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The Earth - Designed for a purpose By Thomas F. Heinze Even atheists see evidence of God’s creation. I made that point in my last creation email when I considered this statement by the famous atheist Richard Dawkins: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose” (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1996, p. 1). Dawkins admits that living things look designed, but he does not believe they were! He thinks natural selection makes them look designed. Natural selection, however, can’t possibly explain away the things that appear to have been designed that are not alive. One of the most important, the earth that we inhabit, appears to have been carefully designed to sustain life. It’s in the “Goldilocks zone,” not too hot, not too cold, but just right (The Privileged Planet, DVD, 2004). God’s word says that He formed the earth for a purpose, to be inhabited: “For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; … he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited…” (Isaiah 45:18).   Most atheists and many other evolutionists contest this, claiming the earth was the accidental product of an undirected explosion called the “Big Bang.” Who is right?   Let’s examine the evidence.   To be inhabitable, the earth must have the correct temperature, that narrow band of temperature in which water can exist in its liquid state: “If the earth were just 5% closer to the sun, it would be subject to the same fate as Venus—a runaway greenhouse effect, with temperatures rising to nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit” (The Privileged Planet, DVD, 2004).   “Similarly, if a planet is too far from its star, a runaway refrigerator effect takes hold. Green-house gasses such as carbon dioxide snow out, and because snow reflects more radiation than rock does, it reinforces the cooling trend. The planet goes into a deep freeze as Mars has" (Laurance Doyle, Hans-Jorg Deeg, and Timothy Brown, “Searching for Shadows of Other Earths,” Scientific American, Sept. 2000, pp. 63-64).   Liquid water is essential for life, but if water in liquid form exists anywhere else in the universe, it is very rare! Most of the universe consists of flaming gasses or frozen desolation and has no liquid water. The narrow band of temperature in which water can remain liquid is around 32 to 212 degrees F. Temperatures found in our solar system vary between around -450.67  degrees and +11,000 degrees F. The temperature range in which water can remain liquid is so narrow compared to the thousands of degrees of temperature variation in our solar system that it is unlikely to have occurred by accident.   While most materials contract when they freeze, water expands by about one eleventh of its volume. This makes ice less dense than liquid water, causing it to float on top of a lake, preventing the lake from freezing all the way through and killing the fish. If Mars were ever warm enough to have had liquid water, it would have boiled away at only 20 degrees F. above its freezing freezing temperature (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/12mar_waterplanet.htm).   No other planet in our solar system has been found to have a temperature that would sustain life. If the sun were either hotter or closer, Earth would be to hot to sustain life. If the sun were cooler or farther away, earth would be too cold. Even with earth and the sun as they are, if daytime were longer, we would fry, and if the nights were longer, we would freeze. Stars much smaller than our sun lock in their planets so the same side always faces the sun, boiling off any water, while the other side remains frozen. Livable temperatures are hard to come by.   Liquid water, however not only exists on earth, it exists in an amount that permits life; even human life:    “…The oceans contain enough water to cover a spherical Earth to a depth of about 4000 meters. If the surface of the planet varied only a few kilometers in elevation, Earth would be devoid of land. … Continents would not extend above sea level.” To keep some land up out of the water: “required the formation of land masses made of relatively low-density materials that could permanently “float” on the denser underlying mantle while parts of them extended above the sea.” This too seems absent on the other planets we know anything about (Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe. New York: Copernicus Books, 2000, pp. 51-54).   The moon has the right mass and distance from the earth to produce earth’s tides, just right to keep nutrients circulating in the water without covering the continents at high tide. “Years of bouncing laser beams off mirrors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts show that each year the Moon moves another 1.5 inches farther from Earth.” Gravity, in this case the moon’s gravity, does not diminish with the distance, but with the square of the distance, so going back in time, the height of the tides would have increased more rapidly than would appear at first glance. Far enough back in time, huge tides would have covered the earth.   The correct atmosphere is necessary for life. If earth had a bit less gravity we would loose our atmosphere. Too much gravity and it would crush us. Too much CO2, or other greenhouse gases and earth would be more like Venus, too hot to host life. Too much dust in the atmosphere would keep out the sun’s rays and freeze us.   Too much oxygen would make forest fires uncontrollable, too little would eliminate the ozone layer, another form of oxygen that keeps lethal ultraviolet radiation from destroying all life. If the ozone layer were too thick, not enough heat would reach the earth. Too high a percentage of any one of the many toxic gasses would kill us.   If the atmosphere were less concentrated, meteors which are now burned up by heat from their friction with the air would fall to earth burning up forests. The gravity from the big nearby planet Jupiter, which has 318 times the mass of the earth, sweeps up much of the space trash that might otherwise crash into the earth with devastating force.   Earth is also protected from deadly radiation. The earth’s metal core produces magnetism, helpful in protecting earth from harmful radiation (Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, pp. 28-29).   If earth were closer to the center of our galaxy, the greater production of gamma rays and X-rays would kill us. Stars much larger than our sun give off too much UV radiation which destroys organic molecules.   If just one essential condition were not present, the earth could not sustain life. If there were just two factors that needed to be within 5% of the ideal amount to sustain life, the chance of both of them being right by accident would be minimal. But there are not just two, there are many! The evidence highly favors God’s statement that the earth was purposely designed to be inhabited. It is highly contrary to the lucky accident speculation.   Do atheists see the evidence? Yes, atheists are not blind. We all see that the earth is a complicated thing that appears to have been designed to support life, and there is no way that natural selection can explain it away.   Not only does the earth appear to have been designed to be inhabited, the alternative, a long string of highly unlikely lucky accidents resulting from an undirected explosion called the Big Bang, is highly unlikely. Why? Because huge numbers of explosions have been observed. In war they have damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of cities and probably billions of houses, but no observed explosion ever built even a shack. Undirected explosions bring disorder out of order. The percentage of undirected explosions that create order of the type needed to make a planet inhabitable is not small, it is zero. Atheists imagine, “There are lots of planets out in space. That increases the probability.” No! That’s a pipe dream! A huge number of explosions have been observed. Zero percent bring order out of disorder. Zero times whatever is still zero. This line of evidence eliminates the lucky accident speculation. Getting things ordered to serve a specific purpose requires that someone do the ordering. God created the earth to be inhabited!   There is another verse from the Bible that fits right here: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” (Psalm 14:1)   Some who don’t realize that God loves fools may find this verse offensive, but He really does love fools! The Bible says, “God so loved the world.” The world is well stocked with fools and corrupt, no good people that have done abominable things. God loves them all, and saves every one who repents of his or her sins and trusts Jesus Christ the Savior to save him.   Some don’t even know they are fools. Doesn’t matter! Jesus saves all who repent of their abominable deeds and trust Him to save them.   “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).     Books by Thomas F. Heinze Click here to get discount ordering information.

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