Why I Know, Without the Slightest Reservation, That God Exists

I was watching a video podcast debate with Dr. Jordan Peterson and Matt Dillihunty (who is a professional skeptic and athiest). Both are brilliant men and the session was fascinating. They were discussing the existence of God. This is a high level and deep discussion and not for the faint of heart. I was disappointed though because they failed to discuss the biological phenomena of how we become human. They both agreed there is no biological or physical evidence of any kind to suggest that God exists. I disagree.

They were speaking in philosophical and metaphysical terms, but it reminded me of a book I recently read by Douglas E. Richards, titled Quantum Lens. Richards has an education and professional background in molecular biology, so his books are partly related to his field of expertise. I found one particular section where he describes the process of how we become what we are. Below is an excerpt from that book:

Miracles of a Fertilized Egg Becoming a Human Being.

“How can a single fertilized egg cell possibly contain all of the instructions required to construct an entire human, and then be able to carry out these instructions with such perfection? This single fertilized cell is the progenitor of trillions of cells, which differentiate along the way into different types. And each of these uncountable offspring cells need to know what to be, and where to be, to create the incomprehensibly complex universe that is a human being. But there’s more. The system has to get energy and building blocks from the outside. How do we grow from an infant to an adult? We have to convert food into parts of our bodies. Food gives us energy, yes, but it is also our only source of building material. Our bodies must extract the raw materials we need for construction from such sources as ice-cream, meatloaf, and pasta, and then rearrange these raw materials into muscle cells, heart cells, brain cells, and so on. The idea that a single fertilized cell could successfully transform itself into an adult human, including a brain with many billions of neurons and a consciousness, is utterly ludicrous. Impossible. There is no way this could ever succeed. And yet, all of us are living proof that it does . . .”

Those instructions he mentions are embedded in our DNA. It is literally code, but in a language we haven’t fully deciphered yet. It has a level of sophistication and elegance that we has humans haven’t even begun to duplicate. But as a computer science major in college and a programmer after that, I fully understand the concept of meticulous coding and generally how programming works.

Is this proof that God exists? No, but there’s enough evidence there to convince me this process did not and could not have happened randomly. I understand basic statistics and the likelihood that this could have happened randomly is so infinitesimal, that I’d bet my life on it, it did not happen. There’s an old adage that says if you throw your laundry into a dryer enough times, at some point it will come out folded perfectly. And yes, even that missing sock will be in the right place. Similarly, it has been said that given enough time, chimpanzees typing on a keyboard will eventually come up with a complete duplicate of one of Shakespeare’s plays (this is referred to as the infinite monkey theorem). People who believe either of these will ever happen are also the ones who claim our DNA was just randomly constructed.

And it’s not just the fact that we become fully human. It’s also how we function once we become humans. I have a friend who is a doctor who is an allergist by specialty. He once told me, “Once you begin to understand how powerful and complex our immune system is, if you still don’t believe in God, you’re just being ignorant and stubborn.”

And consider our brains. They are by far the most powerful computers we could ever imagine, building neural pathways and synapses, using chemical and electrical signals that allow us to effortlessly know how to catch a Frisbee thrown at us. We instinctively know how to process the complicated physics and calculus like lift, air-flow, gravity, velocity, drag, spin, etc., to know exactly where to stand and how to move our arms and hands in such a way to catch it. We do this without the slightest education in those complex fields because it’s built right in to our brains. And let’s never forget that there are deep biological urges built right into our very beings that not only allow us, but to drive us to reproduce.

DNA was designed by an intelligence far greater than anything humans have ever done (or ever will do in my opinion). I choose to call this intelligence God. Not even in my wildest imagination would I suggest it happened from random physical happenstance. Drawing on my lexicon from my early days as a programmer, I’ll put it in the most crude and succinct way I can:

Somebody programmed that shit.

Podcast between Peterson and Dillahunty here.