JOB LOOKS FOR ANSWERS

When Job was looking for answers to the predicament his troubled life had put him into, the Lord presented him with some questions that were designed to turn his attention once more to his creator God. Questions that we today could do well to consider as the whirlwind of our personal and of the world's troubles swirl around us.

   Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind: "Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? Brace yourself because I have some questions for you and you must answer them.

   "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Do you know how its dimensions were determined and who did the surveying? What supports its foundations and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

   "Who defined the boundaries of the sea as it burst from the womb, and as I clothed it with clouds and thick darkness? For I locked it behind barred gates, limiting its shores. I said, 'Thus far and no farther will you come. Here your proud waves must stop!'

   "Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? Have you ever told the daylight to spread to the ends of the earth, to bring an end to the night's wickedness? For the features of the earth take shape as the light approaches, and the dawn is robed in red. The light disturbs the haunts of the wicked and it stops the arm that is raised in violence.

   "Have you explored the springs from which the seas come? Have you walked about and explored their depths? Do you know where the gates of death are located? Have you seen the gates of utter gloom? Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know!

   "Where does the light come from and where does the darkness go? Can you take it to its home? Do you know how to get there? But of course you know all this! For you were born before it was all created and you are so very experienced!

   "Have you visited the treasuries of the snow? Have you seen where the hail is made and stored? I have reserved it for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war. Where is the path to the origin of light? Where is the home of the east wind?

   "Who created a channel for the torrents of rain? Who laid out the path for the lightning? Who makes the rain fall on barren land, in a desert where no one lives? Who sends the rain that satisfies the parched ground and makes the tender grass spring up?

   "Does the rain have a father? Where does the dew come from? Who is the mother of the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens? For the water turns to ice as hard as rock and the surface of the water freezes.

   "Can you hold back the movements of the stars? Are you able to restrain the Pleiades or Orion? Can you ensure the proper sequence of the seasons or guide the constellation of the Bear with her cubs across the heavens? Do you know the laws of the universe and how God rules the earth?

   "Can you shout to the clouds and make it rain? Can you make lightning appear and cause it to strike as you direct it? Who gives intuition and instinct? Who is wise enough to count all the clouds? Who can tilt the water jars of heaven, turning the dry dust to clumps of mud?

   "Can you stalk prey for a lioness and satisfy the young lions' appetites as they lie in their dens or crouch in the thicket? Who provides food for the ravens when their young cry out to God as they wander about in hunger?

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   "Are you the one who makes he hawk soar and spread its wings to the south? Is it at your command that the eagle rises to the heights to make its nest? It lives on the cliffs, making its home on a distant rocky crag. From there it hunts its prey, keeping watch with piercing eyes. Its nestlings gulp down blood, for it feeds on the carcass of the slaughtered."

   Then the LORD said to Job, "Do you still want to argue with the Almighty? You are God's critic, but do you have the answers?" (Job 38:1-41, 39:26-27, 40:1-2. New Living Translation)

The thought provoking book, How Now Shall We Live [1] by  Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, leaves us with ...

SOME MORE QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT 

Is The Universe Unique Or Just One Of Many?

Some have suggested that the universe of which Earth is a part may not be the only one. The thought is that many other universes exist. This is known as the ‘many worlds’ hypothesis. Colson explains the basic assumptions of this position …

   According to this theory an infinite number of universes exist, all with different laws and different values for fundamental numbers. Most of these universes are dark, lifeless places. But by sheer probability, some will have just the right structure to support life. The ‘fit’ universes survive, while the ‘unfit’ are weeded out. Our own, of course, happens to be a universe ‘fit’ for life.[2]

   The late Carl Sagan made much of this idea of there being many universes in addition to our own. His weekly TV programme ‘Cosmos’ was built around the naturalistic worldview that nature is ‘all that is or ever was or ever will be.’ Colson says of this viewpoint …

   Take Sagan’s trademark phrase, ‘The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be’ (the opening line in Cosmos, his book based on the television series). Here Sagan is capitalising on liturgical forms. Ever since the early church, Christians have sung the Gloria Patri; ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.’ Sagan is clearly offering a substitute liturgy, a cadence to the cosmos. The sheer fact that he capitalizes the word Cosmos, just as religious believers capitalize the word God, is a dead giveaway that he is gripped by religious fervour …

