THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN (TELEOLOGICAL) ARGUMENT

Cells are microscopic factories that are made of proteins that are like worker molecules that carry out many key biological functions. The building blocks of life at the molecular level are similar to the language components of a book. Amino acids (20 common amino acids) are like individual letters (26) of the alphabet. These amino acids combine to create various proteins, which are like words and sentences. Theses multi-protein molecular machines are like words and sentences that form paragraphs.

The cell is structured and operates like a microscopic factory.

Each cell in the body is intelligently designed. 

Molecular machines coordinate to form major cellular systems just as paragraphs are arranged together to form chapters of a book. Hundreds, if not thousands, of molecular machines form a living cell or cellular system, just as many chapters form a book. These molecular machines within the cell produce proteins, transport parts within the cell, produce energy, dispose waste, replicate, repair, and protect the cell from elements outside of the cell. Two machines are found in all living cells. The Ribosome machine translates instructions to assemble proteins. The ATP (adenosine triphosphate) Synthase machine is the primary energy-carrying molecule in all cells. As you can see, even the most basic cell is highly complex and requires information and instructions on how to use the information to assemble and operate a cell. Gary Kemper, Hallie Kemper, Casey Luskin, Discovering Intelligent Design-A Journey into the Scientific Evidence, (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2013), chapter 7; Stephen C. Meyer, Return of The God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe, (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2021), chapters 9, 10, and 14. This high level of complexity is clear and convincing evidence of intelligent design.

Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute‘s Center for Science and Culture, has articulated and presented the case for “irreducible complexity,” which is a system with a series of parts in which the removal of any part causes the entire system to cease functioning.  The presence of irreducibly complex molecular machines in many biochemical systems indicates that they must be the result of intelligent design rather than evolutionary processes. Much like a spring-loaded bar mousetrap cannot function unless all of its component parts are fully constructed and assembled, molecular machines cannot function unless all of their component parts are fully constructed and assembled at the time they were created. “Darwin’s Black Box” refers to the internal operations and functions of a simple cell, cellular structure, and other aspects of microbiology that were not much understood when Charles Darwin was alive.

Subsequent scientific discoveries confirm the irreducible complexity of several biological systems, including but not limited to, the cilium, the bacterial flagellum, blood clotting, the immune system, and vesicular transport. Blind macroevolution cannot build the complex machinery that are essential for life to exist. Rather, microevolution works principally by breaking things for short-term benefit. It can’t construct anything fundamentally new. Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Free Press, 10^th Anniversary ed., 2006), Michael J. Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2020); Stephen C. Meyer, Return of The God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe, (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2021), chapters 8, 9, and 14.

DNA stores genetic information to build proteins and molecular machines.

All living organisms carry biological information in DNA, which is the hereditary molecule that carries genes. A gene is a section of DNA that contains the assembly instructions for a particular protein. The information in DNA is stored by the ordering of four molecules: adenine (A), cytosine (C), thymine (T), and guanine (G).  These molecules are called nucleotide bases. They are combined with sugar molecule (ribose) and a phosphate group to form a nucleotide. The ordering of nucleotides makes DNA a digital code. The biochemical language of DNA uses strings of three nucleotide bases (called condons) as start and stop commands to construct proteins. An actual DNA sequence might continue for hundreds or even thousands of codons, which encode amino acids in proteins. The unlikely ordering of the nucleotide bases to match the pattern of biochemical language represents specified complexity, which is clear and convincing evidence of design. In addition, the stable double-helix shape of DNA, only pairs A with T, and C with G, called base pairs. The sequential ordering of base pairs in DNA instructs cellular machinery to link amino acids in the correct order and shape to produce functional proteins. These molecular machines in the cell, such as ribosome, interpret the instructions in DNA and execute them. Kemper, Discovering Intelligent Design, 85-87.

Microevolution verses microevolution.

