“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” – Genesis 1:1
This is is how our Bible, the Word of God, starts. These words are so significant the crew of Apollo 8 read them to the world while orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve, 1968.
Yet, the understanding that God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth is the one biblical concept that has come under the sharpest attack in modern times. Many churchgoers today can believe much of what the Bible says, except that He is the Creator.
Not by Chance
Since Charles Darwin published his work On the Origin of Species in 1859, countless scientists claim to have disproved the Bible and some even say the very existence of God. According to Darwin, “survival of the fittest” was one of the main driving forces of nature, not an all-creating God. Small changes within species gave one an advantage over the other. By a gradual and random process, these better-adapted species not only survived but also eventually dislodged the weaker species.
At the time he proposed this theory, Darwin was unaware that such “small changes”—like gradually growing wings, legs, eyes, etc.—was not just an accidental change in the physiology of a creature but required a highly complex alteration in the DNA code of an organism. DNA codes are the building blocks for any living being and consist of massive arrays of highly complex molecules. Today, we know that Darwin’s “small changes” are in reality extremely improbable changes to elaborate systems.
In 2004, microbiologist Doug Axe demonstrated that to accidentally arrange the various elements of a protein called beta-lactamase (an enzyme that confers antibiotic resistance upon bacteria) would need an incredible amount of chance. Axe showed that to rearrange just this one particular enzyme by chance would be a probability of 1/1077. The number 1077 is incredibly large: a 1 followed by 77 zeros. To illustrate just how huge this number is—or how small its probability—consider that there are roughly 1080 atoms in the universe! This means the probability to form just this one protein by chance would be only slightly higher than finding one particular atom from all the particles that exist in the entire universe—obviously a task infinitely less probable than finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.1
There are many more examples from science on how improbable life on Earth truly is. Scientists today speak about the “fine tuning” of the cosmos or the “Goldilocks theorem,” meaning that our universe on so many levels seems to be incredibly fine-tuned to make life on Earth possible. From the size of the earth, its distance to the sun, the type and size of the sun, the tilt of the planet, etc., everything seems so perfectly tuned to make life on Earth possible. Again, the probability that such conditions are found anywhere in the entire known universe is extremely unlikely.2
All these factors make the notion of evolution by chance scientifically less and less plausible. The odds against it are mounting to such a staggering degree that a whole new theory is being formulated to maintain belief in evolution—and to avoid acceptance of a creator.
In May 2007, Eugene Koonin of the National Center for Biotechnology, stipulated that our known DNA-based world is unexplainable by current probability models. He thus proposed a new approach. But instead of considering the simplest and most logical of all explanations—that there is an omniscient and omnipotent God who created our amazing world—he suggested that since our universe does not account for all the improbabilities of life on Earth, there must exist an endless amount of parallel universes that would explain the infinitesimal chances of life on this planet.
A High View of Man
Years ago, I was discussing science and God with one of my fellow students at the Weizmann Institute. When I submitted to him that he would need more faith to believe in pure chance than I need to believe in the God of the Bible, he laughed. But today, this seems to be truer than ever.
Long ago, King David knew what scientists are discovering ... |
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