Transcription
You are a satellite engineer, and you believe the universe was designed. Why? Well, because we find purposeful information everywhere throughout the universe, and it's so evident in manmade things like communication spacecraft, but it's equally, in fact, more evident in living organisms. The probability of randomly assembling just one of the proteins of which life depends, is the equivalent of the solar system packed full of blind people all randomly shuffling Rubik's cubes and all getting the solution at the same time. What? That's insane. Well, it's ridiculous.
What elements specifically point towards design? Well, I, I think there are probably four key things. The first one would be - Dr. Mark, you are a satellite engineer and you believe the universe was designed. Why?
Well, because I see evidence of design everywhere. Working as a satellite designer, I was very familiar with the principles of design, the need to produce a product out the end of the factory door, as it were, that achieved all the objectives, balancing off competing resources and constraints in the design. And you know, I see evidence of that in the world all around us. For instance, take a, a vase of flowers. We all know that the vase was designed, nobody would question that for a moment. But in our culture, we are told that the flowers, well, they're the results of just accidental random processes over billions of years. And yet the plants that those flowers came from can reproduce themselves. Now, you can't have a communication spacecraft or anything manmade that's capable of reproducing itself. So to me, the evidence for design in the universe is abundant.
Okay. And so what elements specifically point towards design that you are seeing in the universe around us?
Well, I, I think there are probably four key things. The first one would be an extraordinarily improbable arrangement of things. Okay. The second would be that there's evidence of, of purposeful information, intelligence, if you like. The third one would be, as I've just mentioned, that optimal trade-off between competing objectives and constraints. And the fourth one is that you have the correct components correctly assembled together.
So if we look at those in turn, the first one I think is, well, a good analogy would be you're walking along the beach and you're looking at these pebbles in the sand. And then you come across an arrangement of pebbles in a nice little circle with two dots and a line. And, you know, it's, it's a face. Now, if you saw that, you would know immediately that there's been some external intelligent intervention acting on those pebbles to make a face. It's not that the, the random action of wind and waves and what have you acting on pebbles typically makes faces, because if that was true, the beach would be littered with little faces looking at you. But it's not like that. So we can instinctively recognize that something has acted on the pebbles. There's been an external intelligence acting. So that's an example. For instance.
What about the situation? Like, is it possible that the pebbles could have, like, you know, maybe if you give them enough time, could they rearrange themselves into a face?
Well, you might argue that, but in fact, time tends to be the enemy of the process. Because as time progresses, what we observe in the universe is that things actually deteriorate. They unravel, they get worse and worse. So if you started off with a face, time and chance will fairly quickly rearrange that. And so maybe if you came back the next week, it would no longer be there.
Okay. So is that, is that, that's the law of entropy, right? Is that what we're talking about?
That's right. In fact, there's a law in the laws of thermodynamics. It's called the second law. And it essentially, it says that in, in a naturally occurring process in an isolated system, over time disorder will increase.
Okay. So you're telling me very highly likely that it's not going to appear on a beach. It'd be very strange.
That's right. Absolutely. And, and we instinctively recognize when something, some highly improbable arrangement of things is there, we say, ah, there's been somebody who's acted on that. I'll give you another example. There was a court case in the US some time ago where a county clerk was accused of inter, well, not randomly selecting the order of candidates on a ballot paper. That was what he was supposed to do, supposed to be drawn out of a hat, right?
Because - The first name on a ballot paper tends to attract what they call the donkey vote. You know? Yeah. People think, oh, start with one at the top and go down, you know? And he claimed that he was not doing this. It was purely random. But it turned out that in 40 outta 41 elections held over some decades, one particular party was always at the top of the electoral ballot. And the court ruled that the probability of that was something like one in 50 billion or some phenomenally unlikely event. And he was duly convicted on that basis.
Interesting. So our legal system will convict people on this basis, but our scientific system won't.
Well, the scientists have a commitment to a, if you like, a worldview, a principle that begins by assuming that there's no God.
Right? Okay.
And if you, there's no God, that means you limit everything, all your explanations have to be naturalistic explanations. So they can't deviate from that because of an initial assumption. Right.
Interesting.
So that's why you end up with, for instance, millions and millions of years of supposed earth history because you need that much time to establish complex arrangements of things like pebbles on a beach. Except they don't. Oh. And as we've already seen, time is actually the enemy of the process. It's not a friend.
Okay. So the very thing that they're trying to use to solve their problem is actually working against them, which is really interesting.
Well, in reality. But you see, there's a, we, we have a philosophical blindness to things which are outside of our worldview.
Yep.
Because we sign up to a worldview, we choose to believe it, and it influences everything that we see and hear. All the information we receive, we filter through that worldview.
Yep.
