The earth is tilted at 23.5 degrees. This produces the seasons as the earth revolves around the sun. If there were no tilt, there would be no seasons. If the tilt were increased the seasons would be more severe, the equator would become an endless burning summer and most of the earth would be an endless night of winter. The changes would be unendurable, they would produce violent storms and life could exist nowhere except in a strip 1300 kilometres wide around the equator.

What about the moon? If the moon were further away our tides would become smaller and they wouldn’t wash the coast and the coast would become stagnant and choked. We’d get the same effect if the moon were smaller. But if the moon were closer, or larger, the tides would be so large that they would sweep over the continents, eroding the mountains and destroying the world. But the moon is serene and secure in space at the end of the gravitational tether where somebody put it. It reflects the sunlight; it keeps track of time at quarterly intervals and is a spectacular example of celestial engineering.

The earth is protected by a donut shaped magnetic shield, called the magnetosphere. These are invisible lines of force that catch marauding electrons from the sun, slows them down to about the speed of sound and re-routes them southward or northward and funnels them down, harmlessly, around the poles in a display called the Aurora.

Earth’s protective atmosphere is the same. The upper level is 1600 kilometres above the earth. About 450 kilometres up is the ionosphere, filtering out a deadly cocktail of death rays (ultraviolets, x-rays, gamma rays and cosmic rays) some travelling almost at the speed of light. This intricately designed ionosphere, however, lets the beneficial rays through. It also burns up the meteors.

If our atmosphere was thinner, it would let most of the meteors through. If it were thicker, we wouldn’t be able to bear the weight. Imagine going for a walk in the open with meteors crashing all around and what kind of houses would we have to build? Strangely this ionosphere lets through those ultraviolets we need. For example, the long ones for plant life and the ones that kill bacteria and the ones that help manufacture Vitamin D in the human skin. Who invented this screening process for meteors and the sun’s rays?

Without this blanket type atmosphere, the temperature on earth during the day would be 110 degrees C. At night it would be -110 degrees C. In fact, our planet would be like the moon is now which is the same distance from the sun as we are but with no atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere turns out to be the most practical, most efficiently and most amazingly well engineered world life shield imaginable. It speaks to me about the quality, genius and craftmanship of its engineer.

I could go on and on about things like air pressure, the oxygen cycle, the water cycle and other cycles, my point has been to demonstrate to you the miraculous nature of not only life, but our ongoing survival, and to point out that this earth is an amazingly well-suited human habitation created by God for our comfort. It is a self-maintaining spaceship, where heating, lighting and our water supply are provided free. Our water and air are constantly recycled and purified by distillation and photosynthesis and then both are used to cleanse the earth by rainfall and wind.

Is this all amazing or is it coincidence? I could have discussed the laws of entropy and thermodynamics which defied the evolutionary theory of an upward development, because these laws say the universe is winding down not up, e.g. heat always becomes cold and energy is constantly being lost from the system. How is it that we can be told that rockets, planes, computers and dictionaries are the product of genius and hard work, yet we who are infinitely more complex, are the product of chance? I don’t think so!