Nature and Science Speak about God

Summary

In this section, fundamental concepts of religion are studied from a scientific standpoint. The concept of ‘Where there is design, there is a designer’ is taken further, to reveal that the greatest evidence of God before us is the universe, which is God’s creation. Nature proclaims the fact that there is one God Who, in the infinity of His Wisdom, has created and continues to sustain this universe. The very existence of the universe, with its superb organisation and immeasurable meaningfulness, is inexplicable except as having been brought into existence by a Creator—a Being with infinite intelligence—rather than by blind force.

Throughout the universe, there are countless examples of superb organisation, far surpassing even the most advanced systems of man-made machines. It is simply unthinkable that the formidably complicated system of the universe could have come into existence without a Creative Intelligence being behind it. There is something utterly irrational in refusing to believe in the Organiser of an organised universe. The human mind has thus no rational grounds for denying the existence of God. We have to concede that there is a formidable array of facts in the universe that cannot be explained unless we admit the role of a superior Mind, or God Almighty.

In the following statement of belief, George Earl Davis, an American physicist, makes perhaps the best summing-up of the situation:

If a universe could create itself, then it would embody in itself the powers of a Creator, a God, and we should be forced to conclude that the universe itself is a God. Thus the existence of a God would be admitted, but in the peculiar form of a God that is both supernatural and material. I choose to conceive of a God who has created a material universe not identical with Himself but dominated and permeated by Himself.

(Man Does Not Stand Alone, p. 71)

One must ask, ‘Can such a great scheme of checks and balances as is found in Nature develop without any deliberate planning?’ Examining the wonderful organisation, meaningfulness and extraordinary wisdom which manifest themselves in the universe will prove beyond a shadow of doubt that there is indeed an Organiser and Sustainer of this universe.

Planet Earth is a unique exception in the universe because of its rare qualities and attributes. All the numerous celestial bodies in the universe are either huge fiery stars or rocky planets, with the sole exception of Earth, which has life and its accompanying support elements. This exception itself is a proof of God’s existence. Now, every exception necessarily requires an answer to the question: ‘Who or what is the cause of this exception?’ Without believing in ‘cause and effect’, one cannot explain why there is an exception. And this unique exception in the case of Earth is proof enough that God exists.

Based on this, this chapter suggests that it has to be concluded that the choice before us is not between the universe with God and the universe without God. Rather, the real choice before us is between the universe with God and no universe at all. As we cannot opt for the proposition “No universe at all”, we are compelled to opt for the proposition, “The universe with God.”

The greatest evidence of God before us is His creation. Nature itself and our study of nature, both proclaim the fact that there is one God who, in the infinity of His Wisdom, has created and continues to sustain this universe. By ignoring or rejecting this truth, we plunge ourselves into an abyss of murky incomprehension and its attendant evils.

The very existence of the universe, with its superb organisation and immeasurable meaningfulness, is inexplicable except as having been brought into existence by a Creator—a Being with infinite intelligence — rather than by blind force.

Among the philosophers of our time, there is a group, perhaps fortunately a small one, which doubts the very existence of every thing, no matter what it may be. It asserts that there exists neither man nor universe. In its nihilism, it likewise rejects the existence of God, even as a remote possibility.

As far as this particular brand of agnosticism is concerned, this may be a philosophical point worth considering, purely as an abstract exercise in logic, but it is in no way connected with reality. When we think, the very act of thinking gives evidence of our existence. The great French philosopher and mathematician Descartes (1596-1660), founded his philosophy on the precept: “I think, therefore, I am.”¹ And from this point, he went on to deduce the existence of God. Our sensory perceptions, too, give clear indications of the external existence of material things. If for example while walking along the road we are hit by a stone, we feel the pain. This experience establishes that, apart from us and outside of us, there exists a world having its own separate identity.

In fact, our minds, through our senses, perceive innumerable objects and register countless sensations and impressions every moment of our waking existence. These acts of cognition are personal experiences, which continually reinforce the concept of the world having its own existence. Now, if the philosophical inclinations of a particular individual make him sceptical about the existence of the universe, this is an exceptional case, bearing no relation to the experiences of millions of human beings. It is simply that such an individual is so engrossed in his own private predilections that he has became deaf and blind to common realities. For the sake of argument, he would have us concede his point, but this would in no way imply that God did not exist. The absurdity of arguments against the existence of commonly accepted things is so patent as to be hardly worth a comment. And quite apart from being incomprehensible to the common man, they could never gain credence in the world of learning.

Outside the nihilist group, the existence of the universe is accepted as a reality: the moment we admit its existence, we find belief in God inescapable, because the notion of creation having arisen spontaneously out of nothing is quite inconceivable. When everything big or small, has a cause, how can it be believed that such a vast universe has come into existence on its own, and that it has no Creator? In his autobiography, John Stuart Mill, observed that his father had impressed upon him from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question “Who made me?” cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it, and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, “who made God?”²

This is an old argument much relied upon by atheists, its implication being that if we do accept that there is a Creator of the universe, we shall be compelled to accept this Creator as being eternal. And when God has to be regarded as eternal, why should not the universe itself be regarded as eternal instead? Although such a conclusion is absolutely meaningless,—because no such attribute of the universe has come to light, so far, to justify the conclusion that the universe has come into existence of its own accord—up till the nineteenth century, this misleading argument of the atheists was regarded as the most attractive one. But now, with the discovery of the second law of the thermodynamics, this argument has lost its validity. Thermodynamics is a branch of science, which deals with energy transformation. In particular, it shows the quantitative relations between heat and other forms of energy. The importance of conservation in relation to energy is expressed in the first law of thermodynamics.

The law of Entropy is the second law of thermodynamics. To understand it, let us take the example of a metallic bar, which has been heated at one end but left cold at the other. Heat will instantly begin to flow from the hot end along the length of the bar to the cold end, and will continue to do so until the temperature of the whole bar becomes uniform. The flow of heat will always be in one direction, i.e. from warmer to colder bodies and this flow will never pass spontaneously in the opposite direction, or even haphazardly in just any direction. Other examples of such uniform and non-reversible processes abound in the physical world. For instance, gas always flows towards a vacuum or moves from a point of higher pressure towards that of a lower pressure till its pressure becomes uniform. It is impossible for any gas to flow in the reverse direction. Such observations provide the basis for the second law of thermodynamics. This law may be stated as follows.

“All natural or spontaneous processes occurring without the intervention of an external agency are irreversible. The process of one-way movement goes on till a state of equilibrium is reached.” On the relevance of these laws to creation, Edward Luther Kessel, an American zoologist, writes:

Science clearly shows that the universe could not have existed from all eternity. The law of entropy states that these is a continuous flow of heat from warmer to colder bodies, and that this flow cannot be reversed to pass spontaneously in the opposite direction. Entropy is the ratio of unavailable to available energy, so that it may be said that the entropy of the universe is always increasing. Therefore, the universe is headed for a time when the temperature will be universally uniform and there will be no more useful energy.

Consequently there will be no more chemical and physical processes and life itself will cease to exist. But because life is still going on, and chemical and physical processes are still in progress, it is evident that our universe could not have existed from eternity, else it would have long since run out of useful energy and ground to a halt. Therefore, quite unintentionally, science proves that our universe had a beginning. And in doing so it proves the reality of God, for whatever had a beginning did not begin of itself but demands a Prime Mover, a Creator, a God.³

James Jeans has expressed the same view thus:

The more orthodox scientific view is that the entropy of the universe must forever increase to its final maximum value. It has not yet reached this; we should not be thinking about it if it had. It is still increasing rapidly, and so must have had a beginning; and there must have been what we may describe as a ‘creation’ at a time not infinitely remote.⁴

There is much physical evidence of this type to prove that the universe has not always existed. On the contrary, its life span is limited. According to astronomy, the universe is in a state of continuous expansion outwards from the centre of its origin. All of the galaxies and celestial bodies are observably moving away from one another at enormous speeds. This phenomenon can be satisfactorily explained if we presume an initial point of time when all these constituents were an integrated whole, and the release of energy and the process of movement were subsequent developments.

