Machine-like nature of the universe. All around us, in nature and the universe we see machine-like operations. These operations are extremely complex inside life and the cells. Machines have makers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMn319zkZ2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id2rZS59xSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJyUtbn0O5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9cVhwPg84Machine usage is in progression. Animals use simple machines. Some primates (apes, chimps, monkeys) use rocks and sticks to work their food. The leverage they provide with the rocks and sticks is machine use.
People use simple machines. People make and use complex machines. All machines that people and animals make and use come from examples of machine operations in the universe.
The progression is that, as the machines that people make and use are far more advanced than the ones that animals make and use, so are the machines that exist in nature far more advanced than the ones that people make and use. The advanced machines of the universe have an advanced Maker - God. Machines have makers.
So you consider life and cells to be machines. And you consider that these machines can make other machines. What made the machine you call God?
God is so "great" that such a question can't apply. Asking such a question is expressing ignorance more than simply saying something like, "God is way beyond my understanding."
Using this logic, everything is made by something else, and it would go on forever.
Forever? Everything that we understand operates by cause and effect. If the universe is 15 billion years old, think of the logic involved at the start of it that, after all this time, and untold cause and effect activity, the result could be something as great as life and humanity.
Where does it stop? Are we to accept that God is exempt from the logic you use in this argument?
Where is our logic? It is said that if two perfect chess players were to compete, it would be a stalemate with white having the slight advantage. What is logic? None of us has enough to fathom the mysteries of the universe. So how can we fathom the mysteries of God?
You may respond with something along the lines of "God is the beginning of this progression, the thing that created the universe, and he existed for all time." Well, if there IS in fact an beginning to the progression of machines creating machines creating machines, why can't it be the Universe itself? What if it does not need an intelligent creator and it has existed forever - since time is only extant in the universe it effectively could have existed forever even considering the Big Bang theory.
This is reasonable thinking. However, eliminating the word "God" or even "god" from the dictionary would leave a void that humankind can't explain. The void would be huge, because the design in the universe is intelligently done.
What's even better, is that we know the universe exists and it can be proven by conventional science (so far as proving that anything effectively exists could do). Making things with a specific design in mind is more on the human/advanced animal level, but the universe can certainly create, through the extant and provable laws of physics and semi-random processes. Keep in mind that in the current scientific view, the world is at least 4 billion years old, and the universe much older yet. Just considering the fact that matter and the laws of physics exist, you would expect SOMETHING to happen in all that time. For all we know, there could be a set of "machines" somewhere else in the universe that is far more advanced than what we call "life".
Okay, expand your thinking a little. From a blog somewhere:
Why is it so hard for someone who believes in Evolution, to believe that a form of life might have developed that is so far beyond man that man could not conceive of much (if any) of what it is about?
Let’s say that microbes and people both evolved. People understand many things about microbes. Microbes understand nothing about people.
Yet, as people are so far beyond microbes that microbes understand nothing about them, why is it such a hard stretch to believe that there is a God that is so far beyond people that people can not conceive of Him except when He reveals Himself to them?
Doesn’t the Theory of Relativity allow for the possibility that someday man just might evolve to a point where he would be several orders of intelligence and capability beyond where he is today? So why is it so hard to believe that this has not happened somewhere in the Universe with some being already?
In standard, everyday life, we see things deteriorate at an alarming rate. The older they get, the more they deteriorate – rust, corrode, wear out, die. If Evolution is real, it has done a miraculous thing! It has gone from not-living, to microbe to man in such a gigantic period of time that mountains have decayed to valleys, that rocks have turned to dust, and that no living thing could ever hope to approach in number of years of life. If such a thing as this could happen, why rule out the idea that something like God could evolve, since that is where the evolution of man would be headed anyway?
In nature there are many things that are difficult to assign properly to Evolutionary existence. They just don’t fit into any Evolutionary model.. Yet many of these things fall right into place if viewed from the standpoint of Intelligent Design and God. So, why not consider the idea that there is possibly an evolved God?
We know a little about space time. We are just starting to figure out ways for manipulating space time. A form of man that had evolved several orders beyond present-day man might be able to actually time travel and teleport. Evolution suggests, somewhat, that man might be headed there.
I want what I want NOW. So, why should God wait for evolution to do its work over millions and billions of years, when, in His capacity as God He can control all time and space, make Himself to always have existed, get rid of something as slow and backward as Evolution – making it to never have existed – and replace it with something far better?
And what is the something that God would be replacing Evolution with? A method for taking all of us forward to be with Him, something like He is. A way to take all of us who did not and could not evolve into something like a God, to be moved into God likeness.
The whole idea of Evolution is fantastic. So why not carry it to its ultimate conclusion? A conclusion that answers the question of Evolution and non-existence of Evolution alike. A conclusion that ties together the things the evolutionist sees with the things the Christian sees while not harming either of them.
If I were to have a God to account for the universe, it would be the universe itself - matter, energy, and the laws of physics and other fundamental scientific/mathematical laws (maybe even some we haven't discovered yet) - not a sun god, not a lightning god, not a judgemental god that focuses on abstract ideals like good and evil, or even a loving god that watches over each and every one of "His children" and listens to their prayers (of course choosing which ones to answer according to His will alone).
The problem with God not focusing on good and evil is this. For the universe to exist, everything has to work. Not one particle of an atom can fail. All the laws of the universe must exist perfectly, or else the whole thing collapses.
We are so extremely imbedded into the universe that our activity must be perfect. Perfect is beyond our understanding of good and evil.
When Jesus/God suffered and died on the cross, and then arose again, He took the punishment for a corrupted universe. Man had corrupted the universe. God came as man, in Jesus, so that man could fix the universe he corrupted, with the only strength that had the ability to fix something like the universe - God strength. Trust Jesus God. He did it for you.
