Tuesday, April 8

You have to first choose a intelligent design or a goo-to-zoo-to-you no design approach.

You don't have to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob to believe that there is intelligent design to the universe, ourselves, and everything else. Though I believe that is the eventual ending, it is not the first tier of our argument of a god (intelligent designer). The identity of the god we find is a second, deeper level of the argument.

Let's assume that we are taking the first tier of the argument; whether or not there is a god and leaving the discussion of who the identity of this God is for another tier. Most atheists want to be given naturalistic evidence of a supernatural being, so we will look at the natural world for such evidence.

Comprehend, if you can, the possibility of complex information not only coming into being out of a random explosion but also the fact this complex massive world of logical information 'ordered' itself into the chemical-based, mathematical, cosmological, planetary, and biological systems that exists in the microscopic levels of everything; whether man-made or otherwise. I don't say, 'if you can', but use that as a point to show that we are too limited in our knowledge to do so. Biochemists and mathematicians have shown that the odds of this coming from a non-life 'universe' to evolve naturally at random into the complex life that exists all around us in the natural world. So, if it is astronomically improbability that life came randomly to exist naturally, where did it come from?

You place the concept of an 'intelligent designer' being at the helm of this process and you find the arguments fitting neatly into a box that something/someone created life with its' complexities. The sheer amount of information encoded into each living thing, at the molecular level and even subatomic level, run thousands upon thousands of irreducibly complex organisms that cannot exist without the preexistence of the other parts that make them up. Darwin himself said that his theory of evolution would be invalid if such a level of existence could be proven. Science has.

That is another less direct hit upon the theory of non-intelligently controlled formation of life. Vast systems in the scientific areas of cosmology, stellar, planetary, chemical and biological realms are continually being reduced to such complexity. Logically, it cannot be recreated in any lab I know of the random chance of such complex engineering in the multitude of designs within each system. You cannot get something from nothing.

Take the system of the DNA. This is the encoding that lives in every living thing which is the wiring diagram to the functions that give it life-capabilities. We had the fastest computers working for years before the DNA strand was actually 'uncoded'. Each human DNA is composed of chemical bases arranged in approximately 3 billion PRECISE sequences. As shown, a simple single cell bacterium called E. coli's information would fill all the books in the largest libraries in the world. What is the logical probability of such programming, ignoring the massive amount of processing/debugging/testing processes that would of had to taken place, coming into existence at random? Again, such programming only points to some kind of intelligently guided creation.

Following this DNA, we find that even science is baffled by the information-transferring system that is connected to those 3 Billion sequences of code. With a vast system as complex as the space shuttles, precise DNA instructions are used to control this. A modern informational system found in the evolutionary process of goo to you? Why did it take us so long to're-discover' it then? And how did it get to a molecular level in the first place? The chemical processes have nothing to do with the origin of the messages that are sent. Evolution claims that the chemical process created the information to send and then how to send it.

Even the infamous Charles Darwin established the foolishness of his own expansion on evolution (it was actually his father and grandfather who first proposed such theory). Darwin, in speaking of the complexity of the eye, had this to say about 'macro evolution':

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

No matter whom you are, atheists or religious, you have a concept that things 'began'. To the atheist, the starting point was formless, mindless gobs of goo that adapted and jumped species as they evolved into humanity, animals, plants, and chemical processes that are so balanced that such 'chance' happenings are mathematically impossible. To a religious person, there is an intelligence that is seen through the chemical, structure, and historical evidences in that order that we find. Logically, a leap to an intelligent design is far less of a stretch than chance encounters of atoms to develop an intelligence that is defying logic today.

Logic, itself, stands as a finger pointing towards some kind of intelligent designer, a.k.a. God, as the author of abstract thinking, the ability to question the status quo. This is the hallmark of discovery, this ability to expand beyond the known into the possibilities yet discovered. Human philosophy has pointed towards the human tendency of self-gratification, yet many discoveries were made with the end result being to improve all of humanity. Conscience, that nagging voice or feeling that plagues all of us, is a separate function from the material brain (mind over matter). Morality, the existence of love, emotions, and inherent moral/ethical values that are the same no matter the culture or geographical location, fly into the face of the tendency for self-protection.

