What is the best evidence / argument for intelligent design?

Nevertheless, by strange coincidence, fresh evidences are constantly accruing which go far to convince even the unwilling scientist of the presence of a Designer’s hand. Stones cry out! Nature speaks!

Creation should, indeed, speak, and its voice be heard. What is invisible in the Creator should be and is seen, and seen clearly, being understood by the things that are made—even His eternal power and Godhead—not, indeed, His grace, or truth, or love, but infinite power and design, so much so that people are left thus without excuse. (See Romans 1:20.) Creation declares the power of God. It does not reveal what He is in Himself—His nature—but to any, except those wilfully blind, it is evidence sufficient of the existence of a Creator-God!

He is a Creator. I do not say that simple existence can be proved to be a matter of creation by logical deduction. But simple existence is an abstraction. Man sees trees, planets moving; in a word, evidence of design, and that, which has been so often argued, involves a designer. The distinct knowledge of a Creator is a matter of faith. Yet if man does suppose the abstract existence of matter without a cause, he violates the first principles of necessary thought. He is accustomed to see man form many things out of comparatively formless matter, so he has an idea of this latter. But if he begins to think of why anything existed, he cannot avoid the thought of a cause. Why, implies it? and I can say Why? and it is my nature to say Why? I am so constituted as to look for a cause. I may not be able to define cause, nor can I conceive creation; but I cannot conceive, on the other hand, a thing existing without it. My mind may be inert, and so far take what exists as I find it; but as soon as it is in activity, it looks for why a thing exists. The same thing proves I cannot know a first cause, but only that there must be one. I cannot conceive a thing existing without a cause, therefore I say there must be one. But a first cause means what exists without one. That is, I cannot conceive it. Hence, too, I cannot conceive creation, though I know there must be a Creator. It is merely saying, I am a creature, and must think in the order of my being.

The infidel may tell us that God is to be known in creation. Did any one ever find Him out there? No doubt, creation does prove the existence of a Creator, as we read in the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans, "The invisible things of Him from the creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." Creation yields a testimony which the heathen were bound to receive, and, had they received it, a higher light would assuredly have shone upon them. But they did not receive it, nay, they actually worshipped the things that were made, instead of the One Who made them. Philosophers talk of rising from nature up to nature's God. But nature is a ruin, and man himself a ruin in the midst of ruin; and instead of rising to nature's God, he makes a god of nature, and degrades himself below the level of a beast. See Romans 1:21-32.

If I were shown a picture in mosaic, a supreme work of art, and were told that many artists had had a hand in its production, but that very few of them were known to each other, and that they lived in places widely separated, and that each had concentrated upon his own part of the picture as though it were to be complete in itself, and not a part only of the great master-piece, I should conclude that one mind had designed the picture, and chosen, directed and controlled the workmen, and nobody would charge me with stupidity for coming to such a conclusion.

343 Did you ever see a man labouring and toiling under a weight upon his spirit, in a labyrinth of his own mind, like this? And let me add, if I see a lovely and harmonious picture in nature, do I say it is a result? Was there no Designer, no Creator, no one who formed and made the lilies of the field, which the blessed One admired? Did God clothe the grass, which today is in the field, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, and not order, and arrange, and form His word, which abideth for ever, and by which, as by the sword out of Christ's mouth, men will be judged in the last day? I see a creation around me, a harmony, ay, "the imperfect appearance of design," in looking at the surface of the globe, perhaps at the starry heavens. I read the apostle telling me that His eternal power and Godhead who has ordained them are clearly seen [νοούμενα χαθορᾶταυ] by the things that are made, so that men are without excuse. To Mr. Jowett it is a result, and he uses the comparison to make out a natural design which grows up where God and man are not. Yet he cannot deny design in a harmonious whole, and, to shut out God from scripture, uses an expression, "a natural design," which is simple nonsense; while the object of it is simple and clear, from the exclusion of "miraculous and artificial," that is, God and man. "Design" means, I cannot help perceiving God. "Natural" means, I will not at any rate have Him.

134 Hence of two things, one: either the course of nature began, and then I have a cause, that is, an efficient cause, outside and before that course; or it went on eternally without any cause at all. Not merely matter existed (we do not know matter unformed and whose state is uncaused, and no part of the kosmos), but the whole perfectly ordered system (with the force that governs it in its movements, regular as no man could devise it - scarce discover, and multiform as no man can think) is perfectly uncaused and invented itself before it existed; for invented somehow it is. Matter, we are told, is inert; but it moves with a speed thought cannot realise, yet nothing has made it do so! It is here we may say Credat Judaeus Apella. Mill says he is not obliged to treat this question. But all his theory is false without it, because regular phenomena going on by established laws are not beginning. Day begins, no doubt, that is, I see the sun at a given time; but nothing is really beginning: the rotation of the earth is, as a law of nature, perpetual. If he says it is no law of nature, as it may naturally terminate, so begin, what gave the impulse? He cannot avoid efficient causes, for there are no other real ones. The attempt to reduce phenomenal causes to efficient ones was the intuitive sense that there must be such; the discovery of regular laws gradually did not falsify this, but merely the place they sought them in.

