And the Answers That

Could Change Your Life

Questions

About God

 

A challenging

new book by

Pat Boone and

Cord Cooper

Questions About God - and the Answers That Could Change Your Life

 

 

A Brief Word

 

This book does not take sides in the “old Earth vs. new Earth” theological debate. The book uses science’s figures and hypotheses—about the formation and age of the universe and planet Earth—to challenge certain concepts on scientists’ own turf, and to show how scientific hypotheses, principles, and discoveries con­clusively point to evidence of God’s existence. When using the pronoun “he” and the pronoun objective “him” in reference to God, the book follows the style of the King James Version of the Bible, lower-casing both. When the co-authors speak individually, they’re identified parenthetically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

The First Question? Stay Tuned

 

Things aren’t always what they seem.

As you read this, you probably think you’re sitting perfectly still. Yet could anything be further from the truth? Right now, you’re moving at four incredible speeds simultaneously. First, you’re spinning in an easterly direction at 1,044 miles per hour. That’s the speed at which Earth turns on its axis.

Second, you’re moving through space at 67,000 miles per hour—the speed at which Earth orbits the sun. Third, you’re orbiting the Milky Way’s galactic center at 490,000 miles per hour. That’s the speed at which everything in the galaxy spins around the Milky Way’s center of mass. And fourth, as the universe expands, everything in it is hurtling outward at lightning speed (the speed varies, depending on each object’s location). Yet even that’s not the end of the story. The expansion rate is accelerating.

Yet look at the book you’re reading. Look at every inanimate object around you.

To all appearances, everything is perfectly still.

As Copernicus and Galileo found in challenging centuries of entrenched thought, things indeed aren’t always what they seem.

In reading this book you’ll embark on a journey that will challenge your thinking and point up possibilities you haven’t considered. We’ll look at mysteries that have captivated mankind for centuries. We’ll also see how faith and fact can intersect without our realizing it.

Above all, we’ll look at evidence. Evidence that God not only exists but is knowable.

 

Evidence

It drives our judicial system. It determines the fate of everyone who stands trial. A shred of forensic evidence can mean the difference between a death sentence and freedom. Eyewitness accounts can determine whether a prosecutor pursues a case or drops it.

Evidence also drives science. It results in new theories, new ways of looking at the universe. Science continually changes, replacing old hypotheses with new ones. It continually refines itself, based on evidence.

Science and our system of justice turn on specific standards for evaluating evidence. We’ll use those same standards in considering the evidence for God’s existence.

 

First, a Definition of Terms

If a supreme creator exists, it isn’t in the form of a cosmic old man with white hair depicted by artists through the ages. The omniscient, all-powerful force behind the universe is exactly that. An all-powerful force. Interestingly, the Old Testament of the Bible describes the Godhead figure not as a man but in several distinct ways. Among them? God as spirit, God as light. Though known to the Hebrews as Jehovah and Yahweh, his physical descriptions are spirit and light.

To avoid endlessly repeating genderless terms—“intelligence,” “spirit,” “supreme creator”—we’ll often refer to God in this book using the pronoun “he” and the pronoun objective “him.” These are simply reference points.

 

The Search

People by the millions have a vague belief in a supreme being, yet they don’t experience God in their lives and they wonder why. They expect God to reveal himself to them at will—their will. Yet does anything else on Earth occur this way?

If you’re out of work, do you lie on your couch waiting for prospective employers to come knocking?

When NASA embraced John Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, did it look for ways to gravitationally pull the moon to us, or did it seek every avenue—including failed attempts along the way—to get astronauts from here to there?

Why should the search for God be any different? Interesting question, isn’t it? To find anything on Earth or in the universe, we have to look for it. To find God, we must seek him.

“Look, we’re finite beings,” you’re probably saying. “Knowing God—if he exists—is impossible.” Which brings us to a couple of questions:

 

If God Exists, Why Is It Up to Us to Find Him?

Why Doesn’t He Appear Visibly?

These are questions man has been grappling with for centuries. And the answer could well lie in human nature.

Picture this scenario for a minute: It is night. Pitch dark. Hundreds of millions of people are either asleep or preparing to go to bed. Suddenly an immensely bright light appears. A light brighter than the sun instantly turns night to day. Sleepily, people approach their windows wondering what in the world’s going on. They find that though the light is enormously bright, it can be viewed effortlessly by the naked eye. Instead of heat, people feel an incredible tranquility. As by the millions they peer up at the light, they feel a welcoming, almost overpowering love and sense of well-being. Though no audible sound is heard, everyone inwardly—simultaneously—hears a message in his native language. As the message is spoken, everyone stands transfixed before the light, looking up and looking at each other, everyone instinctively aware the message is being understood en masse.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, it’s the middle of the day, and the same thing is going on. It’s daylight, but the light is five times brighter. The message is being heard everywhere on Earth.

 

 

THIS CHAPTER CONTINUES IN THE BOOK . . . .