A Civil Religious Debate

Ahh...this is the ultimate question, isn't it? Do we exist with a plan, with a purpose, or are we just bunches of matter walking around?

I think the very fact that we are able to muse about such things is in and of itself some decently solid evidence towards a creator.

Look around you. Look at something as simple as a leaf on a tree, and what do you see? Maybe not much, but if you think about the complexity of each different cycle going on inside that tiny leaf, if you think about photosynthesis or the krebs cycle or even the structure of one tiny cell, you might wonder how on earth that happened 'by chance'. That's like spilling paint on a piece of paper and re-creating the Mona Lisa. Sure, it happened again and again as time went on and mistakes were corrected, but the complexity of the world around us simply cannot just be made by accident after accident as time bumbles along. Writing a strand of DNA by chance is about as likely as sitting a very well-behaved monkey at a computer and watching as it hits the keyboard randomly and manages to recreate Webster's Encyclopedia (five times in a row). Now sure, it can hit the backspace button as many times as it wants to and take a billion zillion years to do it, but it's still SO UNLIKELY. Now that's just ONE DNA STRAND. Factor in the (roughly) seven trillion cells in your body, each with six strands of DNA that need to be written and coded, and you've got yourself a heck of an endeavor. Sorry mister monkey, but I don't think it's happening. You need an intelligent designer such as Noah Webster if you want something other than a mess of letters all jumbled together.