- We can often recognize the effects of design in nature. For example, Mt. Rushmore was clearly designed whereas the Rockies seem much more random and undesigned.
- The physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. For example, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, once wrote that biologists must constantly remind themselves that what they see was not designed but evolved.
- There is no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence.
- In the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Intelligent Design
I haven't given the origins of life much thought lately but if I end up in academia I probably should. Today, in the NY Times there was an interesting and short description of intelligent design without the religious fervor that most often plagues other descriptions. It may require logging into NY Times but that isn't too much trouble. The four basic arguments include:
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You bring up the issue of design in the structure of the DNA molecule. If you stretch your view out to a more macroscopic view of the human body (as one example of all the different types of life), the beauty of a design process becomes the only way that one could envision the formation of human life. The more science learns in the way of microscopic discoveries, the more they seem to attempt to rationalize evolution of these molecules. But when you step back and see the sheer complexity of hundreds of different molecules on the surface of a white blood cell that are involved in directing that cell where to find an infection, helping it stick to the sides of a blood vessel to "put on the brakes" before it slides past, helping it sneak out of the blood vessel, and leading it to the site of its action, you realize that this process did not happen by accident. Then there are a wealth of others which aid in the performing of its function. Another fascinating example for me is the complexity of the eye and physical and biochemical steps that are involved with vision, something that is far too easy to take for granted. Missing just one biochemical step through the lack of an enzyme, or one nerve cell in the transfer of information (something that would have to happen were an evolutionary hypothesis to hold true), would result in a nonviable process and therefore no vision. There are hundreds more examples in the human body that just fascinate me every time I learn more about them.
Then, as an aside, there are other things that seem to not be "intelligent" design that are so much more complex than anything we could understand, and definitely not random. Albert Einstein once said something along the lines of "God does not play dice with the universe" in relation to his belief that electrons followed specific orbits around the nucleus of an atom. While it has now been shown that they don't and instead just occupy an area surrounding the nucleus defined mostly by probability of its presence. Very fascinating. Not random. But not the way we thought it "should" be designed. Just as "our thoughts are not His thoughts."
I hope some of what I just wrote makes sense.
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