March Madness and Christian Apologetics?

Picture this scenario. You are walking along the beach on an early March day (in Florida so it’s warm) and you come across a complete March Madness bracket drawn out on the sand. You analyze the picks, snap a picture of it on your phone, and continue on your walk down the shore line. Fast forward about a month later. Your watching the National Championship game surrounded by your friends and family. The final buzzer sounds, the winning team rushes the court, the net is cut down, and the trophy is handed out. When you look at the final score, your mind flashes back to the bracket drawn out on the beach. To your amazement, the bracket on the beach had correctly picked the final two teams, the winner, and the final score. Shocked, you continue to review the remaining picks in the bracket on the beach.

As you analyze and compare the bracket on the beach from about a month earlier to the final bracket of the tournament, each game is picked correctly. Your jaw drops as you make the realization that the bracket on the beach had perfectly predicted the results of the tournament. Frantically googling the probability of such an incredible prediction, you find out that the probability of perfectly predicting a March Madness bracket is 1 in 9.2 quintillion (yes, that is a number). “How big is a quintillion? Well, if all 7 billion people in the world each filled out one bracket per minute, it would take about 2,500 years to fill out 9.2 quintillion brackets. And if you stack 9.2 quintillion brackets on top of each other, it would reach the sun and back—more than 3,000 times (Berg, 2021).”

Now, considering the astronomical probability of pulling off such a feat, would you say that it was the tossing and turning of waves on the shore that produced the perfect bracket on the beach? Or would you say a person who was perhaps an expert in college basketball produced the perfect bracket on the beach? You’d say that it was a person, right? Why would you say this? This would be the most reasonable conclusion because the probability of predicting a perfect March Madness bracket combined with the probability of the waves producing that elaborate and understandable image on the beach would be unthinkable. Why is this unthinkable? Because information is always linked to an intelligent source. Why is information always linked to an intelligent source?

First let’s analyze what information is. Information “involves code (a set of symbols and rules for using letters, words, phrases, or symbols to represent something else), meaning (which enables communication by representing real objects or concepts with specific symbols, words, or phrases), expected action (which conveys an implicit or explicit request or command to perform a given task), and intended purpose (which is the anticipated goal that can be achieved by the performance of the expected action or actions)” (Ham, 2019).Therefore, information can be universally defined as “an encoded, symbolically represented message conveying expected action and intended purpose” (Ham, 2019). According to the Universal Definition of Information (UDI), “anything not containing all four attributes is not considered information” (Ham, 2019). So, how does our March Madness bracket on the beach line up with the Universal

Definition of Information:

Code: English Alphabet

Meaning: Letters make words that represent physical schools, the results of games, and the score of National Championship game

Expected Action: To determine what the correct results for the games in the March Madness tournament will be.

Intended Purpose: To correctly predict the results for the games in the March Madness tournament

As we can see, the March Madness bracket on the beach meets all the criteria to qualify as information. According the to First Fundamental Law of Information, “a purely material entity, such as physiochemical processes, cannot create a non-material entity” (Ham, 2019). Non-material entities include thought, spirit, and will (Ham, 2019). In addition, the Second Fundamental Law of Information states that “information is a non-material fundamental entity and not a property of matter” (Ham, 2019). For example, “the information recorded on a CD is non-material. If you weigh a modern blank CD, fill it with information, and weigh it again, the two weights will be the same” (Ham, 2019). The First Law of Thermodynamics drives home the point that information is non-material further. According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, matter cannot be created or destroyed. How does this apply to information?

Take our March Madness bracket on the beach. If a wave came and washed it away, the wave would be destroying the created information on the beach. So, since information can be created and destroyed, it follows that information is non-material (Ham, 2019). So more laws and correlation to consider:

• “information cannot originate in statistical processes. Chance plus time cannot create information no matter how many chances or how much time is available” (Ham, 2019).

• “Information can only originate from an intelligent sender” (Ham, 2019).

• “All codes result from an intentional choice and agreement between sender and recipient” (Ham, 2019).

• “Any given chain of information can be traced backward to an intelligent source” (Ham, 2019).

• “When information (UDI) is utilized in a material domain, it always requires a machine” (Ham, 2019).

• “Information is required for the design and construction of machines” (Ham, 2019).

Now, the March Madness bracket on the beach was a theoretical example, but do we see any examples of this in real life? Take DNA. It involves “a code (letters, ATCG, that make up words, codons), meaning (each codon represents an amino acid), expected action (construction, function, maintenance, and reproduction of an entire organism), and an intended purpose (existence of life)” (Ham, 2019). Since DNA is considered information, it follows that it originated from an intelligent source. But wait, what about evolution and natural process, couldn’t they have produced DNA?

As we have seen, the material processes involved in evolution/natural processes could not have produced the non-material information we see in DNA. Furthermore, the chance of intelligent life that DNA is present in being formed by the undirected natural processes of evolution is 1 in 10 to the 2,000,000,000 power or 1 followed by 2 billion zeroes. So, just as we can conclude that March Madness bracket on the beach was the result of an intelligent source, so can we conclude that life was the result of an intelligent source. And who was that intelligent source? Genesis 1 has the answer, and that answer is the God of the universe.

“Then God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that crawl, and the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. So God made the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that crawl on the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.” So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.” God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you, for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth — everything having the breath of life in it — I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day.”

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭1:24-31‬ ‭

References:

The New Answers Book 2 by Ken Ham

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/lx/the-odds-of-a-perfect-ncaa-bracket-are-even-worse-than-you-think/2552134/