Further to my earlier examples concerning the eyes and the heart let me unfold more facts from Word for Today back in February. The very first verse of the Bible states “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” However, for many people over the ages and still today there is the big question of evolution versus creation. Did it all come about by accident or was it created by an all-powerful superior being – namely our God. The thought of it all happening by a ‘big bang’ has often been promoted. The theory of an explosion creating something so magnificent and so precise is well beyond my conception. As referenced earlier explosions cause destruction not construction – period! 

Yes, I can accept a degree of evolution as certainly things have evolved/developed but only as a subsequence of God’s original creation. Sir Fred Hoyle, a professor at Cambridge university, has gone on record by stating that ‘The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolution is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and using the materials lying around might assemble a Boeing 747.’

He has further stated that ‘The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is           1 to a number with 40,000 noughts after it … it is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution … there was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor or any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.’

No doubt we have all heard of evolutionist and scientist Stephen Hawking, an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. However, he had to acknowledge that ‘The universe and the laws of physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn’t combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn’t form the heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop.’

Albeit he didn’t attribute creation as such to our God it is a powerful statement especially in the light of his other statements such as “God is the name people give to the reason we are here.” “God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator.” Sadly, despite his intellectual ability he remained an atheist to his dying day at the age of 76.

In Isaiah 45:12 with reference to our God’s creation we read “It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshalled the starry hosts.” Scientists, indeed astrophysicists, have fought hard to prove life on other planets. The recent initiative this year being the landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars – the Red Planet.        A wonderful achievement by mankind but it hasn’t and I am certain that it will not be successful in finding life on that planet nor will future attempts on any other planets.

I truly believe that our planet – Earth – is the only planet capable of sustaining human life and meet all our everyday needs. Now, this cannot be a sheer coincidence and the Bible is very clear that God is the creator of all. If the earth was 10% larger or smaller then life as we know it would be impossible. We are just the right distance from the sun so that we receive the right amount of heat and light (although as I am writing this on a cold Saturday afternoon a little more heat would be welcome!). Conversely, if we were any farther away, we would freeze (hmm!) and if we were closer, we wouldn’t be able to survive.

Additionally, consider the tilt of the axis of the earth – none of the other planets are tilted like ours at 23 degrees. This angle allows the sun’s rays to touch every part of the earth’s surface over the course of a year as the earth circles the sun. If there as no tilt to the axis, the poles would accumulate enormous masses of ice, and the centre of the earth would become so hot we couldn’t stand it (hence the concern about global warming and how it has been caused by man in damaging the perfect balance of God’s creation).

We can rejoice in Isaiah 45:18 “For this is was the Lord says – he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited.” What a wonderful privilege that God, who created each of us, made the Earth perfect for us to inhabit but furthermore a heavenly home has been prepared for us and awaits our presence in that time to come.