The “smoking gun” evidence for intelligent design

The computer I’m using to create this information is an obvious product of intelligent design. We even know the designer(s) are employees of Apple computers. In fact, “design” does not exist until produced by intelligence, so the term would seem to be slightly redundant. In the absence of intelligence the presence of design, no matter how beguiling it may be, could be assumed to be an illusion.

But is that a safe assumption?

In a way, this article also serves as proof that intelligent design exists. I am choosing my words more carefully than unusual, knowing that the title of the article and subject matter will surely attract the attention of my harshest critics, who also happen to be the intended audience. No typos for you!

Intelligent design has also been described in an online dictionary as “a theory that life, or the universe, cannot have arisen by chance and was designed or created by some intelligent entity.”

Biologist Jerry Coyne, author of the book Why Evolution is True, also wrote a screed titled “THE CASE AGAINST INTELLIGENT DESIGN”, which he neglected to make despite its length. The extraordinarily long essay turned out to be nothing more than an extended defense of evolution, combined with a completely dishonest portrayal of intelligent design as an attempt to reconcile scientific evidence with Young Earth Creationism (YEC).

What evidence do people like Mr. Coyne or Richard Dawkins offer in rebuttal to the idea of intelligent design? Advocates of Darwin’s theory of evolution (or some permutation of it, such as neo-Darwinism) will insist that the evidence of poor design, vestigial organs, and the absence of evidence for the Designer are enough to dismiss any suspicions that Nature might have required help at some point along the way, in the time that has existed since the Big Bang, until now.

Vestigial organs are allegedly useless appendages inherited from some distant ancestor from a completely different kind of organism. Perhaps they are useless. Or, perhaps biologists simply haven’t figured out how the organism uses the appendage in question. Perhaps their innate bias against the idea of a supernatural Creator prohibits them from imagining the actual use. We can save the debate of vestigial organs for another day, should it ever become necessary.

What evidence exists for an argument of poor design? The scientists often like to point at a complex organ, the human eye.

What is the problem with saying the human eye was obviously not designed, because the design was poorly conceived? The words arrogance and stupidity come to mind.

Does the human eye function? Yes. Where is the superior eye, designed by human hands?

Well, it doesn’t exist. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a big fan of science and technology. More than once I’ve been known to say “better living through chemistry,” though it was sometimes made in reference to legal or illegal drug use. So how can we say that something we aren’t capable of making ourselves was not designed, because humans would have done a better job? The author of the article describing the alleged “poor design” of the human eye offers that the most popular criticism of his arguments is that creationists will say the eye is irreducibly complex, and then he immediately concedes that the eye is irreducibly complex! His counterargument is nothing more than a silly assumption — that the eye must have evolved as one unit. I say, forget the eye. Let’s talk about the human body for a moment, and compare it to a computer. Why? For one thing, computers and robots are understood to have been produced by intelligent design, and their designs are modeled to simulate the behavior of the human brain and perform work that humans used to do.

Can a computer made of metal, plastic and silicon legitimately be said to have a superior, intelligent design when it is mimicking an “un-designed” living organism? Why no, it can’t. A machine has severe constraints on its abilities in regard to autonomous behavior. What does that mean? Simple. Turn off your computer, and don’t touch it again until it can turn itself back on.

Or better yet, what about when the computer breaks?

The human immune system is the proverbial “smoking gun” evidence that our bodies were designed, and by a form of intelligence our puny little minds are barely capable of contemplating. Once upon a time, I managed to mangle one of my pinky fingers pretty bad, and I’d become rather attached to it, especially since I am left-handed.

Fortunately, I was asleep for this part.

So a very talented surgeon temporarily placed a pin into the bone to hold it in place while the reparative processes inside my body did their usual thing, though at the time I was prepared to give the doctor all the credit.

And after my recovery, I thanked him for fixing my finger. In reply he downplayed his role by saying something that I’ll never forget, because it is a profound truth: the body wants to heal itself. My body healed the broken bone. He simply put the broken pieces in the right place and let time solve the problem.

The immune system in my body willingly sacrifices individual cells to serve my body as a whole, a design of natural self-defense. Think about that for a moment. It’s pretty altruistic of a white blood cell to give its life to protect my whole body from germs and bacteria. My body…which a biologist would probably argue is all that I am, yet my physical brain wants to do things (and does them) that my conscious mind does not know how to do. Therefore, logic dictates that the human body ought to be considered the product of an intelligent design.

Because guess what?

My computer doesn’t know how to fix itself, either. In fact, it’s dumber than a brick, until it has power. And even then, virtually all of its intelligence comes from its creator(s.) If something breaks, a human being will have to fix it. A computer cannot repair itself. It doesn’t know how.

In that respect, a computer is exactly like a human being.