THE DEBATE ABOUT INTELLIGENT DESIGN

I don't know if you are aware of it, but a huge debate is raging in the world of science. It is about the amazing level of design that indicates an intelligent designer not only in the exploding knowledge about the infinitesimal design found in the universe and in living organism, but also the delicate balancing in the laws of nature and the matter/energy levels that make up the universe. What is amazing about modern scientists, specifically microbiologists and astrophysicists/cosmologists, is that all of this seems precisely balanced—to an astoundingly delicate degree—specifically to allow for the existence of intelligent life on the earth.


Materialistic scientists do not want even to discuss this, and in fascist manner try to eliminate the voice of any scientist, no matter how prominent they may be, who might disagree with them, threatening and in fact destroying their careers, denying them tenure, and excoriating their scholarship for bringing "religion" into the scientific endeavor.


The materialistic scientists (those who believe science must restrict itself to purely naturalistic explanations for the degree of design
in the universe). They argue that design is a natural result of pure chance combined with the size and longevity of the universe itself, thus offering an infinitesimal number of opportunities for the right set of conditions for life to occur not just on earth, but many times throughout the cosmos.


There are three particularly illogical and hypocritical facets to this materialistic position: (1) both in biology and astronomy/cosmology, the modern impetus for the movement resulted from two books, one by a prominent biologist and the other by a prominent astrophysicist, both of them non-religious agnostics who wrote their bomb-shell books based on the growing discoveries in their respective sciences about how the universe and the living cell operate; (2) , their own explanations for the design in the universe are not scientific theories based on physical evidence, but rather consist of blind religious faiths; and (3) their explanations for design in the universe are demonstrated to be positions they really don't believe, but rather feigned positions desperately seized upon in order to avoid losing the debate about an intelligent designer who possibly could be a super-natural "Creator". Let's discuss each of these points briefly.




FIRST, in the area of astrophysics, or Cosmology, Paul Davies, a British physicist and noted agnostic scientist sent a warning shot over the bow of the steaming atheism of the higher echelons of the scientific community with his work, The Accidental Universe in 1982. He quickly followed that work in 1983 with God and the New Physics, a true bombshell in the scientific community which laid out a preponderance of evidence. After examing that evidence, Davies wrote in his conclusion:

　
It is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in the numbers, has been rather carefully thought out . . .the seemingly miraculous concurrence of (these) numerical values must remain the most compelling evidence for cosmic design.
Paul Davies, God And The New Physics, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 189.



The next year (1984), the same kind of bombshell hit the world of biochemistry with the release of The Mystery of Life's Origin by Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen which overwhelmingly refuted (perhaps "annihilated") the materialistic explanations for the first development of living cells from a primordial soup. And then in 1998, a further bombshell hit the world of micro-biology and astro-biology with the publication of Michael Denton's book, Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe. Denton was a Senior Research Fellow in Human Molecular Genetics at the University of Otago, New Zealand.




In the concluding chapter of this work, Denton sums up the mounting evidence with these words:

　

. . .the teleological model of nature presented here is far more coherent and makes far more sense of the cosmos than any currently available competitor. The idea that the cosmos is a unique whole with life and mankind as its end and purpose makes sense and illuminates all our current scientific knowledge. . . No other worldview comes close. No other explanation makes as much sense of all the facts.



It is sometimes claimed by critics of the design hypothesis that the universe is bound to look as if it is designed for our existence because we could only be here if the universe was adapted for our existence. . . However, the conclusion to design is not based on evidence that the laws of nature are adapted to some degree for life but rather on the far stronger claim that the cosmos is optimally adapted for life so that every constituent of the cell and every law of nature is uniquely and ideally fashioned to that end. Michael J. Denton, Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose In The Universe, (New York: The Free Press, 1998), p. 385.

　

SECOND, the materialistic scientists, defend themselves with explanations for which there is NO scientific evidence, but rather based on religious faiths chosen over the obvious evidence of a designer. For instance they argue for the amazing order of the universe as coming from natural phenomenon such as the organization of crystals (which are based on the molecular structure of certain elements), etc.

　

But this ignores the clear contradiction between natural order and intelligent order as found in language or other designs by intelligent designers such as human beings, a distinction based upon clearly known criteria to modern science.




Or materialistic scientists will resort to explanations like other universes (by definition for which we can obtain no natural evidence) from which original DNA was planted into our universe, or some super advanced life from somewhere in the universe that visited earth and planted DNA in our world, but again for whom there is no evidence.




And this uniform evidential silence of intelligent life out there comes after fifty years of the aggressive research by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) which has included Project Phoenix. That program scanned every star within 200 light years of earth that has solarlike qualities or is known to possess planets for intelligible signals as low as the power output of airport radar beams, finding nothing but silence.




For the last several years, a scientific search has been intense for planets beyond our solar system the size of Jupiter or Saturn. Though earth-sized planets are too small for us yet to discern, Jupiter and Saturn sized planets are pre-requisites for the development of advanced life forms on an earth sized planet (see my blog of June 1 at foxholedon.blogspot.com for more on this necessity). As of 2008, 280 extrasolar planets had been found orbiting 230 stars. None of them have the qualities for life on a planet in their own solar system that could support advanced life or advanced civilizations.




THIRD, and most tellingly, the materialistic scientists disclose their hypocrisy when they say that intelligent design does not require an intelligent designer. Otherwise, why would projects like the SETI project even exist? If they received a signal seemingly designed to communicate information (as opposed to a natural rhythmic signal such as that emitted by pulsars) like a binary code sequentially listing prime numbers, etc., according to their claims, that would not at all indicate it was being sent by intelligent beings.

　

I mean, if the universe is large enough to explain intelligent design as a mere happenstance of the bigness of the universe, then we might receive a binary signal containing the complete works of Shakespeare and it would mean nothing concerning the signal originating form some intelligent source. Or if they found a 2001 sort of monolith or an intergalactic rocket ship on a neighboring planet that too could just be a happenstance of nature.

　

And why do the materialists even bother to respond to articles by intelligent design advocates? The articles could just be an electronic aberration of the web on which billions of messages are being sent daily. Surely one of those messages statistically could be naturally produced by a computer glitch. This, like an electro-magnetic message from space or a highly technologically engineered monolith, would be immeasurably more likely than the delicate fine tuning of the universe to provide for life something for which our knowledge is exploding concerning the prerequisites.

　

It seems to me that all the huffing and puffing about the anti-intelligent design crowd is akin to the O.J. defense. When they cannot refute the evidence, they seize upon, "Some unknown mob committed these hits, and O.J. was just an innocent bystander" which of course is hypothetically possible (since anything is hypothetically possible), but for which there tellingly is no evidence.


For recent updates on intelligent design and the Anthropic principle, for astronomy see Hugh Ross's Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, and for biology see Fazale Rana's The Cell's Design.


Flipsidedon