On the basis of different observations of a similar type, it is generally held that the universe originated about 5 billion years ago. In theory, the entire universe was formed by an extraordinary explosion from a state of high density and high temperature. This has come to be known as the ‘big-bang’ theory. To accept that the universe has a limited life-span, and at the same time to deny its having an originator is like accepting that the Taj Mahal has not existed for all eternity (it having been built some time in the middle of seventeenth century), while denying the existence of an architect or builder, and asserting, on the contrary, that it simply mushroomed all by itself on a particular date.

Studies in astronomy show that the number of stars in the sky is as numerous as all of the sand grains on all the sea-shores of our planet, many of the stars being vastly greater in size than our earth, some even being of such enormous girth that they could accommodate hundreds of thousands of earths inside them and still have room to spare. A few of them are even big enough to contain millions and millions of earths. The universe is so vast that an aeroplane flying at the greatest speed imaginable, i.e. at the speed of light (186,282 miles per second), would take about ten billion years to complete just a single trip around the whole universe. Even with such a huge circumference, this universe is not static, but is expanding every moment in all directions. So rapid is this expansion that, according to an estimate by Eddington5, every 1300 million years, all the distances in this universe are doubled. This means that even our imaginary aeroplane travelling at the speed of light would not ever be able to fly all the way around the universe, because it would never be able to catch up with this unending expansion. This estimation of the vastness of the universe is based on Einstein’s theory of relativity. But this is just a mathematician’s guess. To tell the truth, man has yet to comprehend the vastness of the universe.

In a clear sky, which is free of dust, five thousand stars can be seen with the naked eye. With the help of an ordinary telescope this figure is increased to 2 million and through a great 200-inch telescope on Mount Palomar in America, billions of stars are visible. But even this figure is small as compared with the actual figure. The universe is an infinitely vast space in which innumerable stars are continuously moving at extraordinary speeds. Some stars are moving singly, some in groups of two or more, while innumerable stars are grouped in constellations. You may have noticed myriads of dust particles swirling around in the rays of light penetrating a room through some aperture. If you can visualize this same scene on a colossal scale, you will have a rough idea of the revolutions of the stars throughout the universe. The only difference is that dust particles can collide and move in combination whereas the stars, notwithstanding their enormous numbers are at immeasurable distances from each other and follow their respective courses, like ships sailing hundreds of miles apart in the vastness of the oceans. The whole universe is made of countless constellations, or galaxies, all of which are in perpetual motion.

The nearest example of such motion is the moon’s circling of the earth at a distance of 240,000 miles. It completes each revolution in 29½ days. Similarly, our earth, at a distance of 95 million miles from the sun, rotates on its axis at a thousand miles an hour, and takes one full year to go around the sun. Besides the earth, there are in the solar system eight other planets, all of which are continuously revolving around the sun. Pluto is the farthest away of all, with an orbit of 75 million miles. All these planets move on their individual paths with thirty-one moons in orbit around their respective planets simultaneously. In addition to these nine planets and thirty-one moons, a group of thirty thousand asteroids, thousands of comets and innumerable meteors also remain perpetually in orbit. The central place among them is, of course, occupied by our Sun, which is also a star. Its diameter is 865,000 miles. That is, it is twelve lakh times larger than the earth. The sun itself is not stationary, but is revolving along with all its planets and asteroids at a speed of 600,000 miles per hour. Within a vast galactic system, there are thousands of such mobile systems which combine to form a galaxy. A galaxy is like a huge plate upon which countless stars are in continuous revolution, singly as well as in groups, just like so many spinning tops. These galaxies themselves are, in turn, in continuous motion. The nearest galaxy, in which our solar system is situated, is rotating on its own axis in such a way that it concludes a single rotation within a period of 200 million years.

Astronomers estimate that the universe consists of five hundred million galaxies. Each galaxy contains about 100,000 stars. The nearest galaxy, the Milky Way, which is partially visible at night, has an area of 100,000 light years. And we, the inhabitants of the earth, are thirty thousand light years away from the centre of this galaxy. This galaxy, in turn, forms part of an even larger super-galaxy within which seventeen galaxies similar to our own are in perpetual motion. The diameter of this entire cluster is 2 million light years.

Over and above all these revolutions, another kind of movement is going on, i.e. the whole universe is expanding in all directions just like a balloon. Rotating with an incredible rapidity, at a speed of 12 miles per second, our own Sun is continuously whirling away towards the outer margin of its galaxy, carrying all the members of the solar system with it. Similarly, in perpetual rotation, all the stars are moving away in one direction or the other at tremendous speeds—some at eight, some at 33 and some at 84 miles per second.

The amazing part is that all of this motion is going on with a remarkable organization and regularity. Neither do the stars collide, nor does their speed alter. The rotation of our earth around the sun is a model of regularity. Likewise, its rotation on its own axis is so precise in timing that there has not been a discrepancy of even a second over the centuries. The moon, the earth’s satellite, similarly hardly strays from its orbit by so much as a hair’s breadth, there being only a minuscule deviation in its course, which is repeated with clockwork precision every eighteen and a half years. The other celestial bodies spread throughout the universe function with a similar degree of precision.

According to astronomical calculations, it has frequently happened that entire galactic systems consisting of millions and millions of moving stars have entered other galactic systems and have passed right through them without any collisions having taken place. In the face of such astonishing organization, the human intellect is left with no option but to accept that this is no self-organized system. On the contrary, there must be some unique Power that has set up, and is maintaining such a boundless and infinitely varied system.

This very organization and discipline that is found among the macrosystems is also extant in microsystems. According to the latest research, an atom is the smallest of all the known ‘worlds’, being too small to be observed even by the most powerful of microscopes. (A recently developed one is capable of magnifying an object one hundred thousand times). As far as the optical range of a human being is concerned, an atom is non-existent. But astonishingly, within such an infinitesimal particle, there exists (according to the Bohr Theory) a revolving system just like our solar system. This consists of a positively charged central core, the nucleus, surrounded by one or more negatively charged planetary electrons. Between these there are surprisingly huge gaps. Even in a substance of great density, like a piece of lead, in which one might expect the atomic particles to be rigidly compressed, the electrically-charged particles occupy barely one out of a thousand million parts of the volume and the remaining portion is vacant. The revolution of the electrons around the nucleus is so swift as to be undetectable at any given point. On the contrary, they appear to be omnipresent in their orbit, making, as they do, a thousand billion rounds within a single second.

If science can suppose the existence of a barely comprehensible and totally unobservable organization simply because, without such a supposition, the mechanism of an atom cannot be explained, why should not the same logic apply to the supposition that there is an organizer without whom no organization is possible within the atom?

Now let us turn to human biology to see how the different parts of the human body perform vital and highly complex functions in perfect co-ordination with one another.

The Brain is the central office which controls, directs and coordinates the varied activities of all the innumerable organs of the body. It receives messages from each of the senses, interprets them, sends the proper replies to the organs concerned so that the body reacts appropriately (jumps out of the way of an approaching car, for instance), and registers all the information received in the archives of the memory. Think of a huge telephone exchange in continual contact with every man, woman and child on earth, sending and receiving messages to and from each one every few seconds—and you have a faint idea of the incredibly complex organization of the brain.

