Why Creation Makes Sense

Even the most devoted Christians have periods of doubt. “Is what the Bibles says true?” “Was Jesus really who He said He was?” “Why is there evil in the world if God is good?” “Did God create the universe?” Each of these questions have had entire books written about them, but for now we will be looking only at the last question.

For the last hundred or so years, secular scientists have developed theories that explain how the earth and the life on it came to be. They say the earth was formed billions of years ago, and that life arose due to molecules assembling themselves into self-replicating structures. These structures and their descendants then went on to mutate and evolve over millions of years to give us the variety of life we see around us today.

The inspired Word of God tells us something different: In the beginning, God created the world by speaking it into existence. That what we see around us is not the result of random processes, but the intentional design of a Creator.

Water of Life

Even the smallest and most common parts of creation point toward the truth that God created the universe. Water is something we often take for granted because it is all around us, and we use it every day. But there are certain aspects of the water molecule that make it uniquely suited for life.

The water molecule has a bent shape that causes one end of the water molecule to have a partially positive charge, and the other end to have a partially negative charge. This slight charge, or polarity, gives water many of the properties that make it such a unique molecule.

The polarity of water molecules makes them attract neighboring water molecules. This causes the phenomenon of water tension that makes water form droplets and allows some insects to “walk” on the surface of rivers and lakes. This attraction also gives water a much higher boiling point than other similar molecules. Without this attraction, water would be a gas at regular temperatures rather than a liquid. All forms of life require liquid water.

Polarity also causes water to slightly expand when it freezes. This means that solid water is less dense than liquid water, which allows ice to float on liquid water. There are almost no other substances that have this property. If ice was denser than liquid water, lakes and oceans would freeze from the bottom up until they were solid ice. Instead, ice forms an insulating layer on top of the water, allowing life in oceans and lakes to continue under the ice.

The polarity of the water molecule also allows water to absorb large amounts of energy without increasing much in temperature. This helps lakes and oceans to absorb huge amounts of energy during the summer, preventing the air temperature from becoming unbearably warm. Then during the winter, the oceans and lakes slowly release their stored heat and prevent winters from becoming too cold. Currents in the oceans carry heat away from the equatorial regions to the colder arctic regions, and vice versa with the cold. This helps to moderate the global climate so the tropics aren’t unbearably hot and the upper latitudes aren’t unbearably cold.

The polarity of water molecules also makes the water in blood work well to dissolve many substances such as salts and sugars carried throughout the body. For the same reason water takes a lot of heat to increase much in temperature, water is also ideal to get rid of excess heat by helping blood carry heat from deep in the body to the skin. There, evaporating sweat can then absorb the heat and carry it away.

Water is the perfect compound for each of these different functions in living things and on earth. What makes more sense: That all of the unique properties of water arose by chance, or that the water molecule was designed in a special way?

Earth: Our Home

The characteristics of our planet are evidence that point toward a Creator. The Book of Isaiah says that God created the earth to be suitable for life, and we can see many of these qualities around us if we know where to look.

“For thus says the LORD, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the LORD, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:18)

The planet earth has all the things needed for life to thrive on its surface. The atmosphere is mostly unreactive nitrogen gas, with about 20% oxygen and a mixture of some other gases such as argon and carbon dioxide. If the percentage of oxygen were much higher, the risk of fires would dramatically increase. If the percentage were lower, there would barely be enough oxygen for air-breathing animals and humans.

Plants need carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis to grow, so there is enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for them to grow, but not so much that humans and animals are poisoned by carbon dioxide. Humans and animals need oxygen and produce carbon dioxide as a waste product, while plants need carbon dioxide and produce oxygen as a waste product. This balance allows both plants and animals to thrive.

The sun produces large amounts of dangerous radiation such as ultraviolet rays that can damage and kill living things. High in the atmosphere there is a thin layer of the gas ozone that absorbs almost all this dangerous radiation before it reaches the surface of earth. This ozone is poisonous to humans, but since it is high in the atmosphere, it protects us without danger of inhaling it. Astronauts must worry about the amount of radiation exposure they receive in space since they are not protected by the atmosphere.

Earth has a strong magnetic field. This field helps deflect dangerous charged particles produced by the sun that can cause cancer. These charged particles could also slowly strip away earth’s atmosphere if earth didn’t have a magnetic field. Of course, we don’t know the condition of other planets many years ago, but it seems that Mars did once have liquid water. Now, likely due to not having a strong magnetic field, it is a dry and frozen wasteland with almost no atmosphere.

The earth is designed so it doesn’t get too hot or too cold. Earth is just the right distance from the sun. Too close, and the oceans would boil away; too far, and the planet would turn into an icebox. The rotation of the earth that gives us night and day is fast enough that one side of the planet doesn’t spend too much time broiling in the sun while the other side freezes in darkness. The large oceans on earth also help keep the temperatures from swinging too dramatically between summer and winter by storing excess heat during the summer and releasing it during the winter.

Carbon dioxide, along with other gases such as water vapor, help to hold in heat during the night. Without this greenhouse effect, there would likely be much larger swings in temperature between night and day that could make life difficult, if not impossible.

It is easy to take our sun for granted, but it is perfectly designed to support life on earth. Most stars are smaller and cooler than our sun, making it much harder for them to produce enough energy to support life on a planet millions of miles away. Unlike many other stars, the sun’s energy output remains relatively stable, and it doesn’t have any violent super flares that could kill all life on earth.

The sun is about four hundred times farther from earth than the moon, while the diameter of the moon is four hundred times smaller than the sun. This allows for dramatic solar eclipses where the moon just barely covers the disc of the sun. Astronomers believe there is no other place in the solar system where this type of eclipse is possible. It is almost as if someone exactly designed the ratio of distance and size between the sun and moon so that we could see this small part of His glory.

Certainly, some of the characteristics of the earth, moon, and sun could have occurred by chance, but what is the probability that they all happened by chance? What makes more sense: That they are the product of chance? or that they were intentionally designed?

Matter and Energy from Nothing

In the early part of the 1900s, astronomers believed that the universe had always existed—that it was eternal and mostly unchanging. Then the astronomer Edwin Hubble observed that stars and galaxies appeared to be moving away from each other. This seemingly insignificant fact had huge implications. If stars and galaxies were moving away from each other, this meant that at some point in the past they had been much closer to each other. In fact, this also meant there must have been a point of “creation” where all the matter and energy in the universe came into being.

Some astronomers were dismissive of this idea because it was so close to the Biblical Creation account and said that this must have happened in a “big bang.” The name that was used to make fun of the idea stuck, and it is what we call it today. Although there was initially resistance to this idea of a specific point where the universe was created, eventually the evidence that the universe was expanding couldn’t be argued with, and scientists had to accept that it must be true. Although the Big Bang Theory says that God isn’t required for the creation of the universe, it is interesting that secular scientists have arrived at a model for the creation of the universe where all the energy (light) in the universe was created at one point in time.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and dark-ness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:1-5)

Man has never observed matter and energy being created from nothing. This is such a universal fact that it is called the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy. This scientific law states that the amount of matter and energy in the universe does not change, and that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed.

If matter and energy cannot be created from nothing, what makes more sense: That an all-powerful being created the universe? or that mass and energy somehow popped into existence?