There Are No Atheists In Birthing Rooms

We were all expecting.

But when baby John appeared mid-morning last Wednesday, is was still, a surprising, upending experience.

And for a good reason.  There is no more unexplained, mysterious,  jarring -- yet -- holy moment -- than the birth of a child.

In our case, it was the birth of our first grandchild.  But that only made the explanation and the mystery, more profound, and inexplicable.

For me the most disconcerting part of John's birth was trying to figure out how John came alive.   I understood the biological, physiological part of John's development:  sperm meets egg -- egg divides -- egg continues to develop and grow, etc.

But as I looked at John -- starred at John -- I could not understand how he became a breathing, living being.  I mean John is no mere 'robot' -- no mere movement of flesh, form, and frame.  John is radically alive!

Now, I know the 'correct' answer; it's out of the 'correct' book, Holy Scripture:

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.  I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God!  How vast is the sum of them..."  (Psalm 139:13-17).

But I must confess.  Though I've known this text, and other related texts, all my life, when I came 'face to face' with the truth of this text (and related texts) -- it was still, utterly, unbelievable.

I am doing better.  But I still have not fully absorbed the sheer audacity of God in human birth.  It's as if at birth, God gets 'in our face' and shakes us -- 'slamming us' emotionally -- into a new awareness of His utter control and singular role as sole creator -- not only of the universe -- but also -- of every living life.

One problem: we don't know how God does it.  We've figured out how fingers are formed -- and eye color mutated -- but we haven't figured out how a baby becomes a living being.

But we're trying.

A current craze is artificial intelligence (AI).  In essence, AI is attempting to 're-create' human life, in visible and demonstrative forms. In fact, in recent months. Google, the famed Internet giant, has organized it's entire company around AI, under the guise of Google Brain, convinced:

"...that artificial “neural networks” that acquaint themselves with the world via trial and error, as toddlers do, might, in turn, develop something like human flexibility...[Already] Google Brain has demonstrated that this approach to artificial intelligence could solve many problems that confounded decades of conventional efforts. Speech recognition didn’t work very well until Brain undertook an effort to revamp it...The same was true of image recognition. Less than a year ago, Brain for the first time commenced with the gut renovation of an entire consumer product, and its momentous results [are] being celebrated..." https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html

It is any wonder, that Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned theoretical physicist has conjectured that AI could supersede human life as we know it, spelling:

"...the end of the human race...[Why] humans...are limited by slow biological evolution...[thus, eventually, they won't be able to] compete and would be superseded..."     http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540

Scary.

But I disagree.  For though AI might be able to replicate human flexibility and other aspects of human movement and 'presence' -- it will never be able to replicate the human spirit which is only birthed and renewed by a Divine Creator, the Lord God.

The Lord God's singular role is 'cemented' in the book of Genesis:

"...Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being..." (Genesis 2:7).

The only thing more startling than these words is when you actually see these words 'coming to life' right before you own eyes.  It's just inconceivable.

It's also, convicting.  For there is no other explanation than a Creator beyond us.  God.

Sure, that's 'hard to swallow' in a pluralistic, faith-less, 'AI world,' where many are convinced they can be the creator.  But I'm telling you, though you can explain scientifically, biologically, the creation of flesh, form, and frame, there is no explanation scientifically, biologically for the breath -- the countenance -- the sheer life -- of a newborn baby.

No other explanation.

And so, if we're honest:  there are not atheists in birthing rooms.

And so I thank God for the miracle of new birth, as it jars us, humbles us -- reminding us: that in spite of brilliant technology and sophisticated scientific theory -- none of us -- even the most brilliant of us -- even the most 'AI accomplished' of us -- can create a living being.