In the white and grey matter of the brain, there are nearly a thousand million nerve cells, each of which is, by turns, an electric battery and a small telegraph transmitter. Each cell branches out into a number of fine conducting threads, the nerve fibres, which extend to all parts of the body. A large number of them run down the hollow backbone, twisted together into a thick cable, the spinal cord, admirably protected by the bony and well-cushioned walls of the spine. Through these tiny threads, each of which is covered with an insulating sheath, current flows at the speed of about 70 m.p.h, carrying messages to and from the brain, with marvellous speed and accuracy. There is an elaborate system of relays, condensers, switches, etc., which permits the transmission of the most unexpected messages between the brain and each of the millions of cells it controls, without the least confusion or delay.

The most complicated radio station, the most up-to-date telephone exchange is like a tin of sardines compared to the incredibly elaborate maze of the nerve system of the brain.

The Ear: Long before man discovered wireless, the ear knew all that was to be known about the reception of sound waves. The human ear consists of a funnel, beautifully adapted to pick up sounds and equipped with fleshy folds, which enable it to perceive the direction from which the sounds come. Inside the ear, fine hairs and a sticky wax prevent harmful insects, dust, etc. from getting in. Across the inner end of the funnel there is a tightly stretched membrane, the eardrum, which vibrates like the skin of a tabla when sound waves strike it. The vibrations are passed on and amplified by three bones (called the hammer, the stirrup and the anvil) whose relative sizes are precisely adjusted to produce just the needed amplification. Indeed these bones never grow: they are of exactly the same size in the infant and in the adult.

The amplified vibrations are carried by the bones to another membrane just beyond which lies the wonderful organ of hearing, the inner ear. This is a small tube (the cochlea) coiled up like the shell of a snail, and filled with a liquid, in which a harp of 6,000 strings ranging in length from 1/20th to ½ mm., hangs suspended. Each string vibrates to a particular frequency of sound so that the ear can hear all possible combinations of 6,000 different sounds. The vibrations of the strings are transmitted to 18,000 nerve cells whose fibres communicate with the brain.

The Eye is the world’s most efficient television station: it takes flawless pictures in colour and transmits them without the least blurring to the brain. It takes a photographer to appreciate fully the working of the eye. Like any camera, it is a small dark box, with an aperture in front-fitted with a transparent pane. In front of the pane there is a shutter of variable speed (the iris), with an adjustable slit and automatic release. Behind this, there is the crystalline lens whose curvature is continually adjusted by automatic muscles so that whatever is looked at is always sharply in focus. Six large powerful muscles control the movements of the eye and point it in any desired direction.

The delicate parts of this precision instrument are kept clean by the eyelids, which are window-wipers and use a cleaning fluid secreted by a gland at the corner of the eye and poured in through a siphon. A constant temperature is maintained, as in any laboratory with highly sensitive apparatus, by means of a heat regulating membrane, the choroid. The photographic plate of the eye is a small screen at the back, the retina, on to which the images of the things we see are focussed. The retina can take 10 direct pictures each second or 800,000 pictures a day, wiping itself clean after each. It is so ‘fast’ that 30,000 separate points of light can be recorded by a single square millimetre (the size of a nail head) of its surface. All the pictures are in vivid colour, with sharp outlines, and delicate shading; they are, besides, movies and in 3-dimensions, thanks to the stereoscopic focus of the two eyes.

The Heart is a small organ, about the size of the fist, (4 inches long and 2 ½ inches broad), weighing not much more than eight ounces, yet this small pump can work prodigiously. It keeps on pumping day and night for a whole life-time without the least pause, rating some 100,000 strokes a day and sending about a gallon of blood circulating through the body, once every 13 seconds. In a single day, the heart pumps enough blood to fill a good-sized oil truck; in a single year it could fill a train of 65 large oil wagons.

The heart is specially built for the immense job it has to do. Its walls are made up of very tough muscular fibres, and it is surrounded by a double membrane (the pericardium) containing a fluid that lubricates its continual movement. The beat of the heart takes place in two steps, as first the upper and then the lower half contracts. This enables each half of the heart to rest while the other is beating. Inside, the heart is divided into 4 chambers, two upper chambers called the auricles and two lower chambers called the ventricles. Blood always flows from the auricles to the ventricles, and this one-way traffic is maintained by umbrella-shaped valves which guard the openings between the two sets of chambers.

Digestion: The digestive system can be looked upon as a factory where food is tasted by the tongue, then crushed by the teeth, moistened with saliva and finally, —after elaborate precautions to avoid shunting mistakes — is pushed through the gullet into the stomach, a chemical plant where the most astonishing changes occur. Here millions of cells, too small to be seen, produce a dozen highly complex chemicals which break up the food we have eaten, whether it be meat, spinach, rice, or cheese, into simpler substances, which can be absorbed by the cells of our body and built up into our flesh and bones. The chemical changes that take place are truly marvellous—well beyond the capacity of the best equipped of our laboratories. And there are five million of these little chemical units in the stomach, some forty million in the intestines, and more than three and a half billion in the liver. They produce, not only the chemicals needed to digest our food, where and when required, but are also effective remedies against diseases like cholera and dysentery. At the same time, the liver manufactures substances which help the body to burn some of the food we have eaten, to provide the heat and energy every living being needs. The digestive system is not only a chemical factory, but a powerhouse as well.

The Lungs: These are organs which bring the blood into contact with clean fresh air—for they knew, long before we ourselves were aware of the fact, that to purify the blood nothing is better than a good bath of oxygen.

At each breath, air is drawn into more than 1,500,000 little air-sacs in the lungs, which if spread out would cover an area of some 200 square yards—the size of a nice little vegetable plot. These little balloon-like sacs are made of a thin elastic tissue which allows air to pass through but prevents blood from oozing in.

The blood is carried to the lungs through 50,000,000,000 tiny hair-thin tubes which form a close network all along the outside of the little balloons of the lungs. Each day they bring in some 10,000 litres of blood. Oxygen is sucked in by the red blood cells, while waste products of the body like carbon dioxide and water are given up by the blood, pass into the little air sacs, and are breathed out.

As long as a child is in the womb of its mother its lungs do not function, and the flow of blood is turned away from the lungs by means of a special little door in the heart. As soon as it is born, the baby, who is on the verge of suffocation, utters a loud cry. The cry produces a whole series of wonderful changes. The great bags of the lungs open and air rushes in to fill them. A great flow of blood is drawn into the lungs which like a violent draught of air slams shut the little door inside the heart which had hitherto turned the blood away.

The Skin, with its vast network of sensitive fibres spread over the body’s surface is equally fascinating. The moment a hot object comes in contact with our skin, or even comes close to it, about thirty thousand “hot cells” feel it, and instantly report it to the brain. Similarly, there are 250,000 “cold cells” within our skin which crowd the brain with messages as soon as contact is made with a cold object. The body then begins to shiver and veins in the skin become dilated in order to make up for the loss of warmth in the body. When intense heat is “reported” to the brain, three million perspiratory glands are activated to release the cool fluid we recognise as perspiration. The nervous system is divided into different parts, one of them being the autonomic branch, which deals with reflex functions that are performed within our body, such as digestion, respiration, heart beat and so on. This autonomic branch is further subdivided into two systems: the sympathetic system, which causes activity and the parasympathetic system, which serves as a brake. If our body were under the exclusive control of the sympathetic system, the heart would beat so rapidly that death would result. And if our body were left to the mercy of the parasympathetic system, the beating of our heart would be totally arrested. Both these systems function in perfect co-ordination with each other. Whenever our body is exposed to excessive stress and strain, causing a sudden need for extra strength to withstand it, the sympathetic system dominates, making the lungs function more rapidly, and pumping adrenaline into the system from which the body may derive extra energy. But while we are asleep, the parasympathetic system has the upper hand, anaesthetizing all our bodily activities.

