The Blog

Hi Everybody! I am a christian teen who wishes to share his ideas on the web, and ultimately, create an online christian teen community. This blog is new, but I am hoping that you will be impacted by what I write and become a member of this online community. I have been greatly inspired by Alex and Brett Harris at www.therebelution.com and David Platt at www.radicalthebook.com thank you for reading!

Monday, April 14, 2014

God and Science Part 3

 In the first part of God and Science, we established the existence of absolute truth and morality, meaning that there is only one right and one wrong and that two contradicting rights can not coexist. In part 2, we explored the creation of the universe and how it came about. Today in part 3, we will talk about the earth.
     Modern science (or modern media, your pick) explains earth as a random planet where life started as microscopic organisms that over time evolved into people. Now the first problem I have with this is the life part. On every other planet in the solar system, we have found no life, and we have not found any conditions where any life on earth could exist. Therefore, there must be something special about earth that allows life to exist. As it turns out, there are several conditions that are required for us to live on this planet. One of the most commonly known is the distance from the sun. If we were any closer to the sun, then it would be too hot, and if we were any farther, away it would be too cold (extreme examples: mars and mercury). Another factor is our atmosphere. On every other planet, we need suits and oxygen tanks to breathe, but the atmosphere on earth is perfect for all our lungs' needs. Yet another factor is water. One of our biggest needs is water, and our planet is the only one in the solar system with any water at all (except for the ice on mars). Another one is the protective magnetic field around it. This field redirects solar winds and asteroids around the earth, which is one of the reasons that earth does not have many craters (which is not the case on the moon or mars). 
     There are several more factors and addition to the ones I just mentioned on how earth is perfect for life on earth. When all the numbers are added up, it is a pretty rare occurrence. So according to all the evidence, I can not think that earth is a random occurrence. By all this, I have to think that a certain something set everything right for us to live. But then again, someone could explain all of this away by saying that humans evolved into the earth's conditions. This would definitely make sense, if indeed evolution was the way life came about. And that brings us to my next topic: Evolution.
     Evolution theorizes that a bunch of chemicals randomly combusted and became a microscopic organism, which eventually grew into a fish, which became a reptile, which became a mammal, which became a person, through the process of natural selection, or survival of the fittest. Now I won't ask about how the original chemicals came about, or the original planet for that matter, for a similar question was posed in part 2 and I feel like I would just be repeating myself. I do, however, wonder at nonliving objects coming alive without any aid. I certainly have never seen that happen, with or without aid. To me, logically, something that is not alive and never has been alive couldn't simply come to life. Life is made by other life, but never have I heard of life spontaneously combusting into existence. Well ok, I will have a little faith and go with the assumption that life did come from random chemicals. So now we have a planet with a living organism in it. What next? That microscopic organism reproduces and creates more microscopic organisms by splitting itself in half and the two halves growing into separate organisms. Now this species begins to spread, and as it gets into different environments, some of the microorganisms die from new conditions. A select few, however, have changes in their body structures that allowed them to survive. As time goes on, these "adaptations" slowly changed the species, and some of them get larger. And larger. After a few billion years, we have fish. And the rest, as they say, is history.
       But then we get to an interesting place. After life has evolved into monkeys, those monkeys evolve into humans. I can see the structural similarities, but one thing I do not understand is the human brain. All of the capacities of the human brain, such as the ability to think, are, well, mind blowing. I do not understand how something so complex came about by evolution. I can kinda see how the other body systems came about, as they slowly evolved into what they are now (provided we didn't go extinct along the way) but the human brain... I just don't see it. Scientists have studied the human brain, and they don't understand much of it, much less able to reproduce it. They can't even fully reproduce one body system, much less all of them working together. All of that coming by chance takes a lot of faith.
     Unfortunately, I don't have enough faith for all that. I'm more of a logical person, and logic tells me that if evolution did happen, someone guided it to happen the way it did. Or perhaps everything was created separately. Any way you go, I don't see it happening without a guide. Take an example I used in part 2. Just like a painting is painted by a painter, a creation never just happens, it is created. A famous illustration is the Watchmaker Analogy. Say you take apart a watch, piece by piece. Then, you take your pile of piece and throw them on the ground. What are the chances of all the pieces fitting together into a watch on impact? Not likely, I'd say. The complexity of the watch is just too great to be able to fit it together by chance. And this doesn't even explain how the parts of the watch were made, or even the materials of those parts. 
     As I conclude, I would like to mention a joke someone told me once that got me thinking. An atheist scientist challenged God to a creation contest, and whoever can create the greater creation would win. They met in a field, ready for the contest. The scientist went first. He picked up some dirt, ready to create something amazing out of it. Just as he was about to create, God stopped him, and God said this: "Get your own dirt." The point of the story is this: no one can create something out of nothing, much less something randomly being created out of something. The only way for something to be created out of nothing is for something or someone to come from a higher plane and create. 
     So back to the original question: does God exist? I believe that He does. I do not think that He is in conflict with science, but that He created it. I also believe that the Bible is true, and that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world. I will not settle for the mediocrity of accepting my beliefs as merely beliefs but as Truth, because I do not believe that there can be multiple truths. I believe in an absolute right and wrong and true and false, and I do not believe in shifting, relative moralities and truth. I also believe that if my beliefs are true, then they change everything. If my beliefs are indeed true, then the very nature of our existence is radically shifted from mediocrity to purposful. And if my beliefs are true, then every person in the universe was uniquely and powerfully created by a loving and powerful God. No one would be devalued by evolution, no one would be a mistake, and everybody would be loved and created for a purpose. And that to me is the greatest Truth of all.