So if you come across something which doesn't fit your worldview, people have a number of responses. One of which is to simply reject it. It doesn't exist. Just simply deny. Another is to shelve it and think, oh, it's interesting. I'll have to think about that one day. A less likely outcome is that you will allow it to confront your worldview and entertain the possibility. Maybe I've gotta change what I believe. And it's very difficult for us to change what we believe. Just imagine if we were constantly changing our belief system, we'd become completely dysfunctional socially and relationally in all sorts of ways. So our worldviews are very important and we defend our worldviews as an instinctive response to some information that appears to conflict with it.
Yep.
So that's why the secularist who begins by assuming there is no God will seek to defend that. And so they kind of look for ways they can explain around how, how can we get around this problem of, of time, you know, maybe there are other factors which influence it. Maybe there are some other ways in which extremely unlikely things can arrange themselves, like pebbles on a beach.
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Bit of an interesting question. I've heard of this like concept or theory or suggestion that there are many universes out there and we just happen to be lucky enough in the one that managed to evolve correctly. Is that a reasonable explanation?
Well, that's a good example of a, what, what shall I call it? A rescue mechanism to defend the worldview. Right? So we look at the probability of biological systems arising by chance, and it's staggeringly low. I mean, it's, it's ridiculously low. No one in their right mind would accept that as an acceptable probability. For instance, the probability of the pebbles on the beach making a face is far higher than random processes assembling even the simplest biological machine or cell. So how do we solve the probability problem? Well, one way of doing it is if you increase the number of attempts you have at solving the problem. And that's where the multiverse idea basically comes from. It's the, it's - Right. - An idea that there's just an infinite number of universes out there. We just happen to live in the one where this particular outcome has occurred.
Interesting.
For instance, I could argue that there is another universe somewhere where you and I are having this interview in a studio, but I'm wearing a green shirt and not a maroon one.
Okay. Yep. Okay.
So you can see it's slightly ridiculous. It's actually philosophical nonsense.
Yeah.
And totally bereft of any kind of observational evidence. Because we live in this universe, we can't observe universes outside of it.
Ah-huh.
So it's an attempt to try and save the probability problem.
Right. So you just mentioned there before that observational, so is there a difference between observational versus, what would you call it, historical science?
Well, indeed there is, and that's a very important point because what science is actually about is trying to discover how the universe works by making observations, which you should be able to repeat, by the way, so others can confirm or deny your results. And that's the way we try and understand the laws and principles of physics, for instance. And then being very creative beings, we take those laws and principles, invent amazing things like computers and communication satellites, for instance.
It's like, that's the engineering section.
Yeah. Right, right, right.
So you study first, then you use the rules, you understand and have been able to observe to then invent the next - Thing and then you implement. So that's how our knowledge of how the universe works, grows. It's through observational science.
Okay.
But when we start to address questions like, how did the universe get here, that's a different problem because we can't observe our origin. So it's actually outside the scope of observational science. Okay. In fact, it's interesting, it, it's the discipline of history that deals with one-off events in the past. The discipline of science really should be focused on observable, repeatable experiments, things that you can touch, see, feel, measure, and so on. And whether results of those experiments can be shared with other people. So here is a bit of a problem because when you start to try and reconstruct the past to explain what you're observing in the present, and that's what evolution is really trying to do.
Okay? Yep.
You tell a story about the past, which inevitably reflects what you believe about - The past. Yeah, that's valid.
Okay. So if you start off with the belief, well, there's no God, I limit myself to naturalistic explanations.
Okay. So - I make up a story about the past, which explains the progress from there to now in purely natural terms. And it's gotta account for all the complexity and everything that we can observe today and make measurements on.
Okay. And so people have assumed that there's no God because they can't directly observe him according to the science rules. But we can, you are saying that as an engineer, you are able to see the evidence that there has to be a designer. Is that what you're telling - Me?
That's, that's what I'm saying. That's exactly right. So you walk along the beach, you see the pebbles, you know, immediately somebody arranged it.
Yep.
I look at the world around me, I see extraordinary complexity way beyond pebbles on a beach.
Yep.
So why is it not equally logical to say somebody designed it? Okay. Who's somebody? Now, as a Christian, I happen to believe that that is the God who's revealed himself in the Bible. And he tells us in the Bible that he created the heavens and the earth in six normal length days, just like the days we experience now. And it also provides a timeline in what are called chrono genealogies in the opening chapters of Genesis. And from that we can conclude that the universe was created only about 6,000 years ago. Now, that's a spectacularly different outcome, but it's based on firstly belief in that the fact that the Bible is true. So that's a, that is a belief, that's a faith step, but also confirmed and affirmed by all the observations that we make, whether it's in science or archeology, history, theology, philosophy, anything, any human discipline can be brought to bear. I believe in testing the scriptures and it comes out being verified as true every time.
Interesting. That's, that's interesting. And that's probably too much of a coincidence as well actually come to think of it. That would be very strange if it wasn't true.
