Modern Science Puts Design Argument on Steroids
Psalm 19:1 says
The heavens declare
the glory of God
and the firmament
shows His handiwork
Psalm 19:1
The universe declares the glory of God. In all its cosmological proportions, it displays the handiwork of God. William Paley (1743 – 1805) was an Anglican theologian and cleric. He presented an argument from design, arguing that divine existence is evident in Newton’s clock-like universe. One of his books was Natural theology. Suppose you were walking down the street and you found a watch on the road. You took it into your hands and observed it. What do you conclude? This watch a product of blind chance or is this watch a product of an intelligent creator?
David Hume, a contemporary of William Paley, mocked this way of thinking. Hume argued that that analogy at the basis of the argument from design is faulty because it reasons to a cause (A perfect supreme being) that is not exactly proportional to the observed effect (the world).
Look at the world. Echoing Milton in the Paradise Lost, Hume complained, “Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering on the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence”. This wastefulness and savagery does not imply a benevolent God. He scoffed at “some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance”. Hume attracted a lot of followers down to our time. ‘I see mutations in nature. It does not show me a good designer’, said atheist cosmologist Neil degrasse Tyson.
“Bad design implies a bad designer. It’s a bad design, so it’s a bad designer. You believe in a good designer. So, he does not exist.”
But this is a misunderstanding of what the Bible teaches. Let me illustrate with a simple example. Let us say, you were a stranger who suddenly dropped into this world and you found an abandoned car beside a highway. You wanted to examine the car. You struggled to start the car, the engine is cranking and misfiring, the radiator is overheating, the coolant is leaking, the battery is failing, the brake pedal is sinking, shock absorbers are failing, the car is bouncing up and down, the windshield wipers are not working. Your friend said, ‘This car is made by Toyota and Toyota is a bad car company’.
That is a bad argument. Because he did not consider other probabilities.
How old is this car?
What was its condition on the day it was sold to the customer?
How exactly did the customer use this car?
Was he driving it carefully or was he drunk driving?
How many cars made by Toyota are working well?
How many cars made by Toyota are not working well?
Those things must be taken into consideration before declaring Toyota a ‘poor designer’. If I give you more information, you might even change your conclusion. If I told you, ‘a gentleman was driving under intoxication and crashed it here’. Then you don’t even blame the Toyota. That is exactly what the Bible teaches us. God handed over a beautiful planet to Adam and his wife. The Bible says when God looked at the original universe, He said, it is Good (Genesis 1:10). On that day, there was not one hospital in this world. There was not one prison in our world. There was not one cemetery in our world. It was Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience that brought all ‘hospitals full of diseases, prisons crowded with malefactors, battle fields strewed with carcasses, and nations languishing under tyranny, famine and pestilence’.
God created us with love. God gave us freedom. We’ve abused our freedom and made a mess. The world is celebrating Mothers Day. Some mothers are not happy. They say, ‘We had children with great hopes but they broke our hearts. What is the point of this Mothers Day?’ Yes, they decided to have kids to see them prosper in this world but their hopes were dashed to the ground. Similarly, God gave us existence so that we prosper but with our disobedience we broke God’s heart. All disease, all violence, all rapes, all murders, all natural disasters came into this world because of man’s sin. It was not God’s will.
Why do millions of people still buy Toyotas? Because the number of safely running cars far outweighs the number of crashed cars. Why do millions of people still love God? Because the number of good things we find in nature far outweigh the number of bad things. We should not say, ‘I found a mutation here. So, God is a bad designer’. The number of orderly genes far outweigh the number of mutations. How many people are in the hospital compared to outside the hospital? How many people are in prisons compared to outside the prisons? The number of beautiful things you experience in this life far outweigh the number of ugly things. With all the sinfulness of human beings, we can still see the goodness of God in our world. Yes, many things show us bad design. But we also see things which show good design.
