Logic tells us that there must be a first cause. The question what that first cause is, and can we ever define it? What do we know? In the case of our universe the best we can do is deduce back to virtually the point of singularity when the universe was approximately 10-43 seconds old, and was infinitesimally small in size, estimated at 10-25 meters (much smaller than the nucleus of an atom). We will never know what existed before, or what set it off. This brief period of time was known as the Planck Epoch, and Stephen Hawking has described it in theory. What we do know that the size and strength of the explosion had to be almost exact if too powerful the plasma would just expand, and stars and the consequent atoms would never form, if to small the universe would just collapse upon itself. The tolerance is so exceedingly small that defies credulity. What we do know it is that just our galaxy alone is about 100,000 light years in diameter. Still, in and of itself while fascinating, can be explained that in an eternity of pulsation, the “perfect storm” allowed for the formation of the universe, despite that statistically, it is incredulous that it all happened so perfectly.

The formation of a habitable planet such as our earth is equally miraculous. The orbit around the sun in the right place and almost perfectly circular (rather then elliptical), a molten iron core, that gives us our magnetic poles, that magnetism is enough to protect us from the solar winds that would blow our atmosphere away, much like mars today, it also helps protect us from harmful radiation from the sun itself. It should be noted that at some point billions of years in the future the earth core will have used up its radiation (heat) producing elements and the iron core will solidify, good-by magnetism, good by atmosphere. In the mean time the earth was given a tilt, more then likely when some planet sized asteroid struck the earth and ripped a good bit of our surface into space creating our moon, leaving the iron behind on earth to gather in greater proportion to the reduced earths mass, but this moon serves another more important function. It is the the moon orbiting around our earth that stabiles’ the earth tilt on its axis, thus giving us our four seasons. Compelling, maybe, but you have to take into account the age of the universe (13.73 billion years), and the fact that there are currently estimated to be 500 billion galaxies in our universe, each with on average 100 billion stars. Now those are big numbers, and thus statistically make our earth possible, but probably unique. If we were to find out all the described set of circumstances routinely made habitable earth like planets, I would put THAT in the intelligent design column.

It is in the realm of the creation of animal life, particularly looking at humans, but can just as easily be applied to all mammals, if not all living things beyond viruses and bacteria. Darwinian Theory only can take us so far, and can not explain all our current complexity by “survival of the fittest”. It is glib to say that some phototropic element in some protozoan type single cell animal developed into the complexity of our eyes. To do that though you would have to show how the eye developed theoretically, and outline in detail how all the parts developed independently, and how each stage of that improvement gave the animal an edge in survival, it would not even have to be a significant edge, just a slight edge would be satisfactory, but no one can do that, there is no sequence of events ever proposed to show how a photosensitive cell could evolve into today’s complex eye. The same thing to a lesser with the complexity of our hearing. Those three tiny bones (malleus, incus, stapes), and the drum all must work in combination, what was the steps?

Now the most potent argument of all for intelligent design, in my opinion. Warm blooded animals can not exist without a functioning blood stream.

A blood clot consists of
• a plug of platelets enmeshed in a
• Network of insoluble fibrin molecules.
Platelet aggregation and fibrin formation both require the proteolytic enzyme thrombin. Clotting also requires:
• calcium ions (Ca2+)(which is why blood banks use a chelating agent to bind the calcium in donated blood so the blood will not clot in the bag).
• About a dozen other protein clotting factors. Most of these circulate in the blood as inactive precursors. They are activated by proteolytic cleavage becoming, in turn, active proteases for other factors in the system.
By tradition, these factors are designated by Roman numerals; to avoid confusing and will use Arabic numerals instead.
Initiating the Clotting Process
• Damaged cells display a surface protein called tissue factor (TF)
• Tissue factor binds to activated Factor 7.
• The TF-7 heterodimer is a protease with two substrates:
o Factor 10 and
o Factor 9
o Let's follow Factor 10 first.