Well, exactly. And, and is, I think this is a confirmation of truth. Because if the Bible is true, and if it's record of what happened at the beginning is true, then you would expect all these other things to naturally confirm it if indeed they are objective and true in their own disciplines and how they, how they address the problem. So the problem then is of course, that the evolutionist has a, a different starting point.
Yep.
Right. He begins by saying, well, there's no God, I've gotta explain everything naturally. And he runs into dead ends all the time. Unfortunately, those dead ends are not talked about in our science courses, universities, tv, documentaries, and the like. It all comes over as though it's a very neatly, you know, wrapped up thing with a bow on the top. It, it's, you know, this is proven. In fact, you might even have heard expressions like evolution's, not just a theory. Evolution is a fact. There was a big sign in the museum in Sydney sometime ago now, and it said, evolution is a fact written across - The world. This sounded a little defensive actually looking at it with that mindset.
Well, you might wonder, why would you bother making the statement? Is that, is it so important?
Well, if yeah, if it's, if it's true, you shouldn't need to have to prove that it's, it's true. It should be self-proving.
That's right. Okay. So the, one of the, the key evidences in on design is that you have these incredibly unlikely combinations of things. If I can just share a, a quote, or at least I'll paraphrase it. This was from Sir Fred Hoyle, who was a very clever scientist. He was not a Christian, but very astute. And he made this observation, he said words to the effect that the probability of randomly assembling just one of the proteins on which life depends, is the equivalent of the solar system. Now think about this, the solar system packed full of blind people or randomly shuffling Rubik's cubes and all getting the solution at the same time.
What? That's - Insane.
Well, it's ridiculous, isn't it? Totally ridiculous. And, and you have people who are very clever. Like there's a guy called George Wald who received the Nobel Prize, and he's a very clever guy. And he actually said, he acknowledged that it's impossible for non-living matter to assemble itself and become a living thing, a process called abiogenesis. He said, it's impossible. And you think, oh, he's got it. But then he goes on and says, yet here we are, I believe, as a result of spontaneous generation.
So, so really he was saying, you're living in a miracle quite, - Quite crazy.
So it's a bit like Alice in Wonderland, you know, believing six impossible things before breakfast or whatever it was. So he acknowledges the impossibility of this, but then he says, and yet I believe it. So I think that illustrates something of the incredible improbability of, of these things happening. But there's another key evidence of design, and it's one which is prevalent, it's everywhere. And it's a very powerful argument, but often missed. And it's the argument from information. Now information surrounds us everywhere. Like there's information in this book. I'll talk about this book a bit later on. Okay. But you turn the pages and it's full of amazing illustrations and lots of text.
They are cool actually.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's fantastic resource.
Gonna take a look at that one.
But information is, you can think of it as coded instructions that reduce our uncertainty of something or increase our understanding. Okay. And I would liken it to, let's say, well, the illustration of book is a good one. When you open a book and read it, you see all these letters. But the information you are receiving is not a product of the ink and the paper, it's how the ink has been arranged so that it makes letters that we recognize and the letters you assemble into words that are consistent with a known vocabulary that the writer and the reader of the book must share.
Oh, yep.
And the words have to be arranged in grammatical sentences so they capture the meaning.
Yep. 'Cause if you muck that up, that would also cause trouble.
Yeah.
Yep.
Like in this conversation, I, an idea might arise in my mind, so I encode it as an English sentence and then I speak it. You hear, you then decode because you also understand English. And so hopefully the idea that arose in my mind then arises in yours.
That's really interesting. Actually, come to think of it, we study this kind of concept in, I'm a university student, but in university they talk about this sort of stuff. They call it cultural screens as well, because they add another level. And that is, that communication through worldviews is also interesting because if you're communicating with the same worldview, it's easier to communicate. Whereas if you have cross worldviews - That's right. It's very hard. So meaning can become - Corrupt. Even the same in - The process.
That's right. In engineering terms, as doing satellite communication links, you have the possibility of noise being injected into the communication channel.
Ooh.
Causing errors to arise. And so engineers spend a lot of time designing satellite links and communication links in general so that the signal to noise ratio is such that you get a faithful reproduction of the message at, at the receiver.
Interesting. Yeah. 'Cause that could cause some troubles, couldn't it?
Well, absolutely, and it does, particularly on satellite links because the signals are very, very weak. Ooh. And so you've gotta extract them out of the noise.
Yep.
So, but this, this communication process requires a couple of preconditions. One of which is that we both have the right code, we both understand English. Alright? So if say you are French, and I wrote the word CHAT, those letters. Now to me that means an informal chat over a cup of coffee. Right. But if you're French, I dunno if you - Stand French and, and I didn't speak and I didn't speak English.
Yeah, right, right. And you didn't speak English. I should add that proviso to someone who knows French, that means a cat.
Oh yes. That could be a problem, - Couldn't it?
Right. So how can you comprehend what's he talking about? You know?
Yeah.
