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The basic question
that we try to answer in this article is, How did the earth and the
rest of the universe come into existence? Were they created or did
they just come into existence through random evolution (i.e., simply
by chance)?
Basil Atkinson,
Ph.D., states on pages 43-44 of his book entitled Is the Bible
True?,
There are only two possible methods by which the world could have
come into being. One is creation, the other evolution. . . .
Creation means that the world was brought into being by the Word of
a personal Creator, in the first instance out of nothing. Evolution
means that the world and everything in it came into being by a long
process of its own accord. . . .
John MacArthur, the
President of The Master’s College and Seminary, on page 32 of his
book entitled The Battle for the Beginning, raises the
following questions: “What was the first cause that caused
everything else? Where did matter come from? Where did energy come
from? What holds everything together and what keeps everything
going?”
Then on page 36,
MacArthur says,
[C]hance simply cannot be the cause of anything (much less
the cause of everything). Chance is not a force. The only
legitimate sense of the word chance has to do with
mathematical probability.
Chance determines nothing. Mathematical probability is merely a way
of measuring what actually does happen.
[N]aturalists have imputed to chance the ability to cause and
determine what occurs. And that is an irrational concept.
There are no uncaused events. Every effect is determined by some
cause. . . . What may appear totally random and undetermined to us
is nonetheless definitively determined by something. It is
not caused by mere chance, because chance simply does not exist as a
force or a cause.
On pages 75, 76,
and 77 of Strobel’s book, The Case for Faith, William Craig,
Ph.D., makes the following statements:
[S]ince something cannot just come out of nothing, there has to be a
transcendent cause beyond space and time which brought the universe
into being.
[W]hatever begins to exist has a cause. . . . The beginning [of the
universe] seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree
to look on it as frankly supernatural.
We know this supernatural cause must be an uncaused, changeless,
timeless, and immaterial being.
It [the supernatural cause] must be uncaused because we know that
there cannot be an infinite regress of causes.
The premise is that whatever begins to exist must have a
cause. In other words, “being” can’t come from “nonbeing.” Since
God never began to exist, he doesn’t require a cause. He never came
into being.
Atheists themselves used to be very comfortable in maintaining that
the universe is eternal and uncaused. . . . The problem is that they
can no longer hold that position because of modern evidence that the
universe started with the Big Bang. So they can’t legitimately
object when I make the same claim about God – he is eternal and he
is uncaused.
Allen Bowman,
Ph.D., declares on pages 84-85 of his book entitled Is the Bible
True?, (the same title as Atkinson’s book),
The difficulty with [the] naturalistic explanation of things is that
it leaves great gaps. There is the gap between nothing and
something: evolution cannot explain how matter began. There is the
gap between chaos and cosmos: evolution cannot explain the origin of
gravitation, magnetism, atomic energy; or of light, photosynthesis,
protoplasm. . . .
Also, in regard to
how the universe came into being, MacArthur states on page 40 of his
book,
There is no viable explanation of the universe without God. So many
immense and intricate wonders could not exist without a Designer.
There’s only one possible explanation for it all, and that is the
creative power of an all-wise God. He created and sustains the
universe, and He gives meaning to it. And without Him, there is
ultimately no meaning in anything. Without Him, we are left with
only the notion that everything emerged from nothing without a cause
and without any reason.
As to scientific
evidence that does not support random evolution of the
universe, Scientific Creationism, a book edited by Henry M.
Morris, Ph.D., makes the following points on pages 25-26:
It is well to note . . . the implications of the First and Second
Laws of Thermodynamics with respect to the origin of the universe.
It should be stressed that these two Laws are proven scientific
laws, if there is such a thing. They have been experimentally
tested, measured and confirmed, thousands of times, on systems both
extremely large and extremely small. . . .
The First Law (Law of Energy Conservation) states that
nothing is now being either “created” or destroyed. It therefore
teaches quite conclusively that the universe did not create itself;
there is nothing in the present structure of natural law that could
possibly account for its own origin.
The Second Law (Law of Energy Decay) states that every system
left to its own devices always tends to move from order to disorder,
its energy tending to be transformed into lower levels of
availability, finally reaching the state of complete randomness and
unavailability for further work.
The Second Law requires the universe to have had a beginning; the
First Law precludes its having begun itself. The only possible
reconciliation of this problem is that the universe was created by a
Cause transcendent to itself.
