Nature and the Universe – design not coincidence
Part 3
Close to six thousand years ago a new world was created. Where there had been nothing, there was all of a sudden over a matter of six days a world full of life.
There was a world full of living breathing life-forms many of which were capable of thinking for themselves. When one considered each life-form it would be found that each one had been created according to a set of perfect plans. And each design was so intricate that it could not be duplicated by anyone but the creator Himself. Indeed this entire creation was so magnificent that it would make those who consider it feel small and insignificant in comparison with the one who had created this. One couldn’t help but feel awestruck at the magnificence and glory of He who created such a intricately designed system of life.
In the previous two parts we looked at God’s creation on days one to five. Let’s now look at day six.
DAY 6
On the sixth day of creation this is what the Bible tells us that God did:
“And God said, ‘Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.’ And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth,
and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ “Genesis 1: 24-28
Here we see all the animals of the land being created and then finally man himself.
The animals
God created groups of animals that shared similar characteristics even if they looked nothing like each other. There are such groups as the mammals, the reptiles and the amphibians. When you look at the design of these animals you are astounded by the complexity and beauty of all these creatures that God has created. There are many factors that tell us of the existence of a great creator when we look at animals – consider the following examples.
Examples of the amazing designs of land animals
The Giraffe
The Giraffe demonstrates God’s glorious design. The giraffe’s blood pressure is two or three times that of a healthy man. Because the Giraffe has such a long neck, ten to twelve feet, its heart needs tremendous force to pump blood through the carotid artery to the brain. The Giraffe’s heart is huge; it weighs twenty-five pounds, is two feet long, and walls up to three inches thick.
The Grizzly Bear
The animals bulk did not necessarily inhibit its speed for example, the grizzly bear can run as fast as the average horse.
The Cheetah
The cheetah, the world’s fastest mammal, runs at a maximum speed of sixty to sixty-three miles per hour (100km/hr). Also remarkable is it’s rate of acceleration – it can go from a standing start to a speed of forty-five miles per hour in two seconds (70km/hr).
The Chuckwalla
There is a type of lizard called a Chuckwalla that escapes pursuers by crawling into a crack in a rock and inflating its body with air so that it is wedged tightly into the crack and can’t be pulled out.
The Insects
An animal’s proportions – the shape of it’s legs and it’s wings, for example – are determined by it’s size, and they would be all wrong if that size were changed without an appropriate change in proportions. No insect the size of a man that retained the proportions of ordinary insects could in the earth’s gravitational field walk, fly, hop, or otherwise progress the smallest fraction of an inch.
Fussy eaters
God designed some animals so that they could only survive on certain foods. For example, if the Eucalyptus tree were to become extinct, then so would the Koala as it eats nothing but Eucalyptus leaves.
The Porcupine
The male porcupine has some 30,000 quills on its head, back, flanks, and tail; the belly is the only large area without armour. Once a quill enters flesh, it is difficult to remove, and it tends to “travel”. A porcupine researcher whose leg was impaled with a quill in a laboratory accident observed that it took exactly thirty hours and thirty minutes for the tip of the quill to emerge on the far side of his leg.
The Gopher
The burrowing rate of the gopher is equivalent to a man digging a tunnel nearly eighteen inches in diameter and seven miles long in a period of ten hours.
This is one of the main reasons that animals were created: so that God could be glorified when you looked upon the animals amazing and in some cases staggering design. How could anyone possibly consider evolution as a viable alternative to explain the creation of all living things when one looks at how intricate is the design of the living things on this earth?
The ultimate work of creation – Man and Woman
Of course the ultimate work in creation was the formation of man.
Man was created as the superior to all other living things on Earth. In the passage taken from the Bible above, it says that man will have dominion over all other living things. For not only does man have same technically perfect design that the animals have but he has an extra feature. He has the intelligence to be able to reason things way beyond any other living creature. One of the reasons behind this is the number of genes that a human has inside his body. Scientists estimate that they could fill a 1000 volume encyclopaedia with the coded instructions in the DNA of a single human cell if those instructions could be translated into English.
Man of course was given such superior intelligence so that he could glorify God. God wanted a race of living beings that would be able to make a choice as to whether they would worship Him and glorify Him. Animals could not do this for they didn’t have the level of intelligence to be able to make decisions like this. So we see man as being the final work in the creation process. The creation of man was the final ultimate climax to a line of remarkable creations.
I mentioned above that man’s body was made up of genes. To demonstrate that there must have been a designer let’s consider more closely the wonders of cells, DNA and genes.
The story of DNA
If we look inside a cell we see a nucleus. But if we used a powerful electronic microscope to look inside the nucleus we would some material which looks like a ladder with its two side rails joined by rungs which had been twisted many times along its entire length. This material is DNA.
If you were to stretch out the DNA molecule it would be about two metres in length. If you were able to run your eye along the length of a DNA molecule you would see instructions for making all the different types of enzymes the cell needs. The DNA controls the whole cell because all the enzymes are responsible for making the chemical reactions in the cell work.
