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"How
to Know God Exists" -
The Argument From Design
In Isaiah 45:18 we read that the
Lord "formed the earth and made it;
He established
it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be
inhabited." (NAS) This verse tells that there are
specific designs built into the earth that help support life.
Apologists point to these designs as another proof of God's
existence. This is known as the teleological or the design
argument.
The best example of this argument
as put forth by William Paley in the late 18th century. He asks
you to imagine a man was walking on the beach and discovering a
pocket watch lying in the sand. By studying it you notice how it
moves and winds. Then you remove the cover and notice the
delicate balance of the spring and how the gears are fashioned
in just the right ratio to give perfect movement.
After seeing all these things,
you would come to the conclusion that this item you found had a
designer; someone had crafted all those pieces to give a
specific function. You wouldn't believe that the forces of
nature carved the sand into glass, eroded metals into cogs and
assembled the entire thing by a strong wind.
After establishing this, Paley
states that the human eye is much more complex and sophisticated
than any pocket watch. It is therefore reasonable to believe
that the human eye is made by design, and there exists a
Designer.
Although this argument seems
airtight, it has been vigorously attacked. David Hume first gave
an objection to it and then Darwin and his followers tried to
show how gradual processes could in fact give rise to a human
eye. The most notable recent attempt was by evolutionist Richard
Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker.
However, most of these fail to
take into account two main points that have recently been
uncovered by science: the irreducible complexity within the
human cell and the Anthropic Principle. Lets briefly examine
each of these.
The idea of a "simple
cell" was a common one in Darwin's time. It should be no
surprise that if someone can show a creature with primitive type
eye cells and then another with a little more advanced vision,
and another, etc. they could draw the conclusion that eyes had
evolved. This is basically what Dawkins does in his book.
However, modern biochemists now
know that the "simple cell" is anything but! Cells
rely on internal reactions happening at the molecular level -
the taking in of food for energy and the production and release
of chemicals to accomplish certain tasks. Many of these
reactions rely on other reactions to occur first, and none of
them are useful without all the others being in place.
In his book Darwin's Black
Box, scientist Michael Behe explains that cell workings are
like that of a mousetrap - you have to have all of the parts
existing at the same time in order for the mousetrap to work at
all. They are irreducibly complex; everything has to be present
at once. Take away the spring and the trap is useless. Take away
the trigger and the trap is useless. In the same way, evolution
is impossible at a cellular level because you'd have to believe
that all these intricate processes came into existence precisely
and simultaneously without error. That is an unreasonable
belief.
Similarly, as scientists
understand our universe better, they notice that there is a
fine-tuning of all these factors that make life possible.
William Lane Craig writes: "In recent years, however, the
scientific community has been stunned by its discovery of how
complex and sensitive a nexus of conditions must be given in
order for the universe to permit the origin and evolution of
intelligent life on Earth. The universe appears, in fact, to
have been incredibly fine-tuned from the moment of its inception
for the production of intelligent life on Earth at this point in
cosmic history." This is known as the Anthropic Principle;
the universe is fine-tuned so that man can exist.
Many of these examples are highly
technical. However, I will try to outline a few. Because of the
molecular shape of water, it is the only substance to become
less dense when it freezes. This means that ice floats. If it
didn't, then all the rivers and lakes would freeze from bottom
to top and never thaw out.
Other examples are if the
universe expanded faster than it did there would be no galaxies
and no planets, but if it expanded any more slowly it would have
collapsed onto itself. If either gravitational attraction or the
weak force of atoms was tipped just minutely, we'd have no
universe. If the temperature of the universe was not as
incredibly uniform as it is, then the conditions for life
couldn't exist.
And there are hundreds more
scenarios; each with a likelihood of random occurrence being so
low that it is impossible to believe our universe was formed by
dumb luck. (For more detail on this see http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/teleo.html)
So when we examine all the
evidence, it shows that Paley's argument still holds and all of
creation shows that it was designed to support life. We are
truly "fearfully and wonderfully made"!
Next time, we'll study one of the
most important proofs for the existence of God - the
resurrection of Christ. God bless until then..
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