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Intelligent Design Versus Evolution

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Intelligent Design Versus Evolution

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Intelligent Design Versus Evolution

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The theory of evolution is doing a lot of damage in our society. Is there valid scientific evidence that supports Intelligent Design?

Transcript


Good afternoon to everyone. Before I begin with the main message, I'd like to take a humor pause, make everybody feel at ease. You might know I was originally from Cuba and I still grieve for the people that still live there. They are going through tough times and to ease a bit of their stress, they have resigned themselves to suffering a lot. They use humor and they have a joke that is told in Cuba and it goes like this. "Did you know that Adam and Eve were Cubans?" "How is that?" The answer: "Well, they ran around barefoot, they didn't have anything to wear, all they could eat was fruits and vegetables and they were told they were living in paradise." That's what Fidel keeps telling them.

Now, how many of you have dogs in your home? Can I see – quite a number. Well, lets see if you will identify with the following joke. It's called, How Dog Rules Evolve. As you know, you first of all get your pet and you have certain rules that you are going to abide by. This little puppy is there, he's very lovable, very pliable and he's going to be obedient so you set up these rules.

•The first one, dogs are never permitted in the house. The dog stays outside in a specially built, wooden compartment named - for very good reasons - the dog house. But, what happens? That kind of changes after awhile. So now the rule becomes:

•Okay, the dog can enter the house, but only for a short visits or if his own house is under renovation. After awhile, that doesn't work very well so,

•Okay, the dog can stay in the house on a permanent basis provided his dog house can be sold in a yard sale to a rookie dog owner. How many of us have those dog houses that the dog never lived in? I must say, I'm guilty of that.

•Inside the house, the dog is not allowed to run free and is confined to a comfortable, but secure, metal cage. That doesn't work out very well after awhile, so...

•Okay, the cage becomes part of a two-for-one deal along with the doghouse in the yard sale and the dog can go wherever he pleases.

•The dog is never allowed on the furniture. After awhile, you adjust it a bit. Okay, the dog can get on the old furniture, but not the new furniture. So that changes after awhile. Okay, the dog can get up on the new furniture until it looks like the old furniture and then we'll sell the whole works and buy new furniture upon which the dog will most definitely not be allowed. So then, the next rule:

•The dog never sleeps on the bed! Period. What happens after awhile? Okay, the dog can sleep at the foot of the bed. You notice how the dog kind of creeps - starts taking over our lives. Then it goes on,

•Okay, the dog can sleep alongside you, but he's not allowed under the covers.

•After awhile, okay, the dog can sleep under the covers, but not with the head on the pillow.

•Okay, the dog can sleep alongside you, under the covers with his head on the pillow, but if he snores, he's got to leave the room.

•That evolves into, okay, the dog can sleep and snore and have nightmares in the bed, but he's not to come in and sleep on the couch in the TV room where I'm now sleeping. That's just not fair.

•And finally, the dog never gets listed on the census question there as "primary resident" even if it's true.

So, with that, let's go to the main message today. How many of you have heard or read about Intelligent Design during this last year, can I see your hands? Just about everybody. Well, Intelligent Design is in the news, it is a controversial issue. And it's interesting, I was talking with a minister yesterday who said that he went to a gym about a week ago and met some people and one of them asked him what he did. He said, "I'm a minister" and the first question that person asked him was "Well what do you think about Intelligent Design?" It's amazing how it's coming up as the very important subject. And Intelligent Design, as you will see, is a very valuable tool to have to strengthen your faith and also to refute Evolution which is still the dominate world view in biology. It will help to answer our children's questions, also when you're at the workplace, in school or even in church. So, let's take a birds-eye view of this subject of Intelligent Design. We are going to see it's modern origins and also, what is the basis for Intelligent Design. Will it eventually triumph or not? It will also help us refute one of the most dangerous and largest lies out there – the Theory of Evolution: that man was not created, but that he evolved from primitive beings. And as we will see, that Theory of Evolution is doing a lot of damage out there.

