Hebrews 3:4

For every house is builded by some one; but he that built all things is God.

This verse is engraved in letters of stone over the principal portal of the Central Church of Christ, Houston, Texas. The thought expressed is a teleological thunderbolt; it is the ancient and indestructible argument from design, bluntly and unequivocally stated, first in the truism that every house has a builder, and secondly in the deduction that the far greater house of the whole universe likewise has its builder who can be none other than God. A noted research chemist, Thomas David Parks, said:

I see order and design all about me in the inorganic world. I cannot believe that they are there by the haphazard, fortunate coming together of atoms. For me this design demands an intelligence; and this intelligence I call God.[1]

Christians ought not to be ashamed of the argument from design; for here it is in the word of God itself, commending itself to the unbiased mind, and standing absolutely uncontradicted by any vaunted achievements of science. The most determined atheist, in his tenderest and most thoughtful hours, cannot escape the persuasive eloquence of that argument from design which demands a Designer. An excellent instance of this is documented in the experience of Whitaker Chambers, who for a while was a militant atheist, but who yielded to the tender whispers of this argument when God spoke to him through the fantastic beauty and loveliness of his little daughter's ear. Chambers was a dedicated Communist; but after he was enlightened, he gave a touching account of how that first ray of light penetrated his soul. Here are his words:

My daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life. I liked to watch her even when she smeared porridge on her face or dropped it meditatively on the floor. My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear - those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: "No, these ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design." The thought was involuntary and unwanted, I crowded it out of my mind. But I never wholly forgot it or the occasion. I had to crowd it out of my mind. If I had completed it I should have had to say: Design presupposes God. I did not then know that, at that moment, the finger of God was laid upon my forehead.[2]

The interrelation between design and the Designer is a fact observable alike by a little child or the wisest man who ever lived. A three-year-old will ask, "Mommy, who made the cow?" And the simple question simply means that intelligence that has not been corrupted accepts the argument from design as truth; and the axiomatic nature of that truth was affirmed twice in the word of God: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalms 14:1; 53:1). "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Psalms 19:1).

[1] Thomas David Parks, The Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1958), p. 74.

[2] Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 16.