Snowflakes, Rainbows, & the Twenty-Four Hour Day---Proof there is a Creator

By Larry Peterson.

Written after seeing a rainbow---

In 2006, NASA's New Horizon spacecraft left our humble, little planet and began its voyage to the edges of our solar system and beyond. After traveling 3 billion plus miles New Horizon finally passed the dwarf planet Pluto, the furthest planet from our sun. I don't know about you but I find it humbling and awe inspiring that we human beings, using the perfection that surrounds us, can manage to find a planet that is so far away. Yet, within our universe, Pluto is as close as a neighbor down the street.

 Hello sister planet

 Let's move past Pluto. It seems NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, launched in 2009, found a possible 'exoplanet six years later.'This planet is worlds beyond our puny solar system. Incredibly, this exoplanet could be similar to our hometown, Earth. Hello sister planet, Kepler 452b.  The Kepler Telescope has identified close to 5000 exoplanets since it started scanning the deepest parts of space. But this is the first one that could be similar to Earth.

 Now, get this--it is one thousand and four light years away. Our closest star system is Alpha Centauri, a mere 4.3 light years away. This means our closest star system is trillions of miles from our solar system and would take us tens of thousands of years to get there. Kepler 452b is 200 times further than that. My question is--how can our melon sized brains discover and learn about these things?

 Light from the Sun takes eight minutes to reach us

 How can we possibly know how to measure distance and location and density and climate relating to places that are so unimaginably far away? The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. (Who figured that out)? How do you measure the speed of light? Assuming the number is correct, that means in one minute light travels 11+ million miles. That would be almost 16 billion miles in one day. Multiply that number by four and a half years. Do you see where I'm going with this? The light from our sun takes eight minutes to reach Earth. Yet Kepler 452b is more than a thousand "light years" away, and our scientists know it revolves around its sun in 385 days vs our 365 days. WHEW!

 What about Earth? How much of what Earth does is taken for granted? Well, here is one thing it does that we never think about and completely take for granted, that is TIME. There are 24 hours in a day. Not 25 or 23 or 24.8, but 24. Imagine if there were random hours in a day. Yeah, right. So how did we get 24 hours in a day? Let's just take it for what it is. Perfectly ordered.

 Proof of Intelligent Design

 We live on a planet that is simply a speck in the universe it occupies. It sustains our life by giving us the air we breathe, the resources to feed and protect us, and we possess minds that can figure it out. It is not only MIND BOGGLING it also is proof that it is the result of intelligent design. Common sense tells us (at least many of us) that all of this could not just be the result of some random, cataclysmic explosion in space eons ago. If this explosion did occur it was managed, controlled, and planned.  Question; by whom? Answer. He has many names but most of us call Him GOD.

 What about explosions? (Please bear with me--I do intend to make a point.) Explosions are destructive and, for the most part, maim, kill and destroy. I can remember several Fourth of July celebrations ago when a guy in Maine, in a festive frame of mind, brilliantly set a rocket off from the top of his head. He died instantly. We can go back more than 75 years and read the history of August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb blew the Japanese city of Hiroshima to smithereens. It ended World War II by killing about 80,000 people. It follows that if I set a bomb off in my car the chances of the result being a better and faster car are--well, ZERO.

 So now--to the point. The Big Bang Theory of Creation  (it was a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre, who first advanced the theory of the “Big Bang”) has become the favored explanation of how our seemingly infinite universe came into existence. Scientists agree that the universe did have a beginning.  They also know that the universe is expanding, changing, and dying, just like we are.  To the question: At the moment of creation, when the unimaginable explosion took place who was at the controls getting all of these moving parts in order?  Reasoning and common sense give us the plausible answer. Trying to prove something else is simply the result of self-pride and self-serving egotism.

 Twenty-four hours in a day is perfect for us*

 Random explosions do not and cannot result in perfection. Twenty-four hours in a day is perfect for us to depend on, including the animals.  It is a contradiction to believe otherwise. Everything around us is perfect. We can predict the rising and setting of the sun to the second, the new and full moons to the minute. We know when the tides rise and fall and can predict their lowest and highest points to the minute. We know when an eclipse, whether solar or lunar, will occur and where. We have learned how to use the world around us to maintain our very existence or, in many cases, destroy it.    

*(this writer realizes that we do have leap year(s) and certain fluctuations in the 24 hour day. Overall it is insignificant yet is another example of the perfection around us that we can manage time to the very second)

 Bottom line: because the universe is so vast and expansive (and apparently infinite) and all of it is moving and changing within a perfectly ordered system proves someone bigger and smarter than any of us put this in place. We cannot understand this. We cannot scientifically prove it. But, no matter what, we live in it and survive by it every second of every day of our lives.

 Perfection does not come from chaos. Perfection can only come from someone who is PERFECT. I know who that Person is even though I cannot see HIM or touch HIM. All I have to do is see a rising sun, a blooming rose, a full moon, a rainbow...or hear the cry of a newborn baby or ponder the magic of one snowflake, unique unto itself. Oh yes, and I check my watch often!

 “a persons a person no matter how small”

 Maybe Dr. Seuss nailed it in his famous book, "Horton Hears a Who". Maybe our planet Earth is really no bigger than Horton's, "Whoville". Maybe we are specks on the end of a ball of dust. Maybe we are not as big and as smart as we think we are. We had to have a Creator. It is common sense. It is ultimately all in HIS hands.  I am also sure HE subscribes to the famous sentence in Dr. Seuss's book; "a persons a person no matter how small".

 Maybe those very "smart" people who reject what must be so, need to breathe in a deep dose of humility and realize all this did not just happen as the result of some random explosion or expansion. It is illogical and makes no sense (at least not to me).

Please Note: On  Christmas Day, 2021, a rocket lifted off from French Guiana launching the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit. This telescope replaces the famed Hubble Telescope as the biggest and most powerful in the world (Kepler was smaller) Incidentally, Hubble just celebrated its 33rd anniversary and is still on the job scanning the universe looking for new discoveries. The James Webb Telescope* is able to see further than did Hubble and Kepler and capable of taking pictures thousands of light years away.  It is hard to even contemplate

*   The James Webb Space Telescope is now active and busy scanning our Universe.

Copyright©Larry Peterson 2023 (updated)