So, now we begin understanding what it says in Hebrews 11:6 that faith begins with believing in the existence of God and then in the Word of God . God says that it is impossible to please God if you do not believe in His existence and that He is the rewarder of those that follow Him. So we are going to see many modern proofs of the existence of God today to strengthen our faith , to understand how a group of brave scientists who have seen the truth are attacking the Theory of Evolution through the concept of Intelligent Design and curiously enough, there is a parallel between what these men are doing and what the Church is also doing out in the world. Yes, their subject is that the evidence that they see in science does not support evolution. But, you see, they are going against the tide. They have a truth that they have discovered, they are trying to get it out there, but yet, the media is quite hostile still and similar to what the Church is doing. We have some biblical truths to get out there, but we are going against the tide of tradition and man-made religious laws and we, also, can take comfort that these men, they are being persecuted by their scientific peers, by the press, but they are continuing onward because they believe they have a truth to get out there just as the Church has to continue with its efforts to get the truth out there because it is genuine, it is authentic and the world needs that truth just like they need Intelligent Design to be able to refute Evolution. So, currently there is a heated debate in the United States about whether to let the teaching of Intelligent Design into the classrooms. All of this has enormous repercussions on today's society and the belief in God. Why? Let's go to the Bible for the answer and one of the things that is at stake is the answer, are we descendants of monkeys or instead of only other human beings? Evolution says we have descended from monkeys. Accept it! Get over it! But the Bible and our belief in God says that no, we have not. We have descended from Adam and Eve, from other human beings but not from monkeys and other simpler creatures. So we read in 2 Timothy, chapter 3 verses 1 through 4 a fitting description of our violence-filled days.

2 Tim. 3:1-4 - In the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves... blasphemers... brutal... traitors, headstrong, haughty. We live in a very violent world. How did this world come to be this way? Well, much of the blame can be cast upon three influential thinkers of the 19th century: Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. They sowed three ideas that became the "rotten apples" of today's society - Evolutionary Materialism, Atheistic Communism and Humanistic Psychology; three ideas that have permeated the sciences today. You can see their portraits.

Now, Phillip Johnson, one of the founders of modern Intelligent Design theory, predicts this: "Every history of the twentieth century has three thinkers as preeminent in influence. Darwin, Marx and Freud ... Yet, Marx and Freud have fallen... and I am convinced that Darwin is next on the block. His fall will be by far the mightiest of the three." And that's what Intelligent Design is attempting to do.

Now we have seen very influential men become atheists through the Theory of Evolution. They have denied the existence of God. One of them is zoologist, Richard Dawkins who has written many books trying to show that evolution is true and he stated, "Evolution has permitted me to become an intellectually fulfilled atheist." And so has it for many other people. Evolution has provided a philosophy that they can live by and feel that they are correct in their ideas.

The following account has to do with that coming fall of Darwin and his lethal idea of Evolution, that changed the worship of the Creator to the worship of Creation and its creatures, perpetuating a tremendous lie as the apostle Paul described in Romans 1:18-25. I'm going to read that right now in Romans chapter 1. You can read that along with me or just listen as I go into it.

In Rom. 1:18 it says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,

Verse 19 - because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

Verse 20 - For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,

Verse 21 - because, although they knew God... through nature and their study of living things ...they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Verse 22 - Professing to be wise, they became fools,

Verse 23 - and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man - and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. They started worshiping the creatures instead of the creation.

Verse 24 - Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves,

Verse 25 - who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

So Paul talked about Intelligent Design. This isn't a new concept, but there is a modern version of it thanks to all of the new discoveries in science. So let's see who are behind the Intelligent Design revolution that with scientific truth is toppling Darwin from his lofty pedestal.

First of all, a definition of what is science: Linus Pauling, twice awarded the Nobel Prize for science, said, "Science is the search for truth , the effort to understand our world." You see, it's an effort, a search for the truth, there's nothing wrong with that. That is a lofty goal and that's the way it should be although many times, it isn't. People change the definition of science into something else, something that isn't true. We should search for the truth in all areas. God has revealed to us wonderful truths in the Bible, but they're not just spiritual truths. He gives us, also, historical truths. He gives us wonderful moral principles to live by so we should search for the truth in all areas. We should become good scientists in that sense and by better understanding nature, we can better understand God, its grand designer. As David said, I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14)

Now we have here some of the scientific discoveries that we're going to just briefly touch upon. We have bacterial flagellum which now, through electron microscopes they are able to see the functioning of that little flagellum in a cell. The lungs' cilia, another example of something intelligently designed.

