Читать книгу Our World did not Create Itself - P.J. O'Brien - Страница 4

My Pa is a man of faith. I was interested when we sat down together to understand what caused him to believe so fiercely and passionately. He was born and raised a Catholic, as was I, so I had some understanding of his religion. However, as you discover throughout this book, there is more to it than religion. It’s faith. In this chapter he discusses why he believes.

Why do you believe in God?

Kate, after 85 years of curiosity and observing the wonderful and complex world in which we live, I have no doubt that this world could not have created itself or just somehow come into existence. To me it is all a miracle, designed and created by the person we know as God. To date, no other rational explanation has explained why we are here on earth. So I will now explain why I have such a belief.

When I was a child I was told to learn the Catechism. While I was sometimes a reluctant learner, I absorbed enough to remember the most important questions. I learnt that God created the world, that He is infinitely great and infinitely good, and that He made me, giving me a body and a soul, which He created in his own image and likeness. He created me to know Him, love Him and serve Him here on Earth and then be happy with Him forever in Heaven. We cannot see Him because He is a Spirit, like my soul, and so we cannot see Him while we are here on Earth, but will see Him in all His Glory if we attain eternal life with Him. However, we can know God on Earth by seeing and enjoying the wonderful things He has made.

Many of these are commonplace and taken for granted. Everyday things like the Sun, light, water, air, vegetation, life. And while astronomers continually monitor and explore the universe, as far as is known, our small planet, Earth, is the only place in this vast universe that has these commodities. And as I have grown older I have consistently asked myself why this is so?

For instance, how did the Sun fire up? Vital to our existence, the Sun has been performing since time began without refuelling, maintenance, or spare parts. The best power sources known to man require all of these if they are to perform correctly. Should the Sun’s fires go out, life on Earth would end immediately.

How does our Earth keep the correct distance from the Sun so that we can survive and do not freeze or burn up? How does it maintain that position without being guided by a superior force? Like the universe itself it could not have happened by chance.

How do we have light, travelling at almost 300,000 kilometres per second? What makes it travel and why? When he was seven, my grandson Harvey told me that light goes around the world seven times every second. It is a good way of describing lights’‘impossible’ speed but light only travels in a straight line. Otherwise, if it travelled around corners, then we would have perpetual daylight. There would be no dark side of our earth or the moon. Until it hits a barrier such as Earth it just keeps on going. How! We do not know!! We know that God is light. St John’s Gospel Ch. 6, v12, tells us that Jesus said: “I am the light of the world. No followers of mine shall ever walk in darkness; no, he shall possess the light.”

Water is tasteless, colourless and odourless. We cannot pick it up. Yet it covers almost three-quarters of the Earth's surface. Without it, we cannot live more than a few days. All creation has to have access to this amazing product. How did it come to be only on this tiny planet called Earth? How does it stay attached to our planet?

Air, or our atmosphere? We know it is there with every breath we take yet we cannot see it or understand how it clings to the earth or keep reproducing itself. Like water, air just miraculously keeps on keeping us alive.

How did vegetation come to be on Earth and nowhere else? All the wonderful trees, flowers, fruit, etc., we enjoy but do not know how they got here. They live and feed us. We admire their beauty and usefulness. In the autumn of 2019, Lilli, my then nine-year old granddaughter was showing me a shrub in their garden. She gently held the bell-shaped flower on the shrub and commented that it opened up into its beauty in the morning and closed at night. “Nobody knows how it does that,” she said. A little thinker that one!! How does it do it? How do plants germinate and grow? We do not know! We just know it happens!

The Gospel of Mark - Chapter 4, V26-28 tells us, in the words of Jesus:“This is what the Kingdom of God is like. A man throws seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing. Of its own accord, the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. How? He does not know!!”

Then there is life. How did it come to be here on earth? In his book, The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin wrote in 1859,“That the time-honored explanation of the creation of the world and its inhabitants by an all-powerful God was false.” He claimed that all species had descended from the one progenitor and that humans are not special – they have evolved along with other species. One of his most vocal advocates, Thomas Huxley, wrote in 1863: “I adopt Mr Darwin’s hypothesis, therefore, subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding.” Unfortunately, for supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution this proof has not been provided to this day, one hundred and sixty years later. And even if Darwin happened to be correct, that does not explain how we came into being on Earth.

