THE UNIVERSE IS LESS "DESIGNED" NOW THAN IT WAS BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO SO SHOULD WE TALK ABOUT AN INTELLIGENT UN-DESIGNER?
Christians base their interest in God virtually entirely on the following argument.
If the Universe evinces purposeful design, there must have been a designer.
The Universe does evince purposeful design.
Thus, the Universe must have had a designer.
Nobody really likes the argument that God is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. It sounds too remote or uninteresting. They prefer to look around and imagine they see the handiwork of God.
But what if you argue:
If the Universe evinces traits of non-design, there is no Designer.
The Universe does evince non-design.
Thus, the Universe had no Designer.
People think they have to choose one or the other.
What if we say the universe has some signs of design and some signs of
non-design? What if the universe shows more chaos than design? Then the argument
may show there is one or more designers yes but they are not involved in looking
after the whole universe. The non-designed stuff is out of their reach.
The argument is no good at showing there might be a God. The believers lie
that it shows there is a God. That is an outright lie.
Another problem is that design does not mean the design is purposeful.
If the designer is something like a computer intelligence it just designs and
does not have any purpose. Believers argue that you can observe the
universe and not see that the design has a purpose. True but what if you
are failing to observe that any design in fact has no purpose?
Marcus Chown says,
We associate the direction of time with the direction in which eggs break,
castles crumble and people grow old. What all these changes have in common is a
transition from an ordered to a disordered state. Technically, physicists call
this an increase in “entropy”.
The reason things can become more disordered is obviously that they were more
ordered in the past. And, if we follow this reasoning to its logical conclusion,
we find that the ultimate reason is that the universe began in a highly ordered
state – the Big Bang. Think for a moment what this means. Eggs break, castles
crumble and babies grow old because the universe is expanding from a Big Bang –
because the most distant galaxies are flying away from us. How incredible is
that?
I say,
Believers in intelligent design seem to think that a fully fledged universe appeared at the big bang! No wonder they feel the need to believe in intelligent design. They forget that most of the universe even now is chaotic and unorganised.
It is possible that something can work well enough without being designed. Religion says an intelligent designer is needed. But needed is too strong of a word. It is not needed. Are they guilty of saying, that things always need to be designed before they can do anything? Things work well despite their design diminishing.
Take design as meaning something looks like the work of an intelligence.
The entity that existed "before" the big bang is regarded as well-designed in
its own way. There was not really a big bang. It was several big
bangs - probably an infinity of them. The end result as good as it looks
was not as well-designed as the original entity. So the universe means
there is less design not more. What use is the design argument when loads
of accidental big bangs had to happen for the universe to be possible? The
accidents actually count more.
WORKS CONSULTED
A HISTORY OF GOD, Karen Armstrong, Mandarin, London, 1994
A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL 6, PART II, KANT, Frederick Copleston SJ,
Doubleday/Image, New York, 1964
A PATH FROM ROME, Anthony Kenny Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1985
A SHATTERED VISAGE THE REAL FACE OF ATHEISM, Ravi Zacharias, Wolgemuth & Hyatt,
Tennessee, 1990
A SUMMARY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, Louis Berkhof, The Banner of Truth Trust,
London, 1971
AN INTELLIGENT PERSONS GUIDE TO CATHOLICISM, Alban McCoy, Continuum, London and
New York, 1997
AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS, John Hospers, Routledge, London, 1992
APOLOGETICS AND CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Part 1, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, MH Gill, &
Son, Dublin, 1954
APOLOGETICS FOR THE PULPIT, Aloysius Roche, Burns Oates & Washbourne LTD,
London, 1950
AQUINAS, FC Copleston, Penguin Books, London, 1991
ARGUING WITH GOD, Hugh Sylvester, IVP, London, 1971
ASKING THEM QUESTIONS, Various, Oxford University Press, London, 1936
BELIEVING IN GOD, PJ McGrath, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1995
