Tuesday, November 10, 2020

A RANDOM WORLD?

 

Genesis 1:1

  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

                I have been reading Lee Strobel’s book The Case for Faith. In the chapter that I read this morning he tackled the question of the origin of life. Through a conversation with Walter L. Bradley PhD, he took a serious look at each of the current theories for the origin of life. Each theory seems promising at first glance, but upon further investigation comes up short of giving a definitive answer to the origin of life.

                At the heart of all of the theories about the origin of life is the concept of random chance. Somehow, given enough time, the inert elements of earth were able to organize themselves into animate life without the aid of any outside force. I want to take a closer look at this idea.

                Scramble is a word game that consists of a collection of letters that players use to create words and earn points. What are the chances that a person could create a single word by putting all of the letters in a bag, shaking them, and pouring them out onto the table? If you did that, the letters would land in many different ways. Some of the tiles would be upside down and so the letter would not be visible. Some of the letters would be upside down and others would be right side up. It is possible that, if you did this multiple times, a single word might be formed; that the letters would land side by side in the right order without your help. But what are the odds that when you poured out the letters that they formed not a word, but a complete sentence. The odds are so astronomical that no matter how many times you poured out the letters it would be virtually impossible. Remember, you cannot rearrange the letters in any way. All you can do is pour them out. Now here is the real heart of the problem. If all of the letters are in the box, what is the chance that they, on their own, would form even a single word without your help? That is the problem with all of the current theories of the origin of life. Each of them requires some outside force to move the pieces into place.

                God has designed our world to point to Himself. He has created such complexity and diversity that cannot be explained by random chance or chemical reactions or radiation from outer space. The world in which we live demands a creator; an Intelligent Designer. As Paul states it in Romans 1:18-20, The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

                I need to address one point that tends to muddy the waters for many people. It is the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is what Charles Darwin observed and wrote about. It is the gradual adaptation of a species within that species. Micro-evolution is a fact that can be observed and verified. It is a part of the mechanism that God put in place to sustain life on planet earth. Macro-evolution is the idea that all life evolved from a single cell organism. That over time and through random chance, life on planet earth gradually changed into all of the diverse creatures we now see on earth. This is a theory that cannot be proved and that has no basis in what we actually see in our world.

                In general, our world moves from order to disorder; not the other way around. Mutations usually have negative effects, not positive ones. And no one has ever been able to demonstrate conclusively the mutation of one species into a completely different species. Adaptation within species is an observable reality. Microbe to man evolution is an impossibility, no matter how many billions of years are given.

                All of this to say that we do not live in a random world, but in a well-designed, well-tuned world that has been created by God for our benefit. If we will open our eyes, the diversity and the complexity of our world point us to God. If we refuse to allow God to be in the equation, we are left with darkness; an unanswerable question that the more we explore, the more confounding it becomes.

Psalm 19:1-4a

The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language

where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

 

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