How does the Periodic Table evidence God?
“[T]he same rational God who made the rational human mind also created the rational
world so the mind would be suited to figure out the world’s structure. God created you to
be a follower of Christ with your mind turned on and tuned in to the life He made for
you…if virtues mirror our God of perfection, then ignorance is not a Christian virtue.”
Moreland, J.P. and Mark Matlock. Smart Faith: Loving your God with all your mind, p.35
Many people think that having faith means to accept something without proof or evidence. In
other words – stop thinking and just mindlessly accept. This is not the case! Nowhere does God
ever suggest that His people to stop thinking; on the contrary, we are told repeatedly to
evaluate, to judge, to discern. We are thinking beings with the capacity for rational, creative,
and abstract thought because we are made in the image of God.
Consider the following analogy, modified from http://www.biblestudy.org/theplainertruth/howcan-you-know-there-is-a-god.html
If you were taken to an apparently deserted island and that told that nobody had
ever been there before, what would you think if you found the following?
As you reached the shore of the island, you saw a trail of bricks (like those used to
build a house) going off into the interior of the island. At the beginning of the trail
was one brick. Ten feet away was a pile of two bricks, laid neatly together to form a
square. Ten feet farther you find three bricks, in a neat pile. Yet another ten feet
showed four bricks, in a neat cubic stack. And so it went; every ten feet: five bricks,
six bricks, seven bricks, on into the interior of the island in neat piles exactly ten feet
apart.
Once you saw this, could anyone convince you that no-one had ever been to this
island before? Could they convince you that the seas had roared from time to time
and finally coughed up these bricks, which themselves are nearly identical,
rectangular solids? That millennia of high tides had washed these bricks into neat
stacks that were the same distance apart AND numerically sequenced? Could that
happen by chance in any amount of time? Could you also believe that, in all of these
storms of random chance, you happened on this situation at just the right time,
before another storm came up and scattered them?
At this point, what would you know? You would know that someone had previously
visited the island. The brick trail tells you so; two things clearly indicate that
someone had been there:
Structure
Numerical Sequence
Structure Demands a Builder.
The structured trail demands a builder who made this trail. The bricks demand a
brick maker who gave them all their uniform, rectangular, solid shape. The spacing
of the brick piles ten feet apart would demand a mind to measure and space them.
Someone had to count out the bricks in order for each pile. Numerical sequence
demands a mind that can count (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) and that is rational - not random.
The neat piles were stacked by someone. You would know that someone had been
there! Such bricks and their arrangement in sequences and patterns could NOT
have evolved from a mindless process of chance.
An analogous, but far more complex example of order, structure and sequencing is found in the
elements as they are arranged into the modern periodic table. It is important to note that the
periodic table does not force elements into an order or sequence; the arrangement on the
periodic table reflects the physical reality of the order, structure and sequencing of the
elements. Put another way, the periodic table does not determine the order; rather the order
determines the periodic table. Aside from the periodic table, which is only a man-made
organizational tool (albeit a really useful one), the structure of each individual atom is
exquisitely mind-boggling; atomic structure clearly reflects extraordinary design. It is not
random or chaotic, but orderly and impossible to comprehend in its detail, size, and sheer
numbers.
The first person to let me know they have read this will get a homework pass. Text, email, or tell me, “Structure
requires a designer.”