The Creator's World -- Two Stories

Once a rabbi entered a king’s palace and was granted an audience with the king. The king asked him the question, “how do you know of the existence of the Creator?” The rabbi respectfully asked the king to leave the room for a short while. On the table was a quill, an inkwell and some paper. While the king was out of the room, the rabbi drew a beautiful and detailed picture on the paper. When the king returned he noticed it and was amazed at its beauty. The ink was still wet and the king praised the rabbi for writing such a beautiful poem. The rabbi replied that he had not written the poem, rather, the inkwell had fallen oven, and the ink which poured out onto the paper had formed the picture itself. The king ridiculed such a suggestion saying that it was impossible for the ink to arrange itself into even one brushstroke, let alone a design, and certainly not into such a beautiful picture! The rabbi replied, “there is your answer. If the ink in an inkwell cannot form a picture without the hand of an artist, then certainly the world, which is infinitely more complex than the picture, could not possibly form itself without the hand of a Master Creator!”

A similar fictional story – though more contemporary – is told about the Americans, Russians and Chinese who got together and decided to send a manned space ship to Mars. After spending billions of dollars, roubles and yen, and after years of preparation, a space ship finally blasted off heading for Mars. A while later an astronaut took a small step for man but a large step for mankind and walked out onto the Martian surface. The cameras beamed his every move back to earth. Suddenly, after taking but a few steps, the world was stunned by the sight of a can of Coca Cola lying on a nearby rock. The astronaut noticed it as well, picked up the can, and saw it was the real thing -- for written on the can were the words “Coke trademark – made in USA”. The Russians and Chinese were in an uproar – the Americans had obviously deceived them and sent an earlier spaceship. The Americans denied this claim but were baffled as well by the appearance of the can of Coke. Finally, the press interviewed a professor from Oxford University who explained the conundrum by suggesting that over billions and billions of years it is quite possible that, through evolution etc., a can of Coke was formed, even displaying the words “made in USA!”

His comments were ridiculed. Even after billions of years the mathematical probability of these words forming by themselves is nil. How much more so the creation of this world which is amazingly complex? Even today, scientists agree that they have fathomed only the tip of the iceberg of the complexity of the universe. How could it possibly have formed by itself without a master architect and designer?

(First story adapted from a beautiful parable in the classic Jewish philosophical work "Chovos Halevovos.")