   Sagan’s worship of the cosmos even tells us how to be saved. Threats to human survival—pollution, war, food shortages—have nothing to do with moral failings. Instead, they result from technical incompetence, Sagan writes, which is hardly surprising since he believes that humanity is still in its evolutionary childhood. As a result, the solutions may well come from more advanced civilizations somewhere out there, descending to Earth to save us. For this reason Sagan was an avid supporter of efforts to scan the far reaches of space for radio messages. ‘The receipt of a single message from space would show that it is possible to live through such technological adolescence’, he writes breathlessly, for  it would prove that an advanced extra-terrestrial race has survived the same stage and gone on to maturity. If this isn’t a vision of salvation, what is? The cosmos will speak to us. It is there and it is not silent.[3]

   Colson[4] draws our attention to the acknowledgement of scientists that conditions on the earth are precisely what are required for life to exist on it. ‘They have proposed what is known as the anthropic principle, which states that the physical structure of the universe is exactly what it must be in order to support life.’ Colson discusses some of the characteristics that make Earth unique in this respect, in his chapter ‘Let’s Start At The Very Beginning.’[5]

• Earth is just the right distance from the sun for it to sustain life. If it was positioned a bit further away everything would freeze over. On the other hand, just a bit closer and everything would boil. Either scenario would make life on earth impossible because bodily processes involve chemical reactions for the sustaining of life. And these can only occur within a narrow range of temperatures.
• Earth must also remain within this temperature range as it rotates. This is possible because, unlike most other planets in our solar system whose orbit is elliptical, earth’s orbit is circular.
• Water is indispensable for life on earth. One of its unique features is that it is the only known substance whose solid state (ice) is less dense than its liquid state. This means that when water at the bottom of a body of water freezes, it floats to the surface enabling marine life to survive below. Water is also essential for cell function. Water molecules exhibit something called the hydrophobic effect. This gives it the ability to shape proteins and nucleic acids in DNA.
• The structure of the atom is another unique feature of Earth and the universe of which it is a part. Without this feature nothing would exist. It concerns a variation in size between the neutron and the proton within the atom. The neutron is just slightly more massive than the proton. If a neutron becomes free of the atom such as in an atomic reactor, it can decay and turn into a proton. A proton however does not decay for a free proton is simply a hydrogen atom. Among scientists research groups continue to conduct tests to detect any signs of decay that may occur in protons but have found no clear evidence. If it was the proton that decayed the structure of the universe would be impossible for everything made of hydrogen would disintegrate. The sun is composed entirely of hydrogen. It the proton was subject to decay, the sun would melt away. Water, two thirds of which is hydrogen, could not possibly exist. The universe itself would fall apart because 74% of the observed universe consists of hydrogen.
• Electrical charges within the atom display another of its unique features. Colson explains ...
   

   Not only do atomic particles have a size, but they also have an electrical charge. What child hasn’t delighted in rubbing his feet on the carpet and giving people a shock by touching them? This annoying practice works because rubbing the carpet knocks off some of the electrons and gives the child a negative charge. Within the atom, electrons have a negative charge, and protons have a positive charge. Yet, aside from carpet-rubbing pranksters or socks that stick together in the dryer, most objects we encounter in daily life have no electrical charge. Why not? Because the charge of the proton exactly balances that of the electron. And it’s a good thing it does. If the electron carried more charge than the proton, all atoms would be negatively charged. In that case—since identical charges repel—all the atoms composing all the objects in the universe would fly apart in a catastrophic explosion. On the other hand, if the proton carried more charge than the electron, all atoms would be positively charged—with the same disastrous consequences.[6] 

Was It By Chance Or By Design?

The explanation of the origin of things is portrayed in the various exhibits of Disney World. Colson summarises what is presented there.

A small sphere, the planet Earth, ‘just happened’ to be the right size and ‘just happened’ to be the right distance from the sun so that life ‘just happened’ to arise. And through a process of random mutations and natural selection, we humans ‘just happened’ to appear on the scene.[7]

   We may rightly question the assumptions of the technological marvel which is Disney World. Did the earth just happen to be the right distance from the sun? Is it just by chance that earth’s orbit is circular while others are elliptical? Was it just a slice of luck that the human race came into being on Earth rather than for example on Jupiter where frozen gas clouds circle the planet or on Venus a planet whose surface is as hot as boiling lead as a rain of sulphuric falls upon it?[8] Colson, in this rhetorical question, argues that Earth’s positioning is the result of intelligent design. He asks, “Are these finely calibrated distances a product of mere happenstance? Or were they designed to support life?”[9]

