Evidence of Design

For several reasons, I will no longer be posting weekly articles on this site. This doesn’t mean that I won’t be posting anything anymore, nor does it mean I have changed anything in what I believe. Here are the reasons:

First, I am not able to take the time to research and write them any longer. I am a writer/teacher and several other demands have taken precedent over this work. The articles started when my pastor asked if I would write a weekly article on evidence for creation for our church bulletin. When that ended, I continued to write them and post them here. However, since then other responsibilities have arisen and thus I am unable to spend the time at it any longer.

Second, I feel what I am doing is duplicated other places much better. Daily anyone is able to receive in audio or text form, a brief article from creationmoments.com, for example. Answersingenesis.org and icr.org (Institute for Creation Research) are dedicated to defending creationism and exposing the folly of evolution. Many others could be listed.

Third, I have concluded, after responses and discussions with some who have posted comments, that this forum is largely missing the real battle. We could continue on posting evidences and counter evidences for our positions. I have enjoyed and profited by the comments, both those who agree and those who do not. They have sharpened my writing and arguments, and affirmed once again that what I believe is right. For example, one comment recently stated that probabililities don’t make something true. That is true, but when the chance of even a protein molecule coming together by accident is infinitesimally small, a person is certainly not a betting man to believe that living cells and organisms could possibly have started by random chance! Then of course, even if ithey did, something must add to this the spark of life that allows this cell to function and, most importantly, reproduce. Logically, the argument is over here.

However, the real issue is not which side is most logical. Many wrong conclusions have been made on the basis of logic. Instead, the real issue is the source of our information. True science is limited since it can only deal with proof by experimentation. If I told you I had a migraine headache, you could not say, “I know just what it feels like.” Perhaps how we experiment the headache is different with each individual.

The premise of what I believe is the Bible, the Word of God. God was the only one present in the beginning and He told us how the world and life began. I simply believe it. Then I look around and, sure enough, everything shows evidence of being designed by an intelligent Being. It is even as I expected. If you say this is prejudiced thinking, I agree. If you think Creation alone looks for evidence to verify their beliefs, you are naive. Darwin himself rejected his childhood teaching of faith in God and then went about supporting and expanding his grandfather’s work in evolution. Lyell wanted to debunk the Bible but felt the best way to do so was to show it was wrong about how old the earth is. He attempted to do this through Geology, by denying the catastrophes that aged the earth. He was a man with a mission and that mission was not trying to present good science but to prove the Bible wrong. I showed in another article how Ernst Haeckel manipulated drawings to prove Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. The list goes on.

I was an evolutionist myself because that was all I was taught. But one day while in college I realized that I had sinned against a holy God and that I would be held accountable for this sin one day. I also learned that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, that He came into the world to pay for my sins, and that, if I accepted Him, His payment would be put on my account. I did so and my life was transformed. So was my view of life. I had been blind to it in the past, but now I saw clear evidence for design.

If someone reading this is an avowed evolutionist, you can do two things with what I have written. You can reject it as folly, or you can consider it as possibly true and worthy of investigation. If you do the former, than it just shows you are as prejudice as Creationists. If you do the latter, then open a Bible to the book of John in the New Testament and say this honestly: God, if you are there, prove it. Show yourself to me. I am willing to see if you do. he will do the rest. That is the only honest response.

Psalm 19 tells us, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” This may mean more than we realize. John 1:14 claims, “. . .we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.” From the context we learn he is referring to Jesus Christ, the visible glory of the Father. Thus we could truthfully say, “The heavens declare Jesus Christ.”

In a fascinating book entitled, The Witness of the Stars, author E.W. Bullinger traces the stars of the Zodiac from ancient history, long before Greek mythology corrupted their meaning. The word ‘Zodiac’ actually comes from a Hebrew root meaning a way or path. Modern reliance on the Zodiac for guidance is idolatry and forbidden in Scripture (Deut. 4:19). But is astrology a corruption of the testimony about Christ? Bullinger says it is.