Now Stephen Meyer, head of the Discovery Institute and one of the leaders of Intelligent Design has said, "We are in the very initial stages of a Scientific Revolution." Isn't that emotional? Isn't that exciting to realize that we are living right now in the initial stages of a scientific revolution, whether you knew it or not. Now previous scientific revolutions have transformed society. For instance, we have President Bush mentioning that he believes Intelligent Design should be taught in the schools. He said, "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought so people can understand what the debate is about." He has taken a very courageous stand about it, and he has taken a lot of flack, but he is correct. Also, the Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist said that teaching both Intelligent Design and evolution in schools "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone...I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future." So here we have two of the leaders in the U. S. standing up for Intelligent Design against a vast majority of liberals who oppose it.

Now the start of different Scientific Revolutions took place because of certain key discoveries in science. For instance, Galileo invented one of the first telescopes in 1609 and gazed at the moons of Jupiter starting a scientific revolution, heliocentrism, which means that he realized that the moons of Jupiter did not go around the earth, but they went around the planet. And that helped him understand that not everything revolved around the earth and the theory that the earth was at the center of our solar system was refuted. And he, along with others, started a revolution that the sun is at the center of the solar system and not the earth.

Another one that began a scientific revolution, Sir Isaac Newton began one with his theory of gravity after watching an apple fall from his garden and wondering, now what caused that apple to fall? He strongly believed in an Intelligent Designer. So, one of the fathers of modern science was a believer in Intelligent Design.

Albert Einstein, another one who launched a scientific revolution in the middle of this photo, launched another scientific revolution with his theory of relativity and also changed man's ideas. And some of these theories have helped man send ships into space and they can rely on some of these ideas. He admitted, "Science, without religion, is lame ; religion without science is blind." Both are needed and that's what Intelligent Design is trying to do.

Another one who started a scientific revolution was Charles Darwin when he took that trip around the world in the ship, The Beagle. But this scientific revolution was based on a false premise of materialistic evolution and has led biological science to wander in a confusing maze about 150 years now that science has been trying to explain things through Evolutionary Theory that doesn't fit the facts. That is what more and more scientists are concluding.

The start of the Intelligent Design revolution, Charles Thaxton, physical chemist, coined the term "Intelligent Design" in the 1980's to explain the incredibly complex world they were seeing inside the cell. So being able to look inside the cell they started realizing there is an intelligence behind this. Look at all of these wonderful biological machines inside the cell that could not just have come through evolution.

In 1986, Biochemist and agnostic - a man who doesn't believe in God, but he was honest enough to look at the evidence and come to a conclusion that evolution is wrong - Michael Denton from New Zealand wrote one of the most devastating critiques against Evolution entitled, "Evolution; A Theory in Crisis". I noticed here in the ABC Library they have the textbook by Denton .

Then over in California, Berkley Law professor, Phillip Johnson has become the "Godfather of the Intelligent Design Movement". This man who also didn't have a belief in God, and yet, he was challenged by reading some books on Evolution with this lawyerly mind he saw that these evolutionists were not presenting good evidence. They were resorting to a lot of trickery that he had seen in the law courts with a lot of smoke screens and attacking the person instead of the ideas. So he studied it and he became convinced that evolution was wrong. Some of his famous books: ' Darwin on Trial'. Another one, 'Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds', excellent books.

Molecular biologist, Michael Behe wrote " Darwin 's Black Box". Here's another man who through his researchers, he's a laboratory professor and what he was looking at, he could just not explain it through evolution. He's a common speaker at some of these Intelligent Design conferences. I've had the opportunity to go to two of the ones that are here in the U.S. and Michael Behe is always there.

Molecular biologist, Jonathan Wells wrote another key critique of Evolution: "Icons of Evolution". He just went step by step showing how much fraud is involved trying to support this theory. Also, very good book just showing how the evidence has been distorted by some scientists to try to support Evolution.