When investigating evolution, it is important to distinguish between microevolution versus macroevolution. Microevolution involves small-scale changes in a population of organisms.  No new organism is created. Essentially all scientists agree that microevolution occurs over time. Macroevolution involves large-scale changes in populations of organisms, including the evolution of fundamentally new biological features that may create a new organism. Macroevolution also means that all life-forms descended from a single common ancestor through unguided natural processes. This is typically illustrated by the “Tree of Life”.  Proponents of macroevolution take evidence for microevolution and then claim it demonstrates macroevolution. In recent years, over 1,000 PhD scientists have contested the validity of macroevolution because the extrapolation of microevolution into macroevolution is not warranted. These scientists have signed the following statement, “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”For a list of over 1,000 PhD scientists that have signed the Statement of Scientific Dissent from the Darwinian theory of macroevolution, see https://dissentfromdarwin.org/.

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution involves at least three steps. First, random genetic mutations over time cause change in an organism. Second, unguided natural selection preserves that change that makes the organism better suited to survive in future generations. Third, the descent of life from a common ancestor. Current day evolutionists claim that evolution is capable of developing complex new traits in organisms and accounts for almost all of biological evolution. In recent years, scientists have questioned the validity of the theory of macroevolution. Darwin himself proposed a test for evolution when he proposed, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, (1859), chapter 6. Darwin’s followers updated his theory and called it neo-Darwinism, which states that all life shares common ancestry, and evolved through descent with modification, driven by unguided natural selection acting upon random genetic mutations in DNA over long periods of time. They contend that humans first appeared on the Earth about 1 million years ago.

Genetic entropy refutes macroevolution.

The genome is the instruction manual encoding all the information needed for human life. None of the information systems designed by man can even begin to compare to the sophistication and complexity of the genome. The DNA letters, clusters of DNA words, and DNA gene chapters combine to form chromosome manual volumes which, in turn, form the whole genome library.  The amount of information of a complete genome consists of two sets of 3 billion individual letters each. But the genome’s set of instructions is not a simple, static, linear array of letters. It is dynamic, self-regulating and multi-dimensional.

Each animal is programmed to develop and become that specific type of animal. This programing is different than the programing for humans to develop and become humans. All this information is in a genomic package contained within a cell’s nucleus, which is a space much smaller than a speck of dust. Each human body has a galaxy of more than 100 trillion cells. Every one of these cells has a complete set of instructions, directing the cell’s own highly-prescribed duties.  Where did all this information come from, and how can it possibly be maintained? This is what Cornell University geneticist Dr. John C. Stanford calls, “the mystery of the genome.”  John C. Stanford, Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome, (Longmeadow, MA: FMS Publications, 2014), chapter 1. Neo-Darwinian’s answer is that random mutation at the molecular level and natural selection have created all biological information. But random mutations are typographical errors in the book of life that consistently destroy information and cause aging, cancer, and other degenerative genetic diseases. This “Genetic Entropy” or genetic degeneration occurs because the true distribution of mutations argues against mutations, leading to a net gain in information needed to advance the process of macroevolution.  Specifically, mutations systematically erode the information that encodes life’s many essential functions. Stanford, Genetic Entropy, chapter 2. Even if some mutations were beneficial to life, natural selection does not involve any intelligence or design; it is a blind and purposeless process whereby some things reproduce more than others.  In addition, mutations are complex and happen at the molecular level, but natural selection can only be carried out on the level of the whole organism. So it would have to select an organism that contained all of the beneficial mutations. Stanford, Genetic Entropy, chapter 1.  But where did this organism with all the beneficial mutations come from? In other words, natural selection only attempts to explain the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest.

For updated information on the topic of Genetic Entropy, visit the website www.GeneticEntropy.org/.

The “Cambrian Explosion” refutes macroevolution.

Another problem with neo-Darwinism is the sudden appearance of animal life during the “Cambrian Explosion,” which is the sudden appearance and rapid diversification of most major living animal body plans (phyla) in the fossil record within an interval of about 5 to 10 million years or less, a relatively short period in evolutionary history. For the first time, body plans with complex biological structures such as compound eyes, spinal cords, articulated limbs, and skeletons appeared on Earth. This time is known as the Early Cambrian, and began around 543 million years ago. This time interval is recorded by some excellent fossil deposits that include superbly preserved fossils of these early animals. Two famous examples are the Burgess Shale in Canada, and the Chengjiang in China.

