David Hume argued that if a designer created the Universe, what then could we conclude about this designer if we study what it produced? We may think it seems a big mess:

This Universe points to a designer that is not that powerful, i.e. why all the animal extinctions over time?
It points to a designer who is not morally good. Why make wasps?
The universe doesn’t necessarily point to one single designer. How many people work to design and build complex structures like a cruise liner for example? It requires a whole team. Then if things go wrong with the ship, it tends to be because the engineering team didn’t communicate well with the plumbing team, etc.
So, if the Universe has flaws in its design, should we conclude that a team of designers were behind it, like the Greek Pantheon of Gods who squabble and bicker whilst the Earth pays the price?
However, with these particular lines of attack we are no longer talking within the realms of Science. Many atheist scientists when presented with the mathematical and scientific challenges to Darwin stray into ethical, philosophical and theological debates in order to crush the necessary conclusion for intelligent design. Interestingly, all of the questions above can be answered through a reading of the entire Bible. But if we keep the debate firmly in the Scientific world for now, what conclusion should we accept? What is the most logical, best-fit approach from the evidence put forward?[1]
Evidence of Organic Molecules Arising Naturally

Darwinian evolutionists point to evidence from the Stanley Miller Experiment in 1953 which managed to artificially produce the building blocks of life by reproducing the early atmosphere of the Earth and shooting sparks through it to simulate lightning. Miller produced a red goo containing amino acids. This experiment apparently shows how unguided, naturalistic forces could have formed molecules which caused the first proteins to exist. Thus, no intelligent designer is required in evolutionary models (although you needed intelligent Stanley Miller in this experiment to produce the molecules!). Jonathan Wells, a PhD scientist in molecular and cell biology from Berkeley, has serious reservations about the Miller Experiment:
Nobody knows for sure what the early atmosphere on the Earth was like, but the consensus among scientists today is that it was nothing like the cocktail of gases that Miller used[2];

If you use the gas mixture that secular scientists propose today[3] and repeat the experiment, you do not get any amino acids arising – you actually get Cyanide and other extremely toxic molecules. If there happened to be any loose proteins (needed for life) floating around in this chemical soup then the toxic molecules would fry them instantly just from their fumes alone;
Even if amino acids were delivered to Earth via an asteroid, you are still miles off from having a functioning cell, especially in the time restraints given (see my previous posts on the mathematical challenges of Darwinism).
The biochemist and atheist Francis Crick stated “an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going”[4].
But what about the Archaeopteryx missing link?

In 1859 Darwin lamented that the biggest issue with his theory was the lack of evidence in the fossil record. He asked “if species descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, why do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional fossils?”[5] Lee Strobel writes “as if on cue, two years later scientists unearthed the archaeopteryx in a German quarry. Darwin’s supporters were thrilled – surely this missing link between reptiles and modern birds, unveiled so promptly after the publication of Darwin’s book, would be just the first of many future fossil discoveries that would validate Darwin’s claims”[6].

These future discoveries have failed to materialise. Jonathan Wells also has doubts about the ability of the archaeopteryx to offer any evidence for Darwinian evolution: “do you get from a reptile to a bird – which is an astonishingly huge step – by some totally natural process or does this require intervention from a designer?”[7] It turns out that this fossil does not demonstrate a creature that was half-reptile and half-bird. Palaeontologists nowadays agree that the fossil is a bird with modern feathers – very different from a reptile in terms of its breeding system, bone structure, distribution of muscles, etc. Plus, the fossil record now shows that animals that look most like reptilian ancestors of birds occur tens of millions of years later than the dating of the archaeopteryx ‘finding’! Either birds evolved from reptiles millions of years after this fake fossil, or the premise that birds naturally evolved from reptiles[8] is wrong as the dates don’t fit and the archaeopteryx can be treated as an authentic fossil. Either way, there are big issues with this piece of ‘evidence’ for Darwinian evolution.
Other transitional fossils have been ‘found’ over the years but as Alan Feduccia (evolutionary biologist at North Carolina University) states: “archaeoraptor is the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of fake fossils out there, and they have cast a dark shadow over the whole field. I have heard there is a fake-fossil factory in northeast China, in Liaoning Province, near the deposits where many of these recent alleged feathered dinosaurs were found.”[9]
A big issue for Natural Selection via Random Mutation:

