This may be my favorite time of year here in the Pacific Northwest. Every so often, we have clear, bright days, but the mountains remain stunningly snowcapped.

Spring makes me think of daffodils, bunnies, buds on trees, and fresh green leaves. Rain that causes plants to flourish. Days chilly enough for a coat but sunny enough to convince you that summer is almost here.

Hallmarks of ID

In fact, it reminds me of two hallmarks of intelligent design that Michael Denton has written on at length: light and water. What complexity there is in our water cycle, which brings life to many organisms and at the same time replenishes and renews itself. Denton writes in The Wonder of Water:

In effect, the hydrological cycle is enabled not by one unique property of water, but by several properties that “conspire together,” as it were, to turn the “wheel” and provide water for land-based life.

Without the hydrological cycle the entire land surface of Earth would be a dehydrated, lifeless waste, more lifeless than the Atacama or any of the most dehydrated deserts currently on Earth. Although the importance of the hydrological cycle is widely acknowledged, what is, as far as I am aware, never mentioned is the remarkable fact that the delivery of water to the land, an essential medium of all life on Earth, is in effect carried out by and dependent upon the properties of water itself, unaided by any other external regulatory systems.

And think of how much we depend on photosynthesis! It is true at all times of the year, but the new plants flourishing just now makes it seem a fresh insight. Watch this short video with Michael Denton on light and photosynthesis!

The intricate beauty that rejoices throughout the spring points to something beyond itself — intelligent design.

Photo source: “Why Our Sun and Atmosphere Appear Intelligently Designed,” via Discovery Institute.