By: Mark Tabata (Evangelist)
Several people I work with tell me, “Mark, we exist only because of chance. There is no God!”
I am sure that many have come to believe this through the influence of several sources: the public school system (even though there are godly teachers who refuse to propagate such nonsense), the media, public broadcasting, social networking, etc.
Yet what do the facts of science actually show?
Are we here by chance, or is there a Creator?
One author, Stephen Joseph Williams, wrote a fascinating book entitled, What Your Atheist Professor Doesn’t Know (But Should): An Exploration Of The Implications Of Modern Science, Archaeology, History And Philosophy.
The book is a fascinating study of Christian Evidences.
In chapter two, he writes the following:
“The appearance that the universe was designed to support life on earth is overwhelming. Secular scientists have observed that for physical life to be possible in the universe, many characteristics must take on specific values, as referenced below. In the secular scientific world, this circumstance of apparent fine-tuning in the universe is not disputed, and is referred to as “The Anthropic Principle”. Atheistic scientists have offered several unconvincing rationalizations for this having occurred without the involvement of a Divine Mind, but given the intricacy of the inter-relationships between various features in the universe, the indication of divine “fine tuning” seems incontrovertible.” (Stephen Joseph Williams, What Your Atheist Professor Doesn’t Know (But Should): An Exploration Of The Implications Of Modern Science, Archaeology, History And Philosophy, 50-51 (Kindle Edition); RFH)
Williams then goes on to provide a list of some 93 factors which must exist in a universe in order for life to exist.
Yet he doesn’t stop there.
“Not only is the universe at large apparently fine-tuned to support life, there is an array of features in our more local region of the universe that are also necessary to allow life to survive. The features of a planet, its planetary companions, its moon, its star, and its galaxy must have values falling within narrowly defined ranges (infinitesimally small targets, and all precisely coordinated) for physical life of any kind to exist.” (Stephen Joseph Williams, What Your Atheist Professor Doesn’t Know (But Should): An Exploration Of The Implications Of Modern Science, Archaeology, History And Philosophy, 60 (Kindle Edition); RFH)
He then provides a list of 154 factors “locally” which make life possible, adding these words:
“Keep in mind that this list is always growing as new improbabilities are being discovered. According to Dr.’ s Ross and Rana, the improbability increases by about a million times each month!” (Stephen Joseph Williams, What Your Atheist Professor Doesn’t Know (But Should): An Exploration Of The Implications Of Modern Science, Archaeology, History And Philosophy, 119-120 (Kindle Edition); RFH)
Taking all of these factors into account, is there a possibility that we are here by chance?
“Since the threshold of mathematical impossibility is 1 in 10 to the 50th power (ie: given a 13.73 billion year universe, there is not enough time for anything with this or smaller odds to occur by chance), and the odds of this fine-tuning coming into existence by chance are far, far beyond that, we can rule out chance. Only a transcendent Creator makes sense of this unbelievably complex order in the universe. During the last 35 years or so, scientists have discovered that the existence of intelligent life absolutely depends upon this very delicate and complex balance of initial conditions. It appears that “the deck was stacked” in the substances, constants and quantities of the Big Bang itself, to provide a life-permitting universe. We now know through modern science that life-prohibiting universes are vastly more probable than any life-permitting universe like ours. How much more probable? Well, the answer is that the chances that the universe should be life-permitting are so infinitesimally small as to be incomprehensible and incalculable. For example, Stephen Hawking has estimated that if the rate of the universe’s expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed into a hot fireball due to gravitational attraction. (4) Physicist P.C.W. Davies has calculated that the odds against the initial conditions being suitable for star formation (without which planets could not exist) is one followed by at least a thousand billion billion zeroes! (5) Davies also calculates that a change in the strength of gravity or of the weak force by merely one part in 10 raised to the 100th power (!) would have prevented a life-permitting universe. (6) As we saw in the previous lists, there are dozens and dozens of such constants and quantities present in the Big Bang which must be exquisitely fine-tuned in this way if the universe is to permit life. Moreover, it’s not only each individual quantity or constant which must be finely tuned; their ratios to each other must also be exquisitely finely tuned. Therefore, vast improbability is multiplied by vast improbability, and yet again by vast improbability repeatedly until our minds are simply reeling in vanishingly small odds. There is no plausible physical reason why these constants and quantities should have the values that they do. Reflecting on this, the once-agnostic physicist P.C.W. Davies comments, “Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact.” (7) Likewise, British Astrophysicist Sir Frederick Hoyle remarks, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics.” (8) Robert Jastrow, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, refers to this as “the most powerful evidence for the existence of God ever to come out of science.” (9) So, again, the view that Christian theists have historically held, that there is an intelligent Designer of the universe, seems to make so much more sense than the atheistic alternative: that the universe, when it popped into being, without cause, out of nothing, just happened to be, by chance, fine-tuned for intelligent life with a mind-numbingly unlikely precision and delicacy. To call the odds against this fine-tuning occurring by chance “astronomical” would be a wild understatement.” (Stephen Joseph Williams, What Your Atheist Professor Doesn’t Know (But Should): An Exploration Of The Implications Of Modern Science, Archaeology, History And Philosophy, 121-124 (Kindle Edition); RFH)
It’s no wonder that the famed Albert Einstein said:
“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what that is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the most intelligent human toward God.” (Isaacson, W. (2008). Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 386
Friends, there is NO CHANCE that we are here by accident or by chance. The universe was created by the eternal God Who has revealed Himself to mankind through His wondrous creation:
Romans 1:18-20-18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
We have all sinned against God by breaking His law (Romans 2:12-15), which is why God in mercy sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to save us (John 3:16). Jesus died for the sins of mankind, was buried, and arose from the dead on the third day after His death (1 Corinthians 15:1-8). He has decreed that all hear His Word (John 6:44-45), believe in Him as the Son of God (John 8:24), repent of their sins (Luke 13:3), confess Him as the Son of God (Acts 8:37), and are baptized into Him (Acts 22:16) will be saved by God and added to His church (Acts 2:47). If we are faithful to Him, even to the point of death, we will receive Heaven itself as our home (Revelation 2:10).
When we sin as Christians, we can be forgiven if we repent of those sins and confess them to God in prayer (1 John 1:9).
Why not be baptized into Christ today? Or why not return to Him if you as a Christian have turned from Him in sin?
The churches of Christ stand ready to assist you.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
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