In some previous chapters we discussed self-consciousness. We did this for a reason. For a person who is basically indifferent to religious ideas, it is meaningless and bothersome to talk about the knowledge of Christianity. However, he or she must be a person and have self-consciousness, so it is a possible breakthrough point for changing his or her well-fortified mind. There is another possible breakthrough point. He or she definitely is a part of the world, so we may use the world as a whole to provide some arguments. Any person should agree that if deep analyses of the facts in the world show some interesting results, he or she has to take them seriously.
     The world provides all kinds of knowledge for us to pursue. There are many different disciplines belonging to different categories like physical sciences, social sciences, humanities, etc. Each discipline has its own tradition and attractive features. Each discipline has its own contributions to our society. Each discipline has its own masters who devoted their lifetimes to developing and glorifying it. The brain of our species is so clever and flexible that we are capable of learning and creating a wide variety of different things. Our world is interesting, significant, and balanced, and it needs people to research in all different areas. Is there a God who designed such a world for us?
     The world also provides all kinds of entertainment. People enjoy music, and this is an additional advantage of the abilities of listening and speaking. People appreciate fine arts, and this is an additional advantage of vision. People travel to view beautiful scenes everywhere. People sport. People watch theatrics. After billions of years of evolution, one kind of the specialists of survival suddenly became beings capable of enjoying various types of entertainment during the last several thousand years. The conditions of the world are perfectly right that the species Homo sapiens may have a rich and colorful lifestyle.
     Entertainment is one of many of our mental needs. While we don’t know exactly how psychological issues relate to our souls, we do know that they are important to our life. Happiness, sadness, hopefulness, fearfulness, love, and hate are not less important than our physical needs. We clearly understand that we are emotional animals by our everyday experiences. The dual coexistence of our body and mind makes us unique among all creatures.
     We, this unique species, have created a great civilization. Our civilization is very lucky. Although it doesn’t sound good for those who lost properties, family, or friends in weather-related disasters, our global climate, scientifically speaking, is very stable. The situations of the atmosphere depend on thousands of factors provided by our planet. A little change of a factor can make a big difference. Our climate could be more chaotic. If there had been more random disasters on earth, the driving force of evolution would have been stronger, and we might have become a more superior species. However, this is not the case. There has been no significant global change during the several thousand years of recorded history. Natural disasters happen now and then within a tolerable limit of society. Most of the land mass sees seasonal cycles, which helped the birth of agriculture and enrich our lives. After centuries of industrialization, the global system has been able to absorb its impact on climate so far. The basic setting of the ecosystem of our blue planet is amazing.
     The progress of our civilization was also very lucky. The earliest agricultural society rose in the Mesopotamia region (the modern Middle East). According to modern research, there were many reasons that the earliest Agricultural Revolution happened here instead of elsewhere. The geographical and ecological conditions of Mesopotamia were better than anywhere else. This area had plants and animals suitable for domestication. That was why the people who lived here developed agriculture and animal husbandry. This area also offered some good mineral resources for metal working. In other regions, similar developments came at a much slower pace. If these coincidences had not existed, we could have spent three thousand years on our early developments, instead of one thousand years.
     Another lucky factor of our civilization is the well-prepared conditions for industrialization. Scientific laws beneficial to this process are available. Natural resources for this process are also stored. Developed countries now consume dozens of millions of barrels of petroleum and millions of tons of iron a day to maintain their prosperity and progress. Something will be wrong in the near future due to the upcoming shortage of resources, especially when it comes to petroleum. However, after centuries of progress based on cheap energy, we have learned many things about nature, and our technologies are very advanced now. Perhaps we will successfully apply our advanced technologies to find a different way to run our industrialized world. We are like a college student with a problem: After graduation, he can earn enough money to support a luxurious life, but he has no money to pay school tuition. He solves the problem by borrowing money to get educated, and he will pay back when he has enough income. We have borrowed petroleum for centuries from earth to fund teaching ourselves how to study, control, and change nature for our convenience. We will not be able to pay back petroleum to earth, because we have burned it. If petroleum were not fortunately there, our modernization would have been impossible.
     All of the above show that there should be a God. He carefully designed a set of natural laws to create a universe. This universe would not only give birth to some intelligent beings capable of creating a civilization but also lead to an advanced civilization that has many ordered, complicated, balanced, and interesting features. To create such a universe is much harder than to create a universe simply allowing evolution to happen and not to fail halfway. If an advanced civilization happening in a lifeless universe is a wonder, an advanced civilization happening in a lifeless universe which seems to be carefully managed is a wonder of wonders.
     We should say the opposite, the atheistic worldview, is a little shallow. Let’s look at the inference if our civilized world is merely a result of an automated evolutionary process. We assume that with probability 1/2, the world has all kinds of knowledge to pursue, and with probability 1/2, it doesn’t.  (The probability is picked arbitrarily. It says that the probability that the world has all kinds of knowledge to pursue and the probability that it doesn’t are equal. However, the former is a more orderly case, so it should have a smaller probability in contrast to the latter.) With probability 1/2, the world has all kinds of entertainment, and with probability 1/2, it doesn’t. With probability 1/2, people in the world have mental needs, and with probability 1/2, they don’t. With probability 1/2, the climate is stable, and with probability 1/2, it is chaotic. With probability 1/2, the civilization develops quickly, and with probability 1/2, it doesn’t. With probability 1/2, the civilization becomes industrialized, and with probability 1/2, it doesn’t. In conclusion, with probability (1/2) × (1/2) × (1/2) × (1/2) × (1/2) × (1/2) = 1/64, the world after billions of years of evolution would be as great as the one where we are living now, and with probability 1 - 1/64 = 63/64, it would be troublesome. The conclusion of our analysis is unfavorable to atheism and favorable to theism.

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