This is the fundamental question of life on which all other questions hang.
If there is no God then life has no purpose beyond our momentary pleasure. There is no meaning. There is no right or wrong. Take all you can get and enjoy yourself for the moment because when it is over, it is OVER. That is all she wrote, so to speak.
If there is a God, however, then there is a heaven to gain and a hell to shun; a Great White Throne to stand in front of and give answer to. There is a right and a wrong. There is an eternity that is more real than anything you have every experienced in your life, good or bad.
Can we know if there is a God? And if so, how?
Within the cells of every living organism is a thing called DNA. This is the programming that determines whether you are a watermelon or a woman, whether you have blue eyes or brown, whether you are tall or short. This DNA is an intricate code that we humans are just now beginning to be able to read.
Noah Webster says:
CODE,
n. Any collection or digest of laws.
LAW,
n. [L. lex; A law is that which is laid, set or fixed, like statute, constitution, from L. statuo.]
1. A rule, particularly an established or permanent rule, prescribed by the supreme power of a state to its subjects, for regulating their actions, particularly their social actions. Laws are imperative or mandatory, commanding what shall be done; prohibitory, restraining from what is to be forborne; or permissive, declaring what may be done without incurring a penalty. The laws which enjoin the duties of piety and morality are prescribed by God and found in the Scriptures.
You do not have green vines coming out of your ears, grapes hanging off your nose, or a horse-like tail because the laws prescribed by the Supreme Power who wrote your DNA says you don't.
Could your DNA have written itself?
No. DNA is a language. Language takes intelligence.LAN'GUAGE,
n. [L. lingua, the tongue, and speech.]
Words duly arranged in sentences, written, printed or engraved, and exhibited to the eye. (DNA is exhibited to the eye through the microscope. Different from my glasses only in degree) Style; manner of expression. Any manner of expressing thoughts.
"Any manner of expressing thoughts."
For DNA to express thoughts there had to be thoughts to express before it was written down in our cells. There has to be a Creator God.
Have you ever examined a giraffe?
Their necks are so tall they must have an extraordinarily strong heart in order to pump the blood all the way up there.But with such a strong heart, if they bend their head down to eat or drink, gravity + the heart would blow their brains out (high blood pressure).
So they have a set of valves in the arteries of their necks that shut the blood flow down when they put their head down.
But then when they lift their heads suddenly (as in a lion attack) they would pass out (low blood pressure).
So they have little sponges in the back of their brains that hold enough blood in reserve to keep them conscious until the valves open again.
If any one of these steps were missing, the giraffe would die (either by exploding brain or hungry lion). They must have all been there from the start. They could not have evolved. They must have been created as a complete animal.
There are many other creatures (the woodpecker who would knock its eyes out if it had not been programmed to close its eyes with each strike, the garden spider which would starve if its web was not just right, the chicken egg where the chick would suffocate without its microscopic air holes, the human eye, the bombardier beetle which would blow itself up if it did not have all systems functioning at once, etc.) that simply could not exist without a Divine Design (See “Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution”)
There must be a God.
A Note About Atheist Children
They don't exist.
Researchers surveyed children of atheists and discovered that they knew there was a God. It was not until about adolescence that true atheism began to appear in their beliefs.
We are born with the knowledge of God. Disbelief must be taught.