Are we afraid of a field test

The telelogical argument for the existence of God has roots and resonances in the notion that design is apparent in nature itself, articulated variously by the psalmist, apostle Paul and William Paley.  Let's look at the argument when it is focused on events that are anything but commonplace.

The telelogical argument for divine existence, like all sufficient reasons arguments for divine existence, is a search for an adequate cause for the universe, but it emphasizes two alleged characteristics of the universe in the search -- the element of recognizable design and the corollary element of recognizable intention.

There are caveats that must be kept in mind when examining the telelogical argument.  Because the telelogical argument is less an exercise in inference than an exercise in hypothesis construction, it is just as open to experimental output testing as any explanatory hypothesis.  

The telelogical argument is widely appreciated and has been articulated, at varying levels of sophistication by many different writers, but it is most clearly set out by William Paley.  The argument is plausibly extrapolated from the obvious physical and emotion expressions in the sense of wonder people commonly feel when contemplating natural phenomena, such as chambered nautilus shells, rock crystal structures, and spiral nebulae -- the sorts of things we collect in museums or look at through telescopes and marvel at.

The argument is articulated with care and detail in William Paley's Natural Theology; Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature.  Paley enumerates and describes a vast array of natural phenomena that he held to be more like clocks than rocks, such as human noses, thumbs and eyes.

Paley argued that just as we are compelled to infer the existence of an adequate clock maker from the occurrence of clocks, we are compelled to infer the existence of an adequate eye maker from the occurrence of eyes. Paley concludes that the only adequate source of such phenomena as human noses arranged to shield the nostrils from rainfall is God.