Evidence for God in Physical Design Archives

August 21, 2023August 21, 2023

How Fast Are You Spinning?

You may think you are sitting still as you read this, but you are actually moving at tremendous speeds in various directions. You are on planet Earth which is rotating on its axis. The planet is also orbiting around the Sun. More than that, our solar system is spiraling around the Milky Way. Yes, the Milky Way is also moving in relation to other galaxies. It’s enough to make your head spin but let’s just look at Earth’s rotation. How fast are you spinning?

Earth’s circumference at the equator is about 24,900 miles, and a day, the time when Earth makes one rotation, is 24 hours. Therefore, if you are on the equator, you are moving at about 1040 miles per hour. Where I am, on the same latitude as Chicago, I am spinning around at 773 miles per hour. That’s because the circle at that latitude is much smaller. Those who live in Anchorage, Alaska, are moving at a leisurely 504 miles per hour. How fast are you spinning if you are standing on the North Pole? I doubt if any of our readers are doing that, but if so, you are just spinning in the same place like a top every 24 hours. Try not to get dizzy.

This spinning of Earth creates centrifugal force, which works against the pull of gravity. At Earth’s present rotational speed, if you moved to the equator from the North Pole, you would weigh about one pound less. Not a very efficient way to lose weight.

What would happen if Earth’s spin increased by one mile per hour? Centrifugal force would raise the ocean’s water level at the equator by a few inches and lower it in the Arctic Ocean. More noticeable would be that geosynchronous communications satellites would be out of their proper positions disrupting GPS services, satellite communications, television broadcasting, and military operations. A ten percent increase in Earth’s rotational speed would make the days only 22 hours long. And you thought you were having trouble getting everything done now. How fast are you spinning, and is the whole universe and our place in it just an accident?

What’s the point of all this? We have often discussed the many things that make this planet suitable for advanced life. Abundant water, a just-right tilt of the axis, the right spin, and a just-right Moon to stabilize the spin and speed. Those are only a few of Earth’s remarkable features. It almost seems that it was designed for a purpose by an intelligent Designer who knew we were coming.

August 10, 2023August 9, 2023

Tell the Clouds What to Do

Yesterday, we asked the puzzling question, “How can clouds float in the air?” Clouds are made of water, which is heavier than air, so how can clouds float on air? The short answer is they don’t. We have two things to learn: the clouds are falling, and only God can tell the clouds what to do.

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, I suggest you read it for background. But, for now, let’s return to where we left off in Job 38, where God speaks of clouds as He challenges Job and his friends. These are God’s words in verses 34-38:

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you?
Can you send out lightnings, that they may go,
And say to you, ‘Here we are!’?
Who has put wisdom in the mind?
Or who has given understanding to the heart?
Who can number the clouds by wisdom?
Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven,
When the dust hardens in clumps,
And the clods cling together?”

God asks Job if he can tell the clouds what to do, sending rain when the ground is dry. Of course, the answer is “No.” Human wisdom and understanding can’t do that, but God can. Before God spoke to him, Job seemed to believe that sometimes God used rain as a form of punishment (Job 37:13). God did withhold rain from Israel for years because of the evil leadership of Ahab and Jezebel, but Elijah’s prayer brought it back.

So does God make a practice of withholding rain as a punishment? Not according to Jesus. He told us to love our enemies, “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45).

We cannot tell the clouds what to do, whether we want it to rain or not rain. Only God can do that, but He is not a punishing old man in the sky ready to withhold rain or zap us with lightning if we misbehave. Many people have that confused idea, but the Bible does not support it. God sends sunshine and rain on the just and the unjust through the weather system He created. All weather conditions occur naturally according to God’s designed system, except in rare cases when He intervened with a timing miracle.

Let’s get back to our original question about clouds. They are water and sometimes ice, so how can they float in the air? The answer is that they don’t float. They are falling very gradually. Any unsupported object will fall to the ground because of Earth’s gravity. As it falls faster, the friction of the air molecules increases.

