Head-Heart-Hands — The Intellectual Side of Christianity - Tuesday
Today’s Verse
Romans 1:20
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 people are without excuse. (NIV)
This week, we’ve been looking at logical reasons for believing in God. Today, consider what C.S. Lewis called the “uncaused cause.” There’s a relatively new idea that the universe began with a cosmic explosion—the “Big Bang.” Before the twentieth century, most scientists assumed that matter—the physical universe—had always existed. But in 1931, Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaître theorized that the universe was once compressed to a single point of “infinite density,” then exploded, started expanding, and continues to expand today.
Clearly, I’m not a scientist, and there are dozens of books about the Big Bang Theory, but I often wonder, “What preceded the Big Bang? To put it another way, “How did something originate from nothing? Even famed atheist Richard Dawkins admitted that no one really knows. In his own words, “Cosmology is waiting on its Darwin.” The origin of everything in the universe remains significantly unexplained. “But don’t worry,” he said, “Eventually, we’ll figure it out.”
Then, there’s the argument from complexity. Even if there were a “Big Bang,” why is everything so complex? How could such a colossal cosmic explosion billions of years ago result in the intricate complexity we see everywhere today? Consider the remarkable complexity of just one strand of DNA.
Everything is incredibly fine-tuned, so precise that if things were off by even a fraction, life itself couldn’t exist. Our atmosphere consists of 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and other gasses and liquids that are almost imperceptible. Ponder those percentages. If just one of them were off even fractionally, life as we know it would not continue to exist. If the oxygen level dropped by just 6%, we would all suffocate; if it rose by just 4%, our planet would turn into a giant fireball.
Consider the tilt of the earth, 23.5 degrees. A few degrees in either direction would render our entire planet uninhabitable. In his book Miracles, Eric Metaxas calls Earth and its relationship to the universe so mathematically impossible that it would be the equivalent of “tossing a coin every second and having it come up ‘heads’ for 10 billion years in a row.” Complexity—infinitely so. I believe all the infinite design requires an infinite and immeasurably brilliant Designer.
REFLECTION
It’s complicated, don’t you think? It is mathematically impossible unless God steps into the picture. He did, you know. As David wrote in Psalm 19:1, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; they are a marvelous display of his craftsmanship.”
