Stupidly Simple Systems: The Ruse of Intelligent Design
Was God intelligent enough to create us? Or were we even created at all? The answer is pretty simple.
Intelligent design, as proposed by theists, tries to provide a naively-simple and certain explanation for a vastly complex and mysterious universe. It proposes — in spite of the last 164 years of advancement in the natural sciences — that the Earth, and all of its inhabitants, were specially created by a supreme deity just about 6,000 years ago. The evidence of this epic creation story can be found exclusively in a book only half as old as the event itself: the Bible.
Such an explanation for our existence requires no research or observation, and is protected by a claim of divine authorship from any possible critics, who are deemed “sinners” by its proponents. Because of its inherent simplicity and whimsical nature, this explanation is especially well-suited for early indoctrination. Just as children are prone to believe in myths such as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, they will also believe just about anything that their parents tell them, including the questionable foundations upon which the Christian faith is built.
Growing up in a traditional Christian family, I was taught from a very young age that, as a matter of fact, God created everything in the observable universe within a single week. (It was technically six days — on the seventh day, the all-powerful deity was exhausted and needed some shut-eye.) As a young kid in the Bible Belt, I was seldom exposed to the blasphemies of the natural sciences, unless in a desperate attempt to reduce their hard-to-swallow conclusions into mere straw men.
For the uninformed fundamentalist Christian, or perhaps one who was brainwashed from an age as early as I was, these strange and factually devoid claims resonate deeply as they confirm close-held biases, and reassure these Believers of their faith. The creationist “rebuttals” to these otherwise universally-accepted facts consistently show a misguided and factually devoid understanding of these scientific fields — such is the case for Ray Comfort.
Ray Comfort is a YouTube evangelist who has made a career for himself by finding and interviewing unsuspecting strangers (who are primarily college students) about their religious beliefs, often attempting — and failing — to use “science” to logically disprove them. His arguments follow the same pattern as the aforementioned man-from-monkey argument, reductively characterizing well-proven scientific theories like the big bang theory as “the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything,” a rebuttal so ubiquitous with Ray that he titled his book after it. This notion that nothing created everything is problematic for many reasons. In fact, every word in that statement is fallacious.
To start, the word “nothing” as used here is paradoxical. Nothing is generally understood to be the absence of all things — an absence which cannot be taken in the literal sense because the very concept of the absence of any singular quantifiable thing is, in and of itself, a thing. In Ray’s case, he believes that proponents of the big bang theory claim that the intrinsically-existent nonexistence that preceded the universe had substance, and from that paradoxical substance was able to perform an action: to create.
Although the condition of the universe before and at the start of the big bang is largely unknown and highly debated, most models predict the prior existence of some substance that, although not understandable through the lens of physics, must have been akin to matter or energy. But Ray fails to acknowledge this — either by his own ignorance, or in a deliberate attempt to deceive his viewers and opponents who may have the same misconceptions.
This oxymoronic use of the term also paints a very interesting picture — that of a “nothing” out in space lifting its invisible arms out and magically constructing planets and galaxies.
Nothing could not have created anything, because the very concept of nothing is meant to convey a nonexistence of anything, let alone a supposedly sentient being who has the capacity to create things. To say that nothing created not just anything, but everything, is paradoxical on an entirely new level. Everything, by definition, would contain this “nothing” entity that Ray assumes big bang proponents believe created the universe.
This unusual characterization of such a simple cosmological concept is due to Ray’s inability to restrain himself from including his religious beliefs into what he believed to be a “scientific” argument. His ability to understand scientific theories is through an exclusively theistic lens, and his ability to analyze such ideas is limited. Ray’s line of thinking is inseparable from the belief that God created the universe, and because of this, he is unable to consider the naturalistic autonomy of a system such as the universe because he has already presupposed that such a system required creation.
It goes without saying that Ray’s critique of the big bang theory is a straw man fallacy, but its contents and its construction reveal the critical disconnect in the ways that creationists and naturalists process and perceive scientific information. This fundamental misunderstanding and misrepresentation of these otherwise universally-accepted facts is not exclusive to the dawn of the universe, however. Creationists also have quite a hard time grasping the origin of life, which is best explained with evolution by natural selection.