Throughout the universe, there are countless examples of such superb organization, far surpassing even the most advanced systems of man-made machines. The imitation of nature has lately begun to be treated as a regular object of scientific enquiry. Until very recently the scope of science was confined to the discovery of unknown forces in nature, and their practical applications. But now the study of various organic systems of nature is receiving special attention in scientific spheres. This branch of science is called bionics. It seeks to understand how nature functions, transmitting nature’s patterns into mechanical form, in order to solve the myriad problems, which arise in the field of engineering.

Such imitations of natural systems in the field of technology is well illustrated by the camera, which is in fact, a mechanical reproduction of the function of the eye. The lens, the diaphragm and the photosensitive film correspond respectively to the outer layer of the eyeball, the iris and the retina. No one in his right mind would claim that a camera had come into existence accidentally, but there are a good number of intellectuals in this world who believe that an eye came into existence by the merest chance.

At the Moscow University, a device has been developed for the detection and measurement of infrasonic vibrations. It is five times more powerful than the conventional apparatus, being able to detect and report the approach of a storm twelve to fifteen hours in advance. What was it, which provided the pattern? Credit must go to the humble jellyfish whose organs are highly sensitive to infrasonic vibrations. Engineers simply imitated them. Similarly, the radar, a device of prime importance in defence technology, is a mechanical copy of the bat’s use of sonic waves to compensate for its blindness.

These are but a few of the many examples. Physical science and technology have, in fact, received hints from nature on innumerable occasions for the development of novel concepts. In this way, many problems that still remain an enigma to scientists have often been solved by nature long before. Yet, but for the human mind, the camera and the teleprinter system could not have come into existence.

It is even more unthinkable that the formidably complicated system of the universe could have come into existence without there having been a creative intelligence behind it. There is something quite irrational in refusing to believe in an Organizer of an organized universe. The human mind has, indeed, no rational grounds for denying the existence of God.

The universe is not just a heap of garbage. Quite the contrary. It is invested with a profound significance. This fact explicitly shows that some Mind is at work behind the creation and sustenance of the universe. It is impossible for anything to be as meaningful as the universe is without an intellectual planning behind it. A universe coming into existence by a blind, materialistic process could never evince such sequence, order and meaningfulness. The universe is such a wonderfully balanced organization that it is quite inconceivable that the order and balance could have come about accidentally. In his book Man Does Not Stand Alone, A. Cressy Morrison points out that:

So many essential conditions are necessary for life to exist on our earth that it is mathematically impossible that all of them could exist in proper relationship by chance on any one earth at one time. Therefore, there must be in nature some form of intelligent direction. If this be true, then there must be a purpose.

In support of this view, we reproduce below a paper on this subject written by Frank Allen, a prominent biophysicist whose specializations are colour vision, physiological optics, liquid oil production and glandular mutations.

It has often been made to appear that the material universe has not needed a Creator. It is undeniable, however, that the universe exists. Four solutions of its origin may be proposed: first, that it is an illusion—contrary to the preceding statement; second, that it spontaneously arose out of nothing; third, that it had no origin but has existed eternally; and fourth, that it was created.

The first proposed solution asserts that there is no problem to solve except the metaphysical one of human consciousness, which has occasionally itself been considered an illusion! The hypothesis of illusion has been lately revived in physical science by Sir James Jeans who states that from the concepts of modern physics ‘the universe cannot admit of material representation, and the reason, I think, is that it has become a mere mental concept.’⁶ Accordingly, one may say that illusory trains apparently filled with imaginary passengers cross unreal rivers on immaterial bridges formed of mental concepts.

The second concept, that the world of matter and energy arose of itself out of nothing, is likewise too absurd a supposition for any consideration.

The third concept, that the universe existed eternally, has one element in common with the concept of creation; either inanimate matter with it’s incorporated energy, or a Personal Creator, is eternal. No greater intellectual difficulty exists in the one concept than in the other. But the laws of thermodynamics (heat) indicate that the universe is running down to a condition when all bodies will be at the same extremely low temperature and no energy will be available. Life would then be impossible. In infinite time, this state of entropy would already have happened. The hot sun and stars, the earth with its wealth of life, are complete evidence that the origin of the universe has occurred in time, at a fixed point of time, and therefore the universe must have been created. A great First Cause, an eternal, all-knowing and all-powerful Creator must exist, and the universe is His handiwork.

The adjustments of the earth to life are for too numerous to be accounted for by chance. Firstly the earth is a sphere freely poised in space in perpetual rotation on its polar axis, giving the alternation of day and night, and in yearly revolution around the sun. “These motions give stability to its orientation in space, and, ‘the 23.5 degree axial of orbit, or ecliptic, about the sun results in long winter nights and long summer days alternating between both polar regions and causing seasonal variations in climate’.⁷

The habitable area of the earth is thus doubled and our Earth sustains a greater diversity of plant life than would be possible on a stationary globe.

Secondly, the atmosphere of life-supporting gases is sufficiently high (about 500 miles) and dense to blanket the earth against the deadly impact of twenty million meteors that daily enter it at speeds of about thirty miles per second. Among many other functions, the atmosphere also maintains the temperature within safe limits for life; and carries the vital supply of fresh water vapor far inland from the oceans to irrigate the earth, without which it would become a lifeless desert. Thus the oceans, with the atmosphere, are the balancing wheel of Nature.

Four remarkable properties of water, —its power of absorbing vast quantities of oxygen at low temperatures, its maximum density at 4 degrees C above freezing point whereby lakes and rivers remain liquid, the lesser density of ice than water so that it remains on the surface, and the power of releasing great quantities of heat as it freezes, —preserve life in oceans, lakes and rivers throughout the long winters.

The dry land is a stable platform for much terrestrial life. The soil provides the minerals which plant life assimilates and transforms into needful foods for animals. The presence of metals near the surface renders the arts of civilisation possible. Surely Prophet Isaiah is right (45:18 R.S.V.) in saying of God: ‘He did not make it chaos: He formed it to be inhabited.’

The diminutive size of the earth compared with the immensity of space is sometimes disparagingly referred to. If the earth were as small as the moon, i.e. one-fourth of its present diameter, the force of gravity (one sixth that of the earth) would fail to hold both atmosphere and water, and temperatures would be fatally extreme. If double its present diameter, the enlarged earth would have four times its present surface and twice its force of gravity, the atmosphere would be dangerously reduced in height, and its pressure would be increased from 15 to 30 pounds per square inch, with serious repercussions upon life. The winter areas would be greatly increased and the regions of habitability would be seriously diminished. Communities of people would be isolated, travel and communication rendered difficult or almost impossible.

If our earth were of the size of the sun, but retaining its density, gravity would be 150 times as great, the atmosphere diminished to about four miles in height, evaporation of water rendered impossible and pressure increased to over a ton per square inch. A one-pound animal would weigh 150 pounds, and human beings would be reduced in size to that of, say, a squirrel. Intellectual life would be impossible to such creatures.

If the earth were removed to double its present distance from the sun, the heat received would be reduced to one fourth its present amount, the orbital velocity would be only one-half, the winter season would be doubled in length and life would be frozen out. If its solar distance were halved, the heat received would be four times as great, the orbital velocity would be doubled, seasons would be halved in length, if changes could even be effected, and the planet would be too parched to sustain life. In size and distance from the sun, and in orbital velocity, the earth is able to sustain life, so that mankind can enjoy physical, intellectual and spiritual life as it now prevails.

