By Rev. Joseph M. Esper
In light of the ongoing controversy over whether science classes in public schools should teach only the theory of evolution, or also include the theory of “intelligent design” (which holds that the world couldn’t have come about through mere chance or evolution, but must have been designed by a higher intelligence), a book by two British researchers (published in 2005) offers some highly interesting information.
Christopher Knight and Alan Butler, who describe themselves as “dyed in the wool agnostics,” authored Who Built the Moon? According to Butler, “All experts agree that the Moon is a highly improbable object and it has been nothing less than an incubator for life on Earth. Quite simply, we humans would not be here if the Moon had not been exactly the size it is in the various positions it has held over the last four-and-a-half billion years” (due to tides and other beneficial effects of the Moon’s gravitational pull).
The researchers found some intriguing mathematical relationships between the size of the Moon, the Earth, and the Sun. The Earth, for instance, revolves 366 times in one orbit of the Sun, and the Earth is 366 times larger than the Moon. At the same time, the Moon takes 27.32 days to orbit the Earth—and is 27.32% the size of Earth. “There is no possible relationship between the relative size of the Earth and the Moon and their orbital characteristics, yet the numbers are the same. And that was just the first of many such underlying patterns,” Knight said in a press release about the book.
He continued, “The number 366 was the basis of the ancient measuring system we reconstructed, and that number keeps popping up along with a small group of round numbers such as 400 and 10,000. For example, the Moon is 400 times closer to the Earth than the Sun and exactly 400 times smaller than the Sun. And in 366 orbits of the Moon, the Earth experiences 10,000 days.”
“We were confused at first,” admitted Butler. “Where there should have been random, disconnected numbers there were beautifully harmonious relationships and repeating patterns. It struck us as though we were looking at some kind of engineering blueprint involving the Earth and the Moon’s interaction around the Sun.” The researchers further discovered that the Earth is 109.3 times smaller than the Sun, while the circumference of the Moon when measured in kilometers is 10,390. Also, the Moon is turning at exactly 1% of the Earth’s spin, which gives a speed at the lunar equator of 400 kilometers per hour.
As a result, Knight and Butler assert that “there can be only one logical explanation. Some agency saw the life-bearing potential of the Earth/Sun system and added the Moon as a means to create and nurture life.”
The Judeo-Christian explanation for these mysteries is very simple, and is taken from Genesis 1:1—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.”