Convergence is a term coined by secular scientists to explain how different species that separated from their common ancestor[10] a long time ago spontaneously arise the same bodily features at a later date. For example, bats, birds and butterflies all developed wing body plans separately. In unguided, random Natural Selection, wouldn’t you expect to see a wide variety of whacky designs that bear no resemblance to each other if they aren’t closely related? Why would wings appear on unrelated organisms whose DNA code should have drastically (and randomly) evolved/mutated over the large timeframe since they separated into new, distinct species? If macro-evolution is true, then convergence within this model paints a picture of intelligent direction, not directionless, random forces, indifferently governing Life’s progress. Creationists, however, would explain the phenomenon of convergence in a different way entirely…
An intelligent designer would utilise the same code many times to create similar yet unrelated organisms. Imagine a car designer working for BMW. When they design a new car they use the same blueprint for a wheel again and again. The wheel is such an effective design. Why mess with it and attempt to create square ones?! The wheel is a common design feature, which has the same “code” to follow each time you want to build it in reality from the blueprint. In the same way, a wing may have some variations, but the concept of what a wing is doesn’t change. A designer may fall back on the concept of a wing and utilise it in many different creations. This explains how wings, for example, can show up across many diverse species, even showing similar code in their DNA - not because they are all distantly related, but because the genes for a wing remain the same. When a computer programmer codes for a creature with wings, there is a set code that someone has originally invented that can now be utilised to form an image of a wing on a computer screen. No one would suggest that the computer code must have wrote itself and evolved from earlier forms just because we happen to see the code appear again and again in different locations in the programme! Absurd. An intelligent computer programmer has used the set code multiple times for creative reasons of their own. Whereas, Darwinian evolutionists try to explain convergence through throwback"junk DNA" that has now been disproved (see earlier post). How many leaky holes must appear before a bucket is thrown away and not fit for purpose?
Humans and Apes: Ancestry?

We are 98% genetically similar to chimps, so the theory goes that the ONLY explanation for this is that we share a common ancestor. Jonathan Wells disputes this by suggesting that the similarities are actually a huge problem for Darwinists: “if you assume, as neo-Darwinism does, that we are products of our genes, then you are saying the dramatic differences between us and chimps is due to 2% of our genes…the problem is that the so-called body-building genes are in the 98% (the 2% are really rather trivial genes that have little to do with anatomy)”[11]. We both have two legs, two arms, organs in similar locations, etc. but if an intelligent designer aimed to reutilise similar features then obviously we are going to have many overlaps in our genetic code with other organisms that bear a similarity to us. In the same way that “builders use the same materials – steel girders, rivets, and so forth – to build bridges that end up looking very dissimilar from one another”[12].
If we shared a common ancestor and inherited the majority of our genes via that mechanism, then why do the genes produce such different outcomes in the chimp species vs. the human species? The surprising thing is not the similarities but the vast differences between us when our coding is 98% the same. The differences between us allows our species to be conscious, moral, spiritual, intelligent, purposeful, altruistic, conceptual, i.e. bearing the marks of the Maker, being the only species that was made in “the image of God”[13].
Another line of argument is that the 2% difference in DNA between humans and apes sounds very small and therefore it is easy to achieve macro-evolution from one to another given a long enough period of time. In reality, that 2% difference equates to 60 million base pairs of DNA information that has altered. That is actually an incredible amount of information that needs to transform via random mutation. Secular scientists say there was a time gap of 7 million years for 60 million base pairs to mutuate into something new (us!). Haldane’s Dilemma causes havoc for this assumption. In 7 million years of time, the most evolution via random mutation that could realistically be achieved is 300,000 base pairs of DNA (and even this was an overly generous calculation) - no where close to 60 million! This mathematical dilemma has been known about since 1957 but has never been resolved. Even more worrying for secular scientists is that this proposed 7 million time gap is getting shorter, not wider, since the recent discoveries that Neanderthals (and others) are actually human like us after all. These human-like creatures were frequently used in the evolutionary chain to plug the transitional gap between apes and Homo sapiens but the reality that Neanderthals buried their dead, made tools and bred with Homo sapiens has thrown this 7 million year trajectory into jeopardy.
The Case for a Creator…

