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How to Build a Case for the Creator

Anyone who has ever done any kind of home improvement project knows that the adage is true: “You need the right tool for the job.”

This bit of wisdom also applies to building a case for the Creator. To convince a skeptic that a Creator exists you need to make use of the right tools. In this case, your toolbox must consist of multiple approaches to establishing his existence.

These arguments are no academic exercise. Instead, they are necessary steppingstones to presenting the gospel to agnostics and atheists. The gospel makes little sense to people who question the reality of a Creator God. This was true for me. I couldn’t apprehend the central truth-claims of the Christian faith until I first became convinced of a divine Maker’s necessity.

Thanks to scientific advance over the course of the last few decades, several scientifically informed arguments are available to us, not just in astrophysics but also in biochemistry.

However, I find that many Christians aren’t using the best arguments or the right tools at the right time.

Part of the problem is the undue emphasis many Christians place on critiquing the evolutionary paradigm. In and of itself, this critical approach may get the discussion started, but it doesn’t constitute an argument for the Creator’s existence. It is merely an assessment of what evolutionary mechanisms can or can’t accomplish based on what we currently know.

Yet, Christians often critique evolution and stop there in their attempts to make their case. In fact, some biochemical design arguments I’ve heard are nothing more than critiques of evolution, in general. In my experience, skeptics who are in-the-know can easily find reasonable ways to dismiss these critiques by pointing to work in molecular evolution and origin-of-life studies that propose a way around them.

Admittedly, critiquing naturalistic evolution is part of an effective case for a Creator—given that evolutionary mechanisms alone cannot explain the origin and design of life.

Still, an effective case for the Creator must have its basis in positive reasons for his existence. I have found that I get much further with skeptics when I make a positive case based on what we do know about biochemical systems and what we have learned by studying the origin of life, in particular.

Some of the strongest arguments for the Creator’s existence are known as the Watchmaker argument, the empirical argument, and the bioinspiration argument.

Every argument has its strengths and vulnerabilities. Just as no single tool can be used to remodel a house, no single argument can be used to make a compelling case for a Creator.

The most robust case for a Creator emerges when these different arguments are used in combination, with the strengths of one approach offsetting the weaknesses of another.

Be assured, however, that the strengths outweigh the weaknesses by far.

To receive your copy of Fazale Rana’s new content-rich DVD How to Build the Case for Biochemical Design, visit reasons.org/donate or use the enclosed form and we’ll send it as a thanks for your support.


The 4 Tools
Critiquing evolutionary assumptions raises skepticism regarding the capacity of evolutionary processes to account for the exquisite features of living systems.

The revitalized Watchmaker argument makes use of the similarities between human designs and biochemical systems to construct a formal argument for the Creator’s existence.

The empirical argument argues for the Creator’s existence using synthetic biology by demonstrating the role intelligent agency plays in transforming chemicals into proto-cells.

The bioinspiration argument uses biomimetics, the engineering discipline in which researchers turn to elegant biological designs to inspire new technologies, to raise an intriguing challenge to the evolutionary paradigm.