The illustration above is typical of what you might have in your digital camera. It is capable of storing thousands of digital photos. Used in another way, that same storage device could hold a sophisticated computer program.
And while we marvel at the amazing technology that mankind has developed, we use that technology without giving it a thought.
In human terms, the advances in computer technology are mind-boggling. Most of us, using that technology, have minimal understanding of how these amazing devices work. We have even less understanding of the programming or instructions that provide the results we seek.
That might remind us of the continuing debate over whether our existence is a cosmic accident or the result of divine creation.
As much as we might marvel at the ability to store so much information in so small a package, there is even greater ability in the smallest of living creatures.
A human infant requires a great deal of practice to learn how to walk on two legs, while a spider, with a head the size of the head of a pin, manages to scramble about on eight legs without any training. That same spider is capable of feeding and creating webs without adult supervision.
The compound eyes of a common housefly may contain thousands of receptors, and even though the insect cannot “see” with the same accuracy as a human, that still represents a huge amount of input to that tiny brain.
As small as these insect examples may be, it by no means represents the lower limits of what we might call brain activity. Virtually any living organism, no matter how microscopic, has to some degree, a responsive activity built into its life functions.
Certainly there are great limitations to the intellectual scale of these examples. After all, no one has discovered an instruction manual on how to build a honeycomb written in bee language. And many would argue that the reactions and activities of lower life forms are instinctual or automatic response to stimuli.
As we reflect on the comparison with human-developed computer technology, we need to recognize that the most basic responsive functions of these simple life forms are not that different from the most basic programming of the earliest computers.
Perhaps the most dramatic difference between nature and the technology world is that technology cannot engage in self-replication. No matter how skilled your cell phone may be, it will never mate with another phone to produce an offspring.
And each generation of new technology must have its brain artificially inserted.
Compare this with the knowledge that each generation of a living organism – right down to a cellular level – automatically inherits the processing power to function like the parent organism.
As we incorporate this knowledge into the argument of whether or not intelligent life came about through God’s design or by means of a miraculous series of random cosmic events, the answer should be obvious.
If a belief in God is difficult for some, belief in a series of cosmic accidents that managed to create your son or daughter as well as that talented, web-spinning spider, is an even greater stretch.
Logic favors God.