Saturday, September 20, 2008

Is There A Good Argument For Intelligent Design?

I actually believe that there is.

As per the recommendation of Jessica, I went to YouTube and did a search for "Unlocking the Mystery of Life". I found a video which is about an hour long and is broken up into seven smaller videos about ten minutes long each, which I thoroughly enjoyed watching. For the ease of viewing them, since I do believe they should be viewed, I will place them all here, afterwards I will leave my thoughts...















I hope you enjoyed watching these videos as much as I did. I have been going to school for several years now and I have truly been fascinated by what science has revealed about our world. It is amazingly complex. In fact, it is mind boggling.

I don't disagree that these videos argue an extremely good case for intelligent design. Where did the first cell come from? The first protein? The first strand of DNA? All of these things are amazingly complex and the idea that it happened randomly is far fetched. If you dropped a pile of bricks out of an airplane, what is the chance that they would hit the ground and form a perfectly designed building? Not too great. Even if you did it hundreds of millions of times, I hightly doubt that a building would ever result. A building can only be erected by intelligent design.

Now in the case of the building, we know who designed it... the architect. We know who built it... the carpenter. And although this video argues a damn good argue in favor of intellignet design, it does not attempt to explain what that intelligence is. Could this be used as an argument for the existance of god? Absolutely, and it has been many times.

But the problem with that argument is the argument itself. Intelligent design requires a designer. Let's assume that god is that designer. But god himself is intelligent, so if we follow that argument all the way through, then god must have also had a designer. We can't argue it to a logical conclusion, because there is no logical conclusion. If intelligence requires a designer, and the designer is intelligent, then the designer must also have had an intelligent designer. Where does it begin? Logically, it follows that intelligent design goes back to the beginning of time infinitely. But it had to begin somewhere!

But that whole idea completely shatters the idea of the Christian god. God is believed to have always been; to have existed forever. He was never created or designed but has existed as an all powerful being infinitely. But the argument of intelligent design requires that god too must have an intelligent designer.

An item worthy of mention is the LDS's view on god. Their belief actually fits best with the idea of intelligent design. The LDS god was once a person who had a god and eventually progressed to godhood himself. Each god had a god before him and there is no beginning or end to this process. Maybe Joe WAS on to something afterall!

But sometime, somewhere it had to have happened randomly. That's the only logical explanation as to how the whole chain of events ever got started.

Further, even though I don't disagree with the intelligent design idea, keep in mind what science is. We can hypothesize all day about the origin of life, but we can't test it. We can't test something to see if it was designed. And we can't conduct a test to determine who the designer was. As much as I would love to see such a test conducted, I highly doubt that it ever will be. Remember, science only deals with what can be observed AND tested. We can observe things that strongly suggest intelligent design, but there is no test that can be conducted to prove it, at least none that I am aware of.

I'm not going to hastily disregard the Darwin theory, either. It explains the amazing diversity of life that we enjoy on this earth. Granted, it may not explain everything, but no theory does. Science is a network of theories that are built upon and expound upon each other. The beauty of science is that it changes to fit new data. If something that was once believed to be true is later proven wrong, then new theories are written to explain the new findings. The intelligent design theory builds upon the work of Darwin, not disproves it.

As a student of science myself, I must be willing to take any given evidence and use that evidence to find a logical conclusion, given that the evidence is real and not just the product of some desperate fool trying to prove his point. I must be willing to amend my personal views. I must be willing to admit that I was wrong before. I am willing to do that. Christians are not. They view god as unchanging, therefore any new information that comes available must be wrong.

Any science that suggests the existance of a god, such as this intelligent design theory, they are totally willing to accept. Anything that disproves god, they hastily reject. Sorry, Christians but it doesn't work that way. You don't have the luxury to pick and choose which science you like and which you don't. If you're going to accept some of it, then you must accept all of it. You must either completely reject it, or completely support it.

Now there might come a time when Darwin theory is completely disproven. There might come a time when science actually does discover the nature of god. It might be scientifically shown that someone could walk on water or that they could turn water into wine. Who knows? What we don't know now, we might know later. Science makes new discoveries on a daily basis and who knows what we will have learned in 100 years from now? I would love to be there to see it. On the other hand, science might completely disprove the existance of god. Whatever the evidence and the tests reveal, then that is what I will base my belief upon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You might find these interesting, related to your observation that the Mormon view of God can be compatible with evolution theory:

http://transfigurism.org/community/files/11/sunstone_2008/default.aspx

http://transfigurism.org/community/blogs/lincoln_cannon/archive/2007/10/30/3670.aspx