One day in my senior-level Mathematics class, my professor stood in front of the room, pulled a coin out of his pocket (he loved to do these kinds of things), and flipped it up in the air, catching it with one hand and smacking his other hand down on top of it at the same time.
Without revealing the coin to us, he said: “This coin is an unbiased coin. What is the probability that when I take my hand away, its head side will be facing up?” Simple. Too simple. He went around the room and made everybody answer. I mean … what would you say? After scratching our brains searching for some hidden trick––we knew our professor well––the entire class full of experienced seniors, myself included, gave up and responded with the answer that any reasonable, educated, American adult would give: “fifty percent.”
And as you guessed, we brilliant seniors were all dead wrong.
Deliciously, delightedly, my professor licked his lips and went on to explain to us that the probability was not, in fact, fifty percent. The probability was one-hundred percent. Or the probability was zero percent. But it was not fifty percent.
You see, the coin had already been flipped.
When the professor had asked his question, the coin was already sitting there, lying concealed in his hand. And one of its two sides was already facing up. Though we were uncertain as to which side faced up, in actuality there was absolutely no uncertainty. The side that was facing up was facing up. There was no doubt about it. Now if my professor had asked us the probability of getting a heads before he had flipped the coin, then the correct answer would have indeed been fifty-percent. But after it was already sitting there in his hand, there was no more probability. There was no more chance. The probability was either a) one-hundred percent: absolutely, uncompromisingly, heads, or b) zero percent: totally, indisputably tails. There was no middle ground. It either was or it wasn’t.
The word probability pops up a lot when we talk about origins; when we talk about how this world came to be; when we talk about things like the big-bang, evolution, creationism, and the like. Atheists feel there is a strong probability that God does not exist and therefore did not create the world. Evolutionists are concerned with whether or not it might be probable for either God or the universe to use evolution as a means of producing the life we observe today. Creationists point to the extreme improbability of the world simply being created by chance.
But in a very real sense, this term is bankrupt here. David Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion, argues that probabilities do not apply to creation. Note carefully what he says:
Probabilities belong to the world in which things happen because they might, creation to the world in which things happen because they must. We explain creation by appealing to creators, whether deities or the inflexible laws of nature. We explain what is chancy by appealing to chance. We cannot do both. If God did make the world, it is not improbable. If it is improbable, then God did not make it. The best we could say is that God made a world that would be improbable had it been produced by chance. But it wasn’t, and so he didn’t.
If it is improbable at all that God made the world––that is, if the slightest bit is left to chance, than He did not make it. Why? We argue by contraposition: Because if God did make the world, than it is not improbable. Note what the author of Hebrews says:
Hebrews 3:4 | Now every house is built by someone, but the One who built everything is God.
We are here. We have been created. The house has been built. We intuitively understand that if we are here, than there is no more chance that we have been created––we have been. The author of Hebrews tells us what we already know naturally (that we are created), and then tells us who the agent is in that creation: God. The One who built everything is God.
I would like to introduce another word which I think may be more helpful to the discussion:
Confidence.
For us seniors sitting in that classroom, the question was not “how probable is it that this coin is heads?,” but “how confident are you that the coin is heads?” What we should have said was that we were fifty-percent confident that the coin was, indeed, heads. Even though, in reality, the orientation of the coin was absolutely certain, we could not be confident either way because we did not know which side was indisputably facing upwards. So we would have been perfectly correct in claiming a fifty-percent confidence level.
…Unless we had access to some form of inside knowledge. Unless we could somehow attain factual information pertaining to the true state of the coin. Unless, our professor, who we’ll say a) had 20/20 vision and b) was unquestionably trustworthy to convey truth, had peeked at the coin and told us, for example, that heads was facing up. In which case the correct answer would be: We are one-hundred percent certain that the heads side is facing upwards.
But here’s the thing: The absolutely certain state of the coin’s orientation did not depend on our confidence level.
Hebrews 11:3 | By faith we understand that the universe was created by God’s command, so that what is seen has been made from things that are not visible.
God has told us the state of how things are. God has revealed to us Who our Creator is:
Genesis 1:1-3 | In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
John 1:1-3 | In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created.
Revelation 4:11 | Our Lord and God, You are worthy to receive glory and honor and power, because You have created all things, and because of Your will they exist and were created.
We can speak of how confident we are that God has created the world, that He exists, that He did it how He said He did it, and that He is trustworthy, but we cannot speak of how probable those things are, because, in actuality, He has, He does, He did, and He is. The question is not one of probability, but of confidence.
Because you see, the coin has already been flipped.
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