Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
When we do our studies at school and at university and in the areas of geography and geology and biology, we have a worldview presented that somehow our planet Earth formed billions of years ago by some sort of natural processes. And over a period of time, of course, it's claimed that random mutations produced all the different life forms on Earth. One of the things that we need to remember with some of these theories that are called the Big Bang and the theory of evolution and this sort of thing is that they are theories.
And probably in terms of the Big Bang and the origin of the universe and the origin of our planet Earth, we will never actually know. Science, in actual fact, can't prove the origin of these things. And it's very important to remember, too, that these theories that scientists are working on, trying to work out theories that can explain things, in actual fact so many of these theories, they're just theories. And they're the types of theories, particularly in the areas of cosmology, that will never be proven. When we look at the theory of evolution, for example, all the experiments that people have done today to date to try and demonstrate how evolution could occur, how the first life could form and so forth, have simply shown us that it's absolutely impossible for life, for a living cell to form from nonliving molecules.
The biochemistry is so complex, the molecules involved are so complex, they can't form by chance in a natural environment exposed out in what would have been the environment on the Earth's surface and so forth. And so in contrast to that, we have the revelation that has been recorded in the Bible, that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth and only thousands of years ago, too, not billions of years ago. And when we look at some of the other verses, though, it points out that the heavens declare the glory of God.
And when we look round, we can see evidence of God's creation. If we look, if we consider that worldview, if we look at the worldview that there was an amazing Creator designer that designed and put in place our planet, our solar system, the universe and life on Earth, it makes so much sense, it fits. And one of the things I'd like to look at is when we consider our planet Earth out of all the, there must be trillions of planets out there, and stars and so forth, when we look at it, out of what we've observed so far, and what we've found so far, we can see, at least in our solar system, it is a habitable planet.
That is, it's the only planet in the solar system that supports life, and it supports forms of life, all forms of life that we know of, from the minutest microscopic organism to huge land and marine animals. I think the blue whale is about 100ft long, 30 metres long. So these are from the tiny little bacteria that we can't even see with the naked eye through to these animals.
But we're in an amazing situation. So we're about 150,000,000 kilometres from the sun, and this gives the Earth an average temperature of about 18 to 20 degrees celsius. So it's not as hot as the planets Mercury and Venus, which are much closer to the sun, and it's not as cold as Jupiter or Pluto, these outer planets.
Now, one of the other fascinating things is that it has an abundance of water. There's a lot of water on the surface of our planet, and this is very unique. And water will only survive on our planet because of this unique position that we are from the sun.
The other thing is that when we look at this biosphere, so this area that constitutes the surface of the Earth, so to speak, so the layer of Earth or ground, that constitutes the couple of miles, a few kilometres of this layer on the surface of the Earth, plus the atmosphere, this has a unique composition that provides us and all the living organisms with food and shelter and clothing and minerals that we can make things. So in this particular layer, we find all the different minerals that we know of.
All the elements are there, it would seem, that we know of, that can be mined. They're available there for us as we're developing all our mobile phones, electronics. We need some of these elements that we call the rare Earth elements, and we need elements like lithium and so forth for the batteries.
And they're all there. And we have plants that grow that provide all these different types of structural materials that we can use to build buildings and boats and houses and clothing. All the different fibres that are available, they're all there.
It's really amazing. And there's also stones like diamonds and sapphires and so forth, that can be polished and made into beautiful items as well. Now, another thing is that the Earth doesn't have the poisonous gases like helium or methane, like Jupiter has.
In fact, the Earth has an atmosphere that is quite rich in oxygen. The Earth's atmosphere is about 20% oxygen. Now, again, this level is just right.
If we had too much oxygen, then everything would burn much more quickly. We'd be in sort of a more explosive atmosphere situation. It seems this 20% oxygen again, is just close to a really ideal level for us to operate.
And the oxygen provides part of this ability to. It's an element with just the right reactivity that it can react with so many things to provide energy, and we can burn as fuels and so forth. Now, again, the way our atmosphere is constructed, it's a sort of a blanket, and, again, seems to be there to protect the Earth from extreme temperatures.
And so when you think about it, the Earth is the only planet circulating our sun on which life as we know it could and in actual fact does exist. And so, again, I'm sure many of you have seen the pictures of the Earth taken from satellites, and you see the green areas and the desert areas and the blue oceans and the clouds. And when we look at from outside, it's covered with green vegetation.
And when we look at the oceans, there's over a million islands, and there's hundreds and thousands of streams and rivers. And then we've got the continents and we got mountains and ice caps and we got deserts that produce a spectacular variety of colour and texture. And it's interesting, my wife was reading some articles about the health benefits of going into some of these areas. When we go into mountain areas and waterfalls and even desert areas, and the peaceful and restful effects that these can have on us. These natural environments that the Earth presents provide a range of different types of the environments. And these natural environments seem to provide health effects, unique health effects.
And there's all different types of life are found. So we find life down in extremely cold Antarctica, and we find little wingless insects, for example, that live down there in patches of moss and lichen, and there's plants that even grow down there in places. It seems that from the highest mountains down to the bottom of the oceans, there's life in different types of life living in these places.
The Earth, of course, seems to be in just the right position around the sun, and it seems to almost be travelling at just the right speed, too. I was reading that if the Earth travelled much faster in its 584,000,000 miles long journey around the sun, the orbit would become larger and it would move further away from the sun. And if it moved too far from this narrow, habitable sun, all life path, this habitable zone, all life would cease to exist on the Earth.
And, of course, if it travelled slightly slow in its orbit, the Earth would move closer to the sun. If it moved too close, we'd likewise perish. It's interesting that this trip, that the Earth moves around the sun at 365 days, 6 hours, 49 minutes and 9.54 seconds, which is a sidereal year I was reading where it's consistent to over a thousandth of a second. And people have done calculations saying that if the yearly average temperature on the Earth changed by only a few degrees or so, much of it's life on Earth would eventually roast or freeze, and it would upset the ice water ratio and so forth. If the Earth rotated slower on its axis, all life would die in time, either by freezing at night because of lack of heat from the sun, or by burning during the day from too much heat.
So there's evidence even that the rate of rotation, not only around the sun, but just on our own axis, is just ideal for preserving life. And when you think about it, scientists tried to produce, come up with all these theories, that this situation sort of arose by chance. When you think about, there's just too many, just right variables.
And our normal Earth processes are very unique in this solar system. And from what we know so far, unique in the universe that we've so far discovered. It's interesting, too, when we look at our atmosphere, and I've often thought about this, when you think of the water cycle where the water evaporates, and then it just hangs up there in the clouds, where it gets colder and condenses and forms the little water droplets, and then it's up there and then it can fall out.
And when you think about it, even the density of water and the molecular structures that come together. So water has a molecular weight of 18, so oxygen is 16 and 2 hydrogens of one each make 18.
And yet nitrogen has 2 nitrogen atoms in the molecule, so its molecular weight is 28, and oxygen, of course, the gas is 32. So here we see that the water, gaseous water, is lighter than the nitrogen oxygen, and therefore sort of would tend to rise and float. So it's amazing how this balance is there, but it all depends on the structure, a molecular structure of these atoms.
And so again, part of the properties of the Earth's surface and the Earth's atmosphere and so forth depends on the chemistry of the actual atoms. And the chemistry of the atoms depends on their molecular structure. And it all fits amazingly.
And this is what one of the things that the brilliant scientist, James Clark Maxwell, who has made great advances in the kinetic theory of gases, verified that light was composed of electromagnet and magnetic fields and so forth. Brilliant physicist who was also a creationist. And one of the things he points out is how did atoms evolve and the chemistry of atoms that gave them the molecular properties of the molecules of those atoms, which again, in turn, enables the very structures that make up life and our environment on Earth.
It's quite amazing. Our present atmosphere consists of, like 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and about 1% other gases, such as carbon dioxide and argon and the water vapour, as we talk about. So, as I mentioned earlier, an atmosphere containing too much free oxygen would be fatal to all of life as we know it, if it was too high.
And because free oxygen would oxidise and destroy a lot of organic molecules required for life. And thus, despite the evidence that the Earth has had a significant quantity of free oxygen, perhaps in the past, we have a lot of oxygen bound up in rocks. Evolution persists in declaring that there was no oxygen in the Earth's early atmosphere.
Again, this would be fatal to an evolutionary origin of life as well. If there was no oxygen, there'd be no protective layer of ozone surrounding the Earth. An ozone is produced by radiation from the sun on the oxygen in the atmosphere, which converts the oxygen (O2) or diatomic oxygen into triathomic oxygen three (O3), which is ozone. So ozone is a molecule of oxygen, where you've got three oxygens joined together.
So if there had been no oxygen in the atmosphere, there'd be no ozone. The ultraviolet light from the sun would be very, on the surface of the Earth, would be very strong, and again, that would destroy a lot of the organic molecules required for life.
So evolutionists face an unsolvable dilemma in terms of the presence of oxygen. So this is very interesting. All these things, again, point to the fact that the system was created as a working system, very much a working system jst in terms of the atmosphere and the requirements of the atmosphere to be just right for life.
Another factor, of course, is water. And water is truly an amazing molecule. So at the moment, the Earth is the only known planet with huge bodies of water, and about 70% of the surface area consists of oceans, lakes and seas on our planet.
And while there are a few other planets that have water contain, they contain water only as moisture, as vapour on the surface, or small amounts of ice or liquid water on the planet itself, very small amounts, nowhere near the large amounts that we have on Earth.
And water has, again, amazing properties and very unique properties, so that water can absorb enormous amounts of heat without a large alteration in its temperature. So that's its specific heat capacity, it's called.
And, of course, that's why water is a very effective coolant in car engines for example. And the heat absorption level is actually about 10 times greater than that of iron or steel. And so during the day, the Earth's bodies of water soak up enormous amounts of heat. And therefore, this helps the Earth stay relatively cool. And at night, they can release heat which they've absorbed during the day and combined with, again, atmospheric effects associated with this, this keeps most of the surface from freezing solid at night. And so if it weren't for the tremendous amounts of water on the Earth, far greater day and night temperature variations would be observed.
It's said that, in fact, some parts of the surface of the Earth would become hot enough to boil water during the day, and the same parts would be cold enough to freeze water at night. So it's quite fascinating, but water has other properties.
And so water contracts and shrinks when it's cooled, as most other materials do. And one of the exceptions is actually antimony, and I think bismuth, too. So those two metal elements, they actually expand as they cool.
But water, of course, contracts when it's cooled, and most substances do. But at four degrees, it changes and then begins to expand. So water, once it reaches four degrees, its structure changes, and water then begins to expand, like antimony and bismuth, and actually, I think, rubber does as well. And it expands until it freezes. And because of this, it means that ice floats in water.
Otherwise, we would expect ice to sink in water if it continued to contract as it cooled. And so this is an amazing anomaly that forms in seas, oceans and lakes. So the ice stays near the surface, and it protects against the water underneath.
And that, again, preserves life in ponds. And it's, again, an amazing feature of this. And this feature of water is a result of the effects of the hydrogen and oxygen bonding that occurs in water and between hydrogen bonding, between alternate water molecules and so forth.
Now, this bonding, again, depends on the structure of the atoms involved, the hydrogen atom and the oxygen atom involved, and the way they are combined in the hydrogen oxygen molecule and the particular angular separation of the atoms, it say, form the structure of the molecule. And again, this all reeks of design, design, so that the actual chemistry of these molecules will support life. And, of course, the fact that this ice stays near the surface when the sun heats it during the day and the warm water below melts in summer.
And the fact that this effect in the different density of water also helps produce currents, water currents, due to the heating of the sun and the cooling at night. And this, of course, with the corollus effect, helps produce the ocean currents. So there's so much to it that all these things, when we think about it, they're necessary to preserve life.
So not only do we have life there that we observe around us, but we also need conditions to preserve life. The other thing, of course, is the role that the sun plays. Of all the energy that the sun gives off, I was reading only about zero point 45 billionths of its daily output reaches the Earth, and yet the sun provides the Earth with a huge amount of energy. Someone's done a calculation that the sun provides about 239,000,000,000,000 horse power or about 35,000 hp for each person. And of course, this was done a few years ago, so it'd be less than that now because populations increase.
It's amazing that, again, this amount of energy that we receive from the sun and the sun's producing such an enormous amount of energy, but the amount of energy that we receive here on Earth is just the right amount.
And then, of course, we've got the moon. Now, if the moon was much larger or nearer to the Earth, huge tides that would result would overflow into lowlands and erode mountains. And if the continents were levelled, it was estimated that water would cover the entire surface of the Earth for over a mile. And if the Earth wasn't tilled at 23 degrees on its axis, but was, say, on 9 degrees, we wouldn't have the four seasons. And of course, without the seasons, a lot of life would not be able to exist on Earth.
The poles would be in eternal twilight and water vapour from the oceans would be carried by winds, according to towards the north and south, where it would freeze when it moved close to the poles. So again, the whole surface of the Earth would change and it would become inhospitable. And so just tiny changes would render the Earth unsuitable to support life.
To me, this evidence, and I've only talked about a small fraction of this evidence for design, in the structure of the Earth's surface. To me, it's just overwhelming evidence that our planet is just so unique. And it fits the Bible description that the Earth was created special, it was created specially for life and we were created especially to enjoy that life here.
And of course, the Bible tells us that the creator God who made this Earth, also wants to have a relationship with us and communicate to us through our mind, through the Holy Spirit, that the Bible says that God sent to Earth after the death of Jesus on the cross. It's a fascinating account in the Bible and it fits the evidence and it gives us purpose. And we know from what Jesus said and God has said, that we can see all the pollution around, we can see the damage that mankind is doing to the surface of the Earth.
But one day, God is going to create a new heavens and a new Earth at the second coming. It's worth reading in the Bible. It makes so much sense.
You've been listening to Faith and Science. And if you want to relisten to these programmes, remember you can google 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the listen button.
Have a great day. I'm Dr John Ashton. You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Radio.
