I've read that scientists supposedly are baffled over how our known universe can possibly exist. The deeper explanation of their confusion is a bit tedious. It boils down to the vastness of what we know of the expanding universe being filled with both matter and antimatter, which oppose and cancel out as they interact.
The hard question then becomes why antimatter didn't simply annihilate matter at the moment of the so-called Big Bang event. "The universe should not actually exist," said Christian Smorra, a physicist at CERN's Baryon-Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment.
Anyone not willing to acknowledge the handiwork of a creator in fashioning this exquisitely intricate planet and universe won't discover a valid answer. I became assured years ago based on science, not organized religion, oddly enough, that it's preposterous to contend this dreamlike existence we share is accidental.
EveryStudent.com reporter Marilyn Adamson provides but a smattering of the scientific evidence for the existence of God I'm speaking about.
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Our planet's size is ideal with a gravity field that captures a layer of oxygen and nitrogen gases extending some 50 miles above its surface. Any smaller, and our crucial atmosphere would be impossible. If larger, the atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter. Ours is the only known planet possessing the precise mixture of gases necessary for human, animal and plant life.
Our planet is constantly tilted at 23.5 degrees and located exactly the right distance from the sun to foster life, all the while rotating on its axis around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour. If tilted differently or any closer we'd either fry or freeze.
The moon is the required size and distance from Earth to maintain our axial tilt, and its gravitational pull creates vital ocean tides and movements.
Speaking of water, nothing survives without it. Living creatures consist largely of water (about two-thirds of the human body). The characteristics of water are uniquely suited for life.
There's a wide margin between water's boiling and freezing points, enabling us to live in an environment of fluctuating temperatures, while maintaining our body temperature. It is a universal solvent, with properties that allow it to transport minerals, nutrients and chemicals throughout the human body.
Water is chemically neutral and enables food, medicine and minerals to become absorbed and used by the body without affecting those substances. Its unique surface tension enables it to flow against gravity to the crest of the tallest trees. It freezes from the top down and floats so fish can live in frozen conditions.
While 97 percent of the earth's water constitutes our oceans, a natural system removes salt from their waters to distribute across the world. Evaporation takes ocean water, minus the salt, to form clouds by which winds disperse water. This astounding recycling and reusing system creates a purification and supply process vital to sustaining life.
Our brains simultaneously process astounding amounts of information, taking in colors and objects we see, surrounding temperatures, sounds, smells and textures. It holds and processes all our emotions, thoughts and memories while keeping close track of ongoing functions of our body such as breathing patterns, eyelid movements, hunger, and muscle movements.
This cantaloupe-sized organ processes more than a million messages a second, all the while weighing the significance of all this data and filtering out the relatively insignificant. The brain's unique intelligence function gives us the ability to reason, produce feelings, dream, plan, act and relate to other people and the world itself.
The eye's beyond complex and amazing characteristics are proof for me of a creator. They can distinguish among seven million colors, focus automatically, and do it all while handling a stunning 1.5 million messages simultaneously. While the theory of evolution is centered on alterations from and within existing life forms, it cannot fully explain the initial source of the eye or brain, or the spark within living organisms from inanimate matter.
There are many such science-based reasons that convince me this entire experience we call life is created by divine intelligence, not the least of which is our DNA. The DNA code in each of our cells, comprised of four chemicals science abbreviates as A,T,G and C. Three billion of these letters exist in each human cell specifically to program cells to act in a specific manner.
In essence, DNA is a three-billion-lettered program and instruction manual that tells a cell how to act. So how, by chance, could such a phenomenally complex and sophisticated information program comprised of chemicals that actually instruct and code in such a precise manner how each person should develop somehow wind up in our human cells?
Think about it all. I have.
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Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 11/05/2017