Any falling object will eventually reach terminal velocity when the friction force equals the pull of gravity. We can ignore the air friction for a bowling ball because it is minuscule compared to the ball’s weight. However, the weight of a water droplet in a cloud with a diameter measured in microns is minuscule, so the terminal velocity may be less than a hundred feet per hour. When you consider that clouds are thousands of feet in the air, that “falling” is too slow for us to notice. The water droplets may “dissolve” into the air before they fall very far. When they converge into larger droplets, they fall more quickly as rain.

The bottom line is, yes, the clouds are falling, but you will only notice it when they fall as rain. The more important point is that only God can tell the clouds what to do. The most important thing to remember is that God’s love sends sunshine and rain for everyone, even for those who refuse to recognize His existence.

August 9, 2023August 8, 2023

How Can Clouds Float in the Air?

The sky is falling! Well, not exactly. Actually, the clouds are falling, or are they? Clouds are made of water, and everyone knows water is heavier than air, so how can clouds float in the air? Have you ever wondered about that? Are clouds floating, or is it an optical illusion? I’m baffled. How about you?

Before we answer those questions, here is another one. What does the Bible say about clouds? Clouds are mentioned many times in the Bible. God gives us a creation story in the Book of Job that expands on the Genesis account. These are some of the words God used to challenge Job and his friends in Job 38:8-9:

“Or who shut in the sea with doors,
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;
When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band;
When I fixed My limit for it,
And set bars and doors;
When I said,
‘This far you may come, but no farther,
And here your proud waves must stop!”

In this poetic account, when the early Earth was a water world, God shut up the ocean “with doors” and told it, “Here your proud waves must stop!” I love that word picture of the creation process! God speaks, and the seas listen! But we are talking about clouds, and how can clouds float in the air?

In this Job passage, God explains something we wonder about in Genesis 1:1, where it says, “darkness was on the face of the deep.” The garment of clouds explains the darkness covering the oceans. Otherwise, we have to wonder why the first part of Genesis 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The heavens would have to include the Sun, Moon, and stars, as well as all of the galaxies and everything in them. Why, then, was there darkness on the water-covered Earth? God answers that question by saying: “I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band.”

Genesis tells us that God divided the water covering the land from the water in the sky, meaning the clouds. (See Genesis 1:9-10.) We read further in Genesis 1:14-18 that God caused the clouds to clear up enough to allow the Sun and Moon to be fully visible “for signs and seasons, and for days and years” and to “give light on the earth.”

We see that God’s description of the creation process in Job clarifies some questions that the Genesis creation account leaves unanswered. But that isn’t all God said about clouds in Job 38. He challenges Job with this question in verse 34:

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you?”

God verifies that clouds are made of water, and as Genesis tells us, God divided the water on the surface from the water in the air. So how did God make the water float in the air? Are the clouds defying gravity, or is this an optical illusion? Is God breaking His own laws of physics, or is He fooling us? The answer is – we are out of time for today. But tomorrow, we will answer the puzzling question, “How can clouds float in the air?”

July 25, 2023July 24, 2023

Acceleration of Time in the Cosmos

The Webb space telescope has shown an acceleration of time in the cosmos. Dr. Geraint Lewis and Dr. Brendon Brewer at the University of Sydney’s School of Physics and Astronomy authored a study of quasars that provides a way to measure time.

Quasars are highly luminous objects in space powered by supermassive black holes. The Webb telescope has observed a quasar that is so luminous it outshines the Milky Way galaxy by 100 times. As a quasar, its variations in brightness act as a cosmic clock. The researchers have determined that time flowed five times slower in the past than in our galaxy today.

This makes no sense to most of us until we remember that God created time. Time had a beginning, and the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 makes that clear. The Bible also talks about things that happened before time began and describes God as being outside of time. (See Proverbs 8:23. Revelation 1:8, 1:11, 21:6, and 22:13/) The discoveries of the Webb telescope and quantum mechanics clearly show that time is not an ethereal substance but a created thing that flows through the physical world.