So you've gotta have the, we've both got to share this pre-existing code. But here's the thing, I can't give you a kilogram of English. Right. It's, that's abstract quantity. It's an abstract thing. It's non-material. Okay. So herein lies a problem for the evolutionist who believes that the material world is fundamentally all that exists. But information is non-material. Okay. And we find information is everywhere. So as a satellite designer, I have to specify the performance characteristics I want from the spacecraft that goes to the manufacturer. They interpret that into system designs of component parts, et cetera, et cetera. But it's all, it's all information now.
So there's different types of information, is what you're telling me.
Yes, yes. And in fact, information has multiple levels.
Okay.
And this is where it gets really interesting.
Enlighten me.
And, and because the evolutionists are conscious of this, I mean, these guys are clever, right? Yeah. They're, they're scientists too. But they try and find a way out. And often what the evolutionists does is have a discussion on, on probabilities and so on in terms of the statistical nature of, of a message or, or, or information. So let's say I, I had this happen to me once, let me share a quick story. I made my first ever overseas trip after my university years, and I hadn't budgeted well, and I actually ran out of money. So I sent a message to my father, and this is actually true, asking him to send me some money. And he was a, he had a good sense of humor. My father, he wrote back and said, change your way of living. Which, okay, thanks dad, but I really need some money. But let's think about that a minute. Let's say I write the message, please send money. Now I've pre-thought this, that it turns out it has 17 letters and spaces. You know? Now imagine if you had a bag of alphabet letters, like Scrabble pieces and a blank for a space. But 26 letters of the alphabet. So there are 26, sorry, 27 things in the bag.
Okay?
And you draw one out at random, you write it down and put it back in, draw out another, put it back in. What's the probability that you will spell out, please send money.
Ah, probably quite low.
Very low. Right? So the first pick, you've got one chance in 27 of picking a P, then you've got one chance in 27 of picking an L, right? That's crazy. All the way through. So we have, I gotta do it 17 times. It turns out the probability of getting it right is like guessing a 24 digit pin. So I mean, that's just, nobody would contemplate that as as reasonable. That's just not a reasonable chance, is - It?
That's, yeah, you - Just wipe it off, right?
Yep. It wouldn't work.
It wouldn't work. So that's the, that's the statistical level. But if I let you just pick 17 things out and write them down, you just get this random string of letters. Now if you were to transmit that over a communication channel, like a satellite link, then the satellite communications engineer is just interested in the number of bits. And somehow rather, you have to encode that. And then you transmit it at a, in a certain way that you will be, you'll have high confidence that you'll get the right arrangement of letters at the receiver, but you don't care what the letters are. So a random string has exactly the same information, content as please send money.
Oh, so you are telling me that there's another layer of complexity on top of that, which is, so hang on, let me get this straight. Sending the random letter of strings that's the same length as Please send money. Money - Makes. And that's all statistical, right?
That's all statistical, purely - Statistical.
But the information contained in the police sent money part is, that's that crazy probability - Element.
It's, it's a level. It's a level above.
Okay.
Because you have to select, well, you've gotta select exactly the right letters. Yep. In that sequence. Yeah, you do.
And then you've gotta send it to someone who's gonna understand it - And what it means.
Then the next level up from purely random statistical stuff. Now the, what I was getting to before is the evolutionist argues on a statistical basis, they make statistical arguments. It's called Shannon information about after an engineer who looked at how do, how do you transmit signals between transmitters, receivers, and so on. So when you come to arrange the letters so that certain syntax is observed, like the English language.
Yep.
That's when you get a syntactical level.
Okay. Yep.
Alright. Now we're starting to make specific selections of letters in specific orders. But then there's another level. Again, I could send the words completely scrambled and you still wouldn't get meaning out of it.
Yeah. No.
But if I arrange them to obey the laws of grammar, okay, then I have a semantic level, which now imparts a meaning.
Right?
So it's only when you get to semantics do you get meaning. So we have statistical, which is meaningless. You have syntactical, which conforms to a code, but doesn't necessarily have - Meaning.
And then finally you get to semantics where meaning is being imparted.
Right.
Now you receive the signal, the meaning, and you act upon it. So that's a pragmatic level. Please send money. Hopefully you will now go to your computer and you'll arrange to send some funds from your account to my account.
Which I hope your dad ended up doing if - I'm not, which he did. He did. Yes.
That's good.
He was a good part.
Oh, that's, - But there's another level. And it's the fifth level of information, which is so powerful because there's a reason I sent that message. Oh, I need money. I wanna spend more money. Right, right. So I didn't just, I didn't just randomly send this message. There was a reason. It's a purposeful level. The technical term is alphabetics.
Okay.
So there are five levels of information. Now what we see, and by the way, purposeful information only ever comes from a mind, comes from an intellect.
So not by random, - Not by random processes.
