You Can Know You Have Eternal Life
#4 Marvelous Design implies a Marvelous Designer
(1)
Our Universe - By chance or Design?
by Jim Mettenbrink
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Things with purposeful design come
into existence via chance true or false? If you
were sitting in your maple rocking chair and your friend declared
that a tornado blew through a forest, from which the maple rocking
chair merely occurred by chance, you would think he had lost
his mind. Why? Because the rocker reflects design
and an intelligent designer. The chair obviously serves
a purpose and was designed to suit that purpose to sit
and rock in comfort. Logically we know a chair can not
happen by sheer chance. Yet many people believe that the
universe and all that is in it came into existence by chance.
Such a belief in a chance universe makes the
tornado - rocker event even more believable. But surely
reasonable people know by all the evidence in our world that
there was a great intelligent designer. The two theories
of our origin are by chance or by intelligent designer. Which
is reasonable?
The controversy whether our origin
is by chance or by design is not new. The 17th century
British scientist, Sir Isaac Newton made a model of the solar
system at which his scientist friends marveled. One of
these, who was an atheist, asked who had made the model. Newton
replied, No one, it happened by mere chance. His
friend again asked again and again and again, thinking Newton
had misunderstood his question. Exasperated, his friend
retorted, Do you think I am a fool? This model cannot
merely happen. Newton responded This is an
imitation of our much grander universe that you insist occurred
by chance, yet you wont believe that this model happened
by chance. Newtons point was that both the
real universe and the model had an intelligent designer. In
contrast the atheist and evolutionist assert that the universe
simply happened from an explosion of self existent gases.
To say that chance
is the source of our existence is in the realm of fantasy and
is contrary to common sense. Suppose you mark ten pennies,
numbering them from one to ten, put then into your pocket and
give them a good shuffle. With only one chance, what are
the odds of pulling out the penny marked 1? One
in ten! Now suppose you put the pennies back into the pocket,
what are the chances of drawing the pennies marked 1
and 2, IN ORDER? The probability rises to One
in 90. The possibilities of drawing numbers 1, 2,
and 3 in succession, is one in 720. Drawing pennies 1 through
10, in succession is beyond imagination one in 3,628,800!!!*
Such probabilities are so remote that statisticians state
such is a practical impossibility. So what
is the probability of our universe and everything in it occurring
by mere chance?
Chance or design? Common
sense tells us marvelous design demands a marvelous designer.
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* EGW editor's note:
The odds of randomly drawing the first coin in order is
1 in 10 (i.e. 1/10); the second coin is 1 in 9 (i.e. 1/9); the
third coin is 1 in 8 (i.e. 1/8) and so forth. The odds
of randomly drawing all ten coins in order is 1/10 x 1/9 x 1/8
x 1/7 x 1/6 x 1/5 x 1/4 x 1/3 x 1/2 x 1/1 = 1/3,628,800. This
is extremely difficult to imagine when one compares that to rolling
a Yahtzee of five 6's in the first roll (1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6
x 1/6 = 1/7,776) doable, but almost never happens, and
even then someone still has to roll the dice
they dont
roll themselves! Drawing these ten coins in order may seem
only a little more complicated in organization, but is actual
over 466 times more difficult to achieve by simple chance
if you could draw each second a different wrong combination of
the ten marked pennies and keep drawing steadily , it would take
you a full FORTY-TWO days until you had accounted for
all the wrong combinations! Now imagine taking ten
10-sided dice and hoping to roll all 10s in a single toss
of the dice. The odds of that happening would be 1/10 x
1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10
= 1/10,000,000,000
certainly a fanciful hope beyond all
reasonable expectation. Then consider that the universe
is infinitely more complicated in organization than any of these
simple games, and the odds of our origin by mere chance becomes
unfathomable. Our origin by a designing creator is
a statistical certainty! |