Nothing within the present observable space-mass-time framework is
an adequate Cause. . . .
·
The suggestion matter evolved into its present structure far
out in non-observable space is the so-called steady-state
theory.
·
The suggestion that matter evolved into its present structure
far back in non-observable time has been called the big-bang
theory.
It is obvious by definition that neither the big-bang theory nor the
steady-state theory has any observational basis. In fact, they
contradict both Laws of Thermodynamics. Therefore, they are
philosophical speculations, not science. . . .
The creation model, on the other hand, in effect predicts the
two Laws of thermodynamics. . . . A special creation of space,
matter and time, by an omni-present, omnipotent, eternal Creator is
the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the two most certain
and universal laws in science.
Nathan Busenitz, an
author of numerous articles and books, states on page 38 of his book
entitled Reasons We Believe,
Recognizing that our universe had a definite beginning, secular
scientists have attempted to account for its origins in terms of a
massive explosion of matter and energy. But what caused this big
bang is something they have not been able to adequately explain.
It’s little wonder . . . that even some prominent scientists, such
as Sir John Maddox of England’s Royal Society, have called it [i.e.,
the big bang] a “view of the origin of the Universe [that] is
thoroughly unsatisfactory.”
Then, on page 39 of
his book, Busenitz shares the following additional perspective:
[P]hysicist and Nobel Prize winner Arno Penzias notes, “Astronomy
leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of
nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide
exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an
underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan.” His implication is
clear: the existence of our orderly, life-sustaining universe cannot
be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms.
The foregoing information and the addendum that follows provide
ample reasons to doubt that the earth and the rest of the universe
came into existence through random evolution (i.e., simply by
chance). This serves to increase our confidence that an Intelligent
Designer (i.e., God) created the earth and the rest of the universe,
as the Bible states.
ADDENDUM
EXCERPTS FROM PRESENTATION
BY DR. WILLIAM B. TOLAR
(Edited)
I remember
especially my geology teacher having unusually profound impact upon
his classes as he spoke of the magnificence of our Heavenly Father
who had created the universe in which we could live and how so many
things were so perfectly balanced. For instance I remember him
telling us that logically we might have assumed that the world was
exactly straight up and down, but he said, “not so.”
It was not setting
perpendicular; it was tilted – tilted at a twenty-three degree
angle; a twenty-three degree angle he said which was very important
because this angle makes it possible for life to exist as we know
it. Were it straight up and down, human life probably would not
exist. . . . But let us go on. . . . [O]ur world is rotating on its
axis at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, a rate of speed, he
said, that is exactly right for you and me to exist. For, said he,
if our world turned at only one hundred miles an hour instead of one
thousand miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten times as
long and what do you think would happen to you and all other living
things on August days ten times as long as they now are? The heat
would build up so great it would wilt, scorch and kill everything
above the surface, and the roots that dare to live would soon freeze
in the ten-times-as-long night, when the temperature would plummet
to something like that of the moon, which has something like two
hundred-forty degrees below zero. Therefore, he said, our world was
rotating just the right speed so as to alternate between heating and
cooling. So, our earth is tilted just right and turning just right.
. . .
This world of ours
wobbles off of that twenty-three degree tilt. He said our world
wobbles upward off that tilt about three degrees. It comes back to
the twenty-three degrees angle then tilts downward. Our seasons and
our climates are affected by it. Said our Christian professor. . .,
“It could be nothing less than the grace and power of an intelligent
God who has so created this.” Said he, “Our tremendous world
spinning a thousand miles an hour, tilting not more than three
degrees.” . . . Three degrees is a terribly small angle; but, said
he, if our world straightened up more than three degrees off the
twenty-three degree tilt, the sun would strike our earth with such a
tremendous force and heat at the center, without angles to reflect
the light and heat, the earth would absorb so much heat it would
evaporate the ocean so rapidly that moisture would be pulled to the
North and South Poles and build up in tremendous ice caps and be
separated either by barren desserts or by molten lava, and life
would perish from off the earth as we know it. He said, on the
other hand, if the world were tilted more than three degrees
downward from the twenty-three degree standard, [it would] strike
our northern region with such a tremendous heat it would evaporate
those huge ice caps there in the arctic region, and this might
provide enough additional water in our oceans that we would die.