So we go to, now, the four main aspects of Intelligent Design. What are the pillars of this movement that is slowly making headway in the news? The first one has to do with INFORMATION THEORY. This is something that 25 years ago wasn't even a field of science. It is today. Biologist, George C. Williams explained how information is separate from matter and energy. He started realizing that information is not the same thing as matter and energy. For instance, you take a book, you take the Bible, this is made out of leather, paper, ink and glue. But those little blotches that are inside the pages, those little ink spots, see they are something physical, but they transmit information. Information is not the same as the ink spots. A book carries information, but it is not information. Information is not made by matter, it is not something that you can put in a box. And we all know who work with computers how truthful this is. I've got here two CD's. See, they look very similar. One is empty and the other one is full of information. You put them on a scale, they both weigh the same and yet one is full of gigabytes. You can fill this with millions of gigabytes and it will not add one tiny little portion of weight to it. They weigh the same. Now I can take this information and I can pass it off here, this doesn't weigh any more and this weighs the same. That information can be stored in a disc, it can be placed in a book, you can even send it through smoke signals. See, these are physical mediums that carry the message, but the message is separate from the means that carries it. So this started a revolution: what is information, then? And they came to the startling conclusion that information cannot be created by just matter and energy. There has to be an intelligence that creates information.

Then they found an enormous amount of information inside the cell in the DNA molecule. That's inside the nucleus of the cell and they found that this message inside the nucleus is three billion letters long, it contains a complete instruction manual on how to build, run and reproduce an entire cell which, just recently, they've been able to decipher. They've been able to read the entire code and where have they placed it? They took it from the molecule of the DNA and they store it in discs. But information, you see, is not the same as the disc, it is something separate. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft said, "DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we've ever designed." How could this information have evolved from matter and energy? Evolution doesn't have an answer because you can have all the atoms in the world – atoms do not transmit information. Atoms can carry information that is programmed in it, but atoms cannot create it by themselves.

Here we have a strand of the DNA molecule. This is from a movie about the cell and you see these nucleotides, which are the rungs of the ladder, they are chemical letters that transmit the message. It's a four-letter alphabet that can be read. So all of this is just one big software program inside each one of our cells with this three billion letter manual. Who created it? Could evolution have come up with a manual like that? You know what the error rate of the copying of the DNA molecule is? It's one mistake per ten billion letters. That's how precise the molecular machinery is. It can copy from one cell to make another cell – one mistake per ten billion of these letters. What typist can come up with that? Could evolution have come up with all of these letters in perfect order? And it's actually a language. You have to have grammatical rules. It has to read things properly. It has chemical periods to stop and then begin a new sentence. You have to have the molecular machines that transcribe all of this and then another one to understand the message. So this is something that just has paralyzed evolutionary scientists. They can not even begin to come up with a theory of how information originated in the cell.

This year a leading atheist and philosopher, Antony Flew renounced atheism largely due to the information revolution spawned by DNA findings that he couldn't refute. He said, you know what, I cannot explain information without a Creator, and so he changed his ideas.

Professor Werner Gitt, an expert on information systems explains "Information theory is a whole new branch of science that has effectively destroyed the last underpinnings of evolution." That's how revolutionary this is. It is something that is almost like God has permitted it before He intervenes in world events He had to show mankind the evidence for His existence and to be able to refute a theory so these human beings would not say, well that's what I was taught, there wasn't anything else that came counter to it. Well, it seems like God is now revealing to man before He intervenes in world events. "Try to answer this! Try to negate My existence with this evidence that I have permitted now to be revealed and to be discovered."

Science author, Nancy Pearcey predicts "Intelligent Design will win because it incorporates the insights of the high-tech world of information theory." See, Intelligent Design isn't on the side of information theory. Evolution is against the information theory. It cannot explain it whereas Intelligent Design does. It admits there is intelligence, there is a designer behind creation. Evolution is trying to refute that. She said, "The revolution in biochemistry revealed that the core of living things is a code, a language, information (DNA)...so life is not fundamentally about matter" - as they thought before - "it's about information ." You know the difference between a living person and a dead person, they have the same body, they have everything, the same organs, but a dead person no longer transmits information and so all the cells start locking down. But as long as information is being transmitted, life is there. That's why she says that life is more about information. It keeps things alive. The difference between a computer with all the information and you turn it off, it goes blank, it doesn't do anything. Why? Because all the electrical systems and all the information has stopped.

