The basic question that we will 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 ofeverything). Chance is not a force. The only legitimate sense of the wordchance 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? (coincidently, the same title as Atkinson’s aforementioned 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 previously-mentioned 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 that 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.
Conclusion
The foregoing information and the Appendix 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.
Appendix
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.
