History and Archaeology
Three musings on the origina of life.
1. No serious thinker takes the position that at any point in the past there was nothing at all. No scrap of anything. No sign of anyone. Just nothingness, and then somehow something appeared out of nothing.
Oh, wait! That’s exactly the position to which atheistic proponents of the Big Bang theory have now pivoted after originally stating that a “cosmic egg” of matter, space or energy exploded and expanded into our known universe.
After repeatedly being asked the uncomfortable, follow-up question, “But where did the ‘cosmic egg’ come from that exploded?” they have been forced to change their position.
Now when asked the question, “But how can something come from nothing?” they routinely say that it’s a mystery which they hope one day to solve. For me it’s far less than a mystery. I think this view is logical nonsense although I actually heard the eminent biologist and unabashed atheist, Richard Dawkins, respond to this very question about how something could come from nothing by saying that he was only a biologist and that the interviewer should instead ask the physicists.
Clear minds accept the truth that something has to have always existed, and if you accept this fundamental point, then you’re essentially forced into one of two possible conclusions—either God (or some powerful form of life) has always existed and that material things are a direct result of this being OR that matter has always existed and it developed into the world around us (which, of course, includes you and me).
Those are your two main choices (unless you prefer to believe that we exist only in a dream, although even that begs the question, “Who or what is dreaming?”), and for me it takes less faith to believe that God has always existed and that he designed all that we see than to believe that matter has always existed and that over time it became all that we see.
2. Evolution argues that non-living things sprang to life in the distant past (a point that for me raises more questions than it answers) and that they developed over time into man. But why does man have personality? How come we aren’t like the grass and trees? They have life, of course, but I’ve never heard anyone say, “Wow, that rose bush has such a wonderful sense of humor!”
Of course it’s commonly proposed that chance mutations created adaptable life forms, but how exactly does a mutation produce personality? Why do things need personality to survive? For me it follows much more naturally that my personality points to the existence of a Person who designed me similar to himself.
3. It’s quite striking to me that evolutionists propose with such ease that man with all his complexities evolved from a much simpler life form, and yet they would never conclude that Romeo and Juliet could be produced by a monkey tapping away randomly at a keyboard if given an infinite amount of time?
Oh, but they do argue that! Just read the “Infinite Monkey Theorem” on Wikipedia if you doubt me. As a degreed mechanical engineer and a lover of math and physics since my earliest days, I’ll only add that I’m not convinced that this theorem or any like it is mathematically superior to the probability of the existence of God. But that’s just me, and I haven’t even started in on the significance of the second law of thermodynamics.
—Daniel McCabe