Creator's Purpose in Creating
by
Dr. P.C. Simon
copyright 2004
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Ever since my youthful experience at the Ceylon Pentecostal Faith Home, that prayer will
bring answers by various systems, I was investigating the nature of the Creator and the
purpose of creation.
Millions of us go through life without any understanding the purpose of our being here,
what we are supposed to do during our life time, what happens after death, is there a soul,
what happens to the soul eventually, and for that matter what is the purpose of creation.
There is no easy answer to these mysteries but every question has an answer. Only those
who search unceasingly and fervently will find the answers.
Before we can investigate the Creator's purpose in creating, we have to establish that there
is a Creator. No one has provided unassailable proof that a Creator exists. I prefer the
word "Creator" because of the abuse of the word "God" by thousands of religions alleging
that the word means what they say and everyone else is wrong. However, I will use the
word "God@ because it is shorter.
God's existence is founded on belief. The Roman Catholic Church opposes any
investigation to prove God's existence, insisting that it must be accepted on faith alone and
that faith is not amenable to reason. Therefore, in the church's eyes, reasoning is
inappropriate to prove the existence of God.
When St. Thomas Aquinas tried to prove the existence of God by reason, the church
stopped him from pursuing his inquiry in spite of his belief that reasoning can operate
within faith. To have unassailable faith we must reason and prove.
Belief is changeable. When we realize that our belief is wrong, we change our beliefs. My
childhood belief about a bogeyman changed when I became an adult.
Knowledge also is changeable but that is when we become more knowledgeable.
Therefore, to know is better than to believe without knowledge. To know, we must
investigate, find out, check our findings, and repeatedly arrive at the same answer. We
have to search until we find and continue searching to make sure that our findings are true.
By avoiding to investigate, we will not find out the truth.
All advances in civilization and science are the result of investigation. It is after repeated
probes that we have built up our present understanding of the universe; that the sun has
planets and the earth is 92,957,000 miles away from the sun, that the universe is
expanding, that quarks, gluons and atoms are the foundation of all that exists, that diseases
can be cured by genetic manipulation, that new materials can be created, and much, much
more.
Similarly, we have to investigate the existence of a creator. Some scientists argue that the
universe came by itself and was not created. If so, it was self-created and the universe
itself is the creator. In any case, there is a creator.
Morris Mandel in his book "A Complete Treasury Of Stories@, wrote that an
astrophysicist had an orrery, a replica of the sun and its nine planets with their celestial
distances and speeds of motion reproduced in exact proportion. The orrery could be set in
motion by cranking a shaft. An atheist friend, seeing this replica, asked who made it. The
astrophysicist casually replied, "No one." His friend repeated the question and again
received the same answer. His friend was insulted and said, "Do you think that I am such a
fool as to believe that this was not made by someone?"
The astrophysicist replied, "This is just a replica. Many times when I told you that the
original was made by a Creator, you did not believe and began to argue to prove me
wrong. Yet, you cannot believe a small model could have originated without a maker."
Recently, Dr. Walter Bradley, professor at Texas A&M University, wrote an article,
"Scientific Evidence for The Existence Of God". He concluded this well documented
article without providing any evidence saying, "While Scientific evidence for the existence
of God cannot be made, there is compelling evidence that such belief is perfectly
reasonable." Many Christian theologians are also of the same opinion. But, for me,
"perfectly reasonable@ is not good enough for the most important subject in the universe
affecting billions of human beings who lived and died and the billions that will be born and
perish. We must persist and keep on searching until we find the proof. If we persist, we
will.
Why did the Creator create the universe with all living beings?
Was He/She looking for slaves to worship him or underlings to pay homage? Why did he
create these frail beings that appear as a weed one day and disappear the next. Was he
looking for adoration from his creation that had no freedom to do anything other than what
he wanted them to do? We have to find a logical answer that will withstand all criticisms
by believers and non-believers alike.
The praises and adoration by his own creation will be just like my recording an audiotape
of self-adulation and listening to it every day. It will not satisfy even the ego of a
vainglorious human being. Then in what way will it benefit the great Creator of the
universe? I could not find a satisfactory answer.
If he is a cruel monster who likes to see living creatures go through agony, like an
ignorant child plucking the wings and legs off flies, we can believe that he might have
created human beings to cast them in hell and see them writhe in pain and beg for mercy.
