Articles
We "Lucky" Humans
“Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It cannot be so easily explained, and has far deeper physical and philosophical implications. Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is not so easily explained, and raises the natural question of why it is that way” (Stephen Hawking, Grand Design 162, quoted in Understanding the Times 257).
Hawking is talking about the plethora of physical properties of the universe and our planet that must exist and interact within precise specifications for life to exist. What are the odds that, beginning with uncaused, concentrated matter, there was a gargantuan explosion (again uncaused) that just so happened to create so many fine fine-tuned forces that can support life? There are extremely narrow parameters in things such as gravity, the components of the earth, the proximity of the Moon, the distance from the sun, the existence of an atmosphere, the tilt of the earth’s axis, etc. If any of these or scores of other delicate balances in creation is off by the slightest degree, no life would be possible. Earth would look like Mars or Mercury – barren and lifeless.
Hawking is renowned as one of the smartest scientific philosophers of the age, and he is also an avowed atheist. Yet even he wonders why it “appears” that the universe is designed to sustain life. Well, if he and those of his ilk weren’t prejudicially committed to a naturalistic philosophy, they just might be able to admit what their intuition is telling them: the universe appears designed because it is designed!
This is exactly what Scripture has been affirming from the dawn of time. Its opening passages describe the creation by an Uncaused Cause (God), in sequential order, culminating in the highest life form – man, who reflects the image of the Creator. Looking ahead, prophecy foretells the eventual deconstruction of all created things. Concerning the past and future scope of creation, it is asserted that all the cosmos was brought into being with purpose. The fact of creation is not camouflaged in some outlying corner of the Bible; it is generously sprinkled throughout the breadth of Scripture. Everything is what it is because God created it!
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone … Or who shut in the sea with its doors, when it burst forth and issued from the womb … Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place …? … Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this … By what way is light diffused, or the east wind scattered over the earth? … Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?” (Job 38:4-6, 8, 12, 18, 24, 31).
So the Creator challenges one of His creatures who has temporarily fallen into a skeptical outlook. Is it “luck” that explains all this? Is that a scientific explanation? Well, it’s about all that naturalists have, for in rejecting God they have abandoned purpose, and in abandoning purpose all they have to fall back on is sheer, dumb luck. My, aren’t we humans lucky!?