Okay. Well that will, that's another spanner in the works. So - It does, so the naturalistic explanations or attempts at naturalistic explanations fail at the purpose level. 'Cause the moment you introduce purpose, now you've got a mind behind the process.
Ah.
So as a Christian, I see purpose in the information in the universe. Take the DNA code, for instance. The DNA doesn't just exist there to do stuff pragmatically, randomly. It does it for a purpose. And the purpose is the thriving development of that particular living organism. So we find purposeful information everywhere throughout the universe. And it's so evident in manmade things like communication spacecraft, but it's equally, in fact, more evident in living organisms. So information can only arise from a mind.
On the, on the fifth level. Yeah.
Yeah. Now those, those five levels I was talking about of information were articulated by a very famous information scientist called Dr. Verna Git. And he developed some, some theorems or principles. And I, I'd like to share them. Just gimme a moment. I'll just look out. I wanna get the quote right.
Awesome.
And these are like theorems that come out of information theory. He says, no information can exist without an initial mental source. That is information is by nature a mental and not a material quantity. So remember what I was saying - Before?
That's, that's that abstract concept.
It's an abstract thing. Like I can't give you a kilogram of English. Right? So it's non-material.
But it's specifically abstract that is sourced from a mind. Yes. Is that what - We're
That's right. So the conclusion of that is information comes from an intelligence.
Okay. Interesting. So look at - The information in the DNA. It's incredibly complex. It's multi-layered. We have sessions, interviews on this channel that talk about the complexity of DNA. I recommend our viewers go and have a look at those. They're very powerful. The second theorem from Verna was no information can exist in purely statistical processes. Ah, that means random events, right?
Yep.
So in other words, information cannot arise by chance. So their theorems that actually come from the discipline of information theory.
And we just ignore them in the scientific, how - Do?
Well, it's very uncomfortable, isn't it? Because if you don't want there to be a God and you've signed up to there is no God, then you've got this confronting information. What do you do with it? Well, for the most part, they ignore it to be honest. Okay. I'm not aware of any evolutionists, seriously taking on the issue of an intelligence behind the purposeful information we find throughout living systems.
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It's really interesting. And so you've said so far that evidence for design can be seen in two main ways. Highly improbable arrangement of materials or objects.
Yep.
And also presence of information.
Yes.
What other ways?
Well, the third one I mentioned was the optimization of design trade-offs. So in, for instance, designing a communication spacecraft, you are trading off the power capabilities for the mass, the capabilities of the launch vehicle. You can't build something which is too heavy.
Oh yeah. Yeah. It - Then becomes too expensive to, you know, and, and so there are multi-level of, of constraints which have to be taken into account. If a spacecraft is gonna provide direct broadcast of television, for instance, direct to homes, then you want a lot of power in orbit. So you can use very small dishes, you know, the smaller, the better. 'Cause they're easy to install and they're very cheap. So that means lots of power in orbit. Power in orbit means you need large amplifiers, you need large solar panels to receive enough of the energy from the sun to convert it into the electronic power that's needed for amplifiers. And here's another problem because communication satellites get eclipsed around the times of the Equinox because they pass through the Earth's shadow. And as they pass through the earth's shadow, then where's your power source gone? So they have to carry batteries, and the batteries have to provide all the power capability for the payload for up to 72 minutes, which is about how long the eclipse lasts. Wow. As the satellite passes through the earth shadow. So lots of power on the satellite, big batteries, batteries are heavy. So you find yourself with a very heavy satellite. But now we've gotta pay for the launch. And various launch providers have various brackets of mass capability and price. And the price tends to rocket. Shall I, at the risk of a pun, as as you Oh,
That was good. Very nice.
Sorry pun. But it definitely rockets as you go up in, in mass steps.
Yep.
So you try and always be within the capability of an economical launch vehicle Yep. But still meeting your requirements.
Yep. And that's like half the front of the creativity too, isn't it?
It is, it is. But it's the challenge of optimal balance between competing requirements. But we see that everywhere in living organisms, right? Yeah. Yep. They, they've got to perform a function to a, a, an adequate degree of, of performance. And they've gotta comply with all sorts of other constraints. Mm. Physical constraints and Yeah. All kinds of things. So if you take some examples, for instance, the design of a knee joint, it's a classic example of a four bar mechanism and explain - What's a four bar mechanism. I'm not an engineer.
That's, I'm, I, well actually I'm not a mechanical engineer, so maybe I should play with the electrical engineer card at this point. But four bar mechanisms are very clever designs which permit an extraordinary variety of movement ranges whilst maintaining strength and so on.
Okay. Yeah.