But the creation does not reflect such cruel nature. On the contrary Creator has given
mothers, even mothers of animals, infinite love for their progeny. They sacrifice their lives
and offer themselves as prey when predators attack their young ones. We see this in
Africa when leopards attack young gazelles. I have seen it myself. I could not find any
cruelty in the nature of the creator.
If we watch birds, we will see their untiring enterprise to find food for their nestlings,
coaxing the raptorial birds away from the nestlings, and protecting the young ones with
self-sacrifice. All these are examples of their loving nature. These indicate that the creator
has endowed them with love.
Still I did not find the purpose of creation.Then I argued that if I can find out the
substance of the Creator, I might be able to find his nature just as Mendeleyev, the Russian
scientist found the nature of atoms from their substance. I tried this approach namely to
find the substance of the Creator but I could not. I thought that the substance of the
Creator might be energy. But there was no proof for it. It was only an assumption on my
part. So I rejected that idea.
Then I changed the focus of my investigation. The next question I posed was with what
substance did the Creator create the universe? I could not find a satisfactory answer even
for that question.
Therefore the next question was "What was there for the Creator to create with?" I
realized that before anything was created, only the Creator existed and nothing else. This is
axiomatic and needs no proof. The Creator had only His/Her own substance. There was
nothing else in the universe. Therefore he had to create with His own substance.
That means the substance of the creation and the substance of the Creator is the same. If
the substance is the same, the nature must be the same. Then the nature of the tangible,
observable and knowable creation, is the nature of the intangible, invisible, unknowable
Creator. By studying the nature of the creation, I will know the nature of the Creator. This
was an exhilarating idea and I was overjoyed. But very soon it ended in disappointment.
For there are millions of substances in the universe, organic, inorganic, chemical or
physical, natural or artificial, solid, liquid, and on and on and each substance has dozens of
natures or qualities. Which nature of which substance am I to study? I found it impossible
to study all natures of all objects in the universe in my lifetime. I was about to give up in
dispair.
Then an intuitive information appeared. Since the substance is the same for all creation
there may be a common nature among them. If so, what is that common nature? So, I
looked and I found many common natures. There were many substances with common
natures such as liquid, solid, smooth or rough, hard or soft, natures common to many
substances but I could not find one nature common to all substances.
Finally, when I was about to give up in disgust, as if by providential nudging, I hit upon
gravity.
Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces in the universe. It makes objects move
towards each other. It is an attraction of one mass for another and is present in every
material in the universe.
Gravity affects the smallest and largest particles in the universe, from quarks as tiny as
1/10,000,000,000,000,000 of a millimeter to galaxies as large as 20 billion or more light
years wide including the invisible dark matter which is more than five times the mass of all
the billions of visible stars put together.
The very shape of the universe is a function of gravity. Gravity regulates the motion of
stars and galaxies. When our sun, with its nine planets and all the asteroids, journeys
through its 226 million-year orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy at a velocity
of 486,000 miles per hour, gravity keeps the earth and other planets in the solar system in
orbit around the sun.
The earth's gravitational pull holds all objects on the surface of our planet. If it were not
for gravity, all objects on the face of the earth would fly off at the 67,000 miles per hour
(mph) speed along the orbit and 1100 mph rotational speed on its axis.
Our weather patterns are created by gravity. Tides and ocean currents are the results of
gravity.
Nothing is free from this affinity or attraction of gravity. This shows that the common
nature of the universe is gravity.
Now we have to check and see if our finding of attraction of one mass for another is
correct for it is the basis of all our assumptions and conclusions.
We see that quarks attach to each other because of affinity and become protons and
atoms. Atoms join together through affinity (atomic attraction) and become molecules.
Molecules join together because of molecular attraction and become all things in the
universe. Therefore, the whole universe exists because of affinity.
This affinity (gravity) functions everywhere. If this is the nature of the universe created
with the substance of the Creator, it must be the nature of the Creator. This is the nature
of all matter derived from creator's substance. This shows the nature of the creator's
substance is love. Therefore, Creator is love.
All religions bombard us with divine laws of justice and punishment. I believe they are
wrong. Love forgives and does not punish.
Aristotle says that when men are friends there is no need for justice. Therefore the
question of mercy does not arise with love.
Aquinas wrote that love (affinity) is universally in everything.
