Thursday, February 25, 2016

Temple Observations

A few thoughts I had while listening to the endowment creation presentation:

One of the signs of a well designed system is when it's self-correcting. An example of that is the steering assembly of modern automobiles. The mechanical linkages are designed in a way that the car's weight helps center the steering wheel to help the car track straight down the road. While a simple, yet elegant design, it is one which some unknown mechanical engineer spent many hours of work to get it right. Today, we don't even think about it -- we just expect cars to behave that way.

Consider now something far more complex: the oxygen level in the earth's atmosphere. How is it that the chemical binding energy of oxygen is such that enough of it can exist in the atmosphere to empower animals, including us, to move about while being low enough that it doesn't cause plants and dried carbon-based things to spontaneously combust? If the atmosphere contained a higher percentage of oxygen, fires would be much more prevalent and advanced cultures would be much harder to develop because of the volatility of the building materials.

We take take the world we live on for granted because it just works. Yet, because we see it working day after day, it rarely comes to mind just how amazingly well designed it is. Like Alma the Younger, I think one of the great witnesses of God's existence is this amazing planet we live on. The more astrophysicists learn about exoplanets, the greater is their awareness of how rare the Earth is. To paraphrase one scientist, its existence makes you "think twice" about the odds that were beat if random chance was the only determinant in its creation.

To wit: we live on a planet that's an engineering marvel. According to our understanding of cosmology and physics, mathematically, the Earth is an improbable place. Yet here it is! We have Heavenly Father to thank for it.

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