Frank's Cottage

If you’re not sure there’s a god, but you’re open to spirituality, then give this graphic (kindly supplied by an atheist internet community) a moment of thought.

Am I crazy? Or do you also think the message seems….contradictory? I mean, how can ANYTHING be elegant if it’s just random?

Toss a handful of potato chips on the ground. According to Richard Dawkins – one of the world’s best known and most provocative atheists – the scrambled, disorganized puzzle you see is somehow elegant. And all on its own.

I was extraordinarily blessed to visit the west coast of Canada’s Vancouver Island recently. As I walked along the glorious beaches, I came across a sand dollar. You can see one of the photos I made of it just below.

Now Wikipedia describes this exquisite creation as “a species of extremely flattened, burrowing sea urchins belonging to the order Clypeasteroida”.

But look at that unfathomably artistic pattern. Wikipedia’s clinical explanation says “The petal-like pattern in sand dollars consists of five paired rows of pores. The pores are perforations in the endoskeleton through which podia for gas exchange project from the body.”

Look at that sand dollar pattern again. Did it really have to be organized like this? Centuries ago, only the most Rembrandt-like artist could have come anywhere close to conjuring up this design out of nowhere.

Today, the rest of us couldn’t do as well with a Spyrograph (the geometric drawing toy). And yet, there are people in our world who will insist, to their dying breath, that this is utterly random.

Bringing up unfathomable artistry leads me to the comments of Ross Carkner, my wise pastor friend to whom I showed the graphic that inspired this blog.

I immediately think of painting by Rembrandt or VanGogh … when I do, the statement in this graphic just seems to be so stupid! Their paintings had a master who gave them elegance.

Symphonies and operas that move people and touch deep parts of the soul have a passionate composer, gifted musicians and a talented conductor – they work together to give paper with ink blotches elegance.

Even a snow flake is not random. Its elegance is created by forces outside of itself – temperature and moisture. But Richard Dawkins wants to see no consistency in life … nature is random but humanity is somehow organized. Where did human beings get the compulsion to organize everything? Why do we not live out the random existence found in creation??? We don’t, because creation was organized, not random.

So what am I getting at? Not only is there a creator, there is a creator who regularly conjures up unique and fantastical creations. That includes me and YOU.

However, by living our lives as if we have no creator, we inevitably do wrong and fail to do right.

How can we fix this problem? On our own, we simply can’t. But God can. He offers us Jesus – His divine son whose life, sacrificial death and glorious resurrection makes up for all the wrongs of anyone who accepts the gift of Him.

Follow Jesus and He’ll change your life, for the better, for now and for all eternity. Interested? Post your thoughts below and let’s have a conversation.