Years ago on talk.origins, I got embroiled in a thread which touched on the
issue of design. I remember feeling considerable frustration at the views
expressed by several of the scientists in the group. I didn't trouble
myself to write down _why_ I was frustrated, and later on all I could
recollect of my feelings was that the design efforts I have been involved
in required considerable planning and coordination. IOW saying that design
was something that resulted naturally from the action of natural processed
was an insult to all the effort engineers put into designing things that,
admittedly, are quite different from the kinds of designed entities we find
in nature.
But the efforts of humans to bring about a successful design are rather
small and insignificant compared to the designs God does, and I suspect
that our efforts appear rather puny, confused and convoluted to Him. So
the "design requires a great deal of effort" argument argument is
human-centered and questionable, so far as being a justification for my
frustration was concerned.
Today on the way to work, when my tape recorder was, unfortunately, buried
in my briefcase and I was too much in a hurry to stop and dig it out, the
thought came to me that design is really a battle against randomness. It's
a battle to enforce structure against entropy. Whether humans or God do
the design, attention has to be given to ensuring that the designed object
can function in the face of factors which tend to degrade its operation:
infections, disease, parasites and predators in the case of living things;
rust, wear, shock, vibration, stray emf, etc. in the case of things humans
design. To say that designed objects can emerge naturally without some
intelligent entity providing for dealing with disturbances, seems naive to
this engineer's mind. I hasten to add that I believe God's designs are
intended to be so elegant that there will be no indications of "tinkering"
anywhere. So my view does not imply that there are any points in nature
that we could study to "catch God in the act" unless He chooses to be
"caught". As Howard Van Till does, I tend to believe that the design is in
the properties of entities in nature. In addition (perhaps Howard would
agree, perhaps not) I suspect that complex systems theory says some things
about how God may be continuously involved in nature, guiding its course,
without His oversight being visible to the normal five senses. Complex
systems exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions and
disturbances. By knowing exactly where and when to perturb nature, an
intelligent designer/overseer could maintain control over the direction of
nature by means of infinitesimal perturbations. This is the God who told
Paul, "My strength is perfected in weakness." Perhaps He was talking about
more than Paul's immediate infirmity.
Handle with care. Ego attached :-).
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
GM R&D Center | Warren, MI 48090-9055
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX)
hamilton@gmr.com (office) | whamilto@mich.com (home)