Formed from the dust of the Earth, I am given the breath of life.
Consciousness floating in a universe of mystery, with a brief lifetime to grasp the nature of existence,
A mind processes the wonder and magnificence of God’s creation.
I am given a vulnerable, finite, physical life on Earth.
With belief, I am rewarded an eternal spiritual life in Heaven.
With belief, I am rewarded an eternal spiritual life in Heaven.
The comprehension of God as creator comes with realizing the omnipotence and intellect of His creative design for life and how it came to exist. The divinity of the chef is seen with the realization that He started from nothing and planned all the factors involved to make us happen. It starts with a plan for the creation of life that, admittedly oversimplified, requires ingredients, a pot, and a recipe.
Ingredients-
The fundamental elements of life need to be made. From nothing, comes a ‘big bang’ creating a primordial soup of building blocks to matter. Given the proper energy, temperature, relative abundances (like a little more matter, than anti-matter) and gravity, things like quarks, gluons and leptons coalesce to form things like protons and neutrons, which eventually cool, condense, and recombine to form simple atoms, like helium and hydrogen. Given the proper time and gravity, clumps of matter start forming into stars. To get elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, some of these stars have to explode as supernovae, and the heavier elements are the product of nuclear fusion from that extreme explosion. Their stardust forms nebulae which in time coalesced to form new stars and planets, this time with the ingredients of life in them. Our planet Earth is lucky enough to have them all. Pass the salt please.
It takes some doing to make Earth a pot. For life to develop we need a stable, long-term, right sized Sun. Our planet needs to be at the proper distance from the Sun to provide the optimum temperatures and environment (water, atmosphere, etc.), with a concentric orbit (for milder, livable seasons), and a magnetic field (to eliminate harmful rays). A large moon (to stabilize our axis and provide tides) and large neighboring planets (to divert asteroids) will certainly help. Now at the proper time (age) in the dynamic and ever-changing geological history of Earth, we have a place to add our ingredients. Hopefully, our pot can provide a long term, stable environment to let our soup mix and simmer.
The ingredients formed from stardust will need additional conditions for the proper chemical reactions to occur and form the needed molecules for life. They need to be added in a proper sequence, at sufficient quantities and relative ratios, with catalysts (pH, heat, pressures, water, etc.), and no interfering substances (like oxidizing agents). Prebiotic (before life) ingredients and conditions have never been found on earth, but we are here so something must have worked, so let’s make life.
One idea (one God) to create life is to use carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to make four nucleic acid bases (guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine). These amino acids are the building blocks to make DNA and RNA, which provides the mechanisms for all the bioactivity of life. In fact, this is the only idea that seems to work for Earth. These four amino acids must now be paired up, and the pairs lined up to form long chains. The next steps are to shape the chains into double stranded helical shapes with specific lengths (chromosomes), and toss them into an environment that allows them to function (the nucleus of an organic cell). In this cell must be the parts to facilitate replication of DNA and utilize nutrients for energy to live. The chains have very specific sequences of nucleic acid bases called ‘genes’ that code the information necessary for the manufacture of many types of proteins, structures, functions and characteristics of an organism. If you look at the complex biochemical structure of the amino acids and the complex problems of making DNA and RNA, and the problems in designing functional gene sequences of DNA, it is inconceivable to imagine how these occurred randomly. Additionally, no good evidence or explanations about how these biochemicals are animated to life is given. However, life based on DNA exist on earth and now we have a living cell.
Multicellular organisms need the living cells to specialize, join together, and function together to setup a living system with complex survival abilities. The abundance and diversity of species on Earth is a testimony to the versatility, durability, adaptability, and creative power of DNA. Mutations in species caused by DNA and the fact that all life utilizes DNA, lead scientists to believe DNA is the mechanism for evolution. My personal perspective views mutation and the similarities of species as indication to how genius God’s design of DNA is, and that evolutionary theory, if true , doesn’t exclude God as creator. The Theory of Evolution has real problems with assumptions not supported by real evidence, however, the theory is not unproven, and so, remains an open issue. The immensity and grandeur of the universe is overwhelming, and the durability and diversity of all life is a masterpiece in design, but it is man that is the pinnacle of God’s creation.
Man has about 25,000 genes (a similar number as in a mustard seed) spread out on 23 pairs of chromosomes, each gene averaging 28,000 base pairs. To make man, the functions of DNA and RNA must go into overdrive. With extreme coordination and ingenuity the DNA creates an incredible human body with a superior brain that separates us dramatically from all other life forms. The brain gives us more intricate motor and communication skills, freedom from most animal instinctual behavior, and the innate ability to reason. Given the intellect to comprehend a God, believing that our unexplainable existence originates without divine input is a case of outsmarting ourselves.
Science doesn’t disprove the existence of God. The improbability and ‘fine tuning’ of astrophysics and quantum physics that are necessary for the formation of the ‘ingredients’ are unreasonable without God. The impossible ‘just right’ environmental conditions necessary for the ‘pot’ to start and maintain life is unreasonable without God. In addition, the complex, statistically impossible chemistries and biology necessary for the ‘recipe’ to work are unreasonable without God. If these were not perfected by our master chef, life wouldn’t be on the menu. The rapidly increasing body of knowledge of science reveals an existence of unfathomable complexity and mystery, and leaves me with little option but to acknowledge that creation requires God. Without God there would be no universe, no earth, no life, and no man.
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