There is a Bible verse and a nursery rhyme that have a lot in common.  Job 37:14: "Hearken unto this, O Job, stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God."  And the nursery rhyme: "What are little boys made of?  Slugs and snails and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of.  What are little girls made of?  Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of."

Our English language is composed of only 26 letters.  However, with the proper combination of these letters we can write about any subject in the world.   It all depends on how you put the letters together.  Letters are the DNA of the written word.

Our world is put together with only 92 elements and these elements are put together by only three basic things: (1) electrons, (2) protons, and (3) neutrons.  More than half of these elements are extremely scarce and therefore do not concern us very much.

The electrons, protons, and neutrons join together in nature and form the atoms.  Therefore, we can safely say, along with slugs and snails and puppy dog tails, as well as sugar and spice, you and I are made of atoms.

Of the 92 naturally occurring elements, eight make up 98 percent of the crust of the earth: Oxygen, 49 percent; silicon, 26 percent; aluminum, 8 percent; iron, 5 percent; calcium, 3 percent; sodium, 3 percent; potassium, 2 percent; and magnesium, 2 percent.  All the other elements combined may fill the other 2 percent.  And many of the remaining 2 percent are not found in the earth's crust at all.

How critical is the balance of the elements in this world? Let me give you a few simple everyday facts that every high school student should know if he took any courses in chemistry or physics.  Just one element, carbon, accounts for about 90 percent by value and 95 percent by weight of all the products manufactured.  If this one element, carbon, were eliminated from the earth and we kept all of the remaining elements, the industrial world would collapse.  By the way, your body contains a few pounds of carbon in some form so you would not be here either.

If the element oxygen were to suddenly vanish from the earth, and all of the other 91 elements remained, every living thing in the world would die.  There would be no air to breathe, no water to drink.  The earth would be an airless, waterless hulk of matter orbiting the sun as a dead planet like the moon that orbits the earth.  Our world is very critically balanced, and meticulously fine tuned.

To wonder at the full mysterious power behind how the hydrogen atom, the only atom without a neutron, was programmed to create the neutron and form the atoms to make the elements, is beyond all doubt, a wondrous work.

For a quickie, consider this: Element Number 8 on the atomic scale of elements is a gas called oxygen.  Element Number 1 is also a gas called hydrogen.  When Nature combines two atoms of hydrogen with one atom of oxygen, these two gasses change into a liquid called water.  From this liquid, we can make ice below 32° F., or steam above 212°F.  If you don't think this is a tricky bit of design engineering you don't know too much about how the world works.  Or, are you gullible enough to believe the laws that govern this have been happening purely by chance for billions of years?

Not only this world, but the 100 billion galaxies in our universe, are all made of just three things: electrons, protons, and neutrons.

The next time you are visiting one of our country's national parks like Zion, Bryce, or Yosemite, stand still and behold the wondrous works of God.

Editor's Note:  If you go on and look at what electrons and protons are made of, the amazing building blocks of matter become even more astounding.

Back to Contents Does God Exist?, MayJun06.