Does God Exist?: A Rational Investigation

By Domenico Guzzo

Ever wondered if God exists?  We all have our life-time to find out, so no hurry.  Answering this question has involved an extensive investigation and there is a conclusion.  From a rational perspective, there has to be something OUT

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Apr 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637675946

Book preview

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Copyright © 2021 by Domenico Guzzo

Hardcover: 978-1-63767-595-3

Paperback: 978-1-63767-593-9

eBook: 978-1-63767-594-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021922603

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of nonfiction.

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Printed in the United States of America

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Wikipedia.

From which most of the information and facts

in this book are derived.

Stardust.

You unwittingly evolved into amazing stuff.

Salamander.

If you had not walked out of the sea,

and eventually climbed a tree,

then where would we be?

Dedication

To Humans

&

Aliens.

INTRODUCTION

Does God exist? was a topic studied in my first year at Waikato University. As it turns out, and which is often the case, there are two sides to this issue. On the one hand, some believe the Universe and Nature have come about on their own. On the other hand, some believe there is something, such as a Creator or Intelligence involved. That something is referred to by various names, e.g. The Universe , God, The Force . They cannot both be right. There is either something or nothing out there beyond the material realm.

Which story do you prefer? And, more importantly, which story is true? I hope that the reader can see both sides of this research. If one has a religious inclination, that they will be open-minded to the scientific perspective. If one adheres to the scientific philosophy, that they will be open to reading the scriptural passages.

A few decades ago, I completed my Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy. Finally, after an enormous amount of research, untold editing and perseverance, this is my contribution to the question: Does God exist?

Unless noted otherwise, scriptural texts are from the NIV Study Bible 1985.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHANCE OR DESIGN

SCIENCE

TRUTH

A CREATOR—TO BE, OR NOT TO BE?

WHICH GOD

THE BIBLE

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

WRAPPING IT UP

EPILOGUE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1

CHANCE OR DESIGN

Put down this book, go

outside, look around, and come back in a minute or two. It is just a suggestion; you do not have to get up at all. It is your choice. If you can freely choose between different courses of action, you have what is known as free will.¹ For what I am alluding to, you can simply use your memory of outside experiences or possibly look out a window. If you did go outside, you probably saw natural and human-made objects. Now, concerning natural objects, which includes plants, animals, landscapes, stars, the sun etc., there has to be an explanation for how they came about. What if there is no Creator, no Intelligent Designer, no Guiding Force, nothing like that. Then the natural contents of this material world must have come about on their own accord. That is to say, nature has come about by itself without anyone, or anything, causing it to happen. Could it all have come about just naturally on its own accord? Let us investigate this.

Let’s start at the beginning. Boom! The Universe explodes into existence—The Big Bang. Apparently, the Universe swelled from a size smaller than an electron to nearly its current size within a tiny fraction of a second.² One may wonder what caused this phenomenon to occur. We don’t know. It simply just happened. So, what can we conclude about the Universe’s beginning? It is rather peculiar.³

Let’s move on. How did the stars, plants, animals, landscapes etc., come about? Just by chance, of course. It wasn’t designed, it wasn’t deliberate, there was no intelligence behind it. It all just came about on its own. Simply a naturally occurring phenomenon, that is, things interact with their environment, and change occurs. Different environmental factors, would have produced different outcomes…

Parts of a cell came together. The cell interacted with its environment. Change occurred. The cell evolved. Plants developed, and insects came about. A cell adapted to the conditions and took on traits that were beneficial to its survival. The cell became a fish. The fish developed lungs, probably from swimming in shallow water, and at some stage ventured onto the land and stayed there. It evolved into a reptile or mammal. Eventually, it climbed a tree, perhaps for safety reasons. After being a monkey and getting out of the trees, it ultimately walked upright on land. It became bipedal.⁴ And here we are. No Creator. No Intelligent Designer. No Spirit in the Sky. Just a natural adaptation to the environment. In other words, evolution via Natural Selection. The fact that most natural phenomenon appears how we currently see them is a fluke or coincidence. It is by chance, as opposed to design, that it is like it is. Design implies a designer, and in the scenario of it has come about just naturally on its own accord, there is no Designer.

* * *

Some people believe the world and most natural things have come about primarily due to minor incremental adaptations over an exceptionally long time.

Modern humans possibly have a link that goes back to microscopic life forms, e.g. bacteria. This dot ·, if a bit more than 600µm⁵ wide, would be more significant in size than the largest known bacteria, Epulopiscium fishelsoni.⁶ The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), from which humans derived, branched into bacteria, so it would be fair to say LUCA was microscopic.⁷ Could we have an ancestral connection with microscopic biological cells? Maybe. After all, amoebas move by changing their shape.

An amoeba is a microscopic single-celled organism—amoeba move by changing the shape of their body.⁸ Early naturalists referred to Amoeba as the Proteus animalcule after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his shape.⁹ A wiggle and a jiggle, can go a long way towards improving things.

About 3.5 billion years ago, elementary life forms appeared. These eventually evolved into fish, which evolved into us. See over the page as to what time and adaptation of life to its environment (evolution) has become.

---

¹ Free will Wikipedia

² How Did the Universe Begin? Subheading: Fundamental mysteries By Ker Than livescience.com. I thought the Universe was expanding.

³ How do we know for sure if there was nothing before our Universe started? Scientists base their views upon the evidence and then theorize. If nothing prior to the beginning (or singularity) can ever be verified, then talk of such matter can only ever be speculation.

⁴ Some of the apes developed the ability to walk upright for reasons that are still unclear History of Earth Subheading: Human evolution. Wikipedia

⁵ An µm is a unit of measurement 1000th of a millimetre (mm).

⁶ Bacteria – Sizes (www) Subheading Largest bacteria

⁷ Our ultimate relative was a single-cell, bacterium-like organism known as Last Universal Common Ancestor or Luca. www.independent.co.uk>news Jul 26,2016

⁸ 7th Period Protists and Fungi Wikispaces

⁹ Amoeba Wikipedia

.

A dot. Larger than the original

biological cell from which so much

life evolved. It took a while, but

eventually, microscopic biological

organisms became…

We cannot but conclude that evolution is impressive. It took a long time, but that basic tiny cell adapted and