Yet here I am. Here are we all. We find ourselves mysteriously here, self-aware, thinking and feeling. We have free will, the ability to make choices. But not one of us chose to be made. We had no say in the matter. What does that mean?
I am -- we are -- the product of someone else's choice. We are willed into being by someone else.
I think the conclusion is inescapable. I am not my own. I do not belong to myself. This is not MY life, but someone else's.
Two more questions, then. To whom do we belong? And what does not owning ourselves mean?
To whom do we belong, then? To our biological parents? Not ultimately, For our parents are not their own either.
How far back do we go? Do we trace it back through the ages of biological evolution? Do we belong, via random events, to the material universe? Are we here ultimately by random chance? The atheist thinks so, but it cannot be so.
Suppose we belong to the universe. A silly supposition, but let's suppose it anyway. The universe did not make itself either. Even supposing physics eventually proves -- and I hear that some are working on this -- that something can be spontaneously generated from nothing, such a discovery would neither prove anything about the origin of the universe, nor abrogate the laws of causality.
The reason is simple. You cannot have a circular definition. Physics is the description and study of the way in which the physical universe functions. The way in which the universe came into being therefore cannot be discerned by looking at the function of universe itself.
For if the universe allows something to be created from nothing, then you need a universe in which to create something from nothing, which means you're starting from something, not nothing. You have to have a universe in which to create a universe. That brings us right back to the infinite recursion problem. The chain must begin somewhere or else nothing ever actually exists.
Thus, the universe demands an uncaused cause, without which nothing could ever exist. The laws of physics that govern the universe had to have been determined by someone or something.
This is a long way of saying that there must eventually be someone who owns everything without Himself being owned. He owns himself and everything else. This, of course, is God.
[This is a very old proof for the existence of God. I didn't come up with it. I've just put it in my own words.]
The conclusion is that we belong to God. We already knew this, of course, but this is yet another way of arriving at the same conclusion.
The second conclusion quickly follows. I am supposed to be using my will and intellect to make choices that serve not myself, but that seek to accomplish the purpose for which I was created in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment