The Miracle of Existence

Google Image

The fact that the earth exists among the unimaginable vastness of the universe is nothing short of miraculous. And human reproduction – that each human female has about 300,000 eggs during the fertile period of her life and each male emission has about 300 million sperm – is a second miracle.

“Thus,” writes Alan Lightman in a recent issue of The Atlantic magazine, “each conception contains about a hundred thousand billion different possible combinations of DNA. In other words, there are a hundred thousand billion unique and different human beings that could result from each procreation event.”

 

Lightman, a physicist, writer and former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), writes that “being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience.”

 

Stroke of Good Luck?


It is, indeed, miraculous, but is it merely “a stroke of good luck?” Because we believers - through the combination of Scripture, reason and faith - know that it’s just as unlikely that it all was due to a stroke of luck as it is unlikely that anything exists.

 

Writes Lightman: “Advances in biology have shown that the instructions for creating each individual human being are encoded in a set of molecules called DNA. Far more possible arrangements of human DNA exist than there are atoms in the observable universe—each arrangement corresponding to a different human being. One of those many possible arrangements is each of us.”

 

So, what are the chances that this extremely complex system, this “long chain of accidents,” as Lightman puts it, occurred randomly? I would say – and many scientists would agree – zero to none.

 

Alan Lightman
Google Image
But if God is behind it all – and I believe he/she is – why hasn’t God clued us in?

He has, and this is where Scripture comes in. The genus Homo, which includes modern humans, evolved about 2.5 to 2.8 million years ago. and Homo Sapiens, the anatomically modern humans, about 300,000 years ago. But just as God used evolution to create the universe, he patiently waited until the time was right – 2,500 to 3,000 years ago – to begin revealing Him/Herself and his role in creation in Scripture, the Word of God in the words of humans. Isn’t it possible we weren’t capable of understanding any sooner?

 

After relating the unlikeliness of our existence, Lightman proceeds with the appropriate question: What should be our response?

 

“First of all,” he writes, “gratitude ought to replace entitlement. Gratitude not only for my great good fortune in a long chain of accidents, but gratitude to the individual human beings who have helped me along the way. With my one brief moment, I can try to make the world a slightly better place. Gratitude without action is empty.


“…But to whom, or to what, am I responsible? Not the universe, which is without mind. And not the huge number of human beings who could have been but never were. “… I believe it is a responsibility to myself — to not waste my precious life.”

 

So Much Missing


Bravo! But there is so much missing here. Yes, the question is, return the good fortune to what or to whom? But we believers think the answer is obvious. The responsibility is not to oneself, but to the creator and each other.

 

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,” says Psalm 33, “and all the host by the breath of his mouth.” And in the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Peter and John, after being miraculously released from prison, went to report it “to their friends,” who addressed God, saying, “Sovereign Lord, who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them….”

 

Where did this biblical wisdom come from? The authors were inspired by God, according to Christian belief, to let us know who is behind this miraculous gift of life which so inspires author Lightman and should inspire us.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Gospel of The Little Prince

Image
  Attention all those concerned only with “matters of great consequence:” Is it possible that you’ve become someone you didn’t want to be, having strayed far from the innocence and simplicity of childhood? That’s the main question asked in The Little Prince, which Netflix, the streaming video service, has added to its repertoire of movies and TV shows. Though not a big fan of animated flicks, I was a big fan of the book, The Little Prince, back in the 1970s when it became extremely popular in the U.S. It was first published in French and English in New York in 1943 as a novella by French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery , who disappeared while piloting a Free French Army plane the following year over the Mediterranean Sea. Nearly Two Million Copies “The novella is the fourth most-translated book in the world and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France,” says Wikipedia. “Translated into more than 250 language...
Read more

The Wolf of Gubbio

Image
Google Image According to legend, around the year 1220 when St. Francis of Assisi was living in Gubbio, Italy, a fierce wolf began attacking livestock. And then it began attacking humans. It waited outside the city gates for anyone foolish enough to venture beyond them alone. No weapon was capable of subduing the wolf and anyone who tried to destroy it was attacked. Eventually, the public refused to go outside the city walls. Francis announced he was going to meet the wolf. When he neared the wolf’s den, a small crowd accompanying him stayed back but was close enough to witness what happened. Placing Its Head in His Hands The wolf rushed at Francis with its jaws open, the story goes. Francis made the sign of the Cross and commanded the wolf to cease its attacks in the name of God, at which point the wolf trotted up to him docilely and lay at his feet, placing its head in his hands. "Brother wolf,” said Francis, “you have done much evil in this land, destroying and...
Read more

The Morality of Nurse Jackie

Image
Google Image Sometimes as I jump rope – an exercise I’ve done most days for at least 35 years - I watch episodes of the series, “Nurse Jackie,” on Netflix. The show stars Edie Falco  in the title character, Jackie Peyton, an emergency-room  nurse at the fictitious All Saints' Hospital in New York City . It suites my purposes because the episodes last about the same amount of time as my exercises. I have mixed feelings about the show, however. I like the fact that it’s a medical show whose main character is a nurse, not a doctor. And there isn’t a nurse alive who's more compassionate toward her patients, and sometimes fellow employees, than Jackie Peyton. But she’s a drug addict, and watching her get through her days at the hospital or at home, and with her husband and daughters, boyfriends, drug suppliers and drug counselors, is like watching a plane tumbling out of the sky on its way to a horrific crash. Only Redeeming Quality? She engages in continual lyi...
Read more