The Miracle of Life
John Cyr
During this past year, especially due to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have heard the term ‘Science’ used a lot. ‘Science’ is used to justify decisions and policies and to also argue against what is considered to be false teaching. The phrase ‘Science tells us….’ has been used ad finitum to justify decisions. Of course, ‘Science’ says nothing; Scientists are the ones that say things and they are usually all over the map ( a topic for another day). We are also told that ‘Science’ tells us that everything is explainable by natural laws and that Life here on earth started naturally and has evolved over time by pure chance and randomness. The thought that Life was created or that Life has intentional design is outside the purview of ‘Science’ which scoffs at talk of Creation and Miracles.
Based on the current ‘scientific’ thinking, I was surprised by a title in a Popular Science article that was posted in January, 2021. The title of the article is “It’s a cosmic miracle that Life on Earth has lasted this long” with a subtitle of “Exactly how lucky did we get?”. Huh? A Popular Science article that talks about miracles? That certainly intrigued me so I had to read the article to see what the author was getting at. The author’s main theme is that he cannot explain how Life has existed on Earth for ‘3 or 4 billion years’ (another topic for a different time) especially with all the climate variations that have occurred. With earth’s climate varying over the years, it certainly should have been too cold or too hot at some point in our past to support Life. He goes on to write that Scientists have 2 main theories for how Life has been sustained for so long: 1) The earth has some sort of thermostat that prevents the climate from getting too hot or too cold (which begs the question on how this thermostat was designed?), and 2) we just got lucky. Interesting. A ‘Science’ article referring to miracles and luck to explain something.
Our planet is so incredibly and amazingly built that it is mind-boggling to to consider that ‘we just got lucky’. The earth’s distance from the sun, tilt, gravity, position in the Milky Way, Electro-Magnetic field, and dozens of other properties all contribute to support Life. If any one of these factors was changed by the very slightest of margins, Life would not be supportable. How could all these properties all just happen to line up so that Life is sustainable on Earth?
Scientists have no satisfactory explanation for Life except basically that we got lucky. They cannot explain how Life started and cannot explain how it has been sustained. Also, the more we learn about the complexity of Life, the harder it is to explain how we got here. For example, our human bodies are so complex – basically a system of systems that has an incredibly complex communication system and cells that are essentially mini-factories. Science and Evolutionary Darwinism has no explanation. The more we learn about how our bodies work, the harder it is to explain that we just evolved over time. Actually, even though it is not talked about much, evolutionary Darwinism is being rejected by many scientists. They are finally admitting that Darwin’s theory cannot explain the complexity of Life.
Of course, as Christians, we believe that the Earth was created by God and designed specially to support Life. We also believe that God designed and created Life from the simplest organisms all the way up to humans. The good news is that we as Christians can agree with this Popular Science article author. Yes, it is a miracle that Life has lasted so long on this Earth! It is a miracle because God has made it so. But, it has nothing to do with luck!
“All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive” – G. K. Chesterton
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ ” – Genesis 1:26