What is Rational?

Which of these two sentences is more rational?

1. The universe was created by an eternal, supernatural being.
2. The universe popped into being from literally nothing.

Hopefully you see that #1 is the rational statement.  If you need more, I'll clarify.  The Law of Causality states that if something came into being (was created), it had a cause.  Now the first "cause" couldn't have been created, though, could it have?  Something had to start it all, and it couldn't have started without that first cause.  Imagine a train of dominoes that stretches over the horizon, out of sight.  If those dominoes were falling, one after another, as they passed us then off over the opposite horizon, and I told you that the first domino just fell without any cause, you'd call me crazy.  That would be completely irrational to even think that.  "Of course something caused it to fall.  Someone pushed the first one over, or the wind knocked it over, or the ground shook, or something."  So, we can agree that all things that have happened or have come into being had a cause, with exception to some "first cause", correct?

Okay, now reread the two sentences above.  Which is more rational?

Next two questions:

1. All the variety of life on Earth, from plants to animals to the human being, was created by an eternal, supernatural being.  Something or someone outside of the natural world we know created the complex and varied life we see today.
2. Life started accidentally as a simple-cell organism, then evolved through millions (maybe billions) of years to become a plant, an octopus, an ostrich, a tsetse fly, and a human.

Again, something or someone from outside of nature had to have created life.  If you are a Naturalist (one who says that only the things we see in nature are real - that precludes supernatural forces or beings of any kind before we even start searching for answers), you are stuck.  Life from lifeless matter ... in any combination?  Those two dots do not and cannot connect.  To say otherwise is, again, irrational.  To say that something or someone outside of nature, with some pretty incredible intelligence beyond anything we can comprehend, created life?  Now that is rational.

Note:  A scientist is supposed to preclude nothing, make hypotheses, test them, then go where the evidence leads.  Many, unfortunately, preclude anything supernatural before even starting.  This is the equivalent of saying, "I haven't ever seen a combustion engine, even though you have a book that says that's exactly what is under the hood, and explains how it works, etc.  Instead, I'm going to preclude combustion engines before I even start and begin my scientific search for why the car goes.  I think it's a very quiet bear under there.  Ooh, or a very fast dung beetle.  NO!  For the last time, stop trying to explain this 'combustion engine' nonsense to me!  Don't press your beliefs on me, you religious freak!"  Okay, tongue removed from cheek.  I digress.

With regard to evolution, let's begin by defining what we mean by "evolution".  If we're talking about micro-evolution (the beak of a finch in the Galapagos Islands changing over time to meet changing environmental conditions, for instance), sure - I can see that.  In fact, that's pretty rational.  Now, a plant becoming a dog?  Or a chicken becoming a whale?  That's called "macro evolution" and that's not feasible or rational.  I know apes look a bit like us, and chimps have 97% of the same DNA as we do, but you need to think through what that other 3% means.  That is an insurmountable chasm to cross.  We also have more than half of the same DNA as a chicken, but no one is looking for the missing link chicken-man (a.k.a. cluckus erectus). Also, look up the "Cambrian Explosion" where archeologists have found in the fossil record a single point-in-time emergence of thousands of life forms all completely formed.  Before this - nothing.  What does that sound like?  That crazy Christian theory that God created it all at once, maybe?

Also, there are no real examples in the fossil record for anything that looks like a giraffe, for instance, in an earlier evolutionary form, without the super-powerful heart, the sponge-like organ in its head that throttles blood flow to the brain, or the super-long neck.  We continue to search for any explanation - outside of "God created ..." - to explain the variety and complexity of life, but nothing rational emerges.  Even Darwin said as much.  And since his book was first published 150+ years ago, there has been no scientific evidence found to support his theories further.  Quite the contrary - each new scientific discovery seems to provide evidence for the opposite ... that an eternal, super-natural force created all forms of life.

Last two questions to check for rationality:

1. The data contained in DNA shows further proof that life was created by an eternal, intelligent, supernatural being.
2. The highly complex and ordered information contained in DNA came about accidentally.

Did you know that the data contained in DNA taking up an area the size of a pin head, if printed and put in book form (normal font, single space), would stretch from here to the moon 500 times?  The data contained in DNA is complex and vastly more intelligent than anything man has ever been able to create.  How did that come to be?  Did it pop into existence from nothing, accidentally?  Is that even close to rational thinking?  Of course not.  What is considerably more rational is that an intelligent creator - an architect - outside of nature brought that intelligence into existence and placed it in us - the life it (He) created. 

I'm not jumping at this point in the blog to the conclusion that the Judeo-Christian God is that eternal supernatural being that created the universe, life and the intelligence contained in DNA.  I'll cover that in a future blog entry.  Let's agree, though, that - if the above is rational (and thinking otherwise is irrational), that you must be at least a Diest, not an Agnostic and certainly not an Atheist. 

More to come ...  Intelligent and thought-through comments and rebuttals welcome. ;)