Now, this is the last part of the first pillar which has to do with the Information Theory: Dr. Werner Gitt, a German scientist, wrote the book, "In the Beginning Was Information". Fascinating book. These are his conclusions based on information theory. It says,

•"Since the DNA code has all the essential characteristics of a language, there must have been a sender." Information is not created for any other purpose than to transmit it to someone else. You don't write a letter and then don't send it to anyone. You write a letter because you want someone to receive it. So this information was created to be received and it needs to have a sender. It cannot be created by matter or energy.

•"Since the density and complexity of DNA information is millions of times greater than man's present technology, the sender must be supremely intelligent." Whoever put all of that information – those three billion chemical letters inside the nucleus is far greater than any human beings. Bill Gates says what we do with all of theses computers and software, we're just nothing compared to whoever embedded this information inside the DNA molecule. So the sender must be supremely intelligent, far beyond any human being.

•"Since the sender must have store the information in the DNA molecule and constructed the molecular biomachines to encode," - to get the system going - "to decode and run the cells, the sender must be purposeful and supremely powerful " to compact all of that information. Scientists will mention that just a teaspoon of DNA material because, of course, inside the nucleus, knowing how small a cell is and how small a nucleus and the DNA strand is wound up – if it was stretched out, it would be six feet tall and yet it can all be wound up in this tiny little cell. You cannot even see it unless you have a microscope. Well, if you had a teaspoon of DNA material, it says it would be enough to have the code for all living things that have ever existed and it would be able to have stored all the books ever written by men just in that little teaspoon of DNA. Now whoever put in all that information has to be supremely powerful to do that.

•"Since information is a non-material entity" - it's not matter, it's not energy, something else – "and can't originate from matter, the sender must have a non-material component (spirit)." The sender must not be matter. It has to be something non-material. It has to have a component, a spirit component because that creates information.

•"Since information cannot originate from matter and is created by man, then man's nature must have a non-material component (spirit)." All-right, if it's God who is able with his intelligence to put information inside the DNA code, then human beings, we can create information and we can create it because there is something in us that isn't matter or energy. It's a non-material component – the spirit – which God says in the Bible is the spirit in man. It is able to produce information as the Supreme Designer is able to do.

•And this is the last one, "Since biological information can only originate from an intelligent sender and all theories of chemical and biological evolution claim information comes solely from matter and energy" – in other words, they deny there is a sender – "then the theories of chemical and biological evolution are false." See, this is what the Information Theory finally concludes. If you don't accept a sender, there is no other way you can create information by having intelligence then these theories are false.

That takes us to the second pillar of Intelligent Design. It is called IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY. Sounds a bit complex itself, but it isn't. An example of something being irreducibly complex is the bacterial flagellum with its 40 parts that is similar to an outboard motor. It goes 100,000 rpm. Imagine even the most supped-up car can go 8, maybe 10,000 rpm, 200 miles per hour, but this little flagellum goes 100,000 rpm and scientists have realized it can reverse itself, it has a reverse gear, and it just takes a 1/4 of a revolution going 100,000 rpm it can reverse itself in a quarter of a turn without messing up the gears. Try to do that when you're going 80 miles per hour and push it into reverse. See what happens with all of man's intelligence! Well, this Supreme Designer can change it and nothing happens. It's perfectly adaptable to that. As you can see at the bottom this flagellum is actually a motor. It took thousands of years for man to come up with a design of a motor, but the flagellum has all of the design of a motor. It has a stater, it has rotors, it has different bushings to make sure that friction is not going to harm. Now, how could evolution have come up with this?

Well, this is the second argument: there are structures inside cells that cannot be created step by step. They all have to be assembled together for them to work. You take out one part and the whole system breaks down. That's what being irreducibly complex means. You cannot reduce it any more without having the system break down. And they have found dozens and dozens of examples of these molecular machines that all the parts have to be there for it to work. What would happen with just having 20 parts to a flagellum? Well it still wouldn't work. How's it going to evolve to 25 parts? It has to get to 40 parts before it starts working. You do not have such a precise machinery unless every part – just like nobody would have a motor and say, well, I've got a missing piston, but I guess I can put it to work. The thing would blow up. It's the same way in the molecular world.