A common misconception among creationists is the infamous “man came from monkey” defense, stating that: “If man truly did evolve from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?” This tries to argue that the evolutionary transformation from one species to the next results in the isolated species replacing the former species, which isn’t always true. Their entire claim is also predicated on the very obviously false notion that monkeys — presumably chimpanzees — directly evolved into humans.
Although the scientific community has never endorsed this idea, it is still a common misconception among creationists and those who did not pass high school biology that man directly descended from monkeys. In reality, primates — the all-encompassing taxonomic order of ape-like creatures and humans — all evolved from mostly-extinct common ancestors, with some species having split more recently than others.
The creationist’s misunderstanding of evolution goes far deeper than the common misconception that there is a direct line of descent between two closely related primates, however. The most significant flaw in the fundamentalist’s impression of evolutionary biology is that they assume that complexity necessarily requires intelligence.
Proponents of intelligent design assert that structures such as the eye, lungs, facial muscles, and the human brain must have been fine-tuned by a creator to be functional in their current state. In the words of an article by creationist ministry GotQuestions.org, “Since specified complex patterns can be found in organisms, some form of guidance must have accounted for their origin.”
While it is true that organisms are seemingly brimming with endless complexity, the DNA responsible for that appearance is actually quite simple. The “guidance” necessitated by this argument can be explained as the simple replication of the four unique nucleotide bases, which is entirely due to chemical reactions between organic molecules. The replication and translation of DNA — and the synthesis of proteins as a result — is entirely due to autonomous processes that are intrinsic to the nature of organic life, and matter itself. All matter in the universe is subject to the same reactions that drive biological processes, and if such chemical properties are intrinsic to the universe, there is no need for a creator to guide them.
Although the processes by which organisms develop their traits are completely autonomous, many creationists still fail to see how these simple arrays of molecules could naturally create such traits. Arguments that the natural emergence of such seemingly complex traits would be highly unlikely by Darwin’s natural selection are at the center of many creationists’ calls to reject evolutionary biology as a credible academic discipline, but this sort of reasoning fails to consider two key conditions that make this sort of evolution possible.
First, it is often assumed that the way in which a complex organ or structure exists presently is the most complex and the most advantageous form that it could possibly take. This assumption is notably evident in arguments from Ray Comfort, such as his banana theory, where he assumes that the banana’s phenotype is as perfect as it could ever be for human consumption. (If that were true, the better-tasting ripened bananas would be the ones to have the superior nutritional content — not the sour, green, unripened sorry excuses for fruit.) Ray also expresses this misconception in many of his street evangelism videos, such as this one, in which he insists that if “something” created life, then it must have been all-knowing to create such complexities like the eye or brain.
While the human eye is quite fascinating in its function and its utility, there’s no reason to think that an even greater eye — perhaps one that had the ability to see endlessly across the horizon, detect a wider range of electromagnetic wavelengths, or simultaneously focus on every object in view — couldn’t exist.
The same is true for the brain, which could easily be improved on. A brain that has no capacity for mental health disorders, an intrinsic drive to cooperate with others, and an undying passion for creating and bettering society would be quite an improvement for humans, and it would help enable us to rid our world of the problems we have caused it.
To suggest that these traits are too well-designed to have emerged via natural selection is — to put it simply — unimaginative. If there truly were a God who was infinitely omniscient and had unlimited designing capabilities, you would expect that he would perfect his own creation. But so many of the traits we tend to see as “complex” fall short of even what the finite human mind can dream up.
It is also worth noting that the concept of complexity can only be quantified relatively. For instance, long division is complex in the eyes of a third-grader who has only just memorized their times tables, but to a student studying real and complex analysis, the concept seems fairly rudimentary. Because of this, it is very easily to attribute undue significance to something that could be inconceivably more complex, and this is likely why creationists get caught on the idea of certain parts being “irreducibly complex” — a topic I will cover in a later article.