St. John, who escaped unhurt when plunged into a cauldron of boiling oil at the
persecution of Domitian, writes "He that loveth not, knoweth not God for God is love and
Love is god"
I collected all available evidence, to find what love will and will not do.
I found that love is kind, patient, long-suffering shares everything it has, such as
knowledge and power. Love will not hate, will not quarrel, will not punish, and will not get
angry. Love is not jealous. Love is not boastful, and not selfish.
Love seeks to give rather than get. Love seeks no credit but gives its protege all credits
for achievements. Love has no secret, reveals everything of self, and doesn=t insist on
obedience from its protege. It desires to be with its beloved and even to unite and become
one. It does not look down upon the physical nature of its protege nor exult over the
spiritual nature of self, allows freedom of thought and action for everyone. The nature of
love is to love its enemies; in fact love has no enemies.
I found attraction emphasized in Quantum Chromodynamics which asserts that the force
that holds quarks together within the proton is gluon, an attraction. When quarks move
farther apart, the gluons get stronger and pull them together. The farther the quarks get,
the stronger the gluons become. For this reason, an individual quark has not been seen.
On the other hand, the nearer the gluons come, the weaker the attraction becomes. This is
the opposite of what we expect. Why does this happen? It is to give freedom for the
quarks to move within the protons. This tallies well with the nature of love that allows
freedom to do everything. This includes the right to disobey the Creator, freedom to do
evil, to commit atrocities, hurt fellow beings, to create havoc in the world, destroy His
creation, even attempt to destroy Him and declare Him Dead as Friedrich Nietzsche did. In
spite of all these possibilities the Creator has given freedom to his creation because that is
the nature of love.
Therefore, evil in the world is the result of love, infinite love. We could argue that the
Creator should have given freedom to do only what is right and not evil. That would not be
complete freedom. Granting full freedom further proves that the nature of the Creator is
love.
Thus, I compared the nature of love with the nature of the creator and found that the
homogeneity tallied to the nth degree. Therefore, the nature of the creator is love.
In the Sonnets Shakespeare says, "All creatures in the world through love exist"
When we are convinced that love is the basic element of existence, we will persist to
prove that fact just as when we know that two and two is four, we will not accept any
other answer as correct. If we get another answer, we will look again and again until we
see where we made the mistake. That is what we have to do in assessing the nature of the
Creator.
Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese-born American citizen, poet, painter, and philosopher, wrote
in his book, The Prophet, that men looking at their own shadow, thought that the sun is a
caster of shadows. We can look in the wrong direction and get wrong answers. So to find
the truth, we must repeatedly investigate our findings.
There is an anecdote that illustrates this point. An engineer, an experimental physicist, a
theoretical physicist and a philosopher were hiking through the hills of Scotland. From the
crest of a hill they spotted a black sheep on the next hill. The engineer spoke out first,
"Look, the sheep in Scotland are black". The experimental physicist interjected. "Some of
the sheep in Scotland are black" The theoretical physicist thought for a while and
countered, saying, "At least one sheep in Scotland is black". The philosopher broke his
long silence as conclusion, "At least on one side." If we critically examine our findings we
will find the right answer.
The next important character of the creator I investigated was "giving." "Love" should give
everything it has and not just a pittance out of his or her resources. Creator cannot be
satisfied after giving me an iota of his immense assets. St. Paul wrote, "Love bestoweth
everything." This is to say that, if the Creator is love, He/She has to share His/Her wisdom,
knowledge, power, strength and everything it has with us. This has not happened so far.
Why?
The giver cannot give more than the receiver can receive. We cannot give a one pound
gold brick to a four-month-old infant who can hold only a quarter ounce rattle. We cannot
teach infinitesimal calculus to a third grade student. So, the Creator has to upgrade the
ability of human beings to receive divine knowledge and power. This is happening now.
We are in the age of information. Knowledge is doubling and redoubling in shorter and
shorter periods. There is an explosion of information.
In his Chronology of Science and Discovery, Isaac Asimov, the prodigious science writer,
recorded hundreds of discoveries taking place in shorter and shorter periods.
I gathered and tabulated them and found the first twenty-five discoveries took two million
years, the next twenty-five took only sixteen hundred years and the third twenty-five took
only three hundred years. Then discoveries increased in numbers and the time lapse
reduced. Now, there is an explosion of information every day about outer space, space
travel, radio galaxies, quasars, genes, nucleotides, genetically altered drugs, food products,
growth patterns, sex alterations, cloning, disease prevention and treatments, microsurgery,
nanotechnology, quantum teleportation, and on and on. Computer knowledge is advancing
so fast that new models become almost obsolete within a short period. The next generation
computer is in the making before marketing the present model.