If we didn't have a morality at the societal level, then my belief that I have absolute authority in my world would mean that I have the right to decide to drive down the other side of the road unlike another person, who might feel that they have the right to drive down my side of the road in the opposite direction. The incarnation of those that society deems to be a threat stands to reason that there is an intelligent design that triumphs our own preservation that was designed for the preservation of the species.

But anyone who decides that God cannot exist will not believe any evidence given to show otherwise. This is where I say that anyone who believes that there is no God believes that they are god. They are the ultimate and final source of truth in their world, which is an attribute that only a god can have. They might say otherwise, but again logic stands against such claims. Dr. Richard Lewontin, in his book Billions and Billions of Demons, states it this way:

"It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the unitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

This is why the fact the universe has been proven in astronomical circles to actually have begun, exquisitely designed/balanced/irreducible machines at a molecular level, natural law, objective moral standards, and personal claims of divine interaction with a supernatural 'something' are all thrown into the trash heap by those who don't want to believe in intelligent design.

Beginning with the basics

"Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage ----with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear." 2 Timothy 4:2-3 NIV

I listened to an interview last night as I ran from one crisis to the next with Dr. James Dobson and Ben Stein regarding his new documentary about intelligent design. Again, I am struck by how much science is becoming the tool of man to disprove God and the only way they are doing it is to deny the very evidence that science finds of God's hand. As Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion" states,

"Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion."

In such efforts to deny God, it seems that man is set on just ignoring the evidence. A friend of mine on an online community I belong to said that we, humanity, aren't flexing our muscles in the realm of science (that was my statement), rather exploring the world known and unknown. But if that is the case, where science is burdened with man's insatiable desire to know the unknown, why do we cut off any discussion regarding theories that challenge the bar?

"Academic freedom is no longer assured in many countries. This is especially true when it involves espousing views contrary to the theory of Darwinian macroevolution. Numerous instances have been documented where scientists and teachers have either been censored or removed from their positions for allowing or facilitating open discussion of the empirical problems of macroevolution." Statement from PSSI (Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity) website.

If we look to the Genesis account, which refers to God as the intelligent designer of the world and all its creatures, environs, and structures, we find that God started the whole process. "God said" is repeated ten times in the account and shows that a Being spoke what He was going to do and then did it. Much like a scientific theory, where a scientist will propose an uninformed expectation and then endeavor to make it happen. Even Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary thought, claimed this process as his own….

“I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.”

One of the tenements of Evolution theory is that natural selection brought us from the primordial ooze to the complex design of the human body we enjoy today. Ignored is the biblical account that God created or actively initiated over twenty five events in the creation account.

According to evolutionists, randomly unsupervised events occur that affect the genetic makeup of an organism in which the fittest (those equipped with the advantageous traits to survive, proliferate, and procreate) are the survivors which beget the species which evolves to repeat this process. This leads to a species developing over time with all the advantageous traits needed to survive. The 'final' species is far different, superior, and adaptable than the original. Eventually, we were formed.

Yet, for some strange reason, the Genesis account has a phrase in it that is so 'duh' in its obviousness that one wonders why it is included in such a powerful and purposeful way. Each species, we are told in the account, brings forth offspring "according to its own kind." I.E. Human gives birth to human, monkey to monkey, finch to finch. This is the observed way of species progeneration throughout known history. And yet, science feels fit to deny evidencal proof.

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” Charles Darwin.

If intelligent design, which does not promote the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is such an outrageous theory and only involves quacks and charlatans, why does it invoke such rage and hostility? If creation is such a religious dogma instead of scientific process, why do so many people have a problem with letting those nuts just have their time? If evolution is not just a theory, but mankind's lucky break in the scheme of things, why are so many of the basic tenets faulty and unprovable?

Maybe we should ask our ancestors, the monkey?

Or should we look to the obvious and call it truth?