#3 Three Sticks

Let's imagine that you are walking through the woods in a very secluded area. As you are walking, you see something on the path in front of you. When you get up close, it turns out to be three sticks that look like this.

What goes through your mind? How did those sticks appear like that?

Please give me a number on a scale from 0 to 100. Closer to zero means that the sticks happened to become like that totally at random with no interference from any unusual force. There is zero significance or meaning to the pattern.

A number closer to 100 would mean that you are more and more certain that some intelligent being arranged the sticks in exactly that pattern with some specific purpose in mind. The intention of the intelligent being is to send a message which has meaning and possibly value to an observer.

There is no right or wrong answer. This is just a line of reasoning.

My guess is that most people would give a number in the high 90's, although I haven't yet done the experiment. If you would care to leave a comment at the bottom, I'd be curious what you think.

OK, next step. Let's go a little further down the path. This time you encounter four sticks instead of three sticks. Look at the two pictures of 4 sticks that follow and think again of a number between 0 and 100.

  

Did your number go higher or lower? I'm pretty confident when I say that I think your number would go higher. It's getting less and less likely that this was an accident and more and more likely that the arrangement was done by some intelligent being.

One more picture and then my conclusion. Imagine again you are walking in the woods and encounter 5 sticks that look like this.

What number between 0 and 100 would describe whether this is random or put there by an intelligent being.

I don't know what number you are at right now, but if your number keeps going up, there will be some point at which it will get infinitesimally close to 100 as I keep adding more and more sticks.

What about 6 sticks, 7 sticks, ...100 sticks, ...1000 sticks in an arrangement that looks ordered?

I haven't even gotten started. I can go all the way up to 3 billion sticks. Take a look at this picture of "sticks":

Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

"The human (Homo sapiens) genome is stored on 23 chromosome pairs and in the small mitochondrial DNA. Twenty-two of the 23 chromosomes belong to autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex determinative. The haploid human genome (ex. sperm or ova) occupies a total of just over three billion DNA base pairs.

The haploid human genome contains about 23,000 protein-coding genes..."

Now imagine that you are walking with a friend in the woods and you come upon 3 sticks, then a little while later 4, then a little further on 5 sticks, on and on, ... 100 sticks arranged as I have described. Every time you come to a new set of sticks, your friend denies that any intelligent being could possibly have left this trail. Neither of you can see any intelligent being anywhere around can you?

What do you do? Do you laugh at the foolishness of your friend? Or do you cry for him because he is so lost from his senses for some reason.

3 billion "sticks" all lined up and organized ... there must be a God.

PS: Here's another ordered pattern that I love, but it's not sticks, it's "rocks".

There has got to be God.