurs, or small but large-numbered, like the insects. But humans discovered that the big brain is the zenith of evolution. As mentioned earlier, the dinosaurs lived for 165 million years, and insects, obviously, are still in existence. Why did it take only 5 million years for humans to unlock this evo lutionary key? The answer lies with the greatest feat in the existence of life on our planet. Humans have evolved beyond evolution. We cut the strings and became independent of our evo lutionary ties. When we want to fly, do we wait for evo lution to slowly form wings on our backs? No, we build an airplane. If we want to move faster, do we just wait for evolution to form larger leg muscles? Nope, we invent cars. We have even escaped the con fines of this planet Because of the power of intellect, the simple fact that we control and change our environ ment to satisfy our wants and needs secures earth and this universe as our own. This is why we are human, and not animals. In order to eat fruit high in a tree, does the human throw rocks or use sticks to reach the fruit like other pri mates? No, the human in a forest sees beyond what is directly present in the environment beyond the sticks and rocks. The human makes a lad der to reach the fruit or makes an ax to cut the tree down. This develop ment is not a quirk in the history of life. Rather, this is what is commonly referred to as divine intervention. God maHo tKio t^onnan and guess what - she kicked ass. Something extraordinary hap pened when God decided that sci ence needed a little nudge, and our ancestors went from being ape-like to being Homo sapiens in a rela tively brief span of time. If the process had been purely natural, evolution would inevitably have destroyed itself. I compare this to standing on a hill and rolling a ball 1,000 times, watch ing it move down uic luu iu aic vaney vassmfmm, i x because of the force ^mT of gravity. However, on the 1,001st instance, after it reaches the valley, the ball rolls back to the top of the hill. No one can reasonably claim that gravity was responsible for this occur rence. * Evolution did not “roll the up the hill.” Humanity has a maker. I hope I wasn’t too confusing, but I don’t think the mysteries of the universe are as easy as pie. Besides, the surest sign that God does indeed exist is that atheist-boy Klaus says the opposite. Anyway, if you remember anything from this column, remember this: As humans, we rock, but God gave us the Les Paul. Injustices throughout human history contradict presence of a divine power KLAUS MARRE is a senior broadcasting major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist When I was a young German (just pic ture me running through the Black Forest in my Lederhosen), I went to church just because it was what everybody did. Back then I made a list of questions I wanted to ask God if he ever appeared to me, as he did to all those prophets you can read about in the Bible. They were really innocent questions... the kind my relatives would find “cute” when they saw the list in my room kind of like, “Did you cry when Jesus died?” As I grew' oiuer, suu rroiiCK ing in the Black Forest, 1 got a little tougher on God. “Why did you make mean dogs? They bite.” Things didn’t make sense, and I questioned God’s authority. I wanted to know why God let 80 million peo ple die in World War II, and why he lets children starve to death every day. It didn’t make sense to me, and it was just a matter of time before I went from a curi ous child to an atheist, at about age 10. I had all these questions, and God had no answers for me. Actually, I don’t blame God because he does not exist. By the way, I use the term “he” loosely. For writing purposes I had to assign a ~„„a— —a t :_* gVUUVl UIIU A JUtH went with the ' common impres ! sion of God being male. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there is no God ... not even a rocket scientist’s assistant or any other per son for that matter. I understand people believe because it provides them with something to look forward to and maybe even a purpose in life, however irrational it maybe. That’s why it is called faith, I guess, but there was a time in our lives when we believed in Santa Claus. We had faith that some chubby, old man brought us presents for Christmas. It is just as irrational as the existence of God, and most of us don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore. - We know now it is impossible for the old man to visit millions of homes in one "\ • .." ; night. With the kind of weight the guy is carrying around, he would have a heart attack on the second roof. Being presented with all the evidence, we lost faith, espe cially after we figured out that our parents would get us presents whether or not we - believed in Santa. To me, it is the same with God. I have no reason to believe in him. I’m not even going to support my argument with the help of the Bible. A brain-dead person could show by the flaws in Scripture that it just does not make sense. For example, if Adam and Eve were the only people created by God, where did all the others come from? Last time I checked, most major religions were not big on incest. Tf xxrrvulrl Ko tan aaoi r fn nor sages in the Bible to show it is all just a sham, that belief in God in most major reli gions is just a kind of “afterlife insurance.” “Believe now, give money and help our cause, and we promise you eternal life later.” Pretty clever, too, with all of us being afraid of death and with no proof that religion keeps up its part of the bargain. It goes well with assigning guilt trips about having committed sins and then hearing God gave his only son so we could move on to a better place. It makes people like me, who do not believe, look like ungrateful asses. Instead, I will make you think for your self. It goes with the theme of the questions I mentioned earlier. If you have answers, please send them to the Daily Nebraskan. Let’s say there was a God who created the universe. This already does not make sense. If we are in fact the chosen few, and he created all this for us, why are there planets and stars billions of light-years away? What good are they goir% to dd ds? We’ll never get there. Did God think it was fim to make planets and just kept going? Put yourself in his shoes. If you were to create something really neat, like an earth with all these creatures running around. Wouldn’t you take care of it? Personally, I wouldn’t let all the bad things happen to humanity, and I don’t see why God, who is supposed to be all good and a great and righteous being, would let it happen either. Sure, all you Bible buffs out there will point me to Genesis 1:28 where it says the earth is man’s dominion. Still, just because you put someone in charge of something does not mean they can do whatever they want. To illustrate my point, let me reduce the scale of my example a little bit. Let’s pretend I have bought 1,000 mice and made them a really neat cage. I let them run around and have a good time. Then, one day, this one mouse talks to a few others and tells them they are a group of supermice and they should go out and whack all the others. So these Nazi-mice start killing off a bunch of their peers. Now, I, as their supreme being, who purchased them from a pet shop and built the cage, would just not stand for that. There is no way I would sit there and let my mice kill each other. Or maybe one comer of the cage gets all the food and 20 mice get fat, while on the other side of the cage, hundreds of the others starve to death. Personally, as a supreme being with the power to put food wherever I want to, I would try to distribute it more evenly to prevent starvation. I guess if there were a God, he would disagree because never in the history of mankind have we had an equal distribution of / resources. So why would this great being let all these bad things happen to his own cre ations? I don’t know. I would be somewhat upset to watch from above and see humani ty destroy my precious creation. What would really piss me off, though, would be when all these bad things happen in my name. All the religious wars, perse cution of innocent people or the attempt to hinder mankind’s progression (such as the medieval scientists who were burned at the stake) in God’s name. I would never toler ate anybody using my name to justify injustice. And if God existed, I am sure he would not, either.