   Does water have just the right structure to maintain life just by chance? Or did someone draw up a design for it to perform the way it does? Concerning the molecular properties of water Colson refers us to Michael Corey who writes in his book ‘God and the New Cosmology,’ “the various properties of water are nothing short of miraculous, no other compound even comes close to duplicating its many life-supporting properties.”[10]

   Is it just by luck that the structure of the atom is the way its is? Colson again makes us think in terms of design when it comes to the atom. “And why is the neutron larger than the proton? No one knows. There is no physical cause to explain why the neutron is larger. It is simply a fact. So apparently the only ‘reason’ for the difference in size is that it allows the universe to exist and to support life.”[11]

   Is it just a happy coincidence that the electrical charge of the proton exactly balances that of the electron? Colson argues for design rather than chance. He writes,

   There is no known physical reason, no natural explanation, for the precise balance in the electrical charges of the proton and the electron—especially when you consider that the two particles differ from one another in all other respects: in size, weight, magnetic properties, and so on. And since there is no natural explanation, no natural law to account for this extraordinarily precise adjustment, is it no reasonable to conclude that this intricate arrangement is the product of a choice, a plan, a design?

   The list of ‘coincidences’ goes on and on. It turns out that the slightest tinkering with the fundamental forces of physics—gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces—would have resulted in a universe where life was utterly impossible. The anthropic principle states that in our own universe, all these seemingly arbitrary and unrelated values in physics have one thing in common: They are precisely the values needed to get a universe capable of supporting life.

   The term anthropic principle comes from the Greek word anthropos, which means human being, and it begins to appear that the laws of physics were exquisitely calibrated from the outset for the creation of human life. Of course, many scientists shy away from this conclusion because it presupposes a creator, and they have been trained to believe that such a concept has no place in science. So what do they do about these obvious marks of design and purpose in the universe? They scramble to explain them away, searching for ways to account for design in the universe without having to acknowledge a designer. Yet, ironically, all these attempts to explain away the design turn out to be far less scientific than a straightforward acknowledgement of a creator.[12]

   Colson present a strong argument for design over chance based on a childhood memory. He writes:

   I remember as a child visiting the ‘Old Man in the Mountains,’ a tourist attraction in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. At an overlook station, our family would join other eager tourists to see if we could detect, in the outline of the rocks, what looked like the profile of an old man. Of course, we knew it wasn’t really a carving of a man; it was like many other places that are billed as natural wonders—places where, over the ages, the wind and the rain have carved out shapes that resemble a face or a bridge or some other object.

   By contrast, imagine you are driving through South Dakota and suddenly come upon a mountain bearing the unmistakable likenesses of four American presidents, looking just as you remember them from your history books. Instantly you recognize Lincoln’s jutting chin and Washington’s high forehead. Would you—would anyone?—conclude that these shapes were the product of wind or rain or glacial erosion? Of course not. Immediately you realise that artists with chisels and drills have painstakingly carved these four famous faces out of the stone.[13]

   Colson also writes of the contribution computer technology has made to the discussion of the question of chance verses design.

   But the computer revolution put an end to any chance theory of life’s origin. Beginning in the 1960s, mathematicians began writing computer programs to simulate every process under the sun, and they cast their calculating eyes on evolution itself. Hunched over their high speed computers, they simulated the trial-and-error processes of neo-Darwinian evolution over the equivalent of billions of years. The outcome was jolting: The computers showed that the probability of evolution by chance processes is essentially zero, no matter how long the time scale.

   In 1966, at a landmark symposium at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, a group of computer specialists presented their findings to the nation’s biologists. The charge was led by Murray Eden of MIT and Marcel Schutzenberger of the University of Paris. At first, the biologists were angry at the upstart computer whizzes for invading their territory. But the numbers could not be denied. And after the symposium, chance theories began to be quietly buried.

   As a result, today it is common to hear prominent scientists scoff at the idea that life arose by chance. The famous astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle compares it to lining up 10⁵⁰ (ten with fifty zeros after it) blind people, giving each one a scrambled Rubik’s cube, and finding that they all solve the cube at the same moment.[14]

Gradual Change Or A Completed System?

At the heart of the evolutionary explanation for life as we know it is the hypothesis that the life forms we see around us have emerged from a primeval one celled organism by an infinite sequence of mutations. A mutation involves a change in the genetic structure of a cell that results eventually in a new life form appearing. Colson notes that “the only natural source of new genetic material in nature is mutations. In today’s neo-Darwinism, the central mechanism for evolution is random mutation and natural selection.”[15] His further comments help us to think through our question—have the  life forms around us come into being by a process of gradual change or as a completed system?