• Factor 10 binds and activates Factor 5. This heterodimer is called prothrombinase because it is a protease that converts prothrombin (also known as Factor II) to thrombin.
• Thrombin has several different activities. Two of them are:
o proteolytic cleavage of fibrinogen (aka "Factor I") to form:
 soluble molecules of fibrin and a collection of small
 fibrinopeptides
o Activation of Factor 13 which forms covalent bonds between the soluble fibrin molecules converting them into an insoluble meshwork — the clot.
(Thrombin and activated Factors 10 ("Xa") and 11 ("XIa") are serine proteases.
Amplifying the Clotting Process
The clotting process also has several positive feedback loops which quickly magnify a tiny initial event into what may well be a lifesaving plug to stop bleeding.
• The TF-7 complex (which started the process) also activates Factor 9.
o Factor 9 binds to Factor 8, a protein that circulates in the blood stabilized by another protein, von Willebrand Factor (vWF).
o This complex activates more Factor 10.
• As thrombin is generated, it activates more
o Factor 5
o Factor 8, and
o Factor 11
• Factor 11 amplifies the production of activated Factor 9.
In all those tissue factors there are four proteins that serve no independent function neither by themselves nor in any combination of any two or three. Yet if Darwinian Theory were to hold each of those proteins would have had to have had in someway independently contributed to the survival factor of the host, and they do not. In fact there are no proteins floating around in any animal that does not serve a function. These proteins are so complex that any one of them showing up independently through mutation is statistically staggering, for all four you are talking about a length of time exceeding the expected life of our universe at one random mutation/second, and certainly beyond the current life of our universe, let alone our planet. This is similar to the infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of typewriters eventually reproducing all the works of Shakespeare by randomly hitting the keyboard. If our blood did not coagulate, our first cut would be our last. Add to that if the clotting system is not in perfect harmony, our blood would clot in our bodies, causing death. The odds of all these factors, and others, developing independently and to tie the whole life cycle/system together leads me to the only logical inescapable conclusion that there had to be some form of Intelligent Design behind it all.
No one has an adequate explanation for the Cambrian Explosion that took place about 530 million years ago, at that time there more varied kind of animal life around then the period of time before or since taken in total. 580 million years ago there were only single cell plants and animals, with some simple colonies like algae. Why is it that no new vertebrate families ever showed up after that Cambrian explosion. All species seemed to have formed in that 50 million year period between 530 million years ago, and 580 million years ago. Darwinians have no rational explanation, or theory.
So on balance a compelling case can be made for a prime mover who designed the universe, its component elements from the periodic table, and complex life forms. I have no trouble calling that entity God. It is in the next two steps that the case falls apart, that of an immortal soul, and that there is anything resembling “life after death”. It is literally true “Man, thou are from dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Let us start at the beginning. The universe is estimated to be about 13.73 billion years old. Our planet is a mere 4.54 billion years old. Complex life forms as I pointed out earlier showed up on this planet about 580 million years ago. The early hominids showed up about 2 million years ago. Man has only been around about 200,000 years. All humans on earth can trace their ancestry back to a single “Eve” in Africa some 150,000 years ago; and even then about 70 thousand years ago we had our first ice age, and the human race nearly went extinct. By looking at myocardial DNA geneticists estimate there were only about 3,000 breeding females on this planet at that time. There is more genetic diversity to be found in a family band of chimpanzees in the wild then in comparing Australian Bushmen DNA with the Eskimo DNA. The only other two species I know of that show so little DNA diversity is the tiger, and the cheetah. They probably were even closer to extinction than the human race. Even so, it was only about 35 thousand years ago we find any evidence of true abstract thinking in making carvings of man and animals, cave paintings and the like. We have no idea what sparked this form of thinking, but from that point on mankind truly started to develop a civilization. I guess theologians might say it was at that point God infused an immortal soul into mankind. We jumped from man like animals to animal like men, in a blink of an eye.