If in the origin of life there was no design, then living matter must have arisen by chance. Now chance or probability as it is termed, is a highly developed mathematical theory which applies to that vast range of objects of knowledge that are beyond absolute certainty. This theory puts us in possession of the soundest principles on which to discriminate truth from error, and to calculate the likelihood of the occurrence of any particular form of an event (pp.19-23).

A tendency to take human existence too much for granted is easily corrected by considering for a moment the proposition that since the earth is moving continuously at a velocity of one thousand miles per hour (and although our feet are in contact with the ground, we are all of us hanging with our heads down in space), we ought to be cast off centrifugally into outer space, just like so many grains of sand flying off a rotating bicycle wheel. An alarming idea, isn’t it! But, of course, nothing of the sort happens, because, fortunately for us, the gravitational force of the earth and the atmospheric pressure together hold our bodies safely in position on the earth’s surface. This bilateral action keeps us clinging to the earth’s surface no matter in which hemisphere we happen to be. The pressure which the atmosphere exerts upon the human body is the rather surprising figure of 15½ lbs (about 8 kilograms) per square inch. But we do not feel the effect of such intense pressure, because the blood in our bodies exerts an equal pressure in the opposite direction.

On the basis of his own observation and studies, Newton came to the conclusion that all bodies exert a mutual attraction. But he had no answer to the question, ‘Why do bodies attract one another?’ He himself confessed to having failed to offer any explanation for this. On this point, A.N. Whitehead, the noted American mathematician and philosopher, says:

By admitting this fact, Newton has expressed a great philosophical truth, that is, if nature is inanimate, it can give no explanation to us, just as a dead man cannot narrate any incident. All rational and logical explanations are ultimately the expression of a purpose, whereas no ontology can be ascribed to a dead universe.’⁸

To the words of Whitehead, we might well add the query that if the universe is not under the supervision of any intelligent mind, how is it then invested with such profound meaningfulness? The earth completes one rotation on its axis in twenty-four hours. In other words, it is rotating on its axis at a speed of one thousand miles per hour. Suppose its speed was reduced to one hundred miles per hour—which is quite possible, our days and nights would then be prolonged to ten times their present duration. The heat of the summer would become scorching and would reduce the entire vegetation of the planet to ashes during the day time, and whatever survived the heat would be shrivelled up by the severe cold during the excessively long nights. Just one change in one set of conditions would bring total devastation in its wake. Other changes could do the same. The sun, which is now our source of life, could become the most terrible scourge if, for example, the distance between the earth and the sun—approximately 95 million miles—were reduced by half; then its 12 thousand degrees Fahrenheit surface temperature would cause this paper to burst into flames. Conversely, if the distance were doubled, the earth’s surface would become too cold to allow any life to survive. A star, ten thousand times bigger than the sun, would keep the entire earth roasting hot, like an oven. The earth’s inclination in space at an angle of 23 degrees is one of the greatest of marvels to man, because that is what causes the seasons, making the greater part of the earth habitable and providing a greater diversity of plant life. Had the earth’s axis been perpendicular, there would have been perpetual darkness at the North and South Poles, the oceanic vapours would have travelled northwards and the earth’s surface would have been covered in either glaciers or deserts—to describe but a few of the adverse effects. This would have rendered the survival of life on earth impossible. One can go on endlessly imagining different sets of physical circumstances which could have precluded or destroyed human existence. It is unthinkable then, that, the perfect conditions for man to come into existence on earth were simply self-generating and had no origin in divine inspiration.

If we think of what conditions were like at the time of the formation of the earth, it seems all the more miraculous that life could come into being at all. Isaac Asimov has painted a fearsome picture of the beginning of things. Correcting the earlier hypothesis in favour, at the beginning of this century, he writes:

Currently, scientists are convinced the earth and the other planets did not form from the sun, but were formed of particles coming together at the same time that the sun itself was being formed. The earth was never at sun temperature, but it did grow quite warm through the energies of collision of all the particles that formed it. It grew warm enough so that its relatively small mass could not hold an atmosphere or water vapor to begin with.

The solid body of the newly formed earth had, in other words, neither atmosphere nor ocean. Where then did they come from?

There existed water (and gases) in loose combination with the rocky substances making up the solid portion of the globe. As that solid portion packed together more and more tightly under the pull of gravity, its interior grew hotter and hotter. Water vapor and gas were forced out of combination with the rock, and came fizzing out from its substance.

The gaseous bubbles, forming and collecting, racked the baby earth with enormous quakes: escaping heat produced violent volcanic eruptions. For unnumbered years, liquid water did not fall from the sky; rather, water vapor whistled out of the crust and then condensed. The oceans formed from below, not from above.

What geologists mainly dispute now is the rate at which the oceans formed. Did the water vapor all fizz out within a billion years or less, so that the ocean has been its present size ever since life began? Or has the process been so slow that the ocean has been growing all through geologic time and is still growing?

Those who maintain the ocean formed early in the game and has been steady in size for a long time, point out that the continents seem to be a permanent feature of the earth. They do not appear to have been much larger in the past, when the ocean was supposedly, much smaller.

On the other hand, those who maintain the ocean has been growing steadily point out that volcanic eruptions even today pour quantities of water vapour into the air; water vapor derived from deep-lying rocks, not from the ocean. Also, there are sea mounts under the Pacific with flat tops that may have once been at ocean level but are now hundreds of feet below.⁹

Be that as it may, if the oceans had been deeper by just a few feet more, they would have absorbed all available carbon dioxide and oxygen, and no vegetation of any kind could have survived upon the earth’s surface. If the air in the atmosphere had been less dense than it is at present, the twenty million meteors that daily enter it at speeds of about thirty miles per second, would be crashing down all over the earth, burning up all combustible matter and perforating the whole of the earth’s surface. The heat alone of a meteor travelling 90 times faster than a bullet would be enough to annihilate so vulnerable a creature as man. It is thanks to this atmospheric layer being of an appropriate density that mankind is safeguarded against these fiery showers of celestial debris. This density is also exactly right for solar actinic rays to reach the earth in such proportions as will promote the growth of vegetation, destroy harmful bacteria, and make vitamins available which may be absorbed directly from the sunlight through the skin, or indirectly from edible matter through the digestive system. How wonderful it is to have all these benefits in exact proportion to our requirements.

Take oxygen, for example. It is the source of life and is not obtainable from any source other than the atmosphere. But had it formed 50% of the atmosphere or more, instead of the present 21%, combustibility of all matter on the earth’s surface would have been so high that even if just a single tree caught fire, whole forests would at once explode. Similarly, had the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere been as low as 10%, life might conceivably have adjusted to this over the centuries, but it is unlikely that human civilization would have taken its present form. And if all of the free oxygen instead of only a part, had been absorbed by the matter present on the earth’s surface, no animal life would have been possible at all.

Along with oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon gases in their free form as well as in the form of different compounds are the most important ingredients of life; the very foundations, in fact, on which our life rests. There being not even one chance in a hundred million that all these elements should have assembled in such favourable proportions on any other planet at any one given time, we have to ask ourselves how it came about that such freely moving gases formed themselves into a compound and remained suspended in the atmosphere in exactly the right proportions to sustain life. As the noted physicist Morton White puts it, ‘Science has no explanation to offer for the facts, and to say it is accidental is to defy mathematics’.¹⁰

We have to concede that there is a formidable array of facts in this world and the universe, which cannot be explained unless we admit the intervention of a superior mind. For instance, the density of ice is less than that of water, because as it freezes, its volume increases in relation to its mass. It is because of this that ice floats instead of sinking to the bottom of lakes and rivers and gradually forming a solid mass. On the surface of the water, it forms a layer of insulation to maintain the water below at a temperature above freezing point. Fish and other forms of marine life are thus permitted to survive throughout the winter, and, when spring comes, the ice melts rapidly. If water did not behave in this way, all of us in general, and people in cold countries in particular, would face severe calamities. Clearly this property of water is tremendously important to life.