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, Friedrich Nietzsche, Penguin, London, 1990
CITY OF GOD, St Augustine, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1986
CONTROVERSY: THE HUMANIST CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTER, Hector Hawton, Pemberton Books,
London, 1971
CRITIQUES OF GOD, Edited by Peter A Angeles, Prometheus Books, New York, 1995
DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION, David Hume, William Blackwood and Sons,
Edinburgh and London, 1907
DOES GOD EXIST? Brian Davies OP, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1982
DOES GOD EXIST? Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide Church of God, Pasadena,
California, 1972
DOING AWAY WITH GOD? Russell Stannard, Marshall Pickering, London, 1993
EVIL AND THE GOD OF LOVE, John Hicks, Fontana, 1977
GOD A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED Keith Ward, OneWorld, Oxford, 2003
GOD AND EVIL, Brian Davies OP, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1984
GOD AND PHILOSOPHY, Antony Flew, Hutchinson, London, 1966
GOD AND THE HUMAN CONDITION, F J Sheed, Sheed & Ward, London 1967
GOD AND THE NEW PHYSICS, Paul Davies, Penguin Books, London, 1990
GOD AND THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING, Philip St Romain, Liguori Publications,
Illinois, 1986
GOD THE PROBLEM, Gordon D Kaufman, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1973
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch,
East Sussex, 1995
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL 2, Frederick Copleston SJ Westminster, Maryland,
Newman, 1962
HONEST TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM Press, London, 1963
HUMAN NATURE DID GOD CREATE IT? Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide Church of God,
Pasadena, California, 1976
IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene Oregon, 1996
IN SEARCH OF CERTAINTY, John Guest Regal Books, Ventura, California, 1983
JESUS HYPOTHESES, V. Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977
NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, The Catholic University of America and the
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
ON THE TRUTH OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH, BOOK ONE, GOD, St Thomas Aquinas, Image
Doubleday and Co, New York, 1961
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY, Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1996
PHILOSOPHY AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, Colin Brown, IVP, London, 1973
RADIO REPLIES, Vol 1, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul,
Minnesota, 1938
RADIO REPLIES, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul,
Minnesota, 1940
RADIO REPLIES, Vol 3, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul,
Minnesota, 1942
REASON AND RELIGION, Anthony Kenny, Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1987
SALVIFICI DOLORIS, Pope John Paul II, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1984
SEX AND MARRIAGE – A CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE, John M Hamrogue CSSR, Liguori,
Illinois, 1987
TAKING LEAVE OF GOD, Don Cupitt, SCM Press, London, 1980
THE CASE AGAINST GOD, Gerald Priestland, Collins, Fount Paperbacks, London, 1984
THE CASE FOR FAITH, Lee Strobel, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000
THE CONCEPT OF GOD, Ronald H Nash, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1983
THE HONEST TO GOD DEBATE Edited by David L Edwards, Westminster Press,
Philadelphia, 1963
THE KINDNESS OF GOD, EJ Cuskelly MSC, Mercier Press, Cork, 1965
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, CS Lewis, Fontana, London, 1972
THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING, Alan Hayward, Christadelphian ALS, Birmingham, undated
THE PUZZLE OF GOD, Peter Vardy, Collins, London, 1990
THE REALITY OF GOD AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, Brian Davies, Continuum, London-New
York, 2006
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF BELIEF, Charles Gore DD, John Murray, London, 1930
THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London,
1905
UNBLIND FAITH, Michael J Langford, SCM, London, 1982
WHAT IS FAITH? Anthony Kenny, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992
WHY DOES GOD ALLOW SUFFERING? LG Sargent, Christadelphian Publishing Office,
Birmingham, undated
WHY DOES GOD ALLOW SUFFERING? Misc, Worldwide Church of God, Pasadena,
California, 1985
WHY DOES GOD? Domenico Grasso, St Paul, Bucks, 1970
WHY WOULD A GOOD GOD ALLOW SUFFERING? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
1990