The measurements of time by the Webb telescope and in laboratories on Earth show an acceleration of time in the cosmos. The Bible refers to God stretching out the cosmos (Isaiah 40:22, 44:24, 45:12, and 51:13). That fits well with the evidence that the creation began with a singularity that was not merely a physical process but also the creation of space and time by the God who exists outside of space and time.

Ancient people looked to the sky and were amazed at the creation they observed. Now that we have better tools and a fuller understanding of the processes, the wonder of creation is even greater than it was in Moses’ day.

Reference: The journal Nature Astronomy for July 3, 2023

July 19, 2023July 19, 2023

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

It’s known as the Sagan standard and abbreviated ECREE. Carl Sagan, an American scientist, and agnostic, hosted the PBS program Cosmos in the 1980s. He said in the series, “I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” He was talking about claims that aliens from space had visited Earth. But we can apply the principle to more than alien visitations.

The truth is that Sagan did not originate the ECREE concept. He just popularized it on television. The idea had been previously expressed many times by others. Even Thomas Jefferson described it in a letter he wrote in 1808 about the existence of meteorites, but he was much more wordy. (He used about three dozen words instead of Sagan’s five.)

What does the Sagan ECREE standard mean? It tells us that when we make an extraordinary claim, we must back it up with extraordinary evidence. How about the extraordinary secularist claim that everything we see came from nothing by means of nothing? If matter, energy, time, and space all originated at the “big bang,” and nothing existed before that, where is the extraordinary evidence to back up that claim? Could an eternal God existing outside of time and space be a better explanation for the universe?

If one claims that life originated from non-living chemicals without intelligent guidance, what is the extraordinary evidence for that? Even if science succeeds in creating life from non-living chemicals in the laboratory (and they are far from doing that), it would merely prove that intelligence can create life from non-life. That is what the Bible has said for thousands of years.

Once life got its start, what is the evidence that it evolved from species to species until it reached homo sapiens? We don’t see any extraordinary experimental or fossil record evidence of that either. To prove that natural selection acting on random mutations could accomplish a task that defies the second law of thermodynamics requires extraordinary evidence, which we don’t have.

We agree with the Sagan standard that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE). The question is, does all that we see in the universe and on our planet give extraordinary evidence of unguided random chance or design by an intelligent Creator?

Reference: Wikipedia

July 17, 2023July 16, 2023

An Astronaut Who Believes in the Bible and Science

“There are no atheists…on top of rockets” is the title of an article by B. T. Irwin, interviewing NASA astronaut Victor Glover. Glover has served on the International Space Station and will pilot NASA’s Artemis II Mission to the Moon next year. Glover is an astronaut who believes in the Bible and science. He talks about how the creation gives evidence for the existence of God.

What is especially interesting is that Glover’s interview was published in The Christian Chronicle, a Church of Christ periodical. The Christian Chronicle has been antagonistic to our ministry because we refuse to dogmatically say the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. The Chronicle has also supported dispensational efforts by promoting Ken Ham’s material and the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter amusement park. Ham’s program promotes the 6000-year age of the Earth to support his dispensational doctrinal views. Victor Glover is an astronaut who believes in the Bible and science, as he explained it in these words:

“The moon is a time capsule for the Earth, and we think it’s old – about 4.5 billion years. And my preacher used to say to me, ‘Yeah, but NASA is wrong because I know the Earth is about 10,000 years old.’ I said, ‘How do you know that?’ He walked me through the lineages in the Bible, and I said, ‘But that doesn’t mark any specific time period.’ And it doesn’t need to because the power of the Gospel is not in a timeline. It’s in that message, in that promise, and that promise being kept. So they don’t actually work against each other like some people like to claim that they do. I had to navigate that because of my faith and my belief in science. I believe in both, and I don’t find them to be in conflict. And I think it’s helped me to be an ambassador to both sides.”

