The moon is the earth’s closest companion…it is a satellite of the earth. It is a dark body (like a planet) and is seen by reflected sunlight. The Bible says, "God created the moon to be "the lesser light that rules the night" (Genesis 1:16). This is one of many essential duties served by the moon. Our planet is the only planet with a moon large enough to light up the evening sky. Our moon is 100 times larger than the average sized moon in our solar system. With an average sized moon, our evenings would be 20 times darker.

The Bible in Genesis 1:14 says the moon was also created "for signs and seasons and days and years." Meticulous records demonstrate that the moon has remained in a stable orbit for 3000 years. This stable and predictable orbit has allowed people to accurately predict eclipses many years in advance…what an orderly solar system God has created!

The moon’s diameter is 2159 miles (less than the width of the continental United States). Its surface area is slightly greater than Africa’s surface area. Its mass is 1/81 that of earth.

The moon is nearly a perfect sphere; its diameter differs by no more than 1% in any direction. One reason for this is that the slower an astronomical body spins, the less it becomes bulged at the equator and flattened at the poles. The moon rotates slower than the earth, which attributes to it being more spherical.

Due to its lower mass, its gravitational pull is 1/6 that of earth. This results in a low escape velocity, which results in a negligible atmosphere since the speed of the molecules that could form an atmosphere is greater than that of the escape velocity.

Tides are essential for life on earth and caused mostly by the moon’s gravity (with some help from the sun’s gravity and centrifugal force). The gravity of the moon directly causes a bulge of ocean water on the side of the earth toward the moon. A bulge of water is a high tide, while the bulge farthest from the coast is where the low tide occurs.

a) The moon is a result of chance events that occurred over a long period of time.

b) The moon is a result of a plan by an intelligent designer.

The Public schools teach choice "a." Do not let them off the hook too easily. Insist on a detailed explanation. Success or failure lies in the details. Here are some of the "best explanations" by those who reject the idea of an intelligent designer.

This theory proposes that the moon was once a planet travelling around the sun in its own orbit. They propose the earth captured the moon. A good question is how could the earth capture the moon from the sun (the sun has a much stronger gravitational pull). It would require a catastrophe, which has never been observed in this orderly solar system.

The mathematical probability of such an event is extremely low. For the Capture Theory to occur, the moon would have to be dislodged from its original orbit around the sun and them brought near the earth in just the right direction at the right speed – or else the moon would either crash into the earth or it would drift off to space.

For nearly 100 years, people speculated that the moon spun off from the earth. Most of them believe that it was ripped from the Pacific Ocean, based upon its great depth. This theory has many flaws. Beside the miracle of the mass being in a perfect orbit with the earth, the earth would have had to spin at an incredible rate to allow the fission. The theoretical spinning would have generated heat to result in a temperature of 4500 F! There is no geological evidence the earth’s crust ever was subjected to this heat. Also, what caused the earth to slow down? One last problem is the composition of the moon rocks is different enough from the earth to render the Fission Theory as "hopeless."

The Accretion Theory

This popular theory proposes the earth and moon accumulated from the same original cloud of dust and gas.

Problems: 1) Small particles do not bind together to form large particles. There is no known explanation of what caused all this dust to get together and form the earth and moon. 2) The moon is composed of lighter materials than earth…Two bodies formed from the same area of the same cloud should have the same or similar composition.

The Impact Theory

This theory proposes a planet the size of Mars smashed the Earth (near its edge) and parts of the Earth and the mystery planet broke away and these fragments formed the moon.

As with the other theories, it is extremely unlikely fragmented masses formed a single mass and then found a perfect orbit with earth. The broken pieces would have either fallen back to earth or escaped its gravitational field entirely.