For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:20
Premise 1 : Creation reveals God’s Eternal Power
First Cause
/ˌfərs(t) ˈkôz/
the beginning to which every chain of causes must ultimately go back.
The Law of Causation involves 3 simple steps:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning
- The universe began to exist
- Therefore the universe must have a cause of its beginning
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that matter and energy can neither be created or destroyed. Atheist and evolutionist allege that the Universe began with an explosion of a ball of matter 13-14 billion years ago, yet they never have provided a reasonable explanation for “the original ball of matter”.
The Latin phrase “Ex nihilo nihil fit” is a Latin phrase means “out of nothing, nothing comes” and not only serves as a principle of rational philosophy but is the cornerstone of the law of causation. The gases, matter, and chemicals that evolutionists say caused the beginning of the Universe had to first be caused themselves.
A logical and rational naturalistic explanation for the origin of the “original” ball of matter does not exist.
If one is a naturalist, he must believe that matter and energy could either create themselves or exist forever. The evidence from nature, however, is that matter and energy could not create itself (First Law of Thermodynamics), nor could it exist forever (Second Law of Thermodynamics).
Science and natural observation testifies that nothing can ever emerge from nothing and that life can only come from something that is already alive.
If something could emerge from nothing or living organisms could emerge from non-living matter then why isn’t this happening all the time? Why aren’t things consistently popping into existence randomly? The Bible claims God is the life source and cause behind the beginning of the Universe.
In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth
Genesis 1:1, Revelation 22:13
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End
The terms, “eternal” and “Being” are not incoherent. We can believe that God is an eternal Being without fully understanding how this may be so. An eternal “something” is not only coherent, it is logically required. There are only two options: the first thing to exist must either be eternal or it began to exist.
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen
Romans 1:20
The idea of eternity runs like a lofty mountain range through the Bible. Everywhere you turn, you find it. In fact, all our treasured biblical doctrines and truths would collapse without the reality of an everlasting God.
David Jeremiah; God Is Eternal
The universe, with its beginning and potential end, requires a cause, and that cause must be eternal and beyond the universe itself, pointing to a “supernatural” God who is outside of nature.
Challenge Question: If science and nature have proven that it is irrational to say that matter caused or created itself—Does the Bible’s explanation that God is the Eternal Creator provide the best explanation that explains reality?
Premise 3 : Creation reveals the infinite intelligence and creativity of God
The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship.
Psalm 19:1-4
Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make Him known.
They speak without a sound or a word’ their voice is silent in the skies;
Yet their message has gone out to all the earth, and their words to all the world
The word tell is saphar in the original greek and means to recount or assign. The Psalmist is unequivocally stating that the complexity, diversity, creativity, intelligence and power displayed in nature assigns authorship of creation to God. That day after day and night after night the intricate design and fine-tuning of the universe including the laws of physics, and genetic design specificity are display the craftsmanship of an intelligent cause and Creator, rather than a random chaotic process.
Genetic Diversity and the Complexity of DNA can’t be the result of random processes
In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. In 1957 Crick had an insight which he called “The Sequence Hypothesis,” and it was the idea that along the spine of the DNA molecule there were four chemicals that functioned just like alphabetic characters in a written language or digital characters in a machine code. The DNA molecule is literally encoding information into alphabetic or digital form.
This discovery was a huge blow to the theory of evolution because science and human experience has demonstrated that information always comes from an intelligence. Whether you find a paragraph, a cave drawing, or even a word drawn in the sand if you trace them back to their source you will always come to a mind and not a material process.
Each of the 8.7 million species scientist believe exist has their own distinct DNA blueprint or digitized super codes. The DNA of every organism contains a veritable library of specialized, instructional information to be used in the organism’s formation, growth, and survival.
The DNA in just one of the 37 trillion cells in the human body measures 6 feet long. If you uncoiled all of the strands of human DNA it would equal 67 billion miles or 150,000 round trips to the moon. The information in DNA is more sophisticated than anything else known to man, including the information to assemble nuclear weapons, super computers, and space stations.
The laws of the universe are necessary for life to exist. But they aren’t sufficient to explain how life arose. The origin of life requires a massive infusion of information, which can only be explained by intelligent design. Biological information such as found in DNA and proteins comprise two features:
- Complexity
- Functionality
DNA is a biological blueprint with far more complex and functional instructions than any other human design or computer program and every blade of grass, spider, tadpole, albatross, kangaroo etc. has it’s own blueprint that is unshared by any other species.
As you can see by the picture above all 400,000 species of beetles have their own blueprint making them totally distinct from each other with regard to color, shape, size, functionality, adaptive behaviors, instincts and even breeding patterns. New beetle species are being discovered frequently with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species of beetles.
The genetic complexity throughout each family and order of organisms is mindboggling and plants and bacteria have not even been discussed.
The 8.7 million species of animals have their own anatomies, habitats, breeding patterns, instincts, and behaviors and none of them crossbreed in nature, and the majority cannot crossbreed within subspecies without sterility or death occurring. There are about 435,000 unique land plant species on Earth with about 2,000 new species being discovered every year each with their own precise, and vastly complex DNA super code blueprints.
Challenge Question: Do you believe random natural processes provides the best explanation for the complexity, design, and diversity found in nature or is Intelligent Design a more plausible explanation?
