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     Things with purposeful design come into existence via chance! – true or false?  If you were sitting in your maple rocking chair and your friend declared that a tornado blew through a forest, from which the maple rocking chair merely occurred by chance, you would think he had lost his mind.  Why?  Because the rocker reflects design and an intelligent designer.  The chair obviously serves a purpose and was designed to suit that purpose – to sit and rock in comfort.  Logically we know a chair can not happen by sheer chance.  Yet many people believe that the universe and all that is in it came into existence by chance.  Such a belief in a “chance” universe makes the tornado - rocker event even more believable.  But surely reasonable people know by all the evidence in our world that there was a great intelligent designer.  By chance or by intelligent designer are the two choices of our origin.  Which is reasonable?
     The controversy whether our origin is by chance or by design is not new.  The 17th century British scientist, Sir Isaac Newton made a model of the solar system at which his scientist friends marveled.  One of these, also an atheist, asked who had made the model.  Newton replied, “No one, it happened by mere chance.”  His friend again asked and again and again, thinking Newton had misunderstood his question.  Exasperated, his friend retorted, “Do you think I am a fool?  This model cannot merely happen.”  Newton responded “This is an imitation of our much grander universe that you insist occurred by chance, yet you won’t believe that this model happened by chance.”  Newton’s point was that both the real universe and the model had an intelligent designer.  In contrast the atheist and evolutionist assert that the universe simply happened from an explosion of self existent gases.
     To say that “chance” is the source of our existence is in the realm of fantasy and is contrary to common sense.  Suppose you mark ten pennies, numbering them from one to ten, put then into your pocket and give them a good shuffle.  With only one chance, what are the odds of pulling out the penny marked “1”?  One in ten!  Now suppose you put the pennies back into the pocket, what are the chances of drawing the pennies marked “1” and “2,” IN ORDER?  The probability rises to “One in 90.”  The possibilities of drawing numbers 1, 2, and 3 in succession, is one in 720.  Drawing pennies 1 through 10, in succession is beyond imagination – one in 3,628,800!!*  Such probabilities are so remote that statisticians state such is a “practical impossibility” So what is the probability of our universe and everything in it occurring by mere chance?
     Chance or design?  Common sense tells us “marvelous design demands a marvelous designer.”

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     * EGW editor's note:  The odds of randomly drawing the first coin in order is 1 in 10 (i.e. 1/10); the second coin is 1 in 9 (i.e. 1/9); the third coin is 1 in 8 (i.e. 1/8) and so forth.  The odds of randomly drawing all ten coins in order is 1/10 x 1/9 x 1/8 x 1/7 x 1/6 x 1/5 x 1/4 x 1/3 x 1/2 x 1/1 = 1/3,628,800.  This is extremely difficult to imagine when one compares that to rolling a Yahtzee of five 6's in the first roll (1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/7,776) – doable, but almost never happens, and even then a somebody still has to roll the dice!  Drawing these ten coins in order seems only a little more complicated in organization, but is over 466 times more difficult to achieve by simple chance – if you could draw each second a different wrong combination of the ten marked pennies and keep drawing steadily , it would take you a full FORTY-TWO days until you had accounted for all the wrong combinations!  Then consider that the universe is infinitely more complicated in organization than these simple games, and the odds of our origin by mere chance becomes statistically impossible.  Our origin by a designing creator is a statistical certainty!