Why Earth’s History Appears So Miraculous

Atlantic Monthly ^ | March 5, 2018 | Peter Brannen

[Pontiac]

Snip

It’s something of a miracle that life on our planet has been left to evolve without fatal interruption for billions of years.

Such a long unbroken chain of survival, however unlikely, is necessary for bags of mud and water like ourselves to eventually sit up, and just recently, to wonder how we got here. And like the bullet-riddled—but safe—planes, our planet has survived countless near-fatal blows.

There have been volcanic apocalypses, body blows from supersonic space rocks the size of Mount Everest, and ice ages that might have frozen the planet almost to the tropics.

Had any of these catastrophes been worse, we wouldn’t be here..

But they couldn’t have been worse for precisely that reason.

Snip

Earth history teaches us that something as seemingly benign as briefly having a supercontinent can very nearly end the world several times over, illuminating just how fragile the entire project of complex life really is.

And not only have we benefited from this astounding series of fortunate events, through it all we’ve somehow never been set back to square one over 4.5 billion years—even while potentially sterilizing comets like Hale-Bopp keep eerily sailing past us.

Perhaps this fantastic luck—one that’s necessary to someday produce observers like ourselves—implies that the great Elsewhere is filled, to un-traversable distances, with indifferently swirling gas and lifeless rocks.

Snip

[wbarmy]

That same series of chance seemed to work on 9/11 also. Normally, at that time of day, there could have been nearly 55,000 people in those towers. But major traffic jams on all the bridges, unforeseen events in the boroughs and a host of other situation kept the vast majority of people from getting to the towers on time. And they never did.

Videos show that a multitude of people were headed to the towers when the first plane hit, and they turned around and left.

[daniel1212]

"That same series of chance seemed to work on 9/11 also. Normally, at that time of day, there could have been nearly 55,000 people in those towers. But major traffic jams on all the bridges, unforeseen events in the boroughs and a host of other situation kept the vast majority of people from getting to the towers on time. And they never did. Videos show that a multitude of people were headed to the towers when the first plane hit, and they turned around and left."

. And if God did not restrain evil then the whole world would be worse than North Korea, a living Hell, while He makes all work together for the good of the redeemed, thanks be to the living God.