“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” ~ Atheist Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker

Look at this picture.  Are those curvy lines in the clouds a natural phenomenon, or created by an intelligence?  How could you know?

This question is what drives the Intelligent Design movement, which as a former biochemist, is of interest to me.  As a former evolutionary believer, I was amazed to come to find that there are a lot of disagreements about evolution within the scientific community, and more problems with the data and theory than I had ever imagined. 

The ID movement asks, does the specific complexity behind life require information?  Information that must come from an intelligence?  Much of what we know about information theory indicates that such complexity does NOT arise by chance.  Especially when you consider the complexity of the DNA molecule, and all of the secondary processes that exist to copy it, repair it, safely recombine it, and pass it on to progeny.  The more you look, the more mind boggling it becomes.

Remember the movie Contact?  In that movie, they were listening for anything that might indicate intelligent life ‘out there.’  They received a string of prime numbers, and assumed that such a thing was way too complex and specific to happen by accident.

And yet we look at the immeasurably more complex DNA molecules, true blueprints, and think they happened by chance?  

I didn’t see any planes, but I assume that they are what caused the obvious trails in the clouds.  That is the best explanation for such a specific and unlikely pattern in the sky.  But I might be wrong.

When you look at the design, complexity, and beauty of nature, do you see an intelligent mind behind it, or the results of chance?