God didn't create us but just based on sheer numbers this sort of thing (Earth, humans) was bound to happen sooner or later. They supported this idea by asking me if God has anything to do with the rest of the universe. Though there may be life out there somewhere else (who knows) there certainly isn't any on the planets in our galaxy. So what does God do? Does He just take care of this Earth and us humans? Why didn't He create other people to occupy Himself with? The planets don't really need His control since they're just floating around out there. Why just us? What about the rest of the universe? What's the point of it?
I thought that this was an interesting question, here was my feeble attempt at a response:
C.S. Lewis actually tackles this somewhere when he asks a question in response to the "huge universe" question. Would the atheist prefer a small universe where nothing else existed but our galaxy? Would that actually change anything about God, prove or disprove his existence, or help us to understand our purpose any better? In some ways I think that this helps to put the question in its proper place. There's no universe/created order that would definitely/definitively prove or dis-prove anything about God or his existence.
Given that there is a huge, created universe, I think that there's a couple responses:
1. Random change explaining all of this is still a long, long, long shot. That something like humanity was bound to happen somewhere eventually is just not mathematically sound reasoning. That's like saying if I leave my office a complete disaster that eventually it's bound to tidy itself up somehow if I just leave it alone long enough. Multiply my office by a couple billion, still not a good chance that any of those billion offices are going to organize themselves into something intelligible. There's no governing principle or energy or intelligence to organize my office apart from something entering into the raw material and helping to make it happen.
2. I think that Scripture talks about creation pointing to God's character again and again...and I think that this is at least in part why the cosmos is so big; why the details are so infinitely incredible. Go to your local swamp and take a small sample and it's teeming with life. Bust out a map of the universe and the stars and black holes and how big and massive all of it is--all of this is meant to scream out to us that God exists, that there's design here, that it's been done on purpose. God is infinite. It's like he's taken a cheese-slicer and run it across his character: we get something of the variety and diversity of his creative power, just a taste, but we don't get the infinite-ness of his depth--it decomposes, things die, it doesn't last forever. I would argue that the vastness of all of this and the fact that it all hangs together at all is proof in the opposite direction from your atheist friend: random-ness just can't possibly account for all of it.
3. God has clearly ordered some things so that they run to some extent on their own--he creates the laws of physics and gravity and such. But those things are held together in him. Colossians 1 talks about all things holding together/consisting in Jesus. I think of it like all the cosmos
being gathered up in a tennis ball and that ball fully submerged in an infinite bowl of water. If at any point that ball ceased to be under water, it would simply cease to exist. Every moment, every breath, all of it is being propped up by Jesus, the Living Word through whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together.
4. Who knows about life on other planets and whether or not they are fallen and whether or not God has acted in a similar way as he has here on earth? Perhaps one day we will meet more of God's creation and discover that they, too, have a story of redemption, of a God who comes to visit them and to make things right...and of course the atheists will find ways to explain
that away as well...
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