I realized that the upgrading is happening now. We are in the age of information.
Knowledge is doubling and redoubling in shorter and shorter periods. There is an explosion
of information. Nanotechnology is building structures and devices on the scale of billionths
of a meter. This will enable us to create machines too small to be seen by the naked eye.
Scientists have manufactured motors of the size of a pinhead and electrical switches of the
size of molecules. After landing on the moon we are attempting to land on mars. This is a
sign of the creator upgrading our knowledge.
This proves that knowledge is increasing at a very fast rate. Of course, it is evidence that
the Creator is trying to impart knowledge as quickly as possible to human beings. But only
those with prepared minds will grasp the significance of all this explosion of knowledge.
The next characteristic of love I investigated was companionship. We see companionship
everywhere in nature. Birds gather together in flocks, fish form schools, ants and bees
form colonies, and human beings form societies.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam say that God created Eve as companion for Adam and that
God came into the Garden of Eden looking for Adam and Eve to have companionship. This
is a function of love.
Another characteristic of love I looked for was protection from pain. If the creator is
love, he will not permit pain and suffering. Then why does a loving Creator allow pain?
I realized that the Creator has made provision to compensate for pain. When a predator
attacks, to offset pain, the brain cells of the prey have the capability to produce enkephalin
and endorphin. These hormones secreted by the influence of our mind on the ductless
glands in the body offset pain.
When a cat catches a mouse, I believe the brain of the mouse is flooded with endorphin
so that it does not feel the pain. In addition to producing pain-annihilating endorphin, the
victim may faint and feel no pain. It is up to us to faint and suffer no pain or resist fainting
and suffer pain.
Another characteristic of love is unselfishness. All living things live for others. Trees yield
fruits not for their own benefit but for the benefit of the birds and animals that inhabit the
vicinity. Plants yield honey for the bees and, in return, bees help pollinate plants. I live for
everyone associated with me: my tailor, barber, dhobi, gardener, mechanic, carpenter and
so on ad infinitum.
The cells of one organ help other organs in the healing process. White blood cells attack
and devour invading microorganisms to the extent that the white blood cells burst open and
die. This is self-sacrifice to save the rest of the body. "He that hath eyes" can see love
everywhere in nature. I can quote hundreds of similar examples of love in nature.
When we understand this,we will realize the infinite love of the Creator. We will fall in
love with Him/Her. We will only want to be in the Creator's presence. Everything that is
acceptable to the Creator becomes acceptable to us.
That is why Marcus Aurelius - the philosopher-emperor said "Everything harmonizes with
me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late,
which is in due time for thee."
What is the purpose of creation? We have substantiated that the Creator is love. Love
cannot exist without an object to love. My love for my children cannot exist if I have no
children. Therefore, the Creator had to create an object for Him/Her to love.
Therefore, the purpose of creation is companionship, freedom and sharing everything He
has with His creation. Everything in the universe was created eventually for the evolution
of human beings and our becoming equal to the Creator so that the Creator can share
everything He/She has.
I (and all human beings) am the ultimate object of creation. I am the object of his love.
Naturally, he is so fond of me. His eyes are always on me to protect me from any danger.
Like a mother runs after a rambunctious child when it runs onto a busy street with heavy
traffic, God runs after me. He loves me so much that he wants to be with me all the time.
His happiness is to see me happy. He is joyful when I am healthy, happy, and prosperous.
When I wander around, he is always there to protect me. He is passionately devoted and
attached to me and yearns for me. He dotes on me and idolizes me. He esteems my
achievements. He is captivated by my mistakes, caresses, fondles, embraces, hugs, chases
after me and holds me as his pet. He tolerates me even when I am greedy, uncouth,
belligerent and rambunctious. He created me to love me and he is happy he created me.
His nature can be expressed best by the German word "einfuhlung" which means that the
Creator sees the success of his own creation which has become a creator just like a
teacher sees his student becoming a very clever teacher. He vicariously enjoys the success
of his protégé and immediately distances himself, giving all the credit to his student. He
looks at his creation with joy and pride, giving all credit to its immediate creator whose
creator He himself is. He and we are one.
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