A story I once heard about a model of the universe illustrates the folly of Darwin’s theory. A Catholic invited his atheist friend to view his working model of the universe. After admiring the intricate work, the atheist asked; “Who made it?” His friend looked at him with a smile and replied;“Oh, no one made it, it just suddenly appeared!” With a scornful laugh, the atheist responded;“Come on tell me, someone must have made it!” Expressing mock surprise, the Catholic responded,“Why! You believe the real universe just somehow appeared without any maker, so it should be easy for a mere model.”

But with all that aside, how did that first cell come to be on earth? How did our tiny planet become the only body in this vast universe to have all of the above gifts? Scientists tell us that dinosaurs became extinct around 66 million years ago, long before humans appeared on earth. If they came into existence by evolution then the question is this. How were they part of the evolutionary process if they disappeared long before humans came?

You have obviously thought much about life, death, and eternity. Has your belief changed and strengthened over the years?

Yes Kate! Knowledge has certainly strengthened the beliefs I have always had and enabled me to articulate them much more effectively. So as I have grown older, I have more maturely looked for an explanation of our existence and have concluded that if there is no God then the universe could not have come into being. Life, air, water, vegetation, and all the other gifts God has given us could not have invented themselves. Remember, all of these gifts are necessary for us to survive in this life. Yet every one of them is a miracle. To believe that all of them just happened to come into existence on Earth, independently of each other, without a creator, is stretching credibility beyond the limit.

Did you ever have doubts?

Not really! I have always accepted what I was taught as a child i.e. God made the world and all in it out of nothing. He made me in His own image and likeness. So it is much easier for me to accept the concept of God. Knowing what the Bible tells us about creation makes it much easier to understand that we will never comprehend the power of an all-powerful God. It is beyond our imagination and knowledge. It is only by studying His teachings and observing the wonders of creation that we can obtain the gift of faith in the God who created it all.

What does the Bible tell us?

It is in the Book of Genesis, Kate. Google tells us that modern scholars believe this Book was written around twenty-five hundred years ago. At that time people generally believed that the world was flat, and of course technology was very primitive compared to today. With all the detail it contains, Genesis must have been inspired by someone. St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy 3:14-4:2, tells us “All scripture is inspired by God.” It is a fantastic story;

The Book of Genesis Chapter 1 V1-20, 2.4.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the water.

God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that light was good, and God divided light from darkness. God called light ‘day,’ and darkness he called ‘night.’ Evening came and morning came: the first day.

God said, ‘Let there be a vault in the waters to divide the waters in two.’ And so it was. God made the vault, and it divided the waters above the vault from the waters from under the vault. God called the vault ‘heaven.’ Evening came and morning came: the second day.

God said, ‘Let the waters under heaven come together into a single mass, and let dry land appear.’ And so it was. God called the dry land ‘earth’ and the mass of waters ‘seas,’ and God saw that it was good.

God said, ‘Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants, and trees bearing fruit with their seed inside, on the earth. And so it was. The earth produced vegetation: plants bearing seeds in their several kinds. God saw that it was good. Evening came and morning came: the third day.

God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of heaven to divide day from night, and let them indicate festivals, days and years. Let them be lights in the vault of heaven to shine on the earth. And so it was. God made the two great lights: the greater light to govern the day, the smaller light to govern the night, and the stars. God set them in the vault of heaven to shine on the earth, to govern the day and the night and to divide light from darkness. God saw that it was good. Evening came and morning came: the fourth day.

God said, Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth within the vault of heaven.’ And so it was. God created great sea-serpents and every kind of living creature with which the waters teem, and every kind of winged creature. God saw that it was good. God blessed them saying, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas: and let the birds multiply upon the earth.’ Evening came and morning came: the fifth day.

God said, ‘Let the earth produce every kind of living creature: cattle, reptiles, and every kind of wild beast. And so it was. God made every kind of wild beast, every kind of cattle, and every kind of land reptile. God saw that it was good.

God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth.’

God created man in the image of himself,

In the image of God he created him,

Male and female he created them.

God blessed them, saying to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on earth.’ God said, ‘See, I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit: this shall be your food. To all wild beasts, all birds of heaven and all living reptiles on the earth I give all the foliage of plants for food. And so it was. God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. Evening came and morning came: the sixth day.

Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their array. On the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing. He rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he had rested after all his work of creating.

Such were the origins of heaven and earth when they were created.

Verses 2 4-9, 15-17, 18-25.

At the time when the Lord God made earth and heaven there was as yet no wild bush on the earth nor had any wild plant yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth, nor was there any man to till the soil. However, a flood was rising from the earth and watering all the surface of the soil. The Lord God fashioned man from dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being.