Darwin’s “dilemma” or “doubt”.

Darwin’s “dilemma” or “doubt” refers to the Darwin’s concern that the fossil record contradicted macroevolution. Darwin hypothesized that if macroevolution were true, “it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited … the world swarmed with living creatures.” But Darwin admitted that the fossil record below the Cambrian strata did not appear to contain such creatures. Instead, “species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks” without any evidence of prior transitional ancestral forms. Darwin acknowledged that this lack of ancestral forms was “a valid argument” against macroevolution. He recognized the objection that “the distinctness of specific forms, and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links-is a very obvious difficulty.”  He hoped and predicted that with time and additional research, these missing transitional ancestral forms would be found in the fossil record. However, since 1859, fossil discoveries have not found any transitional ancestral forms. Therefore, the fossil record does not depict an ancestral animal tree of life of simple animals evolving from a common ancestor into more complex animals. Instead, it depicts that complex animals appear suddenly as if complex life exploded and first appeared in the Cambrian Explosion. The fossil record looks more like a lawn in which each blade of grass representing 8 major living animal body plans (phyla) appear at about the same time. Specifically, the animal kingdom has about 36 phyla in the history of life. About 26 to 27 phyla are fossilized. 20 phyla first appear in the Cambrian Explosion. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, (1859), fifth edition, chapter 6, 301, 378-381; Stephen C. Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, revised edition, 2013), chapters 1-8; Illustra Media Documentary, Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record, (2009); Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt, chapters 9-14, Meyer, Return of The God Hypothesis, chapters 10 and 14.

In addition to the mystery of the missing transitional fossils in the Cambrian Explosion, Darwin and neo-Darwinists also fail to explain the mystery of the process by which all of the complexity in the first animals came about. Macroevolution holds that complex animal life forms would develop by numerous, successive, slight modifications, over long periods of time. But the fossil record shows the abrupt appearance of these complex animal life forms with no transitional ancestral life forms from simple to complex. There was not enough time for the necessary genetic mutations to occur that would develop the complex biological structures. Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt, chapters 9-14); Stephen C. Meyer, Return of The God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe, (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2021), chapters 10 and 14.

Icons of macroevolution.

Most people believe the theory of macroevolution is fact because their school science biology textbooks essentially teach that the current scientific consensus is that overwhelming evidence establishes macroevolution is fact without any criticism of macroevolution.  Since textbooks use the same examples and images so often, these examples and images have achieved the status of “icons” of macroevolution. However, these icons misrepresent the evidence and do not provide credible evidence in support of macroevolution. Biologists have known this for decades and these icons should have been removed from the textbooks, but many of these icons still appear in biology textbooks. These false icons are as follows.

“The Miller-Urey Experiment: A 1953 experiment that supposedly showed how chemical building blocks of life could have formed spontaneously on the early Earth

Darwin’s Tree of Life: A branching tree diagram used to illustrate the notion of descent with modification of all living things from common ancestors;

Homology in Vertebrate Limbs: Similarities in limb bones used as evidence that all vertebrates (animals with backbones) are all descended from a common ancestor

Haeckel’s Embryos: Drawings of similarities in early embryos used as evidence that all vertebrates (including humans) evolved from fish-like animals;

Archaeopteryx: A fossil bird with teeth in its mouth and claws on its wings, often cited as the missing link between ancient reptiles and modern birds;

Peppered Moths: Photos of moths resting on tree trunks, supposedly providing evidence for evolution by natural selection;

Darwin’s Finches: Thirteen species of finches on the Galapagos Islands that are used as evidence for the origin of species by natural selection;

Four-Winged Fruit Flies: Fruit flies with an extra pair of wings that supposedly provide evidence that DNA mutations provide the raw materials for macroevolution

Fossil Horses: Fossils once used to show that evolution proceeds in a straight line and later used to show that it doesn’t; and

The Ultimate Icon: Drawings of ape-like creatures evolving into humans, used to show that we are just animals produced by purposeless natural causes.”

