Did you catch his face? Was it 10538?

This is another adventure in Evidence Unseen, the apologetics book I have been reading on my Kindle.  But it is more because it leads to music.

The author goes into detail about how atheists will try to find meaning in this world and life, but without God there really is no meaning.  If this world was a result of an explosion and other non-entities such as chance, then there is no meaning and all we have are biological fatalism. 

He gives the illustration of a master artist who one day let his 3-year-old nephew splatter paint all over a canvas.  That evening, he invited some critics over and showed him his nephew's painting, but then he told them he had made the painting.

So the art critics invented meaning after meaning about all the splotches and spatters arranged by the nephew.

Finally the artist gives in and tells them that this painting was created by his nephew this afternoon after he let him fling paint all over it.

Some of the critics left all angry because their deep meanings suddenly became meaningless.  But some stayed still drawing meaning out of the blotches even after the artist told them that it had no meaning.

Sometimes I feel like the art critics who stay after the big let-down when it comes to the "10538 Overture."  By Electric Light Orchestra.

It's lyrics are simple:

Did you see your friend crying from his eyes today?
Did you see him run through the streets and far away?
Did you see him run? Did you see him fall?
Did his life flash by at the bedroom door?

Did you hear the news, came across the air today?
Someone has been found on the rocks down in the bay
Did you see him hide? Did you see him crawl?
Does his life mean more than it did before?

Did you see that man running through the streets today?
Did you catch his face? Was it 10538?

My meaning: When I listen to these words and the amazing orchestral rock sounds, it has such meaning to me.  There is this man who does not fit in society roaming the streets all alone in life.  Does he have a name?  Why doesn't someone reach out to him?

Jeff Lynne's meaning: According to wikipedia, he simply wanted to write a song about an escaped prisoner who had a number and not a name.  He had a tune intended to be an orchestral masterpiece.  He then got inspired to write lyrics and the recording engineers added guitars and violins and all kinds of decoration.  The song became their first hit as ELO.

But all the same, Jeff Lynne would not have written the song down if it hadn't at least a subconscious meaning for him.  It has meaning.  It has an author, and lyrics and tunes don't just happen.  The same way, that guy's nephew gave the painting meaning when he spattered it with paint.  We don't know it, but the 3-year-old isn't a zombie robot.  He's a human with his own volition and ideas.

So really, I think this argument might fail in trying to logically prove God's existence to people who believe the earth has no specific origin.  Whether people realize the meaning or not, the earth was created.  It is clearly created by someone intelligent.  How can you study something like childbirth or planetary motion and not see that this could not have arisen from a non-entity?  How can you look at human progress and not see the original artist behind all these people?  Cities and internets and technology do not come as a result of biological synapses.  Someone invented it, and someone fashioned the man to have his desires and ideas.  This is no accident.  This is a planned work of a loving God who knows what he wants and who he loves.