There are many reasons why I could never be an atheist. Here’s one of them. Imagine if you will two laptops advertised for sale. They’re identical in every respect apart from the operating system. The first has been programmed by the brightest minds and runs on the fastest chip with the latest software. The second has been programmed by primary school children who were blind-folded and asked to tap randomly on a keyboard. Which one would we choose to buy I wonder? My guess is that unless we were being deliberately obtuse everyone of us would buy the first and laugh at the idea of the second.
I wouldn’t dream of paying good money for a computer that I knew had been programmed in such a random and chaotic manner. But it seems to me that in order to be an atheist I must believe that something far more complex and finely-balanced – the universe, the earth and human life itself – was formed in just such a way. I take for granted that fact that computers are the result of intelligent design, but I’m asked to believe that a supercomputer like the human brain is the result of chance. Like my chaotically programmed laptop – I just don’t buy it!