The Lord God planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned. The Lord God caused to spring up from the soil every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden. The Lord God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it. Then the Lord God gave the man this admonition, ‘You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you will surely die.’

The Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmate. So from the soil the Lord God fashioned all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven, and all the wild beasts. But no helpmate suitable for man was found for him. So the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. The Lord God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. The man exclaimed:

This at last is bone from my bones,

and flesh from my flesh!

This is to be called woman,

for this was taken from man.’

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body. Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other.

End of Verse 25.

So faith gives you the reason to accept that God exists and cares for us?

That is part of the answer. Through my parents, teachers, the Church, and so many other good people I have come to know and have great respect for, I have learnt that not only did God create us but He promised that if we come to know, love and serve Him here on earth, then when our body dies we will join Him in an eternity of happiness. If we believe that, it is much easier to accept trials and tribulations in this life. So knowledge makes our faith live. In His Wisdom, God also gave us the gift of ‘free will.’ This means that we can refuse to accept what God has taught us. It is easy to say “Oh! When I die, that’s it. There is no God and no afterlife.”

What a risk to take! We are talking about eternity, not a trip around the world. Our reward in Heaven will be that we can see God. People argue whether hell exists or not but if we reject God in this life it means that we reject Him in the next, and that means we will be denied the Vision of God.

A story I once heard highlights what is at stake here. An atheist at a Catholic funeral later challenged the priest and ridiculed him for saying in his homily that God exists. “There is no God. You will be very disappointed when you die and there is nothing.” The priest responded; “Not half as disappointed as you will be when you die and come face-to-fac e with the God you do not believe exists.” I suppose the moral is that a believer has nothing to lose. If the atheist is right then the believer has lost nothing. Hopefully, he/she has led a better life, but if the atheist is wrong then he/she has lost everything. How tragic that would be!!

We only have to watch successful people in this world. Top sportsmen and women only achieve success after they make many sacrifices and work hard to improve their skills. If it is worth doing that to achieve worldly success then it is vital if we want to spend eternity with the God who made us. We cannot comprehend the wonders God has prepared for us. But if we truly believe what God has promised, it is only common sense that we strive to please Him so that we can be happy with Him forever in Heaven.

Once you believe that death is not the end, but the end of the beginning of an eternity of bliss enjoying the Vision of God, then you have no option but to do everything possible to ensure that you do not place that great prize in jeopardy. Through the Mass and Sacraments provided by the Son of God through His Church we can obtain the graces necessary to achieve that objective.

Is that why you go to Mass most days?

If that is part of what is necessary to achieve eternal salvation then it is not a sacrifice, it is a joy. The Mass is the heart of receiving the graces we need in order to attain to eternal life. So, like the athlete, I believe I must do whatever I can, with the help of others, and by the Grace of God, to achieve the prize. It is a prize with no comparison on earth.

As Corinthians tells us, Chapter 2 v9,- “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love Him.” In other words we cannot begin to imagine what a wonderful place God has prepared for us. It is by faith and good works that we will succeed.

Pa, how do you feel about death, are you fearful of it?

No. But I am a little apprehensive about the process. It saddens me that most people are very reluctant to discuss our inevitable death. It is the one certainty about life. It will happen!! So surely it is common sense to consider what the outcome might be? When we read the daily newspapers, there is always a column detailing the death of those departed in the previous days. Some of these are sudden and unexpected. So it is inevitable and before our minds every day.

When you add the fact that our generous God has promised such a reward if we do His Will, then it is very sad indeed. He told us what we must do to achieve eternal life. But it is our choice. If we want the reward He has offered then we must do our best to do His will, not ours.

To disconcert Jesus, one of the Pharisees, a lawyer, put a question, “Master, which is the greatest commandment of the law?” Jesus said; “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: you must love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole law, and the Prophets also.” - Gospel of Matthew 22:v35-40. How profound but simple!! But that wise advice gives us the blueprint to solve the problems of the world.

If society would accept God’s directions to love your neighbour as yourself and not insist that ‘I can do what I want’, (and ‘I want it now!’), then the problems of murder, rape, war, domestic violence, corruption, abortion, divorce, terrorism, etc., etc., would begin to disappear. We hear so much about mental health these days and how to combat it, but the best method is never mentioned. Belief in God and the promise of an eternal life in paradise can alleviate many of the mental problems encountered and would help to overcome what is often just a lack of hope in the future. Life on this earth can sometimes be pretty tough. But if we accept the promise of eternal life with God, then we can more easily gain the gift of hope that makes it all worthwhile!!