Here are some of the astronomical odds and how they were calculated. These are exclusive to Jesus. After I run some errands, I will present astronomical odds for the fallacy of evolution. Feel free to ignore the truth…
SCIENCE SPEAKS (about the odds)
By PETER W. STONER, M.S.
Chairman of the Departments of Mathematics and Astronomy at Pasadena City College until 1953; Chairman of the science division, Westmont College, 1953-57; Professor Emeritus of Science, Westmont College; Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Astronomy, Pasadena City College.
Since it is so detailed, these are the highlights from the 3rd chapter of Science Speaks. For those who enjoy the details and/or the probabilities calculations, the entire chapter will follow at the end of the book…
In evaluating these prophecies, we shall have to answer this question regarding each prophecy: One man in how many men has fulfilled this prophecy? I realize that some will object to this question, saying that these prophecies were made with respect to Christ, and no other man has, or even can, fulfill them. This, of course, is true when you consider the mass of prophecies regarding Christ, but it is not true of all individual prophecies. It was prophesied, for example, that Christ would be born in Bethlehem; certainly other persons have been born in Bethlehem. It was prophesied that Christ would be crucified; other men have been crucified. I certainly am not trying to be sacrilegious in asking these questions; but I am trying to look at the evidence entirely unbiased, that I may the better give a clear argument.
The estimates used in this chapter are a combination of the estimates given by this class on Christian evidences combined with estimates given me later by some twelve different classes of college students, representing more than 600 students. I have carefully weighed the estimates and have changed some to make them more conservative. If the reader does not agree with the estimates given, he may make his own estimates and then carry them through to their logical conclusions.
We considered the following eight prophecies:
- “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (Micah 5:2).
- “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me” (Mal. 3:1).
- “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation: lowly, and riding upon … a colt the foal of an ***” (Zech. 9:9).
- “And one shall say unto him, what are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends”(Zech. 13:6).
- “And I said unto them, if ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver” (Zech. 11:12).
- “And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord” (Zech. 11:13).
- “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7).
- “For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet”(Ps. 22:16).
We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 1017. Let us try to visualize this chance. If you mark one of ten tickets, and place all of the tickets in a hat, and thoroughly stir them, and then ask a blindfolded man to draw one, his chance of getting the right ticket is one in ten. Suppose that we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far s he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote using their own wisdom. Now these prophecies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be. In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 1017 of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ.
This means that the fulfillment of these {8} eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one change in 1017 of being absolute. (1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000)
Suppose we add eight more prophecies to our list, and assume that their chance of fulfillment is the same as the eight just considered. The chance that one man would fulfill all {16} sixteen is 1 in 1045.
(1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)
Let us try to visualize this as we did before. Take this number of silver dollars. If you make these into a solid ball, you will have a great sphere with a center at the earth, and extending in all directions more than 30 times as far as from the earth to the sun. Again, this is based on only {16} sixteen of the more than {300} three hundred prophecies dealing with Christ’s first advent.
Any man who rejects Christ as the Son of God is rejecting a fact proved perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the world.