Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
Some thoughts on inferring a designer

Some thoughts on inferring a designer

Last updated on: April 24, 2021 at 3:26 pm by Dan Peterson

Some thoughts on inferring a designer 2021-04-24T15:26:14-06:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

T-Rex, My Brother
Sosnowiec Tyrannosaurus sculpture, from the family picture album
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

***

But, first:

A few of my odd but obsessive anonymous critics will be unsurprised at my life-long interest in Tyrannosaurus rex; they’ll surely point out the almost embarrassingly obvious family resemblance between me and the dinosaur with regard to our character and temperament. Nonetheless, I press forward. This latest find, if it’s being properly interpreted as showing Tyrannosaur gregariousness — my giant lizard spiritual cousins apparently didn’t practice social distancing — may make my otherwise implausible claims to have actual friendships and genuine social interactions somewhat less difficult to believe:

“Was T. rex a lone wolf or social eater? New research at dig site offers surprising answer: Rainbows & Unicorns site in southern Utah reveals sophisticated family units”

For more on the Rainbows and Unicorns Quarry, see here.

There is an enduring mystery here, though: I’ve been reliably informed by anonymous total strangers that I’m a young-earth creationist who believes this planet to be no more than a few thousand years old, and I certainly can’t doubt what they say. And yet I’ve always accepted the evidence for dinosaurs living in the Mesozoic Era from about 245 million to roughly 66 million years ago. I don’t know how to reconcile these seemingly incompatible facts about myself. Yet one of them comes from direct personal knowledge and the other comes from sources who would surely never, ever, lie about me.

***

Incidentally, just to continue with the pretense that I have actual friends, a pair of them took me and my wife out to Valter’s Osteria Tuesday evening. I had never even heard of the place before, let alone eaten there. But wow. It was a really enjoyable reminder of how remarkably good very good food can be. One of the best meals I’ve ever had, I think.

***

And, by the way, the meal that we had was designed and intentionally created. It didn’t arise by chance. With that in mind, I now share a few notes that I’ve extracted from a prior reading of Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999):

I have the impression from reading popular literature dealing with the early alleged “cosmic soup”, from which life is supposed to have developed, that the writers and their readers feel that the soup was a random and rather homogeneous mixture. On the contrary, Stanley Jaki tells us that, in the succession of stages through which the expanding cosmos developed, baffling asymmetries occurred. “Discovery of some anomaly in the decay of the K2 mesons led for instance to the recognition that ten billion and one protons had to be on hand for every ten billion anti-protons if the present preponderance of ordinary matter in the universe is to be accounted for.”

Yet the uniformity in all directions of the background radiation from the first moment, a cold afterglow still bathing the entire universe, “had to be set up by astoundingly uniform initial conditions in the Big Bang. If the radiation”, observes astronautical engineer Eugene Mallove, “were not highly uniform. (217), for various reasons the temperature of space would now be intolerably high and the universe could not support chemically organized life.” (217)

Not personally pretending to relevant scientific expertise, I would love to hear from people who know whether the statements above are still (or ever were) accurate.

Mallove has set down three more traits. One is that atoms be bound together just exactly as they are bound, neither more nor less tightly. Another is that stars burn precisely at the rate that they do, slowly consuming themselves over billions of years. A third is that space and time expand at exactly the rate that they do, neither more nor less slowly. Scientists find these exactitudes astonishing because “our universe is set up to do three very unusual things: foster the complexity epitomized by life, permit highly complex objects to stay intact over long periods of time and yet allow for gradual change that can lead to even greater complexity.” He concludes that no matter how we might try to imagine more simple possible universes, in almost any of these “the odds for the development of anything as complicated as life — no matter how you imagine it — would be nil.” More reasons to kneel. (218)

Our final example occurs deep within the roaring nuclear infernos we call stars. In them are manufactured the heavy elements absolutely indispensable for our human bodies to work. McCabe puts the matter well. Human life could not have happened except “for the occurrence of thermo-nuclear synthesis in the stars to build up heavy elements necessary for the correct functioning of our protein structure. For example, the metal zinc is an essential component of one of our digestive enzymes: so also iron for the formation of haemoglobin. Modern bio-chemistry demonstrates the enormous complexity of what used to be called ‘the simple cell’ and how extraordinarily critical are the conditions necessary for the correct functioning of an enzyme inside a cell which may contain as many as 2,000 different enzymes.” The reader will notice here how the macrocosm is marvelously and causally connected with the microcosm, while both are indispensable for what we have called the midicosm, the realm in which I at this moment write this sentence and you read it at another moment. All this is more stunning and compelling evidence of an original plan of most elegant beauty. (218-219)

When we ponder the history and the present state of our universe, “one cosmic specificity leading to another, and in staggeringly exact and specific quantitative terms”, we easily understand why cell biologist E. J. Ambrose “sees with wonder a mastering intelligence at work”. Henry Margenau, associate of Einstein and Heisenberg, called the anthropic principle “absolutely convincing” evidence of a Creator, and astronomer Robert Jastrow has declared that it is “the most theistic result ever to come out of science.” (220)

Dubay quotes the late biochemist Lewis Thomas:

I cannot make my peace with the randomness doctrine: I cannot abide the notion of purposelessness and blind chance in nature. . . . It is absurd to say that a place like this place is absurd, when it contains, in front of our eyes, so many millions of different forms of life, each one in its way absolutely perfect. (cited on page 200)

He also cites the physicist Henry Pierce Stapp, of the University of California at Berkeley:

[E]verything we know about nature is in accord with the idea that the fundamental processes of nature lie outside space-time but generate events that can be located in space-time. (cited on page 200)

And the illustrious twentieth-century physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg:

If from the indubitable fact that the world exists, someone wants to infer a cause of this existence, his inference does not contradict our scientific knowledge at any point. No scientist has at his disposal even a single argument or any kind of fact with which he could oppose such an assumption. This is true, even if the cause — and how could it be otherwise — obviously has to be sought outside this three-dimensional world of ours.” (cited on pages 200-201)

And, to conclude for this blog entry, he also cites the biochemist Michael Behe:

The observation of design flows completely from the observations of science. It’s not deduced from going into a sacred book and seeing what is written there. (cited on page 201)

Universal Design Intuition

Valter's

Valter's Osteria

Previous Post

April 19, 2021

Growing Up as Hugh Nibley

Next Post

April 22, 2021 Derek Chauvin and I

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What covered the sky during Jesus’ crucifixion?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Clouds Fire Rain Darkness