No complete “transitional form” fossil has ever been found to link ape-like ancestors to hominids or human beings. So some evolutionists have produced the fossils they cannot find. While evolutionists present much of their finds as if they were compelling and authentic evidence of human evolution, many times they base their conclusions on speculative and flimsy “finds.” Many of these finds of alleged hominids consist of only a mouth fragment, a leg bone, a hip bone, or a knee joint. From this alone, they construct a hominid and present it to the public as a fact. Some of these finds have turned out to be those of a pig, donkey, or the result of a hoax. Evolutionists have used these finds to contend that humans first appeared on the Earth about 1 million years ago. The following ape-like creatures have been shown to be archaeological forgeries.

Neanderthal Man: In 1856, evolutionists claimed they discovered first specimens of primitive ape-men in the Neander Valley. Subsequent archaeological discoveries, however, revealed that there was no scientific basis to make that claim. Detailed comparisons of Neanderthal skeletal remains with those of modern humans have shown that there is nothing in Neanderthal anatomy that conclusively indicates locomotor, manipulative, intellectual, or linguistic abilities inferior to those of modern humans. In addition, the size of the Neanderthal Man skull, 200 cubic centimeters greater than that of present-day humans, refuted the claim that it was an intermediate form between humans and apes.

Java Man-Peking Man: Fossils discovered on the islands of Java in 1891 and 1892 were given the name Java Man (Pithecanthropus erectus). Fossils discovered near Peking (Beijing) in 1923-1927 were given the name Peking Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis). Java Man and Peking Man were proclaimed as “missing links” to man’s ancestor. In 1939, however, two experts, Ralph von Koenigswald and Franz Weidenreich, revealed that both were actually normal current day human beings. In addition, Ernst Mayr from Harvard University classified both as human in 1944.

Ota Benga: In the early 20th century, some evolutionists searched for ”half-man half-ape” creatures that were  “living transitional links” that would prove macroevolution. In 1904, a Pygmy by the name of Ota Benga (which means “friend”) was captured by an evolutionist researcher in the Congo. He had a wife and two children. He was taken to the United States where evolutionist scientists displayed him to the public in the St Louis World Fair in a cage along with other ape species and introduced him as “the closest transitional link to man”. Two years later, he was exhibited at the Bronx Zoo in New York under the denomination of “ancient ancestors of man” along with a few chimpanzees, a gorilla named Dinah, and an orangutan called Dohung. Dr William T. Hornaday, the zoo’s evolutionist director, stated he was proud to have this exceptional “transitional form” in his zoo and treated caged Ota Benga as if he were an ordinary animal. Unfortunately, Ota Benga eventually committed suicide because he was unable to bear being treated as a zoo animal.

Piltdown Man: In 1912, Charles Dawson claimed that he had found a jawbone and a cranial fragment in a pit in Piltdown, England. Even though the jawbone was more ape-like, the teeth and the skull were like a man’s. These specimens were labelled the “Piltdown man.” For more than 40 years, museums and scientific articles alleged the Piltdown man bones to be 500,000 years old as an absolute proof of human evolution. In 1949, fluorine testing, used for determining the date of fossils, revealed that the jawbone of Piltdown Man did not contain any fluorine. This indicated that it had remained buried no more than a few years. The skull, which contained only a small amount of fluorine, showed that it was not older than a few thousand years old. It was determined that the teeth in the jawbone belonging to an orangutan and that the “primitive” tools discovered with the fossils were simple imitations that had been sharpened with steel implements. This forgery was revealed to the public in 1953. The skull belonged to a 500-year-old man, and the jawbone belonged to a recently deceased ape. The teeth had been specially arranged in a particular way and added to the jaw, and the molar surfaces were filed in order to resemble those of a man. Then all these pieces were stained with potassium dichromate to give them an old appearance. These stains began to disappear when dipped in acid. Thereafter, Piltdown man was removed from the British Museum.

