Detecting Design
Order Disintegrates Into Disorder
The fundamental law of the universe (or at least of thermodynamics) is that order disintegrates into disorder. It’s not very often that if I left a bunch of lettered blocks in a forest that over time they would, without the help of some kind of intelligence, figure their way into a sentence that said “I love you - Jessica and John forever” or any coherent sentence for that matter…
Now if you had put something in order and walked away for many years and came back, it is possible that those things would go from “in order” to “out of order”. The elements of this world, the wind, gravity, and the animals that might mess with them could mess them all up and disorganize them.
But if you came back a year later and those blocks had been placed into coherent sentences, no matter how much time had passed, you would assume right away that someone put them that way. Time alone we would not conclude would put the blocks in a readable order, there had to be some form of intelligence to do that.
Zemskys explanatory filter for detecting design explains it like this.
When we see things that are both complex and specific we can scientifically assume design by some form of intelligence.
Going back to our scrabble game or lettered blocks analogy, if you just saw simple patterns like totototogogogogo (the blocks are specific, there is a pattern, but not complex the pattern is very simple) you would be suspicious but not convinced.
likewise if you went by and saw letters dropped that were complex but not specific such as;
Kjdlaskjfakjdjdinjcisjnrkdkjkjflkjsosijncpaojf
It would not indicate intelligent or purposeful design.
But if the scrabble letters formed something both complex AND specific…when there are purposeful patterns like the one we mentioned before such as … “I love you - Jessica and John forever.”
We can assume it didn’t happen by chance and time alone.
NASA's search for extraterrestrial intelligence presupposed the information embedded electromagnetic signals from space would indicate an intelligent source as yet however radio astronomers have not found information-bearing signals coming from space but closer to home molecular biologist have identified encoded information in the cell - Stephen C. Meyer
EVERYONE BELIEVES IN GOD BECAUSE EVERYONE MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT SOMETHING WAS FIRST SOMETHING IS THE UNCREATED CREATOR, THE FIRST CAUSE.
When people tell me they don’t believe in God I often ask them to define their terms because God is simply who or whatever you believe created all of this.
If you believe that the first uncreated thing that was the cause of everything else was a lifeless molecule or energy then that is your God. If you are an Atheist, it is not linguistically correct to say you don’t believe in God. You should say you don’t believe that God is the type of being others believe him to be. You believe God is a lifeless molecule. (As that is what you believe was the first thing in existence and came to form everything else.)
My only follow-up question would be:
Do you believe that that molecule and or energy had no intelligence and over time the design we see just came to be or does it seem to make more sense that the first cause, the uncreated creator, is the intelligence behind the design? That the perfect intelligence created things less smart than itself? Or that something lifeless and unintelligent was able to form intelligence, and everything spiritual we experience in the world such as love, dreams, relationships, recognition of beauty, self-awareness, was all created from this lifeless dust?
Or like CS Lewis said the fact that there is love, may it be imperfect in this world, indicates the source or perfect of that attribute must exist? The perfect love the complete love the straight line must be in the “I AM.”