Our awesome God!

Our God is an awesome God.  A God of power and majesty!

Science tells us about the events that have caused the world to be the way it is today. I believe the things that science tells us. Geology, physics, cosmology, biology. I understand them. I accept the evidence and the conclusions. The Bible story of creation, I do not believe.  They are the tales of people who, long ago, did not know how the universe works. They are simplistic explanations.  However, none of these facts threaten God.  To me, what science reveals actually magnifies the power of our awesome God.  Our God is not a man working day by day to create a single planet in just six days and, in doing so, becoming so exhausted that he has to rest for the seventh.

There are so many things that have to be just right for us to exist and I think it unreasonable to attribute these to blind chance.

Firstly we live in a universe where the laws of physics allow complex matter to exist.  Change just a few of the basic constants of the laws our universe follows and energy could not give rise to matter or, if it did, it would not be the matter that makes the universe we see. Alter the power of gravity slightly and there would be no condensation of matter into stars. The universe would be filled with simple matter, floating in the void.  We are made of star dust, every single one of us. Without stars there would be no complex atoms that make up the molecules of everything from the atmosphere, to bacteria, to mice, to men. It is within the nuclear furnace of stars that our constituent atoms were made.  Even if gravity was the same, change the energies of the constituents of atoms and nuclear fusion would not occur. We would have condensed matter forming giant blobs. Black holes travelling through space, devouring the rest of the matter that did exist. Without the laws of physics, as they exist, no nuclear fusion means no complex atoms, means no life, no us.

We have observed planets around other stars,  there is no law that says that planets should be ordered as they are in our solar system: Rocky inner planets with massive gaseous outer planets. Other systems have things the other way around, with massive planets, larger than Jupiter, orbiting their stars so closely as to be boiling hot, instead of being out in the cold as our Jupiter is.  Our beautiful Earth is a Goldilocks planet.  Like baby bear's porridge, it is just right.

Complex life depends upon water.  Despite what science fiction writers have said, that statement isn't just a lack of imagination. It is a fact.  It is possible that lifelike processes could occur in other chemical media but other substances tend to liquify at much lower or higher temperatures than water. At lower temperatures chemistry itself slows down.  The available energy is much less than at the temperature at which water is liquid. Some form of life might exist in very low temperatures but it would progress so slowly that it would not become advanced in the period that the universe has existed.  At too high a temperature chemical bonds are too unstable. A living being has to be able to maintain its own integrity and be able to pass on information to the next generation.  Higher temperatures make this far less likely to happen.  Heat is energy.  Make bonds too energetic and they are unstable.

So, life needs liquid water. Water is only liquid at a short range of temperatures.  Too low and it freezes into a solid, in which chemical reactions are too slow.  Too high and water vapourises. No longer liquid, it can not be the medium in which chemical reactions occur.  Our Earth is in just the right place to maintain liquid water on most of the surface. Any closer to the sun and the seas would boil. Any further out and they would solidify.

Our planet is just the right size too.  If the Earth was smaller then its gravitational field would not be strong enough to hold on to an atmosphere.    Unless they are at absolute zero (-460F) all molecules are in motion.  High up in the atmosphere fast moving molecules can reach escape velocity and shoot off into space.   Escape velocity is the speed at which something has to travel in order to leave a planet. That speed depends on the gravity of an object, which depends on its mass.  A smaller planet, composed of the same elements as the Earth, would have a lower mass, a lower gravitational field and, therefore, a lower escape velocity.  It's atmosphere would boil away. Just as that of Mars did.   A planet could have the same mass as the Earth and be smaller but that would mean that it would have to be composed of different materials. If it only contained the heavier elements then it would not contain those required for complex life.  A planet with a larger mass than the Earth has a greater gravity.  It will, therefore, accumulate a larger atmosphere, like the familiar gas giants of our own solar system. This will include the heavier gasses like Carbon dioxide.  Such a planet would have a higher greenhouse effect and thus higher surface temperatures such as those found on our sister planet Venus.  Geologists also theorise that a rocky planet, larger planet than the Earth, would have too thick and rigid a crust to allow plate techtonics.  With no wandering, colliding plates there would be no mountain building, no erosion and complex chemical interactions between the materials of the crust and the atmosphere. Such a planet would not only have greater zoning of elements into layers within its rocky body but also rock and atmosphere would be separated by ocean.

Our planet has just the right amount of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to make Earth habitable for complex living things such as ourselves.  Much more and the Earth would experience a run-away warming, similar to Venus. Much less and we would enter an ice age.

The Earth's orbit is virtually (but not quite) a perfect circle around the sun. This is true of most of the planets in our solar system.  Mercury is the exception.  Orbital eccentricity is measured on a scale of 0 to 1. With 0 being a perfect circle. That is, at all times of the year a planet with an orbital eccentricity of 0, is the same distance from its star.  The Earth's eccentricity is 0.017. That of Mercury 0.206.  Of the 1,000 or so planets detected outside our solar system, the large majority have much more eccentric orbits, many with eccentricities greater than 0.3.  This means that the temperature on the planet's surface would vary greatly between closest and furthest approach. Summers would be incredibly hot and winters terribly cold.  Life, particularly complex life, would have a tough time on such a planet.

Jupiter is in just the right place and acts as the guardian of the Earth.  In the majority of the other solar systems where planets have been discovered, the large gas giants are close to their star.  They zip around it in a few days rather than the 12 Earth years that Jupiter takes to go around our sun.  In its distant orbit, Jupiter acts a gatekeeper. There are all sorts of giant lumps of rock and ice travelling around space at high speeds. If they reach the inner solar system then they can hit the Earth.  Some do get through but most that do are small.  The majority of the large rocks out there get picked up by the massive gravitational pull of Jupiter and destroyed long before they threaten us.  The Earth has been hit many times.  However, it would be much worse without the protection of Jupiter. Constant bombardment with asteroids that rework the surface of a planet, is not conducive to the continuation of life on Earth.

I can not believe that all these things are mere chance.  One or two occurring together could be coincidence.  I therefore believe that, taking all these things together,  it is reasonable to conclude that we exist because our place in the universe was deliberately chosen for us, by our amazing God.