Scientists: Our Solar System is Pretty Special

The materialist/naturalist/evolutionist believes that the universe came into being through a random, spontaneous event, and that all that we see today came to be this way through billions of years filled with random, uncontrolled happenings.

Somehow, in this modern faerie tale, this highly complex universe just happened to end up in this high state of complexity.

In other words, all the matter that suddenly sprang into existence from absolutely nothing managed to, over billions of years, start to organize itself into more dense forms of matter (in defiance of the laws of the universe), until stars eventually formed (in defiance of the laws of the universe).

Planets also just happened to form (in defiance of the laws of the universe).

Conditions on earth just happened to end up in a state where the formation of life was at least possible.

Life just happened to form from a random set of elements and circumstances (in defiance of the laws of the universe).

Life also managed to (in defiance of the laws of the universe) organize itself into higher forms until eventually humans came along who were able to understand this incredible modern faerie tale, er, wonder of random events that just happened to work out favorable to humans.

Materialistic scientists have until recently examined our solar system, seen nothing remarkable (just another random set of things that happened to come out in a positive, ordered system), and surmised the rest of the galaxy and universe must just be filled with other beneficial and ordered systems that just happened to work out that way.

But now, according to Science Daily, researchers at Northwestern University have gone and messed up the comfort of that modern faerie tale...and probably all the milk and cookies that came with it.

It seems this ordinary, mundane, seen-one-you've-seen-'em-all solar system in which humans live isn't so ordinary.

You see, unlike ages past, we can now gather data about other solar systems across the cosmos...and that data is telling us our home solar system is pretty special.

Scientists found that if conditions weren't just right, planets could end up plunging into their local sun, or spinning off into the cold of outer space.

The researchers ran more than a hundred simulations, and the results show that the average planetary system's origin was full of violence and drama but that the formation of something like our solar system required conditions to be "just right."

"But we now know that these other planetary systems don't look like the solar system at all," said Frederic A. Rasio, a theoretical astrophysicist and professor of physics and astronomy in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He is senior author of the Science paper.

Since matter doesn't normally organize itself into higher forms, even the formation of a star and accompanying planets is a stretch. But assuming that is spontaneously possible, scientists have found that actually getting a stable--and thus habitable--solar system is a long shot indeed.

Of course, an intelligent designer (say, like the one in the Bible) could explain this unusual and perhaps unique state of order in our solar system.

But then, believing in an intelligent designer would be a stretch, wouldn't it?