In All of Creation

MY sixteen year old recently wrote an essay on the improbability that the universe occurred by chance. At one point, she wrote:

[Secular scientists] have been working so hard for so long to come up with “logical” explanations for a universe without God that they have failed to truly look at the universe itself .—Tianna Mallett

Out of the mouths of babes. St. Paul put it more directly,

For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened. While claiming to be wise, they became fools. (Rom 1:19-22)

IT IS EVIDENT

The new atheists try to tell us that creation is the result of Chance. That everything on earth is merely the result of coincidence. But as has been demonstrated over and over again, the idea that planet earth as we know it came into being through Chance is so astronomically outrageous, that the very belief in evolution without God requires a faith-like assent and fundamentalist adherence (For those who would like to read more about the absurdity of the notion of creation without God, and it’s real mathematical odds, I strongly recommend reading Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God by Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker. After reading this book, there is not even a whimper left in atheist Richard Dawkins’ arguments.)

What did St. Paul mean when he said ‘what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them… in what he has made’? The revelation of God comes to us in both truth and beauty. If the earth were not planned by a Creator, and was merely the result of chance (though mathematically an impossibility), that does not explain the incredible order, balance, and beauty of creation.

ORDER AND BALANCE

The earth is “placed” such that its surface can maintain a revolving temperature that is neither too hot or too cold in the central continents, yet varying enough to produce a wide diversity of vegetation. The very tilt of the earth is so precise that were it off by a degree, all of creation would be in chaos. Even the weather has an extraordinary balance; we see how just one season, even one month of erratic weather outside the normal range, can be devastating. The atheist might respond saying, “So what, it is what is. That proves nothing.” But again, it is surprising to see the atheist, so hell-bent against religion, embrace the odds of this balance occurring with a religious faith—let alone the fundamentalist faith required to hold that the proteins, chemical elements, and DNA needed to create a living cell existed and mutated over millions of years and then eventually combined at the exact same time with the exact necessary atmospheric conditions. The odds of this, says Hahn and Wiker, is about the same as throwing a deck of cards in the air in the middle of a hurricane, and all of them landing as a four-story card house, where each story is made up of a “complete suite of cards”? Atheist Richard Dawkins’ believes that, given enough time, anything is possible. But that is a confusion of improbability with impossibility.

There is also a finely tuned ecological balance between the creatures of the earth. The book of Genesis, written thousands of years ago, places man as steward over creation. How can this be when lions and bears and other predators are more powerful? What was the writer of Genesis thinking at a time when guns and tranquilizers did not exist and man was greatly overpowered? And yet, man has indeed become lord of creation with the power to make all things work to the good… or as we see all around us, to man’s own peril. The very mind of man, his ability to reason and deduce right from wrong are themselves inexplicable by “evolution”. How does free will, morality or conscience evolve through natural selection? It doesn’t. There are no partially moral monkeys. This spiritual-intellectual order within man was given.

BEAUTY

Say that the universe was created by Chance (capitalized to denote atheism’s religious belief in the “god of chance”) and that life on earth could have come about by some improbable but not impossible combination of events. That does not mean that beauty would have to be its end result. The earth could have been a greyish flatland or jagged peaks of muddy brown. But instead, we see the incredible diversity of color throughout creation. That is to say, the perfect conditions for life do not explain the ingenuity, creativity, and beauty that has emerged. It is one thing for butterflies to have wings, it is another for them to be written with such extraordinary colors. It is one thing to have colorful flowers, but why would they have to smell so incredible? Why is the honey gathered from their nectar so delicious? Why do baboons have red noses and purple bums? When the leaves turn, why is their process of fading such that it paints the landscape in stunning reds and oranges and deep purples? Even winter, and the patterned ice crystal or delicate frosts speak of a design that is far from random, but reveal an incredible beauty and playfulness.

Of course, there are scientific explanations behind why DNA produces this effect or why chemicals produce that color. Wonderful. God has given us minds to understand the machinations of His creation. But why has creation appeared so playful, so magnificent, so creative rather than a just being a simple, bland, living mass?

Scripture speaks about the creation of the world and the personification of Wisdom, that is, the role of Jesus in creating:

When he established the heavens I was there, when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep; when he made firm the skies above, when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth; when he set for the sea its limit, so that the waters should not transgress his command; then was I beside him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the sons of men. (Pro verbs 8:27-31)

Yes, Jesus sat at His Father’s feet, and literally played as He designed the peacock, whale, and puppy and His masterpiece: mankind. God can be perceived in not only the beauty of creation, but in its wisdom, fecundity, and order. All of creation is shouting the glory of God.

And who hears it?

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; wisdom and instruction fools despise. (Prov 1:7)

That is, those who become like little children, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

For the universe is truly amazing. The way the planets flow so harmonically around the sun, not jostling, not bumping into each other. The way just one planet was so perfectly placed so that it could support life; not one step too close, so that all water would be evaporated, and not one step too far, so that all would freeze. The earth is not a place of flat, shapeless terrain where only proteins fit to grow on the backs of crystals, but a massive, churning, colorful array of organisms and minerals and elements and LIFE, so finely orchestrated that if even one creature is added or removed, that ecosystem is thrown into chaos. —Tianna Mallett, 16 years old, an essay on creation

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