Perhaps it’s because of the busy pace of our lives, but most of us have the tendency to just accept that things are the way they are because they’re just that way. "That’s just the way it is." is a common response to many questions. Somehow, deep in the past, the laws of probability, working within all the possible combinations and permutations produced a chance outcome and it happened to be "this" - whatever "this" might be under consideration at the moment.

Serious scientists are finding more and more evidence that "chance" isn’t the most satisfying answer for many of their questions about why things are the way they are. There really seems to have been some intelligent input behind it all. There seems to be clear purpose and design which are quite outside the realm of mere chance.

Some theorists now suggest that little or nothing is decided by chance. Their idea is that we just don’t understand all of the delicate balances that affect final outcomes of even things like coin tosses. The initial position of the coin on the thumb nail, the amount of force in the flip, the position of the hand, the shape and balance of the individual coin, the density and movement of the air, and other factors we don’t normally think of, let alone try to control, when we’re flipping coins all affect the outcome.

When we move into areas of greater complexity, like the shape of eggs, we find chance to be even less satisfying. When we take a closer look, the things that we might be tempted to describe as "natural" have been carefully designed and created.

For Reflection:

• Think of something that you have always considered to have been the product of "chance." What might be some of the variables that produce those chance outcomes?
• Think about how controlling these variables might produce predictable results.