There's this sense in our culture that believing in a higher being, what most of us call God, is not intellectual; I really don't get this. If any of us encountered even a hint of complexities to things in our daily routine, we'd instantly assume some being with intellect planned and created it.

For example, if we walk into a room full of blocks stacked up in a pattern, reason dictates that something with intellect arranged it.

In our experience it makes sense that even the simplest complexity has an intentional intelligent maker.

In our world of reason, a rational conclusion when confronted with structural complexities on a daily basis is: that something with intellect creates complexities.

There can really be no reasonable denial that even ordinary things on earth are complex in structure, far more so than a room of stacked blocks.

From atoms and molecules to rocks and minerals to cells, plants and animals, the design is beyond even our human intellectual capacity in that we cannot make such things.

So how is it that when we are faced with complexities in life the argument they occur by happenstance gets more weight than what ordinary experience and reason suggest, i.e., that complexities are created by something with intellect?

I am not arguing this with disrespect to those who choose to believe creation occurred by happenstance. But I am arguing that theism is a rational and reasonable conclusion and deserves more respect that it gets in our modern world.

In short, even if we cannot detail or name or even prove what exactly the nature of the creative intellect is, there is an evidentiary basis to draw a reasonable conclusion that the universe seems to have an intentionality in its construction; which, in turn, reasonably suggests there is a maker with intellect, i.e., God ... or more to the point, intelligent people may rationally think so.

The Rev. Scott Elliott is the pastor at Riviera United Church of Christ in Palm Bay. Visit Riviera UCC's website at rivieraucc.org.