Chapter 3 ~ The Designer of life
I am glad you decided to join me on this quest. Together we will try to find the answers to the most important questions in life. We will think about questions you may never have thought about.
If there is a Designer, a Creator of life, why does not everyone know exactly who it is? Would you not find it a lot easier if we could see our Creator? There would be an easy answer to many of our questions. But the Creator must have a good reason why He does not show Himself publicly.
Still, it is possible to discover several characteristics of the Creator by looking at nature and human beings. A design also shows something about the Designer. What could you discover about the Designer if you look at nature and the universe? In this chapter I would like to show you several characteristics of the Designer, which can be seen in nature.
A creative Designer
Life on earth proves that the Designer is very creative. Only look at all the details in nature. You can see that everything is made with enormous attention to detail. Every plant, animal and human being is so complex, that even after centuries of research, scientists still have a lot to discover. And what about the rest of the universe? There are countless stars and planets, too many to discover them all.
Do you remember that I was in the garden when I started writing this story for you, and I was amazed at the beauty and the amount of detail in nature. No two creatures are the same and every part of nature is beautiful to the eye. But nature is not just beautiful, every characteristic of humans, animals and plants also has a function. Everything works together.
A flower cannot reproduce without insects and the insects cannot live without the flowers. Many flowers have beautiful colours with which they attract insects. The form of certain flowers is attractive to those insects who can take their pollen to another flower.
Bees and other insects pollinate many of the plants we eat. Without these bees we do not have food. And I do not mean just honey. Most of the plants we eat are dependent on pollination by bees. Our lives would be very different without these little, furry insects.
This is only one of countless examples that show how everything works together to make life possible. The Creator of this must be incredibly creative and brilliant to be able to come up with all these things.
A reliable Creator
Every night when we go to bed, we expect the sun to come up again in a few hours. We are not afraid it will stay dark. We also know that the seasons come and go year after year. In the autumn we know winter is coming and spring will follow. Every year there is a season for sowing and a season for harvesting.
We trust in these regular patterns of day and night and summer and winter. We can also rely on the laws of nature, such as gravity. These laws are unchanging. Science could not exist if there were no fixed laws of nature.
In nature everything works according to fixed patterns of cause and effect. Nothing happens random. A day is always 24 hours long, never longer or shorter. Gravity always pulls you down when you jump, never up.
If the laws of nature were arbitrary, we would end up with chaos. Life on earth would be impossible and the universe would not exist.
The Creator is a Creator of order and structure, of cause and effect. Therefore, it is safe to say that the Creator is reliable.
A Creator of love and relationships
We cannot live without the people around us. We need each other to be able to get things done. We also need relationships with other people. The bond with our family and loved ones goes deeper than just needing one another for food and drink. Relationships and love between human beings form a special part of our existence. They give life extra flavour. So the Creator must have a purpose for the love and relationships between people. We will dive a little deeper into this further on.
The basis for right and wrong
Do you think the Creator is still involved in His creation? Or do you think He made the universe and then just left us? If you look at all the misery in this world, this is not a strange question at all.
Suppose the world came into being without a Creator. In that case, what would the answer be to the question why there is misery in the world? Or do you think misery exists for no reason? But why is something either right or wrong? Who determines that? There must be a standard somewhere, a general norm, a moral truth.
Why should a person be protected against ‘evil’? The laws of nature do not determine what is right or wrong. They are nothing more than laws of nature. They do what they always do. When you jump, you know gravity will pull you back down. There is nothing good or evil in that.
Suppose everything is no more than cause and effect. Would it be possible to choose? If you think that everything we do is just the result of physical and chemical processes, there would be no need to worry about the misery in the world. There is no need to feel responsible for the things we do. Our actions would only be the result of the chemical processes in our brain and body. Or could there be a different way of looking a things?
If no impartial ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ existed, why then would we say murder, rape, adultery or lying are wrong? There must be an absolute truth. That truth is deeply rooted in creation and comes from the Creator.
Are you also curious about the answer to the question why the Creator made us?
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