Introduction

Among many people, there is a belief that a Grand Unifying theory, a G. U. T., when once discovered, will be able to completely explain the universe in a way that eliminates any need for a belief in God. 

I believe that the G. U. T. is God.

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.

Continuing

Part of our unique and exceptional role in America is to know why we believe what we believe about God--and to be able to communicate those thoughts clearly to others.

Stephen Hawking, internationally known theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author, takes this thinking one step further; he believes that the G. U. T. eliminates the need to study philosophy, that science by itself can explain everything. Is this the height of arrogance, or is Hawking onto something?

Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and theologian, is known partly for his thoughts about a “leap of faith,” a concept that claims that man can come only so close to believing in God by the use of his reasoning mind. After man has exhausted his intellectual resources in his attempt to find belief with only his mind, there remains a gap. A gap between reasoning and belief, a gap that can be closed only by faith. Hawking believes that when we fully engage our minds, that we will not discover God; we will discover there is no God.

When I go into a familiar room in the dark, I reach for the light switch, flip in on and fully expect the room to be lit. More specifically, I give it no thought. I simply get light. There is no part of my life where I spend any amount of time thinking about how light works, and wondering if my knowledge--or lack of it--will affect the transition from dark to light. I have acquired a working knowledge of how fluorescent lights, both tube and compact (light bulb size) work, partly to be able to repair them, and partly to decide where, if anywhere, to use them. The same with LED lights (my home is about 95% LEDs). 

For a long time, light was thought to act like a wave. Along comes Einstein who said that it acted like a wave and a particle. And, like everything else Einstein claimed, he was proven correct. The wave and particle discussion is interesting, but it does not change how I deal with artificial lighting. I may do some research in order to add dimmers, change the type of light fixture or bulb, but basically I just hit the switch and get light. And if I spent the time, energy and money to have a leading-edge understanding of how light worked, I would still have to hit the switch, and I would get exactly the same type and amount of light.

Question. Am I the only one who has ever wondered why God, if He loves us and wants us to love Him, would not make it so obvious that He is real that no sane person could deny Him? Wouldn’t that make life a lot easier and better?

Answer. No. 

Life cannot be lived with a secure series of absolute proofs. We need to develop trust, a high tolerance for ambiguity, and the ability to develop faith in things we cannot prove. Humans are not computers, destined to do nothing but process inputs in a relentlessly logical way. At their core, computers can do nothing but produce 1s and 0s, with the use of staggering numbers of transistors. There are about 3 billion transistors in your smartphone alone. In the quest to see if computers can think like humans, it has been observed that anything that a human mind can do--if it can be reproduced accurately by a mathematical statement--a computer can do. Let me know the formula for why I don’t like okra, and why I love my family and friends. 

We need to have belief, faith, trust, hope, and so much more that does not rest on absolute proof in our lives. If fact, if there was a way to provide unimpeachable proof, then things like belief and hope would become...