   The best argument against Darwinism has been known for centuries by farmers and breeders, and it can be stated in a simple principle: Natural change in living things is limited. Or, stated positively: Organisms stay true to type.

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   No scientific finding has contradicted the basic principle that change in living things is limited. Luther Burbank, regarded as the greatest breeder of all time, said the tendency for organisms to stay true to type is so constant that it can be considered a natural law—what he called the law of the reversion to the Average. It’s a law, he said, that ‘keeps all living things within some more or less fixed limitations.’

   Despite what the textbooks say, Darwin did not prove that nature is capable of crossing those ‘fixed limitations.’ He suggested only that it was theoretically possible—that minor changes might have accumulated over thousands of years until a fish became an amphibian, an amphibian became a reptile, and a reptile became a mammal.

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   The late Christian evangelist Francis Schaeffer used to offer an argument against evolution that was simple, easy to grasp, and devastating: Suppose a fish evolves lungs. What happens then? Does it move up to the next evolutionary stage? Of course not. It drowns.

   The only way to turn a fish into a land-dwelling animal is to transform it all at once, with a host of interrelated changes happening at the same time—not only lungs but also co-adapted changes in the skeleton, the circulatory system, and so on.

   The term to describe this kind of interdependent system is irreducible complexity. And the fact that organisms are irreducibly complex is yet another argument that they could not have evolved piecemeal, one step at a time, as Darwin proposed. Darwinian theory states that all living structures evolved in small, gradual steps from simpler structures—feathers from scales, wings from forelegs, blossoms from leaves, and so on. But anything that is irreducibly complex cannot evolve in gradual steps, and thus its very existence refutes Darwin’s theory.

   The concept of irreducible complexity was developed by Michael Behe, a LeHigh University professor of biochemistry, in his 1993 book Darwin’s Black Box. Behe’s homey example of irreducible complexity is the mousetrap. A mousetrap cannot be assembled gradually, he points out. You cannot start with a wooden platform and catch a few mice, add a spring and catch a few more mice, add a hammer, and so, each addition making the mousetrap function better. No, to even start catching mice, all the parts must be assembled from the outset. The mousetrap doesn’t work until all its parts are present and working together.

   Many living structures are like the mousetrap. They involve an entire system of interacting parts all working together. If one part were to evolve in isolation, the entire system of interacting parts would stop functioning; and since, according to Darwinism, natural selection preserves the forms that function better than their rivals, the non-functioning system would be eliminated by natural selection—like fish with lungs.

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   Interestingly, Darwin himself grasped the problem and even admitted that it could falsify his theory. ‘If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications,’ he wrote, ‘my theory would absolutely break down.’

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   A classic example of irreducible complexity is the human eye. An eye is of no use at all unless all its parts are fully formed and working together. Even a slight alteration from its current form destroys its function. How then, could the eye evolve by slight alterations? Even in Darwin’s day the complexity of the eye was offered as evidence against his theory, and Darwin said the mere thought of trying to explain the eye gave him ‘a cold shudder.’

   Darwin would have shuddered even harder had he known the structure of cells inside the eye. Contemporary Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins have tried to solve the problem by tracing a pathway to the evolution of the eye, starting with a light-sensitive spot, moving to a group of cells cupped to focus light better, and so on through a graded series of small improvements to produce a true lens. But as Behe points out, even the first step—the light sensitive spot—is irreducibly complex, requiring a chain reaction of chemical reactions, starting when a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which changes to trans-retinal, which forces a change in the shape of a protein called rhodopsin, which sticks to another protein called transducin, which binds to another molecule … and so on. And where do those cupped cells that Dawkins talks about come from? There are dozens of complex proteins involved in maintaining cell shape, and dozens more that control groups of cells. Each of Dawkin’s steps is itself a complex system, and adding them together doesn’t answer where these complex systems came from in the first place.

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   The most advanced, automated modern factory, with its computers and robots all coordinated on a precisely timed schedule, is less complex than the inner workings of a single cell. No such system could arise in a blind, step-by-step Darwinian process. The most rational explanation of irreducibly complex structures in nature is that they are products of an intelligent being.[16]

Unmanaged Chemical Processes Or Precise Set Of Instructions?