And the way the ligaments are arranged in the knee forms a classic four bar mechanism. There are great articles, by the way, on our website@creation.com, that look at this particular issue along with many, many others. Design is just prevalent. Everywhere we look, the design of eyes is extraordinary. There are multiple different designs for eyes. Some are refractive, like our eyes have lenses,
And - We have a retina and we have a complex system that varies the amount of light that comes in, depending on whether it's low light levels or high light levels. You have color vision, you've got rods and cones in the retina. You've got an optic nerve, which goes to a dedicated part of the brain, which simply interprets those signals so that we can all see so many different complex parts and all arranged in an optimal fashion. But they're also refractive, sorry, reflective eyes, like the eyes of a lobster, which is an array of, of, of, of mirrors, if you will.
Oh, that's, so, it's, that's amazing.
Extraordinary. And for the evolutionist, this is a big problem because not only does the eye have to randomly form itself over millions of years, once it has to do it something like 30 times with these, all these varieties of different designs.
Oh. And every time you, like, it's like when you're trying to type a word document on a computer and then like something happens and you lose your document and you have to start - Again.
Again. Yeah, that's right. You gotta start again.
You have to do all of those eyes like that.
It just makes the, the, the naturalistic attempt at explaining biological systems pretty hopeless to be, to be honest.
Yeah.
So we see optimal designs everywhere and, and engineers actually copy designs from nature because they're so good.
Ah.
So the implicit admission is that these are brilliant designs. You'll, you'll notice when you go for a flight on an aircraft, now the wing tips turn up at the end.
Yep.
Now there was a time when airplanes didn't have turned up wing tips. Yeah.
Yeah, I was gonna say the beginning models didn't seem to happen.
Exactly. So why now? Well, somebody watched an eagle land and noticed - They do.
But as they come into land, the wing tips go up. So they thought, I wonder why, why that happens. Is there a reason? Now this is an interesting philosophical difference in the, if you like, the scientific or the design imperative between the two different worldviews. Right? So if you believe that there is a designer of God who created the world, then you are motivated to try and understand the reasons why the designer put some feature in place.
You also assume that there was a reason to begin with.
Exactly.
Exactly. You also assume by the way, that your brain is gonna work reliably. And it's logical and you can think logical thoughts. But that's another assumption.
You are right. Whoa. Okay. That blows the whole thing out.
Well, exactly. 'Cause if you, if you're the product of random chance, how would you know that your thoughts today are gonna be the same thoughts that you had yesterday? There's no guarantee. But if you believe from the naturalistic point of view that there is no God, then you don't really,
Is it accidental - Or is it meant?
Well, yeah, it just happened by accident. Why would I investigate? It's just a product of Brian Chance. So quite deep down, there's a completely different motivation and incentive in doing science.
Does this explain why a lot of the earliest scientists were - Christians?
Well Christians, and in - Fact, I've heard that around the place.
But it's ab absolutely true. Science was born out of Christian culture, out of a Christian worldview. That's where science came. Ah. That's why many of the early scientists, people like Sir Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday, and you know, the list just goes on Maxwell and so on. We we're Christians, devout Christians who believed that they were investigating a created, designed world.
Mm.
In fact, Johannes Keppler, the astronomer famously said, doing science is like thinking God's thoughts after him. I've - Heard that before. That's a good quote.
It is. It's, that's really interesting. So when you look at upturned wings on birds, why is it there? Well, it turns out it reduces the amount of turbulence.
No.
And therefore drag, so the engineers bent the ends of the wings, put 'em in wind tunnels, look at that. There's less drag. Now drag means you use more fuel. Fuel means money. So now it's more economical to fly airplanes with upturned wings.
There you go.
And you look at a, you've seen a little gecko that runs upside down across a glass ceiling or something. How on earth does it do that?
Yeah.
Its feet are incredibly complex in their design. By the way, it's all talked about in, in this book by design, which I'll share a bit more about later on.
He's with cool eyes.
And so how does that happen? Well, scientists examined with microscopes. What are the feet of a gecko look like? And they are extraordinary. They're not just like owls. 'Cause we can't walk upside down on things. I was - Gonna say, if I do that for some problems.
Exactly. So there's in incredibly fine little hairs, like you call 'em spatula or something. And, and these are so small that they engage with what are called van der Waals forces on the surface of the material. Which remember is just a, some kind of a molecular lattice. It's not a solid surface when you go down at the molecular level. Oh.
So it's like tiny rock climbing grips kind of, - Kind of like that. Except they're not physical.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
So that gives the gecko its extraordinary ability to walk, walk upside down. And so how did it come about an intelligent designer? There's no chance involved in - That.
Yeah. Well, I mean here first gecko to try walking on the ceiling without feet like that might have taken a little dive.
We certainly would. That's right. So how did it evolve? You might ask. So optimal design is just evident everywhere. And the fourth one that I mentioned right at the beginning.
Yes. Yep.
Was you have the correct components correctly assembled.
Yes.
So you look at a communication spacecraft. We don't have plumbing fixtures on it. Right. I mean, they're the wrong components. They're not necessary. You don't have the wrong components on it.
Yep. Well be redundant.
Well, yeah, of course. And they're irrelevant.
Yeah.