For, the oceans are just the right depth, and just a few feet more
of water in the oceans of our earth, without more air coming into
existence, would give enough additional liquid that it would
dissolve all the carbon dioxide and the oxygen out of the air, and
you and I, as land animals, would die. Not only are the oceans just
the right depth, but the earth’s crust is just the right thickness.
For, if the earth were only ten feet deeper than it is, that much
additional matter would oxidize all the free oxygen out of the air
and, here again, you and I would perish as oxygen breathing land
animals. So, here is our earth tilted just right, turning just at
the right speed, wobbling up just right, wobbling down just right,
with just the right depth of the oceans, and just the right
thickness of the earth’s crust. . . .
While the earth is
spinning at a thousand miles an hour and wobbling up and down, we
are moving around the sun in an elliptical orbit that we call a
year. The orbit is not in a perfect circle as we might suppose, but
like a round-ended football. We are speeding through space, while
we are rotating and wobbling up and down, at the rate of 64,000
miles an hour or 18 miles a second. If our world slowed down and
went only one-third that speed around the sun, it would be pulled so
close to the sun at the shallow or narrow part of that football-like
orbit that we would be burned to a crisp as we passed by. For, the
slowing of the speed would cause us to be pulled back in, much as
orbiting astronauts come down when the retrorockets break their
speed and allow them to come down. And, so, we would be pulled in
and burned up.
But if our world . .
. were to double its speed so that it would travel forty miles a
second, that much additional speed would throw us so far at the long
point of the orbit that we would freeze to death in the far reaches
of space before we were pulled back around the sun. So our speed
around the sun is just right. . . . And, . . . we are just the right
number of miles from the sun for us to be able to live: about 93
million miles. At this distance we maintain just the right
temperature for us to live. . . . The sun’s surface averages 11,000
– 12,000 degrees, and asbestos melts at about 4,000. From 93
million miles, we get enough of the sun’s heat to live, and 100
degrees seems very hot weather. A hundred out of 12,000; but did
you know this: . . . if only fifty more out of the 12,000 got here
on the average for a year, we could not live. Fifty degrees above
average or fifty degrees below our average temperature for the
period of a year would make it impossible for us to live. . . . Does
a person in our day dare to stand and say . . . he is still willing
to believe that all of these things are the result of sheer chance,
mere accident? . . .
All of us, I’m sure,
have looked up and wished that [the] great big, beautiful moon would
come in closer. This sounds like a [small] thing, but we had better
let it stay just the distance that it is. At two hundred-forty
thousand miles, God has placed it just in the right path around the
earth, for the moon . . . exercises such a pull of gravity it
literally lifts the oceans of the earth and dashes them against the
continents with such force that in some parts of the world the
difference between high and low tide is sixty feet. The earth
literally bends and stretches several inches from the sheer pull of
our moon. Scientists say that, if our moon were to come in from two
hundred-forty thousand to only fifty thousand miles, the
gravitational pull would be so fantastically increased that every
lower region of the earth would be completely inundated with water.
The Atlantic Ocean, pushing the Gulf of Mexico, would sweep across
Texas and break against the Rocky Mountains with such force that it
would create a hurricane as it came in and another hurricane as it
went out. But, you wouldn’t be worried about the hurricane, because
it would wash every bit of soil and every tree and everything else
into the ocean as it would come and go daily. In due time, the
impact would be so great the tides would shatter every mountain
range of this earth and wash them into the oceans’ bottoms. . . .
. . . . I sat amazed
as the teacher told us that in every green leaf, on every piece of
grass or weed, bush or tree, there [are] tiny cells called
chloroplasts, which contain a substance called chlorophyll that
performs a function so basic to our existence that I could not
ascribe it to accident. The little cell, by the power of the sun,
[takes] the carbon dioxide of the air and the moisture from the soil
and [does] something that our most brilliant scientists cannot yet
do. . . . The chloroplasts combine these two to make starch, and on
this process the entire animal kingdom depends for food. For, if it
stopped, one of two things would happen: either we would starve to
death for lack of food or we would die from asphyxiation, because
that process releases free oxygen into the air, which is absolutely
essential for you and me to live. Without the constant freeing of
oxygen back into our atmosphere, we would die, because our oxygen
would soon be oxidized out of . . . existence.
Others may believe
this orderly universe is the product of chance or accident, but I
cannot. I cannot believe that . . . all these things “just
accidentally” happened. They are signs of intelligence, and that
intelligence is God. |