In the world of arboriculture, there are also numerous examples of nature aiding man. In the first two decades of the century, a chestnut blight, caused by the pathogen Endothia, spread rapidly across the forested regions of the U.S.A. It was widely felt that the holes it made in the forest canopy would never again be filled. This was highly regrettable because of the large number of useful things the chestnut tree yielded: high-grade, rot-resistant timber, wood pulp, tannin, and nuts—not to speak of its shade. It also had the special advantage of being able to grow on mountain ridges with scanty soil as well as in rich fertile valleys. The unique position occupied by the American chestnut was unsurpassed by any other species and, until the arrival of Endothia from Asia around 1900, it had truly been king of the forest. Now it is almost extinct. But the holes in the forest canopy were eventually filled. Tulip trees were already there, waiting for just such openings as would provide sufficient light for that shade-intolerant species to develop. Up till then, these trees had been minor denizens of the forest, only occasionally developing into valuable timber trees. Now, chestnut trees are hardly missed where dense groves of tulip trees have become established, these often growing as much as one inch in diameter and six feet in height per year; as well as their growth being rapid, their wood is of superior quality. Can we, in all conscience, say that the master plan of nature is merely a set of accidental circumstances?

In the present century, too, a crisis of a different but more alarming nature developed in Australia when a certain species of cactus was grown on an extensive scale to provide fencing for the fields. Cressy Morrison writes:

The cactus had not insect enemies in Australia and soon began a prodigious growth. The march of the cactus persisted until it had covered an area approximately as great as England, crowded the inhabitants out of the towns and villages, and destroyed their farms, making cultivation impossible. No device which the people discovered could stop its spread. Australia was in danger of being overwhelmed by a silent, uncontrollable, advancing army of vegetation. The entomologists scoured the world and finally found an insect which lived exclusively on cactus, would eat nothing else, would breed freely, and which had no enemies in Australia. Here the animal conquered the vegetation and today the cactus pest has retreated, and with it all but a small protective residue of the insects, enough to hold the cactus in check forever.¹¹

Can such a great scheme of checks and balances, as is found in Nature, develop without any deliberate planning?

Consider the marvellous mathematical exactitude which is to be found in the universe. The behaviour of even inanimate matter is not in any way haphazard: on the contrary, it “obeys” definite “natural laws”. No matter in which corner of the world, at any given time, the word “water” will invariably mean “a compound consisting of 11.1 percent of hydrogen and 88.8 percent of oxygen”. Whenever a scientist in his laboratory heats a beaker filled with pure water until it boils, he knows, without using a thermometer, that the temperature of the boiling water is 100 degrees centigrade as long as the atmospheric pressure is 760 mm of mercury. If the pressure is less than 760 mm, less energy will have to be applied in the form of heat to produce vapour or steam, so the boiling point will be correspondingly less than 100 degrees. Conversely, if the pressure is greater than 760 mm, the boiling point will be greater than 100 degrees. No matter how often this experiment is performed, by ascertaining the pressure, we can, with certainty, predict the boiling point of the water on each occasion. If there were no system and organization inherent in the working of water and energy, there would be no basis for scientific research and invention. Life in the laboratory, in the absence of immutable natural laws, would be a succession of quandaries; it would be a life fraught with uncertainty and doubt, rendering all scientific enquiry futile. Thomas Parks, a research chemist, writes:

One of the first things a freshman chemistry student learns is the periodicity or order found in the elements. This order has been variously described and classified, but we usually credit Mendeleev, the Russian chemist of the last century with our periodic table. Not only did this arrangement provide a means of studying the known elements and their compounds, but it also gave impetus to the search for those elements which had not yet been discovered. Their very existence was postulated by vacant spaces in the orderly arrangement of the table.

Chemists today still use the periodic table to aid them in their study of reactions and to predict properties of unknown or new compounds. That they have been successful is sound testimony to the fact that a beautiful order exists in the inorganic world.

But the order we see around us is not a relentless omnipotence. It is tempered with beneficence—a testimony to the fact that the good and pleasure are as much a concern of Divine Intelligence as the immutable laws of Nature. Look around you at the exceptions and deviations that do, in fact, defy the laws of cold rationality.

Take, for example, water. From its formula weight of 18, one would predict it would be a gas at ordinary temperatures and pressures. Ammonia—with a formula weight of 17—is a gas at temperatures as low as minus 33°C at atmospheric pressure. Hydrogen sulphide, closely related to water by position in the periodic table and with a formula weight of 34, is a gas at temperatures down to minus 59°C. The fact that water exists as a liquid at all, at ordinary temperatures, is something to make one stop and think.¹²

“On August 11, 1999, there will be a solar eclipse that will be completely visible at Cornwall.”

This is not a prediction based simply on conjecture. We know from calculations based on our observations of the solar system’s functioning that this eclipse is bound to occur. We tend to take it for granted that the innumerable stars we see in the sky, like pinpoints of lights, are part of a vast unchanging pattern. But these “pinpoints” of light are actually colossal balls suspended in the vastness of space and, since time immemorial, have been moving in the same fixed orbits with such perfect precision that their paths (and, more recently, that of artificial satellites) can be accurately predicted at any given moment. Right from a tiny drop of water to the greatest imaginable star, the whole range of natural phenomena evinces a wonderful system and organization. The behaviour of such objects is uniform to such a degree that we have been able to formulate laws on this basis.

Newton’s theory of gravitation explained the revolution of astronomical spheres. In accordance with this, A.C. Adams and U. Leverrier found the basis on which, without observation, they could successfully predict the existence of a hitherto undiscovered planet. As foretold by the two astronomers, when on a night in September 1846, the telescope at the Berlin observatory was turned towards the point indicated by their calculations, it was observed that such a planet did, in fact, exist in the solar system. This is the planet we now call Neptune.

Isn’t it preposterous to believe that this mathematical exactness in the universe developed on its own? An aspect of the wisdom and significance found in the universe, which is worth pondering upon is that it has such potentialities as may be exploited by man whenever the need arises. For instance, let us take nitrogen. Human beings and animals would die of starvation if our diet did not contain nitrogen compounds. Each puff of air may contain 78% nitrogen, but no nutritive plant will grow without an interaction between nitrogen and the soil taking place, and there are only two ways that soluble nitrogen can be mixed with the soil to fertilize it. One of them is by the typical bacterial process. Certain bacteria, which live in the roots of leguminous plants such as peas, beans, alfalfa and peanuts, assimilate atmospheric nitrogen. When the plant dries up, some part of this compound remains stored in the soil. Another form of fixed nitrogen, nitric acid, occurs naturally in the atmosphere when lightning discharges. The action of electrical energy on the atmosphere, which dissociates nitrogen and oxygen molecules, allows the free atoms to form nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, and this nitrogen compound is brought down by rainfall to our fields. The amount of nitrate obtained from nitrogen by this means, according to one estimate, is five pounds per acre of soil, in each year. This quantity is equal to 30 pounds of sodium nitrate.¹³

