These are two speeches taken from William Peter Blatty's "The Ninth Configuration".
In order for life to have appeared on earth there first had to be in existence a protein molecule of a certain dissymmetrical configuration, the configuration
point nine. But according to the laws of probability, for one of these molecules to appear by chance alone would require a volume of matter of more
than--well--many trillions and trillions of times that of the size of the entire universe; and considered strictly from the angle of time and given a volume of
matter equivalent to the earth's, such a probability would require ten to the two hundred and something power billions of years--a number with so many
zeros in it you couldn't fit them into a book the size of "The Brothers Karamazov". And that's just one molecule. For life to appear, you would have to
have millions in existence and at roughly the same time. Which I find more fantastic than simply believing in God.
I have given some thought to one of your problems, the one wherein you question why God does not end man's honest confusion concerning what it is that
He expects him to do, by simply appearing to him and telling him in an unequivocal way. What if a man in shining garments appeared tomorrow hovering
in the air above a great city and declared to all that he was sent to us by God; and that as a credential of his claim he would perform any miracle that was
asked of him? And suppose that he was asked to make the sun do figure eights in the sky for precisely twenty-six minutes, beginning at noon the following
day. And suppose that he accomplished that. Would we believe him? Well, I think that for a while all would believe, all those who saw what he had done.
But after a week or so, I fear only those of good will would still believe; all others would be talking of autosuggestion, mass hysteria, mass hypnosis,
coincidence, unknown forces and the like. It is not what we see in the sky that helps; it is what is in the heart: a right hope, a good will. I hope this help
you. |
