Intelligent Design Series

OPEN: A young skeptic returned from his 1st semester at college and visited elderly Bible teacher who’d invited him over for a meal. He hadn’t been at college long, but he’d been there long enough for the professors to destroy his faith. So as she fixed a meal, he felt he needed to inform her of that, and so he said "I once believed in God, but since studying science, I'm convinced that God is but an empty word."

She paused a moment and then said, "Well, I have not studied science, but since YOU have, maybe you can tell me from where this egg came from." She held up a raw egg she was about to use.

"Why from a hen, of course" he replied.

"And where did the hen come from? she asked.

"Why, it hatched from an egg."

"And perhaps," said the lady, "you can tell me which existed first."

"The hen, of course," he said.

"So, you mean that a hen existed without having come from an egg?"

"Oh, no," said the young man, "I guess I should have said that the egg was first."

"Then you mean that an egg existed without having come from a hen?"

The young man looked puzzled and then said "You’re getting me confused."

She smiled and then replied: "Young man, since you cannot explain the existence of even an egg without God, can you really expect me to believe that you can explain the existence of the whole world without Him."

(Allen Webster, “The Day The Atheist Sat Next To The Preacher”)

Paul wrote the Christians at Rome: “(God’s) invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So (unrighteous men) are without excuse.” Romans 1:20

In other words: even unrighteous people should know there is a God because God is revealed in the things He has made. Psalm 19:1 says it this way “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” The Bible is unapologetic in declaring that our world has been designed, and that there is an “Intelligent Designer” (God) who made it all.

(PAUSE) This sermon series is called “Contending for the Faith” and as we’ve said in each sermon before this one: We don’t have to APOLOGIZE for our faith. We don’t need to rally to God’s defense. Our God is bigger than we are – and He doesn’t really need our help. But in spite of that, God calls us to contend for the faith…” (Jude 3)

In Romans Paul tells us one of the reasons WHY we don’t rally to God’s defense: it’s pretty obvious that there is a God who is up there… and He’s fairly intimidating. He has eternal power and a divine nature, and even unrighteous men who, (though they may not want to admit to you) suspect in their heart of hearts that there is a God and that will come a time of judgment.

Now, there are certain scientists who have begun to rally around this idea. They call their view of how the world has been formed “Intelligent Design (or ID), for they believe that it is obvious that there is an intelligent designer of this world.

Now the difference between these scientists and myself - is where we start from:

• I’m a preacher. I believe that there’s an intelligent designer of the world because I believe in God’s Word (the Bible) – and that’s where I start. I believe God created the world in six days because that's what the Bible says and I really don't need the confirmation of science to accept that.

• But now, these scientists (while they may believe in the Bible) don’t start there. They start with science – with what they can observe in nature. And these folks are convinced that science points to an Intelligent Designer as the creator of the world.

In his book on Albert Einstein, author Walter Isaacson told of a dinner party in Berlin that Einstein had attended. Everybody there apparently assumed Einstein was an atheist, but when someone made mention of that… he said, “No, I have a deep feeling of faith, a deep religiosity that comes from my appreciation of the way the Lord made the universe”, and everybody was stunned. He said he was like a child walking into a library, and you see the books and you know somebody must have written them, and you see them ordered and you know somebody must have ordered them, and there’s a sense of awe that’s manifest in that where you kind of understand that there’s an order underlying everything and the more you appreciate it, the more humble you become in the fact of it.