It is staggering to think about the amount of information that can be found along the microscopic length of a DNA chain. If we were to look at a simple cell like a bacterium, you would see several million coded bits of information. If you went to a more complex living being like a human you would see between two and four billion!
Only a super intelligent being could create such a complex design. Again, the Bible tells us who this creator is:
“So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good”. Genesis 1:21
The story of the enzyme
In the previous section we discussed how DNA contains enzymes. When you look at a enzyme you see that it is long chain which has been twisted and bent into the necessary shape. Enzymes are designed in a special shape so that it holds the reacting chemicals.
An enzyme molecule is like a long row of blocks with each “block” being a chemical called an amino acid. By selecting particular amino acids, the molecule can be bent into the necessary three dimensional shape. But to create the required enzyme there is only one correct sequence of amino acids. If even one amino acid is in the wrong place, then the enzyme could bend incorrectly, not be able to hold its chemicals and become useless.
So every single amino acid must be in the correct place. How does this happen? Chance? No, there must be a intelligent designer behind it. This is what the Bible says:
“And [God] is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else”. Acts 17:25
Was it luck or was there a designer?
Reproduction of course is an essential part of living organisms continuing to exist into the future. Again we must look at DNA if want to find out how one cell becomes two cells. In order for the new cell to contain the same molecular instructions, the DNA must be copied exactly. But the duplication of DNA only happens through the enzymes…which are produced by the DNA. So it is obvious that the Enzymes and DNA are mutually dependent. The DNA produces an enzyme which in turn produces the DNA. The only conclusion we can get from this is that they both must have originally appeared at the same time! This of course is a problem for those who support evolution – it is the classic “chicken and egg” situation. They admit that DNA and enzymes must have been produced at the same time, it is impossible to reproduce if only one is in existence.
What are the chances that something as detailed and accurate as cell reproduction could have happened by chance? Despite trying, no scientist has been able to prove that a complex system like cells, DNA and enzymes all happened by chance. This complex system can sure prove only one thing and that is that there was a super intelligent designer. This designer is God.
Not only did he design the cells but he then brought them together to create organs and ultimately, bodies. Look at all the animals to see the design work of God. With human beings, he took his design work even further by giving them the ability to communicate to each other and to think logically about things. All of this couldn’t have happened by chance, there must have been a designer. This is what the Bible says:
“[God] gives all men life and breath and everything else”. Acts 17:25
Conclusion
All the things we have just seen are all there because God decided they would be there. When one writer in the Bible thought about God and creation this is what he said:
Praise the Lord from the heavens; Praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; Praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all you stars of light! Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created.
He also established them forever and ever; He made a decree which shall not pass away.
Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all the depths; fire and hail, snow and clouds; stormy wind, fulfilling His word; Mountains and all hills;
Fruitful trees and all cedars; Beasts and all cattle; Creeping things and flying fowl;
Kings of the earth and all peoples; Princes and all judges of the earth; Both young men and maidens; Old men and children.
Let them praise the name of the Lord, For His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the earth and heaven. And He has exalted the [b]horn of His people, the praise of all His saints— of the children of Israel, a people near to Him. Praise the Lord! Psalm 148
Like this writer did over 3,000 years ago, let us praise God for he is indeed the one who created all things.
A man called David wrote these words about the great creator in Psalm 8 of the Bible:
O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth, You who set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained; What is man, that You are mindful of him and the son of man, that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honour. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen - even the beasts of the field; The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, that pass through the paths of the seas. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth! Psalm 8
We see from these words how over-awed David was when he sat down and thought about the creation. Therefore, we should be as well when we consider God’s works which we have heard a little about in this article. In the Psalm, man’s smallness is contrasted with the vastness of the creation and its architect. More importantly, we can see in this Psalm the purpose of God in creating man and the earth. Man was to be made in the image and the likeness of God. And after a period of testing man would ultimately be morally and spiritually like His creator. And it will be at the end of this period when each believer will be examined as to what he did with his live, that a decision will be made as to whether he will enter the kingdom of God.
Once man has successfully passed through a period of trial and tribulation, in which his loyalty and love of God are to be proved by his obedience, he will be exalted to immortality and will be given dominion over all the earth.
We can see the great creation of God every day when we look out the window. With such a great scene before our eyes there should be no doubt that there is a God. The power and wisdom of God is revealed to all men through the wonders of creation. (1) Those who do not believe that there is a God are not without blame for failing to seek the wisdom and salvation of the Creator. Therefore God remains just, in not raising them at the kingdom that he will soon establish on this Earth. A Kingdom where those, who use creation as another way of building up their faith in God, will enjoy the prize of salvation being given to them, so that they can live forever continually glorifying their great creator.
Let us use the things we see in the world around us to motivate us to strive to be in that kingdom that God will soon set up on this Earth. Let us use the creation in the world around us in conjunction with those things which we read in the Bible, to lead lives that will be dedicated to God, who was the power that created each one of us.
Footnote
(1) Have a look at Romans chapter 1 and verses 18 to 21
