In today’s world, many hesitate to accept and believe that there is a creator God behind the entire created order that we look at, feel, and taste. They accept the supposed theory of random chance more readily than the fact of creation by divine design. According to the theory of random chance, the universe and the created order has come to existence merely by random chance and the process of evolution. The theory of created order as the product of intelligent design is as follows. Where there is design, there must be a designer. The existence of design can be seen throughout the universe. Naturally there ought to be a universal designer.
Why must we believe that all design implies a designer? Because everyone admits this principle in practice. For instance, suppose we came upon a deserted island and found “This is wonderful” written in the sand on the beach. We would not think the wind or the waves had written it by mere chance but that someone had been there, someone intelligent enough to design and write that message. If we found a stone hut on that island with windows, doors, and a cooking place, we would not think a hurricane had piled up the stones that way by chance. We immediately infer a designer when we see design.
When the first rocket to the moon took off from Cape Canaveral, two U.S. scientists stood watching it, side by side. One was a believer in God, the other an unbeliever. The believer said, “Isn’t it wonderful that our rocket is going to reach the moon by chance?” The unbeliever objected, “What do you mean, chance? We put thousands of man-hours of design into that rocket.” The believer replied, “Oh, you don’t think chance is a good explanation for the rocket? Then why do you think it’s a good explanation for the universe? There’s much more design in a universe than in a rocket. We can design a rocket, but we couldn’t design a whole universe. I wonder who can.” Later that day the two were walking down a street and passed an antique store. The unbeliever admired a picture in the window and asked, “I wonder who painted that picture?” The believer jokingly replied, “No one, it just happened by chance.”
Is it possible that design happens by chance without a designer? There is perhaps one chance in a trillion that “This is wonderful” could be written in the sand by the wind. But who would use a one-in-a-trillion explanation? Someone once said that if we had a million monkeys sit at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet (one of Shakespeare’s plays) by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we do not wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the unbeliever use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an unbeliever. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the unbeliever rather than a logical explanation of the universe. We have a logical explanation of the universe, but the unbeliever does not like it. It is called God.
What about the design of the very thing we use to think about design: our brains. The human brain is the most complex piece of design in the known universe. In many ways it is like a computer. Now just suppose there were a computer that was programmed only by chance. For instance, suppose you were in a plane and the public-address system announced that there was no pilot, but the plane was being flown by a computer that had been programmed by a random fall of hailstones on its keyboard. How much confidence would you have in that plane? But if our brain computer has no cosmic intelligence behind the heredity and environment that program it, why should we trust it when it tells us about anything, even about the brain?
Another overlooked fact is the so-called anthropic principle, according to which the universe seems to have been specially designed from the beginning for human life to evolve. If the temperature of the primal fireball that resulted from the Big Bang some fifteen to twenty billion years ago, which was the beginning of our universe, had been a trillionth of a degree colder or hotter, the carbon molecule that is the foundation of all organic life could never have developed. The number of possible universes is trillions of trillions; only one of them could support human life: our universe. Sounds interesting! If the cosmic rays had bombarded the primitive substance at a slightly different angle or time or intensity, the haemoglobin molecule, necessary for all warm-blooded animals, could never have evolved. The chance of this molecule’s evolving is something like one in a trillion trillion. Add together each of the chances and you have something far more unbelievable than a million monkeys writing Hamlet.
There are relatively few unbelievers among neurologists and brain surgeons and among astrophysicists, but many among psychologists, sociologists, and historians. The reason seems obvious: the first group studies divine design, the second group studies human undesign.
But doesn’t evolution explain everything without a divine Designer? It is just the opposite. Evolution is a beautiful example of design, a great clue to God. There is very good scientific evidence for the evolving, ordered appearance of species, from simple to complex. But there is no scientific proof of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution. Natural selection “explains” the emergence of higher forms without intelligent design by the survival-of-the-fittest principle. But this is sheer theory. There is no evidence that abstract, theoretical thinking or selfless love make it easier for man to survive. How did they evolve then?
Furthermore, could the design that obviously now exists in humans and in the human brain come from something with less or no design? Such an explanation violates the principle of causality, which states that you cannot get more in the effect than you had in the cause. If there is intelligence in the effect (man), there must be intelligence in the cause. But a universe ruled by blind chance has no intelligence. Therefore there must be a cause for human intelligence that transcends the universe: a mind behind the physical universe. Most great scientists have believed in such a mind, even those who did not accept any revealed religion. How much does this prove? It proves that there is a God that transcends the created order: some designing intelligence great enough to account for all the design in the universe and the human mind. How aptly the Bible says in Ps. 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.”
