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Writer's pictureBible Brian

Evolutionists can recognise design, they just have weird ideas on how


Let me ask you a question: Who made your phone? Or if you're reading this on a laptop, who made that? No matter how much faith you have in Evolution, you will likely acknowledge that this is a perfectly logical question, and that "no one" is an absurd answer. This logic does not apply only to electronic devices. Even the mug from which I just drank my last sip of coffee is so obviously designed that you could never find a mug buried in nature without assuming someone made it. The entire field of archaeology is actually predicated on the assumption of design where no designer can be found.


Petroglyphs are by far the best example of Intelligent Design in archaeology. It is no stretch of the imagination that markings similar to petroglyphs could be made naturally. In fact, when those petroglyphs take the form of dinosaurs, this is one convenient explanation Evolutionists provide. But generally speaking, no one will scoff at you for saying a petroglyph is a human creation.


A story is often told of Isaac Newton and his atheistic friend. As a disclaimer, there are so many variants of the story that I don't know if it's a real historical event, but whether true or not, it makes the point well. Isaac Newton had an atheistic friend, who insisted, of course, that the universe lacks a creator. Nobody made the universe, nobody made the world, nobody made man. So one day, Newton commissioned a scale model of the solar system to be made, and left it out for his friend to discover. Eventually, his friend did notice the model, and asked Newton who made it. Newton replied "no one". His friend, believing Newton had misheard, asked again who made it, but Newton doubled down, saying no one made the model, it simply arranged itself. Newton's friend got quite cross, this time demanding to know who made the model. Newton drove his point home, stating "this is a poor imitation of our universe, whose laws you know well. I cannot convince you that no one made this model, yet you often tell me the system it represents is without designer and maker? By what logic do you reach such a conclusion?"


Evolutionists have two main ways to try to escape from this dilemma. One of the ways, relating entirely to biological life, is that man-made designs do not reproduce, whereas living organisms do. This attempt fails because not only does it fail to account for the fact that in order to reproduce, something must first exist, but it also adds a layer of complexity to God's designs that make man's designs look like hand paintings next to the Mona Lisa. No human being has ever made a machine capable of replicating itself, at least not without direct help from a human being. A microwave cannot give birth to a microwave. A car can't give birth to a car. At the very best there are machines specifically designed to create the parts required to build another version of themselves, which must then be assembled by a human or a completely different machine.


But of course, even if the machines we made were capable of reproduction, they can't reproduce if they don't exist. As the old dilemma goes, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Creationism answers the question very easily: God created chickens and gave them both the ability and command to reproduce. Thus, we don't need to worry about how reproducing chickens created chickens in the first place, because that's just illogical. But Evolutionists can't answer which came first.


Another way Evolutionists try to get around their natural Creationist instincts is to say that the items they recognise as designed are already associated with design. This also has three major flaws.


The first major flaw is "so what"? Even if we did not associate these things with design, any objective observer could tell you they were designed. This can be demonstrated by the fact no human being has access to knowledge regarding every single thing ever designed by man. We often ask questions like "what is that?", or even "what's that supposed to be?" Take a look at origami. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful designs, some of which are easily recognisable, some of which we have to ask, and all of which are obviously quite intentionally folded, not just an aggressively screwed up ball.


On top of modern things like origami, I again refer you to the field of archaeology, which often discovers things that are quite clearly designed, yet no one has a clue what it is, at least at first. We could even go so far as to say that any day now, someone could invent something that no one on the planet has ever seen before.


What's more is that there are even examples of fossils, which no one associates with design, that upon closer inspection can be shown to have been designed. Sometimes, these manufactured fossils even get used as evidence of Evolution before finally being shown to be intelligently designed, even if the designer is never caught.


Second, are these Evolutionists really going to claim that if they did not know these things were designed, they would assume they were not, even to the point of mocking anyone who claims that they were? Have we bowed so low to the golden calf that the dirt has blinded us? If you did not know these things were designed, you would still assume they were designed simply because they bear all the hallmarks of design.


But a third thing that makes this so absurd is exactly who that designer is. Not every obvious-to-Evolutionists design in nature was made by man. Animals, as it turns out, are quite good at design. So good, in fact, that a man named Stephen Tvedten once caught the attention of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) because a group of beavers had started constructing dams on his land. In his response letter to the DEQ, he had this to say: "While I did not pay for, nor authorize, their dam project, I think they would be highly offended you call their skillful use of natural building materials “debris.” I would like to challenge you to attempt to emulate their dam project any dam time and/or any dam place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no dam way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic."


While it is clear that Mr. Tvedten had a great deal of appreciation for the beavers' skill as designers, the DEQ did not. Nevertheless, they still recognised the design therein, as the original letter which merited the response blamed Mr. Tvedten for the "Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond", and were complaining about the fact no permit for such dams had been issued. Thus, they also recognised that these dams had been designed.


Thus, even the most die-hard Evolutionists are actually Creationists. They just have very strange ideas about exactly how to recognise design. It is very strange to deny design if you didn't see the designer. It is very strange to say you would deny design in light of reproduction. The design in nature is undeniable. In fact, so undeniable is the design in nature that human beings actually attempt to copy natural designs in an effort to improve our own, of course resulting in vastly inferior products. This is called biomimetics, and when Evolutionists do it, it is the worst case of plagiarism history has ever seen.


When it comes to origins, Creationists clearly have the superior worldview. Whereas Evolutionists have to arbitrarily pick and choose when to accept the obvious signs of design, even to the point of denying their own natural instincts, whereas all Creationists need to do is follow the evidence where it leads.

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