Design or Accident?

 

It happened as an adult the first time when I was in high school. Sitting in the physics class, not paying attention to the lecture, I was entranced by the Periodic Elements Chart on the wall. Looking at the properties of elements and the way they bonded together was simply fascinating. It was a wonder! I started thinking about a common bond, H2O, water. I was struck by the properties of water. In my biology class, we had learned that water reached a boiling point, and got no hotter. Instead it turned into gas. I noted the freezing points, which thankfully only came briefly in the valley I grew up.

But then an odd thing happened. Still tuning out the lecture—I had the ability to focus sharply on particular thoughts—I began to wonder why the properties of water. Why does water boil at 212 degrees? Why does it freeze at 32 degrees? What would the earth look like if it boiled at 90 degrees? What would the earth look like if it froze at 50 degrees? I quickly saw that if either proposition was true, life would not have been possible on earth. Frozen oceans and water boiling would not be conducive to any life on earth, much less the human life we find on earth today.

And this was only one basic substance: water. All of the other elements on the great chart on the wall had properties specially tuned so that the atmosphere on the earth was just right for life. What are the odds? At that point, I changed from a skeptic to a believer. I had uncovered the secret of the universe. It was design.

Odd, that conversion. Sitting in a class, not listening to one of the state’s renowned physics teachers (who I speculate was probably atheistic), I decided that there had to be a God who created this whole universe. The teacher would have probably been appalled to know what I was thinking.

In later years, I read the quote often about Darwin’s doubt. He himself said that nature itself had “the appearance of design”. But, he went on, it is only the appearance of design. I see now, that Darwin was stuck, as we all are, with his premises that there was no God. Darwin was famous for going overseas to see some birds, not believing in creation. And he came back, with wonderful descriptions of the birds, but he still did not believe in God. Stuck with his premises, but the whole world has mistakenly followed those premises to rather poor conclusions.

It was not until I met my first “real” Christian nearly two years later that I found Christ. She had answers for my questions and a strong faith that could not be shaken. I saw in her the very presence of the creator God. So infatuated with her, I decided to marry her, and this year we celebrate 52 years of marriage.

Paul tells us that all of nature declares the glory of God, and that we are responsible to see the Designer when we look at the design. We have trees and clouds and grass and life itself, that all scream design. Maybe, just maybe you might take a walk this day, and look for evidence of the Designer. It is all around you.