The second condition often overlooked by proponents of creationism is the concept of deep time. Deep time refers to the incomprehensible time scale on which Earth operates, which has its beginnings nearly 4.5 billion years ago. To put that into perspective, the modern human as it exists today only emerged between 800,000 and 300,000 years ago. Recorded human history only accounts for the last 5,000 years, yet most modern humans only live for about 74 years. This means that your life — if you’re healthy — only accounts for a little over one percent of the entirety of recorded history, and at most 0.02% of Homo sapiens’ time on Earth. John McPhee, the American writer who named and popularized the concept, expressed the unimaginable scale of deep time in a thought-provoking metaphor:
Consider the earth’s history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the king’s nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history.
Though the history of the human species seems grand in comparison to our infinitesimally short lives, the time scale on which all biological life, the Earth, and the entire universe as we know it operate is greater than anyone can even begin to comprehend. The first animals emerged 609 million years ago, and some of the first life on Earth an estimated 4 billion years ago. And almost three times as old as the Earth and its earliest life is the universe itself, which dawned nearly 13.8 billion years ago.
Understanding deep time is important because without a firm grasp on the concept, it is next to impossible to comprehend how the natural formation and evolution of our stars, planets, and lifeforms could have ever been possible. At the heart of creationism lies a fundamental misunderstanding of the true age of the universe, and what such an unthinkable amount of time could actually do to a universe like ours.
Spending my formative years in a Christian school had a plethora of effects on me. But in my final years of attendance, after I had renounced the faith that I had once considered crucial to my mortal well-being and my fate after death, many of the arguments from my teachers that had once affirmed my sense of security in my belief in God now elicited no response from me, apart from an occasional snicker under my breath. I remember my seventh grade history teacher, who famously argued that the 19th amendment ought to be repealed because “women are just going to vote for murder anyway,” referencing the right to abortion access.
When he wasn’t expressing his questionable political takes or bragging about all the rich and successful “friends” he had, he occasionally gave his input on the taboo scientific concepts that tend to haunt creationists’ minds. Although most of his claims were unintelligible, like when he said, “the chances of evolution being true are like finding a coffee mug out of the entire state of Texas,” there were a few that made just enough sense to conjure up a response to.
I remember one day, while we were taking notes on the Scientific Revolution (oh, the irony), he interrupted our studying to propose a slightly modified version of the watchmaker argument. It too was difficult to understand, but I believe it went something like: “If you put all the parts of a watch in a jar and shook it up for billions of years, you would never end up with a fully in-tact watch — that’s just ridiculous.” He basically argued that no amount of time could ever be responsible for the intricate detail that is found in nature, therefore it must have been created.
While he is entirely right that a watch’s parts could not spontaneously assemble themselves, his argument — like the previous ones — fails to accurately analog the way in which organisms develop their complexity. Fine metal parts in a jar do not behave the same way as DNA in a cell. Watch parts must be aligned and assembled, which likely also require screws to hold them together. Screws must be inserted via a specific twisting motion, which makes the spontaneity of this process increasingly unlikely. Meanwhile, DNA in the cell is very simple, consisting of only four nitrogenous bases, which autonomously form hydrogen-bonded base pairs due to their similar structure.
Although the watch could never be assembled at random over the 4 billion years that life has existed on Earth, genetic material is so simple in structure that its natural formation in that time is almost guaranteed, especially considering that when randomly synthesized portions of genetic material were put through artificial selection in a lab, even they experienced evolution through each generation. This experiment is documented in a Science article by David Bartel and Jack Szostak, and is explained in further detail in the previously-linked Science 2.0 forum post.
Although the big bang theory and evolution are not related in any scientific sense other than that they are ideas that contradict the creationist’s fairy tale, the two ideas are made possible through simple natural forces which work together in systems. Everything in the universe is interconnected by one process or another, and these processes build off each other to create systems that are completely within the observable scientific realm and completely autonomous.
Ecosystems, for example, are some of the most basic and familiar examples of how seemingly magical processes like evolution happen not because they were created to do so, but because their very existence necessitated such a process.
In an ecosystem, each organism’s genetic code varies, both from its own species and other species in that environment. Not only are there birds, animals, and reptiles in an ecosystem, but also plants, insects, fungi, and bacteria. All of these organisms experience mutations in their gametes, and sexually reproducing organisms also experience genetic recombination, which leads to more genetic diversity in their offspring. This genetic variety eventually leads to new traits emerging in the various species populations that live within these systems, which is really all evolution is: change over time.