To show where the circle of the Zodiac was to begin, the Sphinx of Egypt was built as a permanent bookmark. It has a head of a woman, depicting Virgo, and the body of a Lion, depicting Leo. Virgo speaks of the virgin birth of Christ and Leo of His ultimate reign as King of the earth.

Virgo was pictured with a branch in her right hand, and stalks of grain in her left. The word ‘Branch’ is used prophetically of Christ, speaking of His four aspects as King (Jer. 23:5), servant (Zech. 3:8), man (Zech. 6:12), and God (Isaiah 4:2), the same four focuses of the four Gospels. The grain harks back to Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between thee (Satan) and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed”, speaking of the conflict with Satan and his ultimate defeat at the cross.

The first constellation in Virgo explains that this coming ‘Branch’ would be a child, the “Desired One.” The ancient name for this star is Coma and means ‘longed for, desired.’ (see Psalm 63:1) Haggai predicts the coming of Christ thus: “The desire of all nations shall come.” (2:7) The Persian name denotes a pure virgin, sitting on a throne, nourishing an infant boy, whose name in Hebrew is IHESU and in Greek CHRISTOS. Tradition said that when this “Desire of all nations” was born, a bright star would appear in the woman’s arms. Three hundred years ago Thomas Hyde wrote that Zoroaster was a pupil of Daniel and predicted a new star would appear, signaling the arrival of the child they were to adore. When the wise men saw that star, they took the long, dangerous journey to worship the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy (Matt. 2:10). They claimed, “We have seen HIS star (while) in the east and are come to worship Him.” (Matt. 2:2) This child is both the divine Branch, and the human seed (Is. 9:6). He is the God-man, Jesus Christ. As such He both could and did die for the sins of the world to provide eternal life for all who trust in Him.

Recently I watched a fascinating video entitled, Privileged Planet, based on a book by the same name. The book is the joint effort of Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University, and Jay Richards, Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. Both of these men were suspicious that natural selection could not account for the apparent design present in the universe and wrote the book based on one aspect of this suspicion.

Lest some reading this think intelligent design is another angle to creationism, consider this. In answer to the question, “Is intelligent design the same as creationism?” the answer given is, “No. The theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the ‘apparent design’ in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations.” (intelligentdesign.org) So, this book is the work of a scientist and a philosopher who are trying to draw rational conclusions from the data about the subject of origins.

The book and video focus on twenty factors about earth that make it uniquely able to sustain complex life as it does. For example, in our solar system, earth alone is in a position for complex life to exist. If earth were closer to the sun, the gravitational pull would cause earth to rotate more slowly, and eventually only once in each revolution (year). This would make life impossible on both sides. If it were further away, the earth would not be warm enough to sustain life. The inhabitable zone is further away from the sun than Venus, but closer than Mars. The liquid iron core gives the earth a magnetic field that shields us from cosmic radiation. The moon stabilizes earth’s 23.5º tilt which is needed for seasons and tempering the climate. The atmosphere is a protection from radiation, the correct combination of oxygen and nitrogen for liquid water to be in abundance, and perfect for life to continue. Of 70 bodies studied, only of earth can this be said.

Further, these same factors make it possible to actually study and learn about our earth and other objects in space. In other words, the earth is both an ideal place for life to exist, and it is also an ideal place to observe and learn about the moon, the solar system, and the universe around us. Gonzalez began considering this idea when observing the 51 seconds of a total eclipse of the sun from a location in India. Though the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, it ‘happens’ to be 400 times closer than the sun. Thus their relative sizes in the sky are almost identical. Because of this we are able, during a solar eclipse, to observe the sun and other stars normally blotted out by the sun. Gonzalez studied 65 other bodies and concluded that on none of them would a total eclipse occur.

If our atmosphere were not transparent, then only orbiting telescopes could observe the planets and stars. Of 70 heavenly bodies studied, only earth has a transparent atmosphere. Further, we live in the perfect place in the Milky Way, in a relatively uninhabited (with other stars) area. Were we closer to thecenter or further away from the center of the spiral, we could not see the constellations visible to us on a clear night.

The chance of each of these factors being true they guessed at 1 out of 10, a very conservative estimate. However, for all twenty to be true in one planet is 1/10 times 1/10, etc. for twenty times, or one in a trillion trillionth chance. That isn’t very great!!

