I read that Carl Sagan, American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences, once said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.”
That sums up much of Carl’s worldview. And, indeed, he did believe in a lot of what is only imaginary. Nevertheless, God gifted Carl with a great scientific mind. If you knew Carl and me, you would know that he and I disagree on some major issues, but I admired him.
Another of his statements was, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” That’s quite insightful, and I agree with Carl on that one. But that statement seems to differ with his overall understanding of life – his understanding of the cosmos. Why? Keep reading.
As I said, I agree with the “start-from-scratch” statement, because without the universe, we would have no apples, therefore, no pies.
However, he believed in the hypothetical Big Bang – the concept that all of the cosmos, billions of galaxies and any and all life in them, spontaneously self-created out of an infinitesimally small speck of matter, which, in turn, was created out of nothing – or which might have been a residue of a previous big bang cycle. One scientist in New Mexico told me we might be in the 4th or 5th big bang cycle, but don’t believe it.
Back to Sagan’s apple pie comment.
To make an apple pie, we have to have apples, which requires a tree, which requires a seed. Someone would need to create the seed with life in it, and program into the seed what the tree needed to look like, and how to make both leaves and fruit. We need dirt to plant it in, we need nutrients in the dirt, water to help tree roots dissolve the dirt and absorb the nutrients. It would take a book to describe what the seed had to do, and the impossibility of it happening spontaneously.
We need an atmosphere with the right mix of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases. Someone had to make the gases.
We need a star that emits the correct spectrum of light. The planet needs to be the correct distance from the star. We need a home, called a galaxy, where our star can reside. But we have a problem here. Without a star with gravity to cause gas to condense into a solid ball, the gas from the bang would continue to expand and never condense into a solid. The laws of physics would prevent expanding gas from turning on itself and becoming a solid. Even the astrophysicists don’t know how the first stars formed from expanding gas. Anyone can guess, but hypothetical (unproven) guesses are not scientific.
Oh, yes, we need someone to make a glass or metal container to make the pie in because the big bang couldn’t make them. We need someone to invent and plant all the other ingredients so we can mix them with the apples in the pie and make the crust. So people had to be invented. Someone had to figure out how to design and put together chromosomes and genes, and create deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), ribonucleic acid (RNA) … all at the same time.
But we have to go deeper.
Someone had to figure out how to transform the dissolved rocks into 382,000 kinds of plant life. Someone also had to teach the dissolved rocks how to morph into living gelatinous amoebas, and teach them to eat other dissolved rocks. And someone had to teach the amoebas how to mutate and grow into 2.13 million species of animals.
And all of this had to happen in an exceedingly short period of time. Tossing in a few more million or billion years is imaginative, but it is not scientific and it accomplishes nothing. Organic life forms – whether they evolved or were created – had to happen fully functional within a day.
I helped build the Boeing 727s, 747s, 757s, and the B-1B. I worked on the space shuttle program. The parts to these machines cannot self-materialize even with all the basic materials – iron, aluminum, titanium, plastic, glass, etc. – already created. And these machines cannot spontaneously self-assemble no matter how many millions of years we tumble their parts together. And the concept of all matter – from an electron to multi-billions of galaxies – self-materializing out of nothing and self-assembling into well-developed solar systems and galaxies, is non-scientific. Believe it you want to, but it is not a matter of science. It is a non-verifiable belief system.
God, the eternal I Am, the eternal Master Mind of the cosmos, created everything from scratch. He’s the only one who can do that. What I mean is, God, who lives outside time and space, is the only one who could create anything and everything out of absolutely nothing.
Back to Carl Sagan’s apple pie comment.
I thank God every time my precious wife makes apple pies (my favorite), pumpkin pies, cookies, Thanksgiving Day meals, and anything else we want to eat. God created life and the universe, and we use and enjoy what God has created.
Keep studying, but understand that God is not only the engineering, creative force in the universe, but He also came in the form of Jesus to rescue us from our sin nature.
male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). God is a spiritual being, and we are spiritual beings – inside human bodies. Mankind was the high point of God’s creative work here on earth. God created us as an entirely new species, quite different from animals. And to emphasize this distinction, God placed man over the animals. In Genesis 1:28 God told Adam, “Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Animals can’t do that.
interaction. Evolutionist Julian Huxley noted that “Only humans possess true language, conceptual thought, art, humor, science and religion.” And only humans can record and direct the course of history. Humans can express themselves analytically. And it is obvious that only humans have the ability to communicate through complex, multi-lingual skills. All this sets mankind apart from the animal kingdom. 
humans do care for the elderly. Animals do not have the intellectual,
emotional, and relational mentality, or the skill or ability to interact and build an enhanced society; but man has been to the moon and back. Instead, animals have continued their lives without change for the past recorded 6,000 years. When you hear or read some scientist say that 98% of our genes are shared with some animals, don’t get excited about it. They also say we share about 50% of our genes with bananas. So the statistics are meaningless. 
. That is the concept that all truth is relative to the individual, time, or place. However, relativism is a faulty philosophy that attempts to negate absolutism. Absolute means: complete; not limited by restrictions; unconditional; unrelated to and independent of anything else. Interestingly, after a short investigation we find absolute truth in math, history, the Bible, and in every-day life. Often, the denial of absolutism is not about life, but is aimed at the reality of God and the deity of Jesus Christ. And the one who claims his own reality actually claims to be the supreme ruler in his own life; but living for just twenty-four hours will prove that is false. 
Another example of absolute reality: God knew you would be born and that you will live forever – somewhere; but it is your choice as to your eternal destination. Whether or not you believe in heaven or hell does not change the reality of either place: our personal belief neither establishes fact nor eradicates truth. Absolute truth stands on its own foundation. 
This question the historical reality of the Bible is often asked by adherents of an evolutionary hypothesis, some of whom are agnostics and atheists. Let me begin with the concept of evolution because that is normally the direction of the question. Let’s look at three words.
3,000,000 of them being rivets, screws, bolts, etc. Each rivet, window, cable, seat, etc. has a position to fill in order to complete the 747. Can there be variations in placement of parts? Yes. Seats are interchangeable. Rivets can exchange places with like rivets. And so on. Every part has a place it must fill; but when like parts are shuffled, the plane does not change. 
If you read this article critically, you find that spontaneous self-materialization is impossible. Rocks cannot become organic. An intelligent designer-creator is mandatory. There must be a first cause and that first cause, by nature, will not be bound by time and space. This first cause will be intelligent because design and order do not result from time plus chance. Chaos is the product of time plus chance. Ask any farmer or botanist. 
Gene Linzey 