Do any of you check out NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day? I remember discovering it several years ago – it’s really pretty neat. All the images/video I’ll be using in this post are from there, used with permission. You can click any image to go to the NASA page – you might just enjoy browsing around there, it is simply incredible! For instance, the image below – at first glance I thought it wasn’t a photo, I thought it must be an artist’s rendering of deep space. It is in fact a image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Orion Nebula. As to thinking it was by an artist … well, that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about in this part of the Truth & Evidences series.

Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s awesome. And I mean that in the true “awe inspiring” way, not just the “Hey, how does pizza for dinner sound?” kind of way.

I’d like to consider three “layers” to this image. One is the simple text on top. One is the way/technology by which this image was captured. And one is what the image is actually a picture of – the Orion Nebula. Which, if any, of these happened by chance?

Let’s take the first (and simplest) layer: the text. Did erosion and mutations of the image file happen to leave blank white pixels in the lower right hand corner, which just happened to shape into letters of the alphabet, which just happened to be arranged in the proper order to spell words, which just happened to be the words that are the title of this post? Is that too much of a stretch? Or did a graphic designer (me! *waves*) purposefully choose and layout those words to be there? Well, let’s stay open-minded about that one, and move on to the second “layer” – how the image was taken. Did a camera just accidentally get dropped into space and happen to travel exactly where it needed to be, capture the image, and random gravitational pulls and solar winds just happened to bring it back to earth, where it somehow managed to arrive safely and was then discovered by NASA scientists? Or, was carefully designed technology called the Hubble Space Telescope’s ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) and the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla 2.2 meter telescope used to build this image, which is a mosaic containing a billion pixels at full resolution and reveals about 3,000 stars? Which is the more reasonable explanation? Ok, now let’s consider the third layer – what it is actually an image of, the Orion Nebula. Was this made by some random explosion caused by energy that just accidentally happened to some matter, which came out of nothing in the first place? Or was a intelligent design involved in this third layer too? Which layer is the most amazing, the most complex? And yet, which layer is it that many would encourage us to see as just an accident?

Now, maybe the Orion Nebula seems a little … well, nebulous. A little hard to grasp exactly how amazing it is. So let’s look at some things closer to home, and see if they show evidence of a designer (like we would easily admit the other aspects of the image do, even down to something as simple as the text I added to the image).

The following is a video, also from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, showing what it looks like to fly over the earth at night. It’s breathtakingly beautiful – but the thing I want to point out specifically is all the lightning which you are looking down on in the video:


Did you know that the rate of lightning on earth must be in a specific balance? Too much, and there would be greater fire damage. Not enough, and there would be too little nitrogen fixing in the soil. We just “happen” to fall in that happy area in between.

This beautiful photo is also from NASA, and is a shot of Jupiter over the city of Ephesus.

Did you know that without Jupiter we would get pummeled with space debris? Jupiter’s greater gravitational pull and position in relation to the solar system causes it to pull in space material, offering us, in essence, a shield. How fortunate, eh?

But perhaps those still aren’t specific enough. Then consider our oxygen supply. Our air is about 20.95% oxygen. We need this amount to live. If it were 15%, humans would suffocate. If it were 25%, fires and explosions would be a huge problem. Also, if earth’s crust was too thick, there would be too much oxygen transferred to it, and we would suffocate – but if it was too thin volcanic activity would make the earth unlivable. Also, we have the proper balance of carbon dioxide. With too much, the greenhouse effect would become too strong and temperatures would become to high to survive. Too low, and plants wouldn’t be able to complete photosynthesis, and we would suffocate. Again, in all these things we “happen” to sit in that happy middle.

The list goes on and on. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has compiled a list, and has worked on calculating the chance that a planet could just randomly and accidentally (that is, with no Designer) happen to have all these traits which allow life. His conclusion was that the chance was 1 out of 10^138. That number is 10 with 138 zeros after it. Numbers that large are too large to even fully comprehend. Just how big is that number? Well, to give you a sense of scale … the number of *atoms* in the observable *universe* is estimated by scientists to be around 10^80 (10 followed by 80 zeros). That is HUGE.

You wouldn’t assume that the text in the first image just happened by chance, and yet that is so relatively simple — how much more complex and perfectly poised is our world. Which of the two is more reasonable to believe just happened by random chance?

Just because we see and experience our world everyday doesn’t mean it’s “ordinary”, or that all the amazing aspects of it are to be taken for granted.
Leave your thoughts and comments below. :)