Discovery of gravity, a few general laws in chemistry - as the law of general proportions, etc., - proved it was not in essences of things efficient cause was to be sought (though there is more truth in it than in the denial of it). His changing conditions into causes is false as to causation. But the necessity of a cause somewhere is evident, and Mr. Mill admits it elsewhere, only an impotent one that could not make things better than they are, and we are to perfect the poor result! And the fact of general laws leads us up to a general or single cause which caused the course of nature to begin, and consequently was not of it (in the beginning was the Word and by Him all things began to be, or took place. Das Wort war, und durch ihn alles ward). But this, then, was by a will. Hence they can only continue by a will, the same that formed and gave the impulse. If the impulse was necessary to move originally, that only could cause the movement, and that will only can cause it to be now. By Him all things consist.

141 But I must turn to the direct point. A succession of produced facts they have not. They have uniform and universal continuance of force, operating in a constant way as a general rule, though perhaps not absolutely universal, as gaseous molecules or the satellite of Uranus, but enough to give a general fixed phenomenal law, and uniform effects of certain chemical substances; but this knowledge of phenomena brings out the principle of causation. Thus Mr. Mill says, "All phenomena, without exception, which begin to exist, that is, all except primeval causes, are effects either immediate or remote of those primitive facts, or of some combination of them." This science has no right to say. It can only say, This is the case in all the course of material nature which we have examined; and, as an induction, we reckon on it elsewhere when the same cause is in operation, or from the same effect conclude to a similar cause. Nothing more.

But the principle of causation, intuitively believed in men's minds, so that he cannot think of beginning to be without it, is established scientifically as necessary to material existence, and the course of nature in what begins, by the infidel himself. He cannot think otherwise. As a scientific induction, then, it is necessary to the first existence of material existence and fixed laws. That is, I have a creative power. It is true that this leads me to self-existence, which, for the very same reason, I cannot understand, because it does exist without being caused. But this is merely saying man cannot understand what is beyond him. Of course he cannot, or he would not be man, that is, a finite creature.

That is, science must stop in — what belongs to it — the course and order of the kosmos, or ordered universe, and in its nature cannot go beyond it. It knows there must be a primeval or primitive cause for everything; for everything in its sphere is the effect of a cause, and, it asserts, must be. If so, material existence itself must be, and the fixed laws also. As to what and how that primeval cause is (which is not caused, or it is not primeval), it cannot tell. Of course it cannot; nor do I blame it. It is in the nature of things. But ignorance is no ground — I should say no valid ground; for ignorance is very fond of asserting — no valid ground of asserting. That is, science assures me from what it does know that there must be a primeval cause of the existence of what it searches into; but it is, and must be, wholly ignorant of that cause — cannot conceive it: it is not in its sphere of knowledge.

Doubtless there is a vast number of such facts and connections not yet discovered, and I know of no limit in principle to any discovery of the order of nature. But science can go no farther; it deals with phenomena (that is, the perceived course of nature), and cannot go beyond them. These, as ordinary and universal phenomena, can be (if science has gone so far) traced to causes which have produced them, and regularly produce them, or to some general uniform principle, such as what is called gravity; so that there are, as to the course of nature, general laws and productive causes. Still the way this is spoken of is very commonly incorrect; as if there were a succession of events. Now this is not the case in much referred to.

139 A general principle is discovered, as gravity, or the action of acids on certain other substances, or the laws of electricity. In these cases there is no succession or series of events, but either constancy in fact, as in the movements of the heavenly bodies, or, if certain substances are applied to others, uniform effects produced, and new combinations formed, and the like. This has nothing to do with a succession of productions. I do not say everything produced has proceeded from an antecedent, and this from another. It only proves that there are certain general laws which govern what exists, so that they as a rule act uniformly, or perhaps constantly. Adams or Leverrier could discover that there must be a planet in a certain place because of certain disturbances in the movements of Neptune, and there it was found. So Kepler discovered elliptic orbits, and equal spaces in equal times, and the like: and chemistry ascertained the combination of elements in regular proportion. That is, regular and orderly (or, as they are called, general) laws of the operations of forces in what exists in the visible universe have been discovered constant in their nature. What exists moves in a regular way, or, when the occasion is there the same thing produces the same effects; not a succession of productive causes, but uniformity in the actions of each, so that we can calculate on effects if nothing hinders. But that is all. Science informs me of these general laws which govern what exists; but the things must already exist so to act.

Thus these elements are themselves manufactured articles, and are stamped indelibly with the Manufacturer's name. For nothing addresses itself more to mind as from mind than just such relations as are discovered here. As another has said, The most careful structure of brown stone is not so precise in number, relation, and dimensions of its blocks as are molecules, the first terms in matter, in their atomic formation." It should be as easy, then, to refer the natural product to the workmanship of eternal mind, as the recent structure to man's hand and mind. And who would have a doubt as to the latter?

Is this design or mere chance? We see the wisdom of the Creator in this, especially as we could furnish numberless examples just as striking as the illustration we have chosen. If this is true in the realm of nature, we are not surprised to find Scripture stamped with design in number.