This is a relevant question when we come to consider the DNA molecule. Colson[17] explains why.

   Simply put, DNA is like a language in the heart of the cell, a molecular message, a set of instructions telling the cell how to construct proteins—much like the software needed to run a computer. Moreover, the amount of information DNA includes is staggering. A single cell of the human body contains as much information as the Encyclopaedia Britannica—all thirty volumes—three or four times over. As a result the question of the origin of life must now be redefined as the question of the origin of biological information. Can information arise by natural forces alone? Or does it require an intelligent agent?

   Scientists committed to naturalism must try to construct an explanation of life based solely on physical-chemical laws. They must explain the information in DNA as the product of natural forces at work in the chemicals that comprise living things.

…..

   It’s true that DNA is composed of ordinary chemicals (bases, sugars, phosphates) that react according to ordinary laws. But what makes DNA function as a message is not the chemicals themselves but rather their sequence, their pattern. The chemicals in DNA are grouped into molecules (called nucleotides) that act like letters in a message, and they must be in a particular order if the message is going to be intelligible. If the letters are scrambled, the result is nonsense. So the crucial question comes down to whether the sequence of chemical ‘letters’ arose by natural causes or whether it required an intelligent source. Is it the product of law or design?

Was The Universe Always There Or Was There A Beginning?

For centuries the prevailing philosophy was that the universe had always been there. But scientists today have reason to believe otherwise. Colson[18] explains how this shift in understanding has come about …

   After maintaining for centuries that the physical universe is eternal and therefore needs no creator, science today has uncovered dramatic new evidence that the universe did have an ultimate origin, that it began at a finite time in the past—just as the Bible teaches.

   To grasp just how revolutionary this is, we must understand that most ancient cultures believed that the universe is eternal—or, more precisely, that it was formed from some kind of primordial material that is eternal. The ancient Greeks even argued that the idea of an ultimate beginning was rationally inconceivable. Their arguments were revived during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, when classical literature was rediscovered. Then, in the eighteenth century, scientists formulated the law of conservation of matter (that matter can neither be created nor destroyed), and it became a potent weapon in the hands of ardent materialists, who argued that science itself now ruled out any ultimate creation. “Today the indestructibility or permanence of matter is a scientific fact,” wrote a nineteenth-century proponent of materialism. “Those who talk about an independent or supernatural creative force” that created the universe out of nothing “are in antagonism with the first and simplest axiom of a philosophical view of nature.”[19]

   And there things stood. The idea that the universe had a beginning was reduced to a bare article of religious faith, standing in lonely opposition to firmly established science.

   Then in the early twentieth century, several lines of evidence began a curious convergence: the implication from general relativity theory that the universe is expanding; the finding that the stars exhibit a ‘red shift,’ implying that they are moving outward; and finally, the realization that the two laws of thermodynamics[20] actually make it imperative to believe in a beginning to the universe.

   The second law of thermodynamics, the law of decay, implies that the universe is in a process of gradual disintegration—implacably moving toward final darkness and decay. In other words, the universe is running down, like a wound-up clock. And if it is running down, then there must have been a time when it was wound up. In the eloquent words of Lincoln Barnett in The Universe and Dr. Einstein, “the inescapable inference is that everything had a beginning: somehow and sometime the cosmic processes were started, the stellar fires ignited, and the whole vast pageant of the universe brought into being.”[21]

   What’s more, the first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of matter) implies that matter cannot just pop into existence or create itself. And therefore, if the universe had a beginning, then something external to the universe must have caused it to come into existence—something or Someone, transcendent to the natural world. As a result, the idea of creation is no longer a matter of religious faith; it is a conclusion based on the most straightforward reading of the scientific evidence.

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   These various lines of evidence coalesced in the 1960s and led to the formulation of the big bang theory, which asserts that the universe began with a cosmic explosion. The new theory hit the scientific world like a thunderclap. It meant that the idea of an ultimate beginning was no longer merely religious dogma. Science itself now indicated  that the universe burst into existence at a particular time in the remote past.

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   British physicist Paul Davies, though not a professing Christian, says the big bang is “the one place in the universe where there is room, even for the most hard-nosed materialist, to admit God.”[22]

It may be appropriate now, following Paul Davies admission, to allow God to enter the discussion. The opening statement in the Biblical account of our origins echoes the ‘inescapable inference’ from science that ‘everything had a  beginning’, when it declares … In the beginning, God created ... [23]