Another example of something irreducibly complex, the cilia. They are hairlike limbs that serve to move fluid over the cell's surface or to "row" single cells through a fluid like a pipeline. They move back and forth and the mucus in our lungs and so forth are all pushed out by these cilia – the epithelial cells lining our respiratory tract. Each have about 200 cilia that beat in synchrony to sweep mucus toward the throat for elimination. Thanks to the cilia, we don't choke on all kinds of saliva or mucus. They have found all of these parts have to be together for it to work.

And that takes us to the third pillar of Intelligent Design. It's called the ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE. It's a kind of a fancy word, anthropic, for 'man centered'. It means that the evidence points to everything being created for man to arise, to exist. Let's take an example. In Tucson, Arizona, they have a place kind of for entertainment. It's called the Biosphere 2 and it has over a thousand sensors and dozens of dials to control the seven different environments inside. Anyone ever been to Biosphere 2? Can I see – oh, a few. Okay. Peter's gone there. Pretty impressive place from all I hear. They have a dessert environment you go in. It's perfectly timed, the temperature. Then you go in and there's another one, it's the jungle, you know, different. The humidity steps up and of course in order to control all these environments, you need to have sensors, you need to have humidity gauges – everything has to be right or else the climate inside breaks down. Well, what have they found about the universe? Scientists have found 323 different parameters or laws – think of them as dials – that when they are finally adjusted that regulate the Universe and all are precisely set at exact measurements, some to a thousandth of a decimal point. It's like coming up to one of these biospheres and looking and all the dials are perfectly set. Now, what happens if you were to move one over a little bit? Well, the humidity starts rising and that starts affecting the temperature and pretty soon, plants start wilting. But here, you have these constants in nature, these physical laws and they are all finely tuned for it to be perfectly working.

Sir Fred Hoyle, an agnostic mathematician and astrophysicist reluctantly admitted... "A common sense interpretation of the facts about the Universe suggests that a (super intellect) has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature." Now a super intellect has been monkeying around because how can you get all the dials perfectly set? He said later on, "The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." So he was one of the ones that discovered how finely tuned the universe was.

Here's another astronomer, George Greenstein, saying, "The thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency, or rather, Agency, must be involved. Is it possibly that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof for the existence of a Supreme Being?" - you know, this fine tuning - "Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" Of course, according to the Bible, the answer is a resounding yes. As the apostle Paul wrote, For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and godhead so that they are without excuse. ( Rom. 1:20) Just look at the fine tuning of the universe and you realize that there is a Super Intellect that has prepared everything for life. It couldn't have just been by chance and lucky accidents.

And that takes us to the fourth pillar, it's called the DESIGN INFERENCE. That word inference means that you can deduce something from the evidence. For instance, it takes intelligence to distinguish what was built by erosion, wind, water and time from what was built by intelligent beings. When you take a trip to the countryside, we all like to look at the mountains and say, boy, that looks like the head of something or a horse and they've got all kinds of names according to the shapes. But by inference, you can see that that is just the result of natural forces – wind, water, erosion – but then you come to Mount Rushmore and you look and you say, well this is different. This has to be intelligently designed. You know, you have the faces of four Presidents. Could that ever have been shaped by wind, erosion and have gotten just the right faces. So, you see, you infer when you come to Mount Rushmore, you don't know who the sculptor is, but you can infer, you can deduce from the evidence that there was a sculptor, that that was intelligently designed. That could not have ever been designed by nature.

And so, the science of inference or deduction is used in forensics which is investigative and detective work. You know, when they come to the crime scene, the person who committed it isn't there any longer. But, you see, they can infer by taking the evidence who it was, what motive and eventually they will usually catch up with the person. But the author was gone. In the same way, we look at the universe and we can look and we can deduce this was all done by a Designer. All of this fine tuning, all of these laws that had to be just right for life to exist, we can infer that there is an Intelligent Designer.

