Orion Nebula: The Hubble View Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (STScI/ESA) and The Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team.

I need some clarification. My understanding is fuzzy on a point of philosophy and science.

Apologist Ray Comfort asks “How do I know God exists?” His own answer stems from the argument from design: that anything that appears to have a purpose or orderly manner must have a beginning and a creator. Comfort  says:

Keep in mind that we can’t create anything from nothing. We don’t know how to begin. If you disagree, then make me a seed—-from nothing. Make it living, so that it grows into a plant that produces an edible fruit, and make it with the ability to create more seeds within the fruit, so that you can plant them and make more plants and more fruit. So if we can’t even make one seed, how intellectually deceitful is it for any rational human being to believe that nothing created everything?

I see that he most likely has a problem with the Inflation/Expansion of the universe (aka “Big Bang”) because it comes across like the universe popped into existence without a cause or source.

What I don’t understand, though, is why he and other creationists don’t have a problem with matter appearing instantaneously in the form of minerals, animals, humans, energy, and so forth when God says “Duuuude… Bear! Kneecap! Mitosis! Compact Discs! AIDS!”

I strongly doubt that speaking something into existence is very cohesive with the laws of this universe. How is that explanation the least bit satisfying? In what way is it less puzzling than a natural origin? Is this not the same as “something out of nothing”?

Am I missing something here?

Bonus: the known universe… in video!