Nebraska Man: In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of the American Museum of Natural History, claimed he had found a fossil molar tooth belonging to the Pliocene period in western Nebraska near Snake Brook. This tooth allegedly bore common characteristics of both man and ape, and was called “Nebraska man.”  A scientific debate followed, in which some interpreted this tooth as belonging to Pithecanthropus erectus, while others claimed it was closer to human beings. Nebraska man was also immediately given a “scientific name”, Hesperopithecus haroldcooki. Based on this single tooth, reconstructions of the Nebraska man’s head and body were drawn. Moreover, Nebraska man was even pictured along with his wife and children, as a whole family in a natural setting. In 1927, other parts of the skeleton were also found. According to these newly discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor to an ape. It was realized that it belonged to an extinct species of wild American pig called Prosthennops. Thereafter, all the drawings of Hesperopithecus haroldcooki and his “family” were removed from evolutionary literature.

The Taung Child: A fossil skull discovered by Raymond Dart in South Africa in 1924 was initially presented as an alleged ancestor of man. However, contemporary evolutionists can no longer maintain that it represents such an ancestor, because subsequent discoveries revealed that the skull belonged to a young gorilla. The famous anatomist Bernard Wood stated that this fossil constitutes no evidence in favor of evolution in an article published in New Scientist magazine.

Ramapithecus: In the 1930s, a partial jawbone, consisting of two parts, was discovered by G.E. Lewis in India. Evolutionists claimed these two jaw bone fragments were 14 million years old and reconstructed Ramapithecus’ family and supposed natural habitat based on these two jaw bone fragments. For 50 years the fossil was portrayed as an ancestor of man, but following the results of a 1981 anatomical comparison with a baboon skeleton, evolutionists were forced to refute their false conclusions.

Australopithecines: Australopithecines are a group of extinct apes closely related to modern chimpanzees and orangutans. Although many evolutionists use the remains of these extinct apes to try to prove human evolution, the weight of scientific evidence indicates clearly that australopithecines, such as Afarensis (Lucy) and Ardipithecus (Ardi) Australopithecus, were only primeval apes and not the evolutionary ancestors of humankind.

Lucy: In 1974, this alleged fossil of a human female was discovered in Africa. Recently however, it has been revealed that Lucy had an anatomy ideally suited to climbing trees and was no different from other known apes. The French scientific journal Science et Vie covered the story in 1999 under the headline “Adieu, Lucy.” One study, performed in 2000, discovered a locking system in Lucy’s forearms enabling it to walk using the knuckles in the same way as modern-day chimps. In a recent study, Tel Aviv University anthropologists determined that Lucy’s lower jaw bone is some kind of gorilla jaw bone. Other parts of the skeleton are just like the bones of knuckle-dragging, tree-climbing gorillas.  Yet creatively designed sculptures of Lucy appeared in tax-funded museums, and these sculptures are hoaxes, not following the obvious ape-like bone structures, but rather dishonestly presenting Lucy as if she had human-like bone structures.  This is an example of confirmation bias and presuppositions of evolutionists. Eventually, evolutionary researchers concluded that Lucy should no longer be considered man’s direct ancestor.

Ardi: The Ardi specimen is another example of fragmentary evidence based on reconstructions without a demonstrative mechanism of gradual mutational progression. Evolutionary archaeologists claim to understand how this creature walked (straight legged), what its diet consisted of (without evidence), and how such great changes “must have happened” toward the development of humans and chimpanzees.  However, to the contrary, other animal species that existed in Ardi’s day are still alive today with little to no change.

See Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong, (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing 2002), chapters 1-11; Jonathan Wells, Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution, (Seattle WA: Discovery Institute Press, 1^st edition, 2017), chapters 1-7; www.IconsofEvolution.com/; www.6000years.org/.

THE BOTTOM LINE ON THE INTELLIGENT (TELEOLOGICAL) DESIGN ARGUMENT

Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle initially opposed the Big Bang Theory because of the obvious implications of a fine tuner or designer. He later said, “A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982).

In other words, if the universe and life within the universe have complex design based on information, there must be an intelligent designer.