Intelligent Design

Simply and Complexly Marvelous

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Beauty-of-NatureIf you want to spice up a conversation, bring either religion or politics into the discussion.  There are many diverse opinions on both subjects, and the topic of creation can stir the pot among both the believers and skeptics.

Some people believe in a random Big Bang form of creation, others espouse a view known as intelligent design, and then there are those who embrace the Genesis account of creation.

I find it hard to look at the intricate design of the world and believe it just happened by chance.  In Psalm 9, David writes:  “I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will tell of all Your marvelous works.  I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.”

When was the last time you paused and reflected on the “marvelous works” of God?  What would a flower be without its fragrance?  How dark would the night skies be without the light of the moon and stars?  How different would birds be if they were drab in color and whistled and sang out of tune?

The sunrise, the sunset, and the rainbow are the canvas on which the Master Artist paints in vivid colors, and the day would be much different if it began and ended in a colorless brown instead of fire-red hues.  Speaking of fire, what would fire be without its warmth on a cold night or water without its refreshing coolness?

How about food?  What would chili be like if there was no spice or a breakfast roll without cinnamon?  And, it’s almost too painful to consider a world without the tantalizing flavors of ice cream and the aroma of freshly baked bread!

How mundane would life be without this complicated, yet marvelous thing we call love?  Isn’t love the WOW factor in everything that God created?

When you read the book of Genesis, you see God at work.  After He had spoken the physical world into existence, God formed Adam out of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life.  Next in line was the creation of the animal kingdom, but God wasn’t finished until He created woman.

Adam thought he had seen it all, but then he saw Eve.  To Adam, she was the marvelous WOW-inducing work of God

Take sometime this week, to marvel at the works of God, and the way He has blessed you.

What Are The Odds?

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Win Lose Dice Showing Gambling After a quick search of the internet concerning the odds of rolling the dice and getting a 7, I found there are 30 ways to lose and 6 ways to win. I know something else about the roll of the dice, I’ve seen many men lose their paychecks trying to beat the odds.

The odds when rolling dice are good compared to the odds associated with random chance and the human DNA or the creation of the universe. The odds of 3 billion randomly arranged base-pairs matching human DNA is about the same as drawing the ace of spades one billion times in a row from randomly shuffled decks of cards (Dr. Robert L. Piccioni, Ph.D., Physics from Stanford).

In the Origin of Cellular Life (Dr. Harold Morowitz, a physicist from Yale), declared that the odds for any kind of spontaneous generation of life from a combination of the standard life building blocks are one chance in 10E100000000000 (1 followed by 100,000,000,000 zeros).

I believe the intricate design of humans and the universe dictates a need for something more than a roll of the dice or random chance; furthermore, I’m in the good company of people like Antony Flew.

Before he died, Flew, an English philosopher, had rejected atheism and embraced the concept of intelligent design. This doesn’t mean that Flew embraced traditional Christianity; however, he did believe in God as First Cause of the universe. Flew’s position was a form of Deism (the belief in a God who creates but then removed himself from creation), rather than theism.

When I look at nature, I see more than what Flew saw: I see the fingerprints of God everywhere. The seemingly sudden appearance of birds and butterflies is a good example. With the flutter of their wings they migrate thousands of miles to unknown territories and then return to my feeders in the Spring.

If according to evolution, the human species is more highly evolved, why do we need a map, a compass, or a GPS to get to where we are going, but the much less evolved species can just do it?

For many people, evolution is THE answer when they consider the creation of the world and the origin of the species. I disagree. The evolutionary argument is much more theory than it is fact.

Having said this, I know that my position is much more faith than it is fact. Then again, a fact is something that is “observable.” And, since no one was there when it all began, isn’t faith an essential?

If you want to take a fresh look at an old debate, click here to examine 15 questions.

A Picture Is Worth a . . .

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The photo to the right is a picture that speaks of intricate design.  It is a picture of the famous Rose Window in the York Minister Cathedral in England.

The window was designed to celebrate the marriage of King Henry 7th and Elizabeth of York. This marriage finally brought an end to the ‘Wars of the Roses’ that had divided British feudal nobility between the years of 1450 and 1485.  This marriage joined the House of Lancaster to the House of York and brought peace to the two families and eventually gave birth to Henry 8th.

The picture to the left is equal in beauty to the top photo, and it also speaks of complex design.  The curious thing about these two pictures is that when people see the Rose Window they stare at its beauty and ask questions that focus on the person who designed the window.

When people look at the picture to the left, some are perplexed to learn that it is a vertical cross-section of human DNA:  The human race that some say is the product of chance.

Would you believe that the Rose Window and the York Minister Cathedral just spontaneously appeared without a designer?  I doubt it.

How, then, can a person say that the human race with 3.1 billion bits of information in the DNA was not designed?

I  believe this is a case where  a picture really is worth a thousand words.