There is a phenomenon in nature called Collective Consciousness. This can be seen in some species of beetle when the larvae are newly hatched; they have the amazing ability to sync their behaviour across the group to mimic complex structures. For example, some beetle larvae have been observed grouping together in their hundreds to form the shape of an adult female wasp. This attracts the attention of a male wasp who flies over to mate with the female form. The larvae then get attached to the body of the male wasp as he flies away and this enables the beetles to spread from the site where they were born to new food sources, etc. Just stop and think how incredible a feat this is - such intelligence, from beetle larvae of all things! This feat requires coordination and some sort of communication/instinct that we don’t yet understand but scientists are calling Collective Consciousness. How can this evolve blindly and randomly through Darwinian evolution? Random mutations on a life form do not guarantee that another life form will have the same random mutations as another - even from one generation of species to the next. These beetle larvae rely on the existence of other beetle larvae in order to survive long enough to reproduce. How has this syncing behaviour evolved when, under Darwin’s model, each individual has its own random mutations which affects only itself? I still find it mind-boggling how every species of animal that relies on a male and female form in order to mate, has exactly that - isn’t that lucky! “Male and female he created them” Genesis tells us. Collective Consciousness points to a masterful intelligent designer behind the whole of nature who sustains life from one moment to the next with exquisite coding in the cells of organisms to guide complex behaviours when the individual intelligence of the organism is not driving that behaviour consciously itself.
You think you are a single human with your own identity? You are actually more like a metropolis - a complex city of lifeforms that help to keep you alive and healthy from the bacteria in your gut, to a different set of bacteria on you skin, eye lash mites, the list goes on. How did we evolve as an individual species randomly and by chance when our very survival requires the existence of so many types of organisms in a harmonious balance that is truly astounding to comprehend?

Another line of argument is the fact that DNA mutuations are overwhelmingly harmful and there is little evidence that random mutations can add new beneficial information on the scale that is needed to create a human from a universal bacteria ancestor, alongside trees and jellyfish and wasps and whales and tigers, etc. That is a heck of a lot of new information that has to arise from a single celled organism over time and the overwhelming majority of those changes have to be beneficial and not harmful (which we have very little evidence of that this happens in reality). The other issue if you remove a Creator from the origins of life is the reality that DNA and RNA are both made of protein - a chicken and egg problem. The RNA is like the active force in the cell (alongside other exquisite machinery like Kinesin[14]) that read the instructions from the inert DNA and create proteins following these instructions. So the RNA, made from protein, reads the DNA, made from protein, to create new proteins - did the RNA make itself then? Which came first? The cell is an irreducibly complex machine that needs all its parts there from the beginning to work effectively.

How did God create life? My theory is based on biblical teaching and advances in Creation
Science. God created outright ‘kinds’ in specific families of organisms, which then diversified via micro-evolution. We can’t deny micro-evolution - just look at your cute, fluffy pet dog at home and then research domestic breeding to see the original wolf form from which it descended. Yet this was an intelligent process! How did God create? Well, in Genesis it says He spoke and everything came to be. DNA is an intelligent code, like a language. I think DNA is a language that only God can speak. God created unique organisms with insanely complex codes which allows creatures to evolve new features for changing environments to help them diversify and survive. Just like the finches on Darwin’s Galápagos Islands that needed different shaped beaks to utilise the different food sources that were available; this ability to evolve at a micro level speaks of an intelligent and good creator. The emerging field of epigenetics is demonstrating how incredible the DNA code is and the how clever the different functions in the cell are to utilise this complexity of information to turn on and turn off certain genes to adapt to environments. Intelligence at every level of reality that must have been there from the very beginning - not blind forces conjuring up complexity out of nothing!
This creation model avoids the issues that Darwin’s model has with explaining how the first life form came to be and then how all the diversity arose from that one lucky cell in a short period of time (yes, billions of years is considered short to achieve what Darwin argued for). I would argue that the finely-tuned Universe and Origin of Life needs an explanation that incorporates intelligence, consciousness, purposefulness, powerful intervention and meticulously planned design. None of this I find in Darwin’s model.
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.” Psalm 139
References & Footnotes [1] I believe I have indirectly answered many of these philosophical criticisms in earlier posts. See specifically My Purpose? posts, Why does God allow suffering? Objection - what about other religions, Morality: Proof of God? and the 4-part series on Why did Jesus have to die? [2] Klaus Dose and Sidney Fox (origin of life scientists) confirmed that Miller used the wrong gas mixture (hydrogen-rich mixture of methane, ammonia and water vapour). [3] The consensus today is that there was very-little hydrogen but plenty of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water vapour. [4] The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel [5] The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, 1859 [6] The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, p.67 [7] The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, p. 68 [8] An accepted/uncontested dogma in Darwinian science [9] Discover Magazine, “Plucking apart the dino-birds”, Kathy A Svitil, 2003 [10] Following a Darwinian model for now… [11] The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, p.65 [12] The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, p. 65 [13] Genesis 1:27
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