When it comes to probability, bigger IS better!

The odds of the Earth and all its life being created by chance alone is a gadzillion to one.

Wow. All those hundreds of zeroes to the right of the decimal point. With such an incredibly small probability of this world occurring by chance, how could anyone not see that it just has to be the work of an Intelligent Designer...or even God!

Wow. How wrong can anyone be? Unless there are two, and only two, mutually exclusive causes for a phenomenon, one cannot know anything about the odds of one causative agent simply by knowing the odds of another causative agent. What's more, if given the choice between being the causative agent by virtue of another causative agent being extremely unlikely, and being the causative agent by virtue of having an enormously large likelihood, which one would God choose to be?

Does God want to be thought of as "The Only Explanation for All Things Unknown?" or "The Most Ubiquitous Explanation for All Things Known and Unknown?" If I had to choose, I would pick the latter. I doubt if God wants to be seen as the last alternative after Science has failed to provide a "Theory of Everything" mainly because Science is still trying to do so and because God already has His own theory of everything.

The "Science cannot explain this, so it must be God" premise is one of exclusion. It is the premise of last resort. To be sure, Science and God are not involved in any turf wars: Science has its own methods and God has His own methods. Sceintists seek truth through experimentation, but experimentation can also be used to seek God's truth as well. Gideon used experimentation:

(Judges 6:36-40)

36 Gideon said to God, "If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised- 37 look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said." 38 And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.

39 Then Gideon said to God, "Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece. This time make the fleece dry and the ground covered with dew." 40 That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.

That, my friends, is an example of an experimental design called a "reversal design" whereby the conditions of the experiment in the first trial are reversed for the second trial. Here is a perfect, scientific experiment used to test God's will that was conducted more than 2,200 years ago!

My question is, "If Gideon could do it, then what about me?"

I am a scientist. I know how to conduct experiments. I am also a believer in the God of Israel, but not by experimentation, per se. Meaning, I have done my own experiments, but only as a way to confirm what I already believed to be true. Can scientific experiments be used to prove God's existence? If by "prove," we mean "demonstrate according to some preset statistical criteria," then, the answer is "Yes." Remember that Science does not "prove" anything in the sense that it removes all shadows of a doubt. There is always room for doubt.

What I intend on doing is showing that God is not a God by exclusion but a God of inclusion...that God is not just the answer when none is available, but that God is the most likely answer when others are available. Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." Is there anyone who would deprive God of the ability to think? Did Descartes say that he exists because none have proven that he does not? In other words, let's put God on the same footing as Man if we are to use the same criteria.