Psalm 19 in the Bible begins, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” The Bible says that God made the earth for us to inhabit. “The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’S: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.” (Psalm 115:16) The Privileged Planet hypothesis from intelligent design scientists could be improved by concluding that God not only made the world for us, but He also placed it in space in such a way that we could understand the vastness of His creation, be humbled, and glorify Him.

(PS. A Video summary of Privileged Planet may be found on this home page: http://www.illustramedia.com/tppinfo.htm)

In our last article, we discussed the work of Scott Minnich, Molecular Biologist at the University of Idaho, on the bacterial flagellum motor. The forty parts to this amazingly efficient means of locomotion convinced him that random chance simply could not explain its existence.

A favorite term for those who hold this view of intelligent design is ‘irreducible complexity.’ They reason that, if a complex organ were any smaller or simpler, it could not function as it is. If evolution is to be believed, it demands that all life was once simpler, that it evolved from simple to complex randomly without a design or purpose. The apparent design we see in nature today is only coincidentally the same as one would expect were it designed by intelligence.

A difficulty with believing that random chance produced complex life is the mechanism for assembling the parts. Remember, Dr. Minnich stated that Darwinism natural selection states by definition that, if a part evolves but has no purpose, it would be lost to the organism. Yet forty parts are needed for this flagellum motor to work. Evolutionists counter that the parts could have evolved for other functions in the organism and then be ‘borrowed’ to assemble the motor. Minnich countered that, at most, this would account for only half the parts.

But, let’s say that the forty parts of the bacterial flagellum did evolve in various places in the organism. The greater problem is how the protein parts would be assembled into the most efficient motor in the universe. In cells, assembly is now understood. The assembling ‘blueprint’ is locked into the DNA in the nucleus of every cell. The DNA dictates the order of assembly of the amino acids and the RNA carries it out. Minnich states accurately that, without the blueprint, assembly would be as likely as putting together a line from Shakespeare by throwing out Scrabble tiles on the table.

DNA is a code molecule unique to each organism. It is physically what made you and me as we are. It is a blueprint that manufactures. It is like a computer that is able to make products according to its calculations. Who ever heard of such a thing happening in any other part of the universe without massive amounts of time and energy and planning?!

I repeat from the last article, intelligent design is not religious. It is an extrapolated cause drawn from scientific observation and falls far short of the Bible’s claim of creation. It is, rather, the honest conclusion that chance will not explain reality and goes no further than that. Is your view or the origin of life honest with the data all around us?

What did it take for atheist Alfred Russel Wallace to switch to a belief in a Creator? Answer: his examination of the complexity of the brain convinced him.

What did it take Scott Minnich, Molecular Biologist at the University of Idaho, to give up atheistic evolution in favor of Michael Behe’s idea of Intelligent Design? Answer- his twenty years of study of the bacterial flagellum motor.

This is tiny, for to study it, the bacteria must be magnified 50,000 times. Yet it has forty protein parts that must function together to make it work so marvelously.

The flagellum motor whirls at a rate of 100,000 rpm and can stop and reverse direction in a quarter turn! Scott Minnich’s studies led him to state that this is the most efficient machine in the universe. It is water-cooled, has a driveshaft, propeller, and other components similar to those of a man-made motor.

The reason this convinced him of design is based on Darwin’s own statements. Natural selection, by definition, demands that the selected trait is useful. If it is not, then it would disappear. Yet this motor has forty parts and all must be present for it to function as it does. If one part evolved but was not useful, it would be lost before all the parts came together in such an efficient, orderly way.

In Origin of Species, Darwin stated, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Scott Minnich accepted this statement as true, and, therefore, has rejected it in favor of Intelligent Design.

For those critical of mixing religion and science, note that Scott says nothing about God or faith or the Bible in his conclusion. He simply honestly looked at the evidence and said there was no way the propeller on a bacterial flagellum could have come together by a series of mindless accidents.

The Bible is more specific and tells us who that Designer is. The answer is found in John 1:1-3, 14. Our response to this news should be John 1:12.