the chances we take

I said, "How do you account for the formation of the world?"

"Oh! Force and matter work together, and by chance the world was created."

I said, "It is a singular thing that your tongue isn't on the top of your head if force and matter just threw it together in that manner."

If I should take out my watch and say that force and matter worked together and out came the watch, you would say I was a lunatic of the first order. Wouldn't you? And yet they say that this old world was made by chance! 

~ The Overcoming Life by D. L. Moody ~

I took a biology class on evolution back in my first year of undergraduate school and it really opened my eyes to how closed people can be. Needless to say, being in a secular university, the majority of students and professors are atheists/agnostics. What I don't appreciate is professors allowing their personal beliefs to bleed into their lectures. How absolutely professional. My lecturer had a big bone to pick with Christianity and creationism and made fun of it in class. And in the online forum, it appeared like I was the only one standing up for the faith. With every post or comment I made in favour of God, I was ripped apart brutally, as if I had just made a strong, personal insult against them (and their family), people I did not even know.

What is it about faith and religion that gets people all up in arms? And why are they particularly defensive when God or Jesus or the creation of the world is mentioned? If something held no truth, shouldn't it hold no threat? 

It's quite a beautiful irony when people proudly proclaim their subscription to the evolution theory, without having even read The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. If they had, they would realize (with a horrid start) that Darwin mentions a CREATOR in his masterpiece. O wait a minute, I thought evolution had NOTHING to do with a creator and was the antidote for those who needed something other than a god to believe in? Make what you will of the following quote:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." ~ The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

I wonder how many would still choose to believe in the origins of evolution if they had read this. The bottom line thus appears to be: Know what you believe and inform yourselves. I've thought deeply about the issue, written about it in school, and tried to continually read about creation and science, and thus, my conclusion is firm. A simple example I'd like to pose is that of a wooden chair. It appears as a rather simple object, but for a chair to become a chair, requires an incredible process. From the felling of a majestic tree in the heart of a forest to the manufacturing and assembling process in a factory, all of this requires machinery, labour, tools, etc. All for a simple, humble chair which serves us well and daily. No one would ever declare that it came out of nowhere, plain as it looks. So what more can we say about the xylem and phloem in a plant, how a bird takes flight in the endless blue heavens, the shining stars in our infinite universe, and the human body that works amazingly and tirelessly to keep body and soul together until we leave this brilliant earth?

We all have choices and with that, chances. Tell me then, what chances are you taking with all that you believe in?