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



SEARCH EXCATHOLIC.NET

No Copyright