Does Viral Video Disprove Classic Christian Apologetic?

In the video, a person picks up a box of jumbled up nails and shakes the box until all of the nails fall into neat, orderly lines. Above the video, the text reads:

Religious apologist: science actually proves my faith

Me: how so?

RA: because science proves order cannot come from disorder

Me: oh?

Now, of course, it’s obvious a human made the nails, a human made the box, a human shook the box (not too hard, not too soft), and therefore intelligence was involved in the whole process. But, in a series of responses to criticisms such as that, the X user shows other videos of “order” coming from disorder and showing the scientific principles behind it (such as crystals and minerals forming in highly organized patterns, seemingly without an intelligence behind them).

But this individual is missing an important point—there are immaterial laws governing why nails shaken in a box will align themselves or why crystals will form in precise ways. And where do immaterial laws of nature and physics come from?

In a completely material, naturalistic universe—such as the one this X user presumably believes in (and that atheists believe in)—there can’t be immaterial laws of physics and nature. After all, where do they come from? How does a materialistic process create something immaterial? And why should those laws work everywhere and work the same every time, thus allowing us to trust the uniformity of nature?

The viral video merely shows that there are immaterial laws of nature that work because there is a Creator—the God of the Bible—who designed these laws and upholds his creation.

The viral video merely shows that there are immaterial laws of nature that work because there is a Creator—the God of the Bible—who designed these laws and upholds his creation. And that same God loves us so much that he stepped into the world he created, in the person of Jesus, to die on the cross and pay the penalty for our sin so we could be forgiven.

If you’d like to learn more about how to respond to atheistic arguments—such as that nail video—I encourage you to check out a new book I served as general editor on: Defending God’s Existence. You can find it at AnswersBookstore.com.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.