Archeology is another example. You start digging up a mound and pretty soon you see rocks, you see all kinds of wood and all of a sudden, you see a vase and what do you say? Boy, look what evolved from wind and sand. Here's this vase. It just came out of water and mud and just being baked - no, you say, this is different. This was intelligently designed. So this becomes a science of separating what can be created through nature and natural forces and what needs to have an Intelligent Designer behind it.

Arno Penzias, Nobel Prize winner in Physics, 1965, he is one credited with finally detecting the fine tuning of radiation that emanates throughout the universe. It helped to establish that this is an expanding universe and he said, "The best data we have [about the big bang and the expansion of the universe] are exactly what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on but the first five books of Moses, the Psalms and the Bible as a whole." And this is a scientist who doesn't think too much about the Bible, but he says if I look at the Bible and look at the facts of how the universe has started and the description, I find it matches. So the fine tuning of the universe is also explained in the Bible.

Here's another scientist, Dr. Henry Schaefer, Director for the Center of Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, one of the most widely cited chemists in the world recently said, "Those who favor the standard evolutionary model are in a state of panic. Intelligent Design truly terrorizes them." So it's like God's truth went out in that 1st century, it terrorized all of the other ideas and now, God's truth which has been masked and it has been hidden from the world – the world does fear us because of these wonderful truths, especially religious leaders. They fear us because truth is on our side.

But what are we up against? You think scientists are not biased? You don't think they have an agenda? Notice, this is a Harvard biologist, Richard Lowontin, who stated, "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs...in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so-stories, because we have a prior commitment...to materialism...we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." See, they're closed-minded. They don't want to have God in the picture, an Intelligent Designer, and so they put up with a lot of unsubstantiated – as he says - "just-so-stories". In other words, he says, "Well how did this happen?" "Well, that was just so! You have to believe it. Evolution did it."

Another scientist, Dr. Scott Todd said, "Even if all the data point to an Intelligent Designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic." In other words, even if all the evidence points to Intelligent Design, we can't accept it because we have to accept that there is no Creator, that everything was created by natural means. All that's in the universe is just matter and energy. So you can see there is a struggle, there is a battle going on for people's minds.

Now what is the future of Intelligent Design? It's called reverse engineering. You apply it in the automotive world, in the computational world, you can also apply it in the biological world. See, as with a car, you can start with a finished product and work backward to the original blueprint. You start disassembling it, you start studying the engine, the power train, the brake system, the exhaust system. This is the way biology should be run also. You accept that this is the work of an Intelligent Designer and then you start separating it and understanding the pieces behind it.

Nancy Pearcey again says, "The affirmation of design is good for science." Not as scientists say that Intelligent Design is going to do so much damage, it's good for science. "Like all knowledge, science is a pattern-seeking project. The human mind inherently seeks intelligible order. Thus the conviction that such an order exists to be found is a crucial assumption." We're saying, get over it. Accept that there is an Intelligent Designer. Don't try to fake the results. She also says, " No scientists are going to find their work diminish because they ground it in the search for an inbuilt design in nature." It's not going to harm science. It's going augment it. It's going to help it instead of damaging it like scientists are always like Chicken Little saying that the sky's going to fall if Intelligent Design is accepted in the classrooms.

So here is the conclusion. Biology and genetics would be greatly advanced and many new discoveries would be more rapidly made by applying the concept of reverse engineering - the tracing backwards of all the design stages of living things. That's what biology should be about. Then one could understand when and why a design flaw appears and compare it to the template or the master copy. It would therefore be easier to correct it. We would advance far more than so many who are involved in trying to explain evolution through it. But it would also take humility to admit we can't match the Creator's marvelous engineering designs and can only learn and use them to advance our own designs for the betterment of mankind. As the Bible says, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter. You know, He hides these things in nature just like a father likes to hide things so that the children discover it on their own. But the glory of kings is to search out a matter, (Proverbs 25:2) to discover these wonderful truths. And also in Psalms 14:1 it says, The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." So much evidence toward the existence of God.

Comments

  • Jim Jordan
    It seems odd that such an extensive article completely ignores the observable evolution we all know about (instantly observable iterations of bacteria or the lengthy hominid fossil record). There's not even a consideration that evolution could be the result of design. Perhaps this article is suppressing the truth, as warned in the first chapter of Romans.
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