“Where did it come from?” » It's a fairly innocuous question in ordinary circumstances, but when applied to something as complex as the human race – and by proxy, to all life – the question becomes incredibly obfuscated. The argument that humans and the material universe they inhabit are the result of the conscious and deliberate actions of an external entity may seem at least passably convincing, even if one is determined to accept biological evolution as fact established. It is easy enough to dismiss literal biblical creationism as irrelevant and/or inappropriate for scientific discussion, but it is more difficult to object to the formulation of a more sophisticated view according to which the form and structure of the The universe shows signs of having been designed. the fundamental logic behind intelligent design, consider the rational mind's instinctive reaction to two different events: if Bob were to win the lottery when the odds of doing so were one in a billion, rational minds would not immediately tempted to think that Bob somehow cheated to win. But if Bob won several lotteries in a row with odds of one in a thousand, it would become increasingly tempting to accuse Bob of cheating. The structure of this last scenario is such that it justifies the hypothesis of cheating: the fact that Bob is lucky in one lottery is consistent with the inherent randomness of the contest, but being lucky in three consecutive lotteries is a reliable indicator that Bob's victories were the intended outcome. of someone's intelligent entry into what was supposed to be a random system. Although the probability of winning three consecutive games of one in a thousand is exactly the same as the probability of winning a single game of one in a billion...... middle of paper ...... universe and the Evidence that we can observe with our own eyes both seem to point to the deliberate intervention of a conscious, intelligent being somewhere in humanity's distant past. Whether this agent was actually the monotheistic God, a pantheon of gods and goddesses, aliens, or something else remains entirely up for debate, but the simple fact is that human life is simply too ingenious and complicated to to be born from evolution alone. .References:1. George N. Schlesinger, New Perspectives on Ancient Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)2. Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge of Evolution (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996)3. Gee, H., In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record Toward a New History of Life (1999).4. Scherer, S., "Basic Types of Life" in Mere Creation, edited by Dembski 195-211 (1998).