Is is Reasonable to Believe: That Our Habitat was Created?
When you (a thinking rational human) look around at the world we live in, how much order to you see? Let’s consider a few things that seem orderly in the so-called natural world.
The sun is a nuclear furnace that warms us and provides fuel for plant photosynthesis that makes the necessary oxygen and food that we need to life. Vegetation (trees) provides food and materials to build homes with as well as fuel for heating and cooking. Without the sun, all life would soon perish. The moon is our other close heavenly light and amazingly it is made of light reflecting material which provides us a degree of light on most nights. The moon is responsible for fluctuations in the earth’s gravity which creates the tides. The tides sweep debris and other waste to and fro like a planetary washing machine. Without the washing of the tides, earth’s harbors would soon become disgusting cesspools.
The earth’s orderly components are amazing. The earth spins and so it is heated more evenly. If it wasn’t, only a thin margin of the earth in the twilight areas might even be habitable. With no rotation, the whole weather system would probably collapse when the water vapor migrated to the shaded part of the earth and became forever frozen. Not only does the earth spin, it is tilted as it travels around the sun so that the suns rays hit the earth at an angle resulting in an imbalance of warming which creates the winds which moves the weather systems around and also provides winds for navigation. The tilt also gives us the seasons.
The earth has huge oceans that absorb heat from the sun which creates ocean currents that are so dependable that humans use the flows to travel to and from distant shores. Our life-giving water is truly a wondrous substance. Is it a liquid, vapor or solid? Yes, is the answer. As a liquid its usefulness is nearly unending. Quenching the thirst of mankind and animals alike, water can be moved in pipes and canals to water parched crops in dry lands. Water’s weight can be harnessed to produce electricity when contained in dams. When water becomes a solid, through freezing, instead of sinking, it floats. It freezes at 32 °F and as a solid, it was available to be cut up into blocks for the use of preserving food before the advent of refrigeration. A few tinkling cubes of solid water in a glass of tea makes it just the right temperature for a refreshing drink on a hot day.
Even though water boils at 212 °F at sea level, yet, it vaporizes and evaporate at a much lower temperature. This allows the water (in vapor form) to be lifted up by the heat of the sun without the salt and other minerals thereby purifying it. Now a vapor, it moves (often onshore) by the winds and as it is lifted by the sun’s warmth or physically lifted by mountains, it cools and clouds form. As it moves higher into cooler air, the vapor coalesces into droplets that soon become too heavy to stay aloft and then falls as rain or snow. Because of this, many large dry areas of earth are available for food cultivation.
Rivers and lakes are formed by the runoff and the ground becomes charged with water providing dependable water for consumption via springs and wells. As the rivers swell with water and flow to the sea, something was needed to slow the waters flow so it could better perk into the ground or be dammed up as lakes and ponds. That something was an special animal that responds to the sound of flowing water with an obsession to stop or hinder the flow. It uses its specially designed teeth to cut down branches to make dams which also contain its den. Of course, we know this animal as the beaver but perhaps you have not considered this animals special contribution for life. The beavers handiwork is so valuable, that mankind duplicated them in his dam building.
Speaking of animals, for humans to exist inland, how about a system of meat protein that comes to where the humans are? A special fish that swims downstream to the salt water ocean where it puts on weight and then at the end of its life-cycle, it heads back up the stream to its place of origin providing food for humans and animals alike all along its way home. This special fish is of course a Salmon; with a special superpower of being able to transition from fresh water to salt and back again to fresh. The salmon was born with an obsession to get back to its spawning place. Consider the impact of birds. They eat seeds then spread them around as they release their waste populating the planet with plant life that convert Co2 to the O2 that we need for life.
All of this together allows life to exist. Not only to live, but to live in many varied places on the globe.
This brief essay has just scratched the surface about the complexity and synergism of these systems, but there is a lot more. Many consider all of this as just part of a grand accident. But when I consider these systems that provide for life cumulatively, I conclude that these systems are orderly and assembled by design. The Designer and Creator has not hidden Himself. He has communicated with us if we will only listen. His name is Yehovah, the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob. In the Bible, through His prophets, He has revealed who He is, what He has done and the purpose of life and where we fit in. He loves us and His plans for us are not only wonderful, they are eternal. Sigh, if only we will cooperate.
Please take a moment from the drama and distraction of your life and consider your Creator. Are you somehow biased against Him or inclined toward Him? The Bible says you can connect in relationship with your Creator if you want to. Jeremiah 11-14: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back from your captivity;…” Please understand that God is specifically talking to the Jews here, but the principle applies to anyone who like Jesus said, “has an ear to hear.”
Here and now, we are similarly “captive” like the Jews were when the above was written. Held captive in mortal bodies in a place where evil and injustice abounds and anything (or anyone) related to God’s morality are hated in varying degrees. Buck the peer pressure, the future is bleak for those who reject God’s gracious and loving offer. Today is the day of salvation, here’s is how: Salvation God’s Way.