You, you, you're wasting space, energy, mass, all sorts of things. You Yeah. Don't do that. So when you look at an organism, what you find is that they have the correct components doing the right job and they're correctly assembled. Now assembly requires intelligence. You can't accidentally assemble a whole bunch of components, even if you had the correct ones.
I tip my Lego box upside down and accidentally, blindly assemble it correctly.
Exactly. Right. Doesn't happen, does it?
No.
An example I sometimes use, imagine a hapless frog, which jumps into a blender and you switch the blender on and before long you've got this gooey sort of frog soup. Right. And this is not an experiment you should try at home. Right.
I was gonna say, not in my blender. Thank you.
So you could say, in this blender, I have got all the component parts to make a frog. I've got all the proteins, amino acids, I've got DNA in. Now I've got everything. How long will it be before a frog jumps out of the blender? Well, it's not going to happen, is it?
No.
The probability's not - Right.
So it requires intelligence to assemble the component parts you've got. When you're constructing spacecraft, there are a lot of subcontracts that go out to different organizations to build different component parts. They're all then delivered to the, what they call the high bay, which is the factory where it's assembled. And you, you only get what you have requested and you only request the components you need.
Yep.
So same in living things, but they're then assembled according to the design and the plan, the information. So there's a concept called irreducible complexity, which comes into play here. And it's very important because it's stands in the way of the Darwinian idea that you can assemble complex things by slight incremental steps over long periods of time. And the concept is like this. Imagine. And the classic example is the mouse trap. Now a mouse trap consists of just a handful of component parts. But the thing is, you cannot remove any one of those component parts and still have an operating mouse trap.
Right? Yep.
Right. It's been so refined in its design that every single part has a function. And if it's not fulfilling its function, if it's not there, then the mousetrap won't work. So before it's useful and can provide any benefit, you've gotta have all the bits all assembled at once.
Right? Yep.
Yep. Now come back to what we talked about the eye before. Right. You need a lens, you need an iris, you need a retina, you need an optic nerve. You need a dedicated part of the brain to interpret the signals.
Otherwise it's useless and it gets, - Otherwise it's useless.
Exactly.
Chopped off.
So how does evolution account for a partly formed eye as it's on its way to evolving because it doesn't benefit the organism in any way.
Yeah.
The first thing that has to happen is the skull needs to get two holes in it for how's that gonna help its survive.
No.
Right. Then you gotta fill it with some sort of material that becomes the basis of the eye. Then you gotta have a lens and, and until it's all complete, it's useless. So there's no evolutionary advantage, nothing for natural selection to select for. So that you breed more and more of these and progressively develop an eye.
Interesting. Because you just talked upon natural selection, and I've heard we were talking there about observational science versus historical science. There I've heard that natural selection can be rather a devolution of information that was already there, rather than an evolution according to that principle.
Yes. In the sense that natural selection, as its name suggests, selects from preexisting genetic information.
So there has to be information there. You can't build information from - First, you've got to have preexisting information, but then the next generation probably misses the bits that weren't selected. So it's genetically a downhill process.
And that's observational.
That's observational science.
Yep.
So you can look at all the, the variety of dogs, for instance. Yeah. That there are, you've got hairy ones and short haired ones. There's lack of genetic information in each of the so-called pure breeds. They go down genetic cul-de-sacs or dead ends if you will. They're not really pure breeds at all. In fact, they're genetically deficient. Many of them have major problems. But if you really want a robust dog, you've gotta go all the way back up as far as you can into the bitzer, which has got, you know, a whole variety of robust genetic information. It's likely, for instance, that all of the varieties of dogs we see today came from an original dog kind. Probably wolf-like animals.
So irreducible complexity, which is the fourth thing you're talking about, deals with this concept of there has to be information there first.
You can't Yeah. Well that's, that's natural - Selection.
Okay.
Which is selecting from that information. But once you've got the component parts, what I'm saying is you've gotta assemble them before the, that particular organ is useful or effective.
Right.
So if you don't have the complete thing there - Yep.
It can't bestow any advantage on the organism. Yep. So it can't, it can't be selected for in, in the process. So how do they overcome this whole issue of irreducible complexity? Well, I've not ever heard any successful attempt. There've been attempts.
Richard - Dawkins is quite famous for saying, oh well, there are precursors. You look at an arch, you know, the stone mason has built this beautiful arch.
Well - Of course when he built it, it didn't all kind of, you know, he didn't put the stones like that in place. There was a scaffold that was built. And then you build the arch over the scaffold. Yeah. And then you take the scaffold away. So he said, all you need in the evolutionary history is some sort of a scaffolding precursor. And then the scaffolding disappears 'cause it's no longer needed. And you're left with an arch.
Why would it develop if the scaffolding was already there?
Well, yeah, A, that's one good question. And B, the other thing is purposeful intent.
True.