Both these sources have proved inadequate in meeting the nitrogen requirements of man, for fields which are repeatedly cultivated over long periods eventually run short of nitrogen. Hence the practice of crop rotation by farmers. Owning to an increase in population and intensive cultivation at the beginning of the present century, a general deficiency of nitrogen compound began to make itself felt and man appeared to be heading for a prolonged period of famine. It is strangely significant that, at such a critical time, we discovered the method of artificially preparing this compound from the air. One of the several different essays in this field entailed the artificial causation of thunder and lightning in the atmosphere. A force of about 300,000 horsepower was applied to cause this phenomenon, and, as had been estimated, a small amount of nitrogen was thus produced. Man, with his God-given wisdom, had marched one step forward. It was ten thousand years after the dawn of human history that methods had been invented to convert nitrogen gas into fertilizers. This invention placed man in a position to produce this essential part of his nutrition himself, without which, he would surely have died of starvation. It is inspiring to think that, for the first time, throughout the entire history of the earth, man had discovered a solution to the problem of food scarcity at the exact point in time when it was about to cause ultimate disaster to the human species. Many other significant aspects of divine wisdom and purpose are immanent in the universe. All that has so far been revealed by scientific enquiry is quite imaginably nothing in comparison to the facts which still await discovery. Be that as it may, whatever little, comparatively speaking, man has discovered of nature is still too vast in scope to be covered by the present volume. In fact, any attempt on the part of man to list and describe divine blessings would be inadequate. No matter how comprehensive the description may be, the moment our tongues and pens stop moving, we begin to feel that all we have done is delimit rather than describe. Indeed, no account of divine wisdom as manifested in the universe would be complete, even if all knowable facts were to come to light and all human beings, equipped with all of the resources available in the world were to join together in describing them.

And if all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea, with seven more seas to replenish it, were ink, the writings of God’s words could never be exhausted. Mighty is God and wise.¹⁴

Anyone who has attempted to make an exhaustive study of the universe will admit that there is no element of exaggeration in these words from the divine scripture. They are just a plain, unembroidered expression of the truth. In the last few pages, we have referred to the wonderful organization, meaningfulness and extraordinary wisdom which manifest themselves in the universe. The antagonists of religion will no doubt concede that these are facts, but they will insist on a different interpretation of their significance. They do not glimpse, even fleetingly, an Organizer and Sustainer in this universe. On the contrary, they hold that life on earth and the existence of the universe are simply chance occurrences. As T.H. Huxley puts it:

Six monkeys, set to strum unintelligently on typewriters for millions of millions of years, would be bound in time to write all books in the British Museum. If we examined the last page, which a particular monkey had typed, and found that it had chanced, in its blind strumming, to type a Shakespeare Sonnet, we should rightly regard the occurrence as a remarkable accident, but if we looked through all the millions of papers the monkey had turned out in untold millions of years, we might be sure of finding a Shakespeare Sonnet somewhere amongst them, the product of the blind play of Chance. In the same way, millions of millions of stars wandering blindly through space for millions of millions of years are bound to meet with every kind of accident; a limited number are bound to meet with that special kind of accident which calls planetary systems into being.¹⁵

But one of the greatest of our contemporary physicists, Sir Fred Hoyle, asks if it is at all possible that chance could operate on such a large scale, and answers emphatically in the negative. As he puts it in his book, The Intelligent Universe:

‘The Universe, as observed by astronomers, would not be large enough to hold the monkeys needed to write even one scene from Shakespeare, or to hold their typewriters, and certainly not the wastepaper baskets needed for the rubbish they would type.’

None of our sciences, up till now, has unearthed any such “chance occurrence” as could have accounted for such a great, meaningful and permanent phenomenon as the universe. Of course, there are certain random happenings which do explain certain aspects of nature. For instance, a gust of wind sometimes carries away pollen grains from a red-coloured rose and, with them, pollinates the stigma of a white-coloured rose. This cross-pollination produces pink-coloured roses. But such an incident is only a minor event in the entire existence of the rose. Its continued presence under specific conditions in this universe, and its wonderful adaptation to the whole physical system of the rest of the world, can never be fully understood simply by ascribing these things to a random flow of air. The term ‘chance occurrence’ expresses one facet of the truth, but as an explanation for the existence of the universe and its processes, it is patently absurd. According to Professor Edwin Conklin, a biologist at Princeton University, “The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.’¹⁶

It is said that an explanation for the existence and working of the universe with reference to ‘chance’ is not just a haphazard guess but, in the words of Sir James Jeans, is based on ‘purely mathematical laws of chance’ (The Mysterious Universe, p. 3). An author writes: ‘Now chance, or probability as it is termed, is a highly developed mathematical theory which is applied to that vast range of objects of knowledge that are beyond absolute certainty. This theory puts us in possession of the soundest principles on which to discriminate truth from error, and to calculate the likelihood of the occurrence of any particular form of an event.¹⁷

Even if we take it for granted that matter, in a crude form, spontaneously originated in the universe, and that a chain of voluntary action and reaction is responsible for creation, (although such an assumption is baseless) we have no adequate explanation for the existence of the universe. Unfortunately for the antagonists of religion, the same mathematics that provides them with the golden key of the Law of Chance, rules out the possibility of the Law of Chance having been the cause of the present universe, for, in calculating the age and dimensions of our world, Science shows that Chance falls far short of explaining the facts. In a chapter on the uniqueness of our world, from his book, Man Does Not Stand Alone, Cressy Morrison offers a telling illustration of this point:

Suppose you take ten pennies and mark them from 1 to 10. Put them in your pocket and give them a good shake. Now try to draw them out in sequence from 1 to 10, putting each coin back in your pocket after each draw.

Your chance of drawing No. 1 is 1 to 10. Your chance of drawing 1 and 2 in succession 1 in 100. Your chance of drawing 1, 2 and 3 in succession would be one in a thousand. Your chance of drawing 1, 2, 3 and 4 in succession would be one in 10,000 and so on, until your chance of drawing from No. 1 to No. 10 in succession would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance in 10 billion. The object in dealing with so simple a problem is to show how enormously figures multiply against chance.

Sir Fred Hoyle similarly dismisses the notion that life could have started by random processes:

Imagine a blindfolded person trying to solve the Rubik cube. The chance against achieving perfect colour matching is about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. These odds are roughly the same as those against just one of our body’s 200,000 proteins having evolved randomly, by chance.

Now, just imagine, if life as we know it had come into existence by a stroke of chance, how much time would it have taken? To quote the biophysicist, Frank Allen:

Proteins are the essential constituents of all living cells, and they consist of the five elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur, with possibly 40,000 atoms in the ponderous molecule. As there are 92 chemical elements in Nature, all distributed at random, the chance that these five elements may come together to form the molecule, the quantity of matter that must be continually shaken up, and the length of time necessary to finish the task, can all be calculated. A Swiss mathematician¹⁸, Charles Eugene Guye, has made the computation and finds that the odds against such an occurrence are 101⁶⁰ to 1, or only one chance in 10¹⁶⁰, that is 10 multiplied by itself 160 times, a number far too large to be expressed in words. The amount of matter to be shaken together to produce a single molecule of protein would be millions of times greater than that in the whole universe. For it to occur on the earth alone would require many, almost endless billions (10243) of years.

Proteins are made from long chains called amino acids. The way those are put together matters enormously. If in the wrong way, they will not sustain life and may be poisons. Professor J.B. Leathes (England) has calculated that the links in the chain of quite a simple protein could be put together in millions of ways (10⁴⁸). It is impossible for all these chances to have coincided to build one molecule of protein.