For 55 years, the “Does God Exist?” ministry has shown that science is a friend of faith. We have seen much opposition from the religious establishment as we struggle to undo the collateral damage of the rejection of science. Physical evidence continues to reveal the truth of the Bible. Even when it conflicts with human religious tradition, science is in total agreement with what the Bible says. Let us all pray that some who will not listen to us will listen to an astronaut who believes in the Bible and science. Many young souls are at stake in this false conflict between science and faith.

Reference: The Christian Chronicle for July 2023, pages 22-23.

July 12, 2023July 11, 2023

Searching for Signs of Alien Life

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is searching for signs of alien life in the universe. NASA’s astrobiology program is renewing efforts to answer the question, “Does life exist elsewhere in the universe?” We find life all over this planet. Life is everywhere on Earth, from frigid climates to arid deserts and ocean depths to mountaintops. But does it exist anywhere else?

Currently, NASA is searching for microbial life on Mars with two robotic rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance. Those rovers are exploring rocks in fossilized waterways on the planet, seeking any indication that microbes once lived there. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are working to develop a Mars sample return mission to bring rocks back to Earth for closer examination.

In December of 2018, NASA spacecraft “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer” (OSIRIS-REx) arrived at the asteroid Bennu after traveling for two years. It orbited Bennu to map the surface and find a good landing spot to obtain samples. In October 2020, OSIRIS-REx touched down on the asteroid, procured a sample, and prepared it for delivery to Earth. In May 2021, the spacecraft departed from Bennu and is expected to arrive back home in September 2023. Scientists will then study this very expensive rock sample, searching for signs of alien life.

Astrobiologists are hopeful that Enceladus and Europa, moons of Saturn and Jupiter respectively, might support some form of life now or in the past. The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is also involved in the search for alien life. It can detect “biosignatures” around exoplanets, planets outside of our solar system. In all these ways, NASA is searching for signs of alien life in the universe.

Heather Graham, a NASA astrobiologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, says, “We don’t actually know yet how life on this planet began….” Of course, NASA is looking for some natural explanation of how life began. Graham further said that we must “roll back that clock to see how life began.” Why not roll back the clock all the way to the beginning? Science can’t explain how the universe began. Not very long ago, scientists thought the universe was eternal, and they made fun of the idea that the universe had a beginning. However, they reluctantly had to admit that the evidence shows there was a beginning, as Genesis has said for thousands of years.

Perhaps some are motivated to search for signs of alien life to show that God is unnecessary. Will science someday find that there is life, even microbial life, elsewhere in the universe? Perhaps, but if there is, God created it since He created the universe.

Reference: “Is There Life Beyond Earth?” on YouTube

July 5, 2023July 4, 2023

Asteroid Strike from Space

As our view of space and our solar system improves, astronomers have realized that space is a dangerous place. Space travel requires considering the many ways astronauts can be harmed when they leave Earth’s protection. It isn’t just cold and radiation and the damaging effects of weightlessness, but our solar system is full of rock material left over from the creation process. NASA must keep in mind the possibility of an asteroid strike from space.

NASA has plotted 1000 known “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids” (PHAs). These are documented boulders of rock and ice over 140 meters across that will pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth (about 20 times the distance to the Moon). Were a giant asteroid to strike Earth, the result would be catastrophic. There is evidence that this has happened in the past, probably causing mass extinctions on our planet.

NASA used the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission in 2022 to explore the possibility of redirecting an asteroid away from the Earth. We are talking about a large object, not the small pieces of rock and dust that strike the Earth every day, producing meteor displays and fireballs. NASA designed DART to find a way to prevent a catastrophic asteroid strike from space.

NASA has concluded that none of the asteroids known to astronomers will strike the Earth for at least the next 100 years. God created our planet in such a way that we are protected from destructive agents from outer space. The more we learn about space, the more we see the design and planning involved in creation.

The threat to humanity is what we do to ourselves, not any failure in the design of our planet. God has also given us a way to protect ourselves from each other, and we see that in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Read Matthew chapters 5-7, and you will see what Jesus told us. The selfishness and greed of humans threaten our existence individually and collectively. Human self-destruction is far more likely than a catastrophic asteroid strike from space.

