What A Wonderful World

by Tom Wacaster



Since the mid 1920’s our nation has been fed a steady diet of humanism, evolution, and atheism.  Every attempt has been made to get Jehovah God “out” of the picture, and put man at the center, and science as the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful “god” that instructs, enlightens, and informs.   The particular point of focus in the battle for the minds of men has been our educational system.  For the past sixty years the liberal, humanistic, anti-God haters have dominated the class rooms of our public education system.  Consequently we are witnessing the collapse of moral integrity and Biblical ethics that were the mainstay of our society for the previous 200 years.  The battle has been waged in the class room as both sides of our present cultural war have sought to get the upper hand and capture the minds of our youth.  There are signs, however, that the pendulum is beginning to swing back toward center.  From one end of our nation to the other, states are taking a closer look at “intelligent design” as a plausible explanation of the origin of our universe and man.  Some States now require that evolution be taught as a “theory” and not scientific fact.  Others, such as Kansas, have introduced “intelligent design” into the classrooms of their public schools.  Of course the media, along with liberal organizations such as the PTA and NEA, are refusing to go down without a fight.  When one watches the main stream media it is rather astonishing that those being interviewed are extremely biased toward anything that has any religious overtones to it, in spite of the fact that evidence abounds for intelligent design and against evolution.  I am fully aware that the politically correct notion is that “anybody who has any intelligence at all” knows that evolution is a fact, and Genesis 1 is nothing more than “myth.”   But for just a moment, let’s forget about being “politically correct,” and lets put on our thinking caps and consider the evidence that points to design as the only logical explanation for this world, the universe, and mankind.  Physicist Paul Davies, in his book God And The New Physics, observed: “It is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in numbers, has been rather carefully thought out…The seemingly miraculous concurrence of these numerical values must remain the most compelling evidence for cosmic design.”   Even the most hardened of atheists (such as the late Carl Sagan) have admitted that the conditions on our planet are “just right” to sustain life.  It is an undeniable fact that the balance of the fundamental laws of physics are such that our universe appears to have been “fine tuned” in order to provide a place for life to exist as we know it.  So much so, in fact, that one noted scientist observed that “it appears as if this world was actually created in order to prepare a place for man to dwell.”   Lee Strobel likens it to the following:  “I like to use the analogy of astronauts landing on Mars and finding an enclosed biosphere, sort of like the domed structure that was built in Arizona a few years ago.  At the control panel they find that all the dials for its environment are set just right for life.  The oxygen ratio is perfect; the temperature is seventy degrees; the humidity is fifty percent; there’s a system for replenishing the air; there are systems for producing food, generating energy, and disposing of wastes.  Each dial has a huge range of possible settings, and you can see if you were to adjust one or more of them just a little bit, the environment would go out of whack and life would be impossible.  What conclusion would you draw from that?” 

While science has, to a large degree, been dominated by non-believers, we are seeing a new generation of scientists who are taking a closer look at the evidence.  Over the past three decades scientists have discovered that just about everything about the basic structure of our universe is balanced on what one has called, “a razor’s edge for life to exist.”  Noted atheist turned believer, Fred Hoyle admitted, “Someone has been monkeying with the physics.”  The gravity or our world, the location of the earth in relation to the sun, the moon and other planets, and even the eco-system of this world in which we live all “scream” that some intelligent mind was behind it all.  Let’s borrow one example from Lee Strobel’s book, The Case For A Creator:

The [cosmological] constant, which is a part of Einstein’s equation for General Relativity, could have any value, positive or negative…[A]stronomical observations show that the cosmological constant is quite small, very much smaller than would have been guessed from first principles…The fine tuning has been estimated to be at least one part in a hundred million billion billion billion billion.  That would be a ten followed by fifty-three zeroes.  That’s inconceivably precise.  Put it this way.  Let’s say you were way out in space and were going to throw a dart at random toward Earth. It would be like successfully hitting a bull’s eye that’s one trillionth of a trillioneth of an inch in diameter.  That’s less than the size of one solitary atom.

When we consider the conditions that go into making our world a suitable place for human habitat, we stand amazed at the intelligence that it demonstrates.  We are awed at the God Who could so “fine-tune” our world so as it make it a suitable place for human life.  Indeed, ours is a Wonderful World!  Only the “fool” would say, “There is no God.” He is a fool for the simple reason that he has the same evidence staring him in the face, and still refuses to see God. 

Consider the beauty of our world from another standpoint.  Most of us think in the concrete rather than the abstract.  Consequently something is beautiful, amazing, astonishing or astounding only if we can see it with the eyes.  I read about a group of Geography students who studied the Seven Wonders of the World.  At the end of that section, the students were asked to list what they each considered to be the Seven Wonders of the World.  Though there was some disagreement, the following got the most votes:  Egypts Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon, the Panama Canal, the Empire State Building, St. Peters Basilica and Chinas Great Wall. While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student, a quiet girl, hadnt turned in her paper yet.  So she asked the girl if she was having trouble with her list.  The quiet girl replied, Yes, a little. I couldnt quite make up my mind because there were so many. The teacher said, Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help. The girl hesitated, then read, I think the Seven Wonders of the World are…..to touch and to taste,  to see and to hear . . .   She hesitated a little, and then to run and to laugh and to love.  The more I thought on her answers the more I came to appreciate the value of those things that we can never touch with our hands.  Perhaps it would do us good, from time to time, to stop and seriously consider the truly great wonders of the world.   Louis Armstrong may have captured the sentiments of this little girl in a song that was written and released in 1967: 

“What A Wonderful World”

I see trees of green, red roses too.
I see them bloom for me and you.
And I think to myself what a wonderful world. 
I see skies of blue and clouds of white.
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by.
I see friends shaking hands
Saying, “How do you do?”
They’re really saying “I love you.”
I hear babies crying, I watch them grow;
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know.
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Yes I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
Oh, yeah

I can’t think of a better way to end this week’s article other than the simple two words Mr. Armstrong used to end his song:  “Oh, yeah!”