The nature of this entity that used intelligent design to create the universe and all its subsequent component parts we probably will never know. It is even probable it does not even know the human race currently exists, and there is no evidence to show it rewards and punishes based on how we behave as individuals. It is possible that we are no more then an experiment in a lab dish, amongst all the Petri dishes in separate galaxies, or even on the tip of each arm. The isolation of each dish is assured by the limitation of the speed of light. There is no theory even proposed that would allow man to travel in a ship faster then that speed of light. There is a theory of worm holes, but even that theory keeps such worm holes at the quantum level (sub atomic), and short in life. There are theoretical models that propose a space ship that could leave our solar system and move to a distant star, but you are talking thousands of years traveling from one point to another, with no current assurance there would be anything habitable to transfer to. The idea that radio waves would be used to communicate between the stars also has some serious problems. The speculation of a radio wave of any current design, being picked up on some distant star is a myth. Such a wave would be long dissipated in the vastness of space before it even reached our closest stellar neighbor. You know what laboratories do with their Petri dishes and lab rats when they are finished with their experiments don’t you?
The Law of Parsimony tells us that when there are alternative explanations for events the simplest one is likely to be the correct one. This was derived from Occam’s razor which stated that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.
There is absolutely no consensus amongst the various religions as to what “Heaven” is or holds for mortal man. We are now able to mix and match genes between the species, including human genes. It is expected that human body parts will be grown on lab animals for transplant purposes. Clearly there is nothing biologically unique about Homo Sapiens. What makes us unique is the size of our brain relative to our body size. Everything about us can be explained by biologists. What I mean by that is there are no more mysteries about the human anatomy or origins then any other species roaming the earth today. Given all that then the simplest explanation as to what happens to us after we die, is that like all other mammals when we cease to have brain activity we cease to exist we go from “Cogito ergo sum” to “Non cogito ego”.
Can we ever know the true nature of this intelligent design? I seriously doubt it. What makes this a single entity? Why couldn’t it be like an ameba or a paramecium capable of splitting into 2 every now and then, with perfect knowledge in both as to what was known to the “parent”. Why does it’s time frame be the same as ours? We make bread and beer by adding yeast, we know the nature of yeast, how it works, and what it looks like under a microscope, yet when the yeast is working we have no knowledge of the individual yeast particles, all we see or care about is the end product. Could this entity be like the baker or brewer? The DNA of all living things are combinations of just four nucleotide sub units of DNA strands Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine. Think about it every living thing has the same four strands in its DNA in various recombinations’ A G C and T.
Could it be that earth is nothing but a Petri dish where every million years or so, the lab scientist, wipes out the dominant life forms, so that new life forms can evolve. Maybe we are a galactic SIM game, where we reset every now and then, and trod another path. This proposition makes as much sense as any religious beliefs out there, maybe more so, since I just deal with the tangible, the measurable, not this ephemeral soul that can’t be seen, measured, or identified. The fact is I can no more figure out what the ID entity is then I can figure out what existed before the “Big Bang”.
What I can infer about that entity is that there is a semblance of benevolence, just like the lab tech that puts its lab animals to “sleep” when they are no longer serving a purpose, rather the throwing the living animal into a furnace, or stomping them to death. Endorphins are peptide hormones that bind opiate receptors found mainly in the brain. The effect of these endorphins is to reduce the sensation of pain and affect emotions by producing a sensation of euphoria. These endorphins kick in at the time we most need it, when facing death. Cats like to play with their prey (mice) before killing them. They will throw that mouse in the air, let it begin to run, and then recapture it, over and over till bored, and then finishes off that poor mouse. Lab tests show that these mice produce those endorphins at such a time, making it easier to face its ultimate end. It helps explain that sense of peace some folks feel at the time of death. There does not seem to be any “survival” reason for this process to fit into the Darwinian model of “the survival of the fittest”. In fact it seems to me to be counter intuitive. The survival gene would be the one that fought the hardest against that ultimate fate. Could it be it is that intelligent designer just being charitable to that that he created? Is that the reason man has this universal belief in a god that has demands, rewards, punishes?