Review of Neil Comins,
What if the Moon Didn’t Exist
By Jeffrey Stueber
I recently purchased the video The Privileged Planet, a video that
strongly argues for some type of intelligent intervention in bringing about the
existence of the Earth and the universe.
I find strong confirmation in its claims in the book What if the Moon Didn’t Exist by Neil Comins, a book that not only explores what the Earth would
be like if the moon was not there but what our habitat would be like given
other celestial circumstances. Comins is not creationist as is evidenced by his frequent
reliance on evolutionist beliefs. He is,
however, a professor of astronomy and physics at the
We learn from this book the unique nature of
Earth that makes it amazingly habitable to life and Comins
teaches us this in each chapter that characterizes a hypothetical Earth given
different celestial variables. For
instance, on Solon, a hypothetical earth with no moon, the days would shorten
so that today each day would only be 8 hours long, something that would
certainly mess up our work week.
Stronger surface winds would generate greater friction between the air
and our planet surface and wear down mountains quicker leaving little chance
for rock climbing expeditions. Smaller
tides would not mix minerals and chemicals in the ocean effectively in a way
that would make life possible. An
atmosphere dense in oxygen would make life difficult and early travelers would
not be able to use the phases of the moon as a partial clock. Certainly we would agree that life is better
with our moon than without it.
On Lunholm, a
planet where the moon is closer to us than it currently is, ocean tides would
increase potentially making life near the water inhospitable. If the moon were half as far away as it is,
tides would be eight times as high as they now are. Rivers would also overflow frequently making
it difficult to have any life live near the water much less allowing us to farm
such land. The high tides would also
disable early navigation of the oceans making the voyage of Christopher
Columbus highly questionable. A moon
closer to us would shine more light on our planet making night-time astronomy
difficult if not impossible.
On Petiel, an
earth with less mass, tides would be lower but, of course, the planet would
suffer from the effects of less tidal mixing of minerals and chemicals much
like Solon. However, Petiel
would suffer from greater volcanic eruptions that would spew debris higher in
the air causing greater problems for the planet’s temperature and
hospitability. There would be less
carbon dioxide to convert to oxygen and higher winds as on Solon.
On Urania, a
planet with the same tilt as Uranus, life would not be very pleasant. Comins summarizes:
All
the major cities and virtually all the human inhabitants of Earth live where
there is a daily cycle of light and dark throughout the year. Except for cities built right on Urania’s equator, no place on that world would undergo that
daily cycle every day of the year. As a
result, the seasons on Urania would be far more
severe than they are on Earth. Consider
the temperature of
Rising
higher and higher in the sky, the spring sun would melt ice frozen in
Lastly, on Granstar,
a planet with a sun more massive than now, the water cycle would be seriously
impaired not to mention an increase in deadly ultraviolet radiation that would
harm life rather than help it.
What his book shows is how privileged our
planet actually is and how lucky we are to live on such a cleverly designed
planet and universe.
Jeffrey
Stueber