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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Nature's Pepsi Can

What's the right response to a God who so carefully constructed the banana (and the world) for my pleasure?
"In the beginning You laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands." Psalm 102: 25
The second day of the new book I am reading - The God Questions, by Hal Seed & Dan Grider - still focuses on the question of if God is real and where did the world come from.  This section still followed along the path that all the intricacies and beauty of the world and everything in it cannot, and should not, be explained away by chance or a random collision of molecules.  To illustrate this point, the authors compare a Pepsi can to a banana and take a light-hearted approach toward pretending that the Pepsi can was produced through chance: "As time passed, aluminum crept out of the water and shaped itself into just these dimensions. Over time, this thing formed itself a one-time retractable lid, from which a crease appeared, a bit off-center, and out of it grew a pull-tab..." (p.8). The authors, however, then go on to describe a banana and how so much of the banana is designed just for convenient eating by us and other creatures that eat bananas - the way the outside indicates when it is ripe to eat, how it peels back so conveniently when we are ready to eat it and how well it sits in our hand for comfort, and so on. 
We just laughed over how absurd the thought was that a Pepsi can, including the lettering on the can, was formed by a random collision of molecules (basically chance), and then you see how much of the Pepsi can and its convenience is paralleled in the banana and it makes you sit back and take notice of how truly incredible a banana is, something many of us take so for granted on a regular basis.  The question at the end of this section and the top of this blog asks what the right response is and I believe that anything less of awe is selling it short.  Just think of the number of test products, focus groups, etc. that it took to perfect the Pepsi can while God had this all figured out before humans were even formed themselves.  And how patient of a God to know the perfect formula for all that time yet still have it take so long for humans to figure it out and not to get angry or frustrated at our stupidity or short-sightedness that we did not mimic his ingenious and perfect design sooner. 
Nothing less than awe would give God's designs even half of the respect that they deserve, because the amount of awe and wonder that He deserves for making the banana as he did... look in the mirror again, today.  Think about the DNA in your body and how precise every microscopic detail had to be in your creation and your individual design.  And even then, awe just doesn't seem to cut it.

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