What creationists do not understand about these mutations and their effects is that natural selection affects not just the greater of two competing species, but the entire system universally. If a species of bird develops a beak trait that allows it to eat more acorns, there will be competition for those nutrients with squirrels. If some squirrels are slightly more likely to eat fruit, those squirrels will be more successful, and that trait will become exaggerated in that population of squirrels as the squirrels that are more prone to eating acorns die out.
Each organism in an ecosystem is undergoing its own genetic change, and as each generation of change takes effect, the new conditions and obstacles one species pushes on the ecosystem select out certain traits in other species. This process effects all organisms in an ecosystem, and forces them to undergo natural selection to some extent between each generation. Because of this, all organisms are constantly evolving, and these changes can lead the species’ niches and roles in the ecosystem to grow and shift throughout time.
The same types of naturally-occurring systems also account for the structure and form of the universe. The contents of the cosmos consist of simple particles that — due to simple, repeated processes — are able to create the astonishing planets and galaxies that occupy space. Most elements that exist in our galaxy today were formed inside of stars, and eventually released in supernovae. A free cloud of these gaseous substances collapsed into itself, forming compressed, dust-like matter. This matter was pulled into a rotating disk under its own gravity, and over time, the dust within it independently formed boulders of matter that grew in size as gravity compounded more and more of the dusty substance onto the protoplanets. Eventually, these massive rocks were smoothed into spheres, and became the planets we know them as today.
In these systems of space dust that become solar systems and galaxies, only matter and gravity are needed to create such astonishing and complex celestial objects. In a way, the force of gravity is the closest thing in the universe to God that we can look at as a guiding force that shapes our universe. That’s not to say gravity is omnipotent, or morally pure, or even conscious — because it most certainly isn’t. But it’s interesting to think that maybe gravity, along with the other three forces that emerged following the big bang, is intrinsic to the design and function of the universe in some way that is beyond us — perhaps in a way that precedes even the big bang itself.
But creationists aren’t able to see scientific theories like evolution and the big bang as byproducts of naturally-occurring systems, and this is primarily why Christians consistently misrepresent these theories and refute their own straw men instead of what scientific consensus actually states. The worldview of these fundamentalist Christians suggests that everything was made perfectly by a God who knows more than any mortal ever could, and because of this, they instead view science as a divine institution that keeps God’s creation in line, but doesn’t change or develop it.
With such a deeply-instilled belief, they are unable to see how anyone could ever seriously think that every aspect of the universe exists because of natural, unconscious processes and forces, so they attack metaphysical misinterpretations of fairly simple scientific ideas instead. In their minds, everyone knows there must have been a creator, whether they admit it or not. The Bible — which is believed by traditional Christians to be a literally-interpreted scripture without a single error — reinforces this dogma by saying:
“For what can be known about God is plain to [humans] because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19–20)
Because of this idea’s ubiquitous presence in the Bible, in doctrine, and in the minds of so many Believers, it is no surprise that creationists impose it onto atheists and scientifically-literate individuals who have the patience to engage in a conversation with them. Attempting to reason with individuals like Ray Comfort is a Sisyphean endeavor, and at the end of the day, we don’t owe them the satisfaction of “destroying” an atheist with their perceived “facts and logic”.
Creationism truly is the easy way out in trying to find a sense of existential significance or greater understanding of our origins, and unlike the natural sciences, the creation story will never change. There will never be a new book of the Bible that reveals a missing piece as to why we are here or why an “all-good” God created such a majestic world just to watch it burn from his own creation’s misdoings.
So while it is true that we atheists will have a harder time explaining certain phenomena like the origin of life on Earth and what came before the big bang, we will never have to explain away the God who actively rejects the morals that he created, the God that lets children get abused, the God that watches billions of his own animals get slaughtered, the God that sits back in his throne while innocent people are showered with bullets, and the God that demands he be glorified as wildfires and carbon emissions suffocate the world that he claimed to love.
