What Are The Odds?

 I just wanted to bring up a few more things about our universe, with respect to theism, before moving to a new topic.

 

Have you ever watched National Geographic (especially "Planet Earth"), or looked up at the stars, and wondered if it's possible that everything just happened by chance? Some might argue that it all follows the laws of nature or physics, and that these things aren't accidents at all. But that only raises the questions," Why are the laws of nature the way they are? Couldn't they have been different? Where did they come from?" Some things to think about:

 

The Earth has one moon, named Moon. (Why don't we have a name for our moon?)  Jupiter has 16 moons and 47 other smaller objects that rotate around it; Mercury doesn't have any moons. It's strange to think that we could have had more or none at all, yet one is the perfect number for us. The moon controls our ocean's tides; if it were smaller, the gravity pull would be too weak, and our oceans would be stagnant and not well suited for life. If the moon were larger, we would have frequent tidal waves, making all our coasts inhabitable and ocean fishing impossible; you can imagine what would happen to our oceans if we had more than one moon. Our moon is the right size and distance from us. What are the odds?

 

Did you know that the Moon is 400 times smaller than our sun? AND, our sun is also 400 times further away from us than the Moon, which allows us to observe perfect solar eclipses; no other planet in our solar system can do this. More importantly, it has been estimated that if the Earth's rotation brought us closer to the Sun by just one mile, it would be too hot to sustain water, and therfore kill all life. Similarly, if we went one mile further away, our water would freeze, making life impossible. As luck would have it, we are the perfect distance from our little star. What are the odds? 

Let's think about our star. There are 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. We know of 100 billion galaxies. That puts the number of stars that we know of around ten billion trillion stars. No, that is not a typo. That's 1 trillion, multiplied by 10 billion. What if we had been placed by a different star? The largest known star is called the Pistol star, which has a mass 150 times that of our sun and is ten million times brighter. This star could have been our sun. Out of all the stars in the universe, we just happen to be the right distance away from a star that happens to be the right size. What are the odds?

Let's bring it back to Earth; look at our weather system. Earth has huge land masses separated by a lot of salty water. Our atmosphere pulls up water from the ocean, filters it, and then carries it hundreds of miles over the land and distributes it as rain. The rain makes plants grow, keeping plant-eaters alive, then the meat-eaters eat the plant-eaters, keeping them alive. Lightning causes fires and, where the area is mostly dead, it can cause a lot of devastation. BUT, it prevents overgrowth in the forests, and the fires makes the ground fertile for new growth. Our weather system is automatic Earth maintenance. What are the odds?

The answer? Not good. The odds of all these things coming together is like a giant cosmic consipiracy. Of all the known stars and planets in our universe, we have never found a place like Earth. We have never found any traces of life anywhere in the universe. Some planets look to have once had water, which assumes life, but even these speculations have been questioned. They now admit that these "water-like-impressions" could have been caused by other factors.

 If someone were to say that all these things happened by coincidence or chance, it would be followed with laughter. The odds are too great to be left up to chance or coincidence; the only rational alternative is that these things are the product of intelligent design.

 

Mighty Fine Tuning

(Let the video load first, it'll play better)

Getting Something From Nothing

The last post dealt with infinity and how an actual infinity cannot exist. "God didn't create the universe; it's infinite; it's always existed" you might hear someone say. But this is NOT what the overwhelming scientific evidence shows. All the evidence points to a beginning of the universe that includes space, time and all matter.

In 1922 Alexander Friedmann proposed a theory that the universe began with a giant explosion that he called "The Big Bang." His theory was based on the observations from the far reaches of the universe and later confirmed by astronomer Edwin Hubble; the observations are what astronomers call "redshift". What "redshift" shows is that the known galaxies are moving away from each other and that the universe it literally expanding. Friedmann thought that if the universe is expanding out, like a balloon being blown up, then when you reverse the process we come to what is known as the singularity. The singularity is the point when space, time and all matter came into existence. Scientists don't know what created the Big Bang, since there was nothing before it, but everything came into existence at the singularity.

Now the fun part! Something cannot come from nothing, and whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist; therefore, it has a cause. Since the cause of the universe created time, the cause must be timeless and changeless. It must also be immaterial and transcend space, since it created space and all matter. It must also be extremely powerful since it created the universe. We can see how science has revealed what Christians have always believed: In the beginning, God created the universe.

Is the universe actually infinite?

Can an actual infinity really exist? After all, if the universe is truly infinite in time and space, the idea of God is not needed for its existence. Carl Sagan declared, "The universe is all there was, is and will be."

Let's look at the German mathematician David Hilbert's "Hotel". Imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and each room is occupied. However, a guest arrives and asks the front desk for a room. "No problem!" says the clerk, and he moves guest one into Room 2, guest two into Room 3, and so on to infinity, making Room 1 available for the new guest. Then, an INFINITE amount of guests arrive looking for rooms. "No problem!" says the clerk, and he moves guest one into Room 2, guest two into Room 4, guest three into Room 6, etc., always moving each guest twice the number of their room, making an infinity of rooms available for the infinite number of new guests. Yet, before they arrived, all the rooms were full.

Hilbert's Hotel gets even stranger. Suppose some of the guests start checking out. If all the guests in the even numbered rooms check out, an infinite number of guests leave and an infinite number of guests remain. But, if guests in Rooms 4, 5, 6 and so on leave, the hotel is only left with three filled rooms. In both cases the same number of guests leave, but you are left with different conclusions.

Now, lets see if we can make our heads explode, shall we? Let's consider an infinite regress of events. If time is infinite, then an infinite number of events have taken place before this one. However, before this moment could arrive the moment before it would have had to arrive. And before that moment could arrive, the moment before it had to arrive, and so on to infinity. No moment could ever "arrive", because an infinite number of moments would have to arrive first. But, what if this moment could arrive? Then the question is: Why didn't this moment arrive yesterday, or the day before, since, by then, an infinite number of days would have already passed?

What can we conclude? Nothing is actually infinite; therefore, the universe is not infinite and it had a beginning. And whatever begins to exist has a cause.

"Philosophically, the notion of a beginning to the present order is repugnant to me and I should like to find a genuine loophole.We must allow evolution an infinite amount of time to get started."-Arthur Eddington
"Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang." -Stephen Hawking

Why make a blog about faith?

I realize that there are tons of blogs and websites about the existence of God, faith, evolution, the Big Bang and everything else under the sun; so why add another? I have all this stuff in my head and I need an outlet, that's why! :)
I hope to share some of the things that I have learned from others as well as my own thoughts or I might expand on on someone else's idea. I want everyone to know that belief in God and having a relationship with Him is logical, and there is plenty of evidence to support our Christian Faith.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your MIND and with all your strength." Mark 12:28-30