Reference: NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for June 30, 2023

July 3, 2023July 1, 2023

Human Actions Lead to Wildfires

In our part of the country, people will remember the summer of 2023 as the “summer of smoke.” Canadian wildfires combined with wind directions have brought heavy smoke into our area. The smoke has been so dense that a friend living in Chicago told me he could not see across the street – a distance of about 20 yards. In the past, we personally experienced California wildfires and saw their massive damage. The message we need to understand is that human actions lead to wildfires.

God designed the natural world to prevent massive fires from developing. When we allow brush to accumulate, lightning, human carelessness, or arson starts a fire, it will explode into a conflagration of massive proportions. The role of grazing animals is one way the natural world has been designed to prevent these huge fires.

Ireland is a rainy country, but in 2021, wildfires burned near Dublin for six weeks. The fuel for those explosive fires is a flowering plant called gorse. It grows in dense thickets and is highly flammable when it dries in late summer. The removal of an indigenous goat breed known as old Irish goats allowed the heathland to become overgrown. The result was annual fire outbreaks.

By introducing the old Irish goats back to the area where the gorse grows, the plant biomass is no longer a fuel source for the fires. An organization called the “Old Irish Goat Society” (OIGS) has been involved in a three-year project to reintroduce the endangered goat breed into areas suffering the threat of wildfires. One obvious risk in today’s world is that the goats will also eat desirable plants. In the past, carnivores prevented that from happening by limiting goat populations. The OIGS prevents that problem by equipping the goats with GPS colors that set off an alarm when the goats wander too far.

God built into the creation a variety of means of preventing wildfires. Once again, human actions lead to wildfires by altering the original system, which included grazing animals. Yellowstone National Park has similar results with elk herds. We must learn to allow the controlling agents that God built into the original system.

Reference: “Meet the Firefighting Goats of Dublin” in Discover magazine for July/August 2023, pages 10-11.

June 23, 2023June 20, 2023

Glacial Erratics and Time

People living in the southern United States may not be familiar with glacial erratics such as the one in the picture. Glacial erratics are rocks deposited by glaciers that are different from the native rocks in the area. Where we live in southwestern Michigan has many boulders like this. Many of us have at least one of them in our yard. They weigh hundreds or even thousands of pounds. Many years ago, when workers were digging the foundation for a wing of our local hospital, they hit a glacial erratic that was so large no equipment could lift it. They had to break it into smaller pieces to get it out of the way.

What is especially interesting about glacial erratics is that no two of them look alike, and they each have their own mineralogy. Some are a form of granite, some are metamorphic rocks like gneiss or schist, and some are sedimentary rocks like limestone or sandstone. As a public high school science teacher, I used to take my classes to the local gravel pit and have my students see how many different rocks they could find. Once, a girl found what she called “a pretty red rock.” I looked at it and recognized it immediately. It was a piece of jasper conglomerate, a rock only known to exist in an outcrop near Bruce Mines, Ontario – a place where I spent many summers as a teenager.

The question is, how did a piece of rock get from southern Ontario to northern Indiana? I have had students find pieces of pure copper in the gravel pit. There is a copper outcrop in the upper peninsula of Michigan that has the same color and texture as the ones my students found. In fact, almost every rock my students found came from a place far to the north of us where those rocks can be seen in outcrops. It is quite evident to thinking students that running water or wind did not carry those rocks. However, a moving sheet of ice can do it. Today you can go to an active glacier and watch that process taking place.

How long does it take for a sheet of ice to flow from Ontario to Indiana? There are places near Martinsville in southern Indiana where you can find similar glacial erratics. Glaciers bring not only minerals but water to our area. There are hundreds of lakes and ponds in the area where we live. Glaciers are a great tool of God to mold and shape the planet, and we are blessed by what glaciers have given us.
The glacial till we found contained no human remains or tools. The glaciers were there long before humans lived in Indiana. The process of shaping and molding the land took an enormous amount of time, but God created time, and it means nothing to Him. Only human theories and religions demand specific time elements. Truly “with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).