But proteins as chemicals are without life. It is only when the mysterious life comes into them that they live. Only a Infinite Mind, that is God, could have foreseen that such a molecule could be the abode of life, could have constructed it, and made it live.¹⁹

Science, in attempting to calculate the age of the whole universe, has placed the figure at 50 billion years. Even such a prolonged duration is too short for the necessary proteinous molecule to have come into existence in a random fashion. ‘When one applies the laws of chance to the probability of an event occurring in Nature, such as the formation of a single protein molecule from the elements, even if we allow three billion years for the age of the earth or more, there isn’t enough time for the event to occur.²⁰

There are several ways in which the age of the earth may be calculated from the point in time at which it solidified. The best of all these methods is based on the physical changes in radioactive elements. Because of the steady emission or decay of their electric particles, they are gradually transformed into radio-inactive elements, the transformation of uranium into lead being of special interest to us. It has been established that this rate of transformation remains constant irrespective of extremely high temperatures or intense pressures. In this way, we can calculate for how long the process of uranium disintegration has been at work beneath any given rock by examining the lead formed from it. And since uranium has existed beneath the layers of rock on the earth’s surface right from the time of its solidification, we can calculate from its disintegration rate the exact point in time when the rock solidified. In his book, Human Destiny, Le Comte Du Nouy has made an excellent, detailed analysis of this problem:

It is impossible because of the tremendous complexity of the question to lay down the basis for a calculation which would enable one to establish the probability of the spontaneous appearance of life on earth (p. 33).

The volume of the substance necessary for such a probability to take place is beyond all imagination. It would be that of a sphere with a radius so great that light would take 10⁸² years to cover this distance. The volume is incomparably greater than that of the whole universe including the farthest galaxies, whose light takes only 2x10⁶ (two million) years to reach us. In brief, we would have to imagine a volume more than one sextillion, sextillion, sextillion, times greater than the Einsteinian universe (p. 34).

The probability for a single molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by the action of chance and normal thermic agitation remains practically nil. Indeed, if we suppose 500 trillion shakings per second (5x10¹⁴), which corresponds to the order of magnitude of light frequency (wave lengths comprised between 0.4 and 0.8 microns), we find that the time needed to form, on an average, one such molecule (degree of dissymmetry 0.9) in a material volume equal to that of our terrestrial globe is about 10²⁴³ billions of years (1 followed by 243 zeros) (p. 34).

But we must not forget that the earth has only existed for two billion years and that life appeared about one billion years ago, as soon as the earth had cooled (1x10⁹ years) (p. 34).

Life itself is not even in question but merely one of the substances which constitute living beings. Now, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary. We would need much greater figures to “explain”, the appearance of a series of similar molecules, the improbability increasing considerably, as we have seen for each new molecule (compound probability), and for each series of identical throws.

If the probability of appearance of a living cell could be expressed mathematically the preceding figures would seem negligible. The problem was deliberately simplified in order to increase the probabilities (p. 35).

Events which, even when we admit very numerous experiments, reactions, or shakings per second, need an infinitely longer time than the estimated duration of the earth in order to have one chance, on an average, to manifest themselves can, it would seem, be considered as impossible in the human sense (p. 36).

It is totally impossible to account scientifically for all phenomena pertaining to life, its development and progressive evolution, and that, unless the foundations of modern science are overthrown, they are unexplainable.

We are faced by a hiatus in our knowledge. There is a gap between living and non-living matter which we have not been able to bridge (p. 36).

The laws of chance cannot take into account or explain the fact that the properties of a cell are born out of the coordination of complexity and not out of the chaotic complexity of a mixture of gases. This transmissible, hereditary, continuous coordination entirely escapes our laws of chance.

Rate fluctuations do not explain qualitative facts, they only enable us to conceive that they are not impossible qualitatively (p. 37).

Such calculations show that at least 1400 million years have elapsed since the process of rock-solidification took place. These estimates are based on a study of those rocks which are known to be the oldest on our planet. J.W.N. Sullivan puts the earth’s age at two thousand million years—a moderate estimate by his own account. When a period of trillions and trillions of years would be required for a single non-living proteinous molecule to develop in a purely random way, we have to ask ourselves how more than ten lakh species of animals with fully developed bodies, and more than two lakh species of plants could have originated upon the surface of the earth within the relatively short period of two thousand million years.

And how was it that innumerable members of each species reproduced themselves and became widespread throughout the land and the oceans? Is it really conceivable that within such a short span of time, a superior creature like man could have evolved from inferior living organisms, and all just by the merest chance?

The theory of evolution is based upon a certain incidence of chance mutations—accidental variations—among the different species. But even supposing rare mutations conferring a 1% advantage did occassionally occur, just how rapidly could they be accumulated in a species? Patan, in his Mathematical Analysis of the Evolution Theory, has shown that it would take about 1,000,000 generations to effect a population-breeding true for this new mutation. Certainly, even granting the immense periods of time postulated by geologists, it is difficult to see how such a relatively modern animal as the horse would have evolved from its presumed five-toed dog-like ancestor since the relatively recent Eocene times.²¹

This detailed analysis has been made here simply to expose the absurdity of the “chance occurrence” theory. Neither an atom nor a molecule, nor the mind which applies itself to how the universe originated, could have come into existence by pure “chance”. No matter how long a period may be presumed for it, the theory of chance occurrence is impossible, not only from the mathematical point of view, but also from the standpoint of common sense. As a theory, it just does not carry any weight.

An American physiologist, Dr. Andrew Conway Ivy writes: “It is many times more absurd to believe that this causal chain came from nothing, and was due to chance, than it would be to believe that you could get a map of the world by spilling a glass of water on the floor.”²²

It may well be asked where the floor, the gravitational force of the earth, the water and the glass came from in order to bring about this ‘chance occurrence.’

Haeckel, a noted biologist, claimed, “Give me air, water, chemical elements and time and I will make a man.” This claim obviously implied that God was not necessary for such a feat. But by admitting the prior presence of the man – himself – and the material conditions essential for the success of his project, he unwittingly demonstrated the vacuity of such a notion.

Dr. Morrison has rightly said: “While asserting this, Haeckel overlooked the problem of genes and life itself. To bring a man into existence, first of all he would have to obtain the invisible atoms. Then, after putting them in a specific order, he would have to construct a gene and import life to it. Even then, the probability of its chance creation is one in crores. But even supposing that he succeeded, he could not call it an ‘accident’. On the contrary, he would regard it as the outcome of his own intelligence.²³

In the following statement of belief, George Earl Davis, an American physicist, makes, perhaps, the best summing up of the situation: ‘If a universe could create itself, then it would embody in itself the powers of a Creator, a God, and we should be forced to conclude that the universe itself is a God. Thus the existence of a God would be admitted, but in the peculiar form of a God that is both supernatural and material. I choose to conceive of a God who has created a material universe not identical with Himself but dominated and permeated by Himself.²⁴

Notes

1.        “Je pense, donc je suis.”

2.        John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (New York, Columbia University Press, 1960), p.30.

3.        Evidence of God, pp. 50-51.

4.        The Mysterious Universe, p. 133.

5.        Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944), noted British physicist and astronomer.

6.        The Mysterious Universe, p. 169.

7.        Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. I, p. 954.

8.        The Age of Analysis, p. 85.

9.        Please Explain, pp. 65-65.

10.      The Age of Analysis, p. 33.

11.      Man Does Not Stand Alone, pp. 78-79.

12.      Evidence of God, pp. 74-75.

13.      Lyon, Buckman and Brady, The Nature and Properties of Soils.

14.      Quran, 31:27.

15.      Quoted by Sir James, The Mysterious Universe, pp. 3-4.

16.      The Evidence of God, p. 174.

17.      Ibid., p. 23.

18.      Quoted by V.H. Mottram in the organ of the British Broadcasting Corporation, April 22, 1948.

19.      Evidence of God, pp. 23-24.

20.      The Evidence of God, p. 160.

21.      Ibid, p. 117.

22.      Ibid, p. 239.

23.      Man Does Not Stand Alone, p. 87.

24.      Ibid, p. 71.