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| Knowing God |  |
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[Knowing God] >> [Article] |
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Topic: Life a cosmic fluke? "In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth." Gen.1:1 I remember well the thrill of seeing the moons of Jupiter for the first time when peering through a telescope. They looked like a necklace of diamonds stringed around Jupiter! That was some 40-45 years ago. Peering through a telescope on numerous cold early mornings, I gradually learned to find my way "around the heavens", guided by the star charts that invariably never fail me. These charts tell us when and where to look for a given heavenly body e.g. a planet. The stars charts never fail only because our universe and the heavenly bodies obey definite physical laws and order. To me, here is where Atheism fails (such "isms" deny the need of a divine Creator to explain for the physical universe without and the morality within us) and are to me indefensible, as they cannot account for the marvellous beauty, symmetry and order in the nature that we see and enjoy around us. While we do submit that the equation "Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty" as being over-simplistic, surely Beauty and Order in the nature around us is an "echo" of the divine Truth that we all seek! In the words of John Polkenhorne (eminent Cambridge quantum physicist turned theologian): "...those working in fundamental physics are able to discern a world of deep and beautiful order--a universe shot through with sign of mind. I believe that indeed it is the Mind of the world's Creator perceived in this way." Secondly, I see Atheism and Scientism fail in yet another more important but related area i.e. they cannot explain a much bigger miracle : the miracle of life even existing at all in the universe i.e. they have a huge problem of explaining why despite the astronomical odds stacked against it, life as we know it came about at all. A flood of books by eminent scientists had recently been published : "Just Six Numbers", "The Goldilocks Enigma", "Hidden Unity in Nature's Law" that conveyed the Scientists' awe at this "coincidence" . They coined the term "Anthropic Principle" to describe this "marvellous coincidence" that so arranged Universal forces (often conflicting) and factors to allow life to exist. To get a sense of the "awe" that life miraculously came about at all, we turn to the eminent Cosmologist Martin Rees. In his recent book " Just Six Numbers ", he described six numbers which constitute a recipe for life in the universe. He explained that life's existence is extremely sensitive to the values of these. If any of them differs only by an infinitesimal amount, then no stars could exist, and hence no life; let alone life like us who can observe and comprehend and be amazed by this "big fix". Apparently, all four basic forces of nature which govern our universe are implicated in the life story. Awesome yes, but to the sceptics a "cosmic fluke" nevertheless. Shafts of light, of truths, (of our physical world) can and are being discovered by scientific methods. The explanation of the origin of life in our universe as a "cosmic fluke" is not one of them. Bottom line for us as God's people: W e believe this fine tuning of so many factors to allow life to exist is not a fortuitous chance but indeed the glorious design and work of our benign Creator-Designer God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made" John1:1-3
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