Why did you build a scaffold? Well, I built a scaffold to build an arch. Ah. But now you've introduced purpose, you've introduced a mind, you've introduced intelligence. But you can't have that in the evolutionary story.
Right.
Natural selection is a directionalist process. It can't decide natural selection. Can't think I need to have an arch in here. So we need to select these so we can build this to get that.
Yep.
It doesn't happen that way. It's the purposeful intent again. Okay.
Yep. Yep.
So there is no explanation for the irreducible complexity problem of assembling the component parts. So when you look at a, a
living organism, you see evidence of extraordinary unlikely arrangement of things like the so Fred Hoyle quote, and all the blind people solar system getting the same solution and their Rubik's cubes all at once. And that's to get one protein. You have the presence of purposeful, intelligent information everywhere. You have optimal designs which make complex trade offs between competing requirements and resources. And finally you have the correct components correctly assembled. Mm. And all of those things are hallmarks of design. We find them in all manmade things. And we find them in absolute abundance in living organisms, which are way more complex because they can reproduce.
- What about the concept of beauty? Would that fall into the category of that fifth like purpose? Or where does that go?
- Well, I, I think, well yes actually that, that's part of the purposeful level of information. But it's like a fifth evidence of design. Because what we see in nature is beauty added beauty beyond mere functionality.
- Mm.
- So think about it from the point of view of the spacecraft designer. At no stage did we ever sit down and specify that the spacecraft bus, that's the, the body that holds all the electronics had to observe the golden ratio to have the right proportions and dimensions. We didn't worry about the color of the satellite that the colors blended between the solar panels and the antenna reflecting surfaces.
- Yeah. 'cause you're going for practical.
- Exactly. It's purely functional. We just want something which has to work and has gotta be effective, cost effective in doing its job. But what we see around us is beauty way beyond mere functionality.
- It's artistic.
- Artistic, not just functional things are beautiful for their own sake.
- Hmm.
- And I find it fascinating in the book of Genesis, in chapter two, God refers to trees in the Garden of Eden that were pleasing to the eye.
- Mm. Yep.
- Isn't it amazing? So a tree fulfills a function, right? Yeah. Through the process of photosynthesis where it absorbs carbon dioxide, produces oxygen, draws water and sugars up from the ground and grows and so on.
- It's basically a beautiful machine. Is that what you're telling - Us?
- That's what I'm telling you. It's a beautiful machine. It doesn't have to be beautiful to function. It could be some grotesque, ugly looking thing and it would still do the same job. But look at all the different textures, foliages colors in trees. It's amazing. The profusion of beauty - Everywhere.
- Everywhere that speaks of a personal being that is loving it is incredibly creative and just enjoys beauty for its own sake. And we enjoy beauty for its own sake as well. Because we make beautiful things, beautiful music, beautiful artworks.
- Is that,
- And so on that -
- Would you say evidence for being made in his image?
- I think it, it is very much so.
- Even though we've destroyed it - Over - Time with sin.
- Well, - Even, even after the fall of man. But what it says to me, how extraordinarily beautiful must that original creation have been.
- We - Live in a broken world. You know, it's like 6,000 years ago the fall took place. Everything's running down with have our genes accumulating more and more mutations. We have genetic disease and the genetic deformities. We see it in plants, other living animals. We have erosion happening. Things are breaking down everywhere. We talked about time earlier on.
- Yep.
- It's the enemy. It's the inexorable progress of time. Everything's running down. It's not getting better and better. We everything's - Devolving.
- And and yet, and yet in today's world, we see extraordinary beauty - Yet even despite of however many years we've been devolving.
- That's right. So we look at this broken world and it's beautiful. Imagine what that would've been like. But the Bible says something even more amazing. It tells us that God is going to recreate, he's going to bring a new heaven and a new earth into being because this world is just rotting and decaying all around us.
- Mm.
- He's gonna replace it at the end of the age. The Bible says Jesus is going to return. And man, that is going to be an extraordinary event. Yeah. That and possibly not far away.
- Yep.
- So there's coming a new heaven and a new earth and the Bible says that the human mind, our eyes, ears have not heard or seen or conceived how beautiful that is going to be.
- Yeah. That would be cool. I look forward to that.
- And I am as well.
- You've been talking about this book the whole time. Why don't you show me, what is it? What is it about?
- Well, this is a recent release and as you can see, hang on. Lemme Yeah, thanks. It's called By Design and it touches on all the things that we've discussed today. And it's got fantastic illustrations of things in nature that have been designed. And it, I heartly recommend it because it's an an in-depth, thoughtful book that examines all these issues and shows beyond any possible doubt that we live in a designed universe. Which of course means that there must be a designer. And I believe that's the whole nub of this issue. We see design in the world around us. There must be a designer.
- We'll make the link available in description below. I'm loving the chameleon and the colors. That's actually beautiful. But yes, thank you very much Mark. Appreciate your time. Thank you. This, it's - Been a pleasure.