GALLERY
Here is a collection of some very special features of the natural world.
Some of them are well-known – others may be new to you. All of them show every evidence of having been designed. All of them defy the efforts to explain them by the chance, unintelligent process of evolution.
All of them pose the important question: is there a supreme designer and creator?
Are we ourselves the product of His great work of creation?
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The accidental gearwheel
Over the years, the watch has often come to represent what we mean by design: the clear sense of purpose, the cordination of a number of seperate parts working together, precision and accuracy and so on.
In a famous book written in 1802, William Paley put forward a number of examples from the natural world that seemed to him to show exactly these same features that we associate with design. This suggested to him that there was an all-powerful designer at work in the natural world. Many have dismissed his argument, but it refuses to go away.
What Paley could never have anticipated was the discovery that nature too has its watch-like cogwheels. In 2013 scientists investigating a small beetle called a planthopper discovered that the movement of its back legs was synchronised by a pair of perfectly formed gearwheels!
So, big question: could the process described as evolution ever produce such a precision formed mechanism, or is some other agency at work?
The accidental brain
The most complex piece of matter in the whole universe – that is how the brain has been described. Not surprisingly there is still a lot we do not know about it. What we do know is that a single brain rivals the whole of the world wide web in its complexity and interconnectivity.
Our modern experience with computers has taught us the skills needed to design and construct them and the demands of the operating systems required to control them. Most people understand that the brain is largely composed of a huge collection of neurones, a highly specialised cell that behaves very much like a micro computer – taking in signals, treating them, rerouting them and sending them on to a precise location in an inconceivably vast network.
Is it really believable that such an astonishing 'supercomputer' emerged by accident out of the chaos of the 'Big Bang?' More worrying perhaps, if it is just an accident, why should we rely on its conclusions on just about anything?
ktsdesign/shutterstoc
The pride of the peacock
The peacock gave Charles Darwin a headache. Its flamboyant and spectacular display didn't quite seem to fit his 'survival of the fittest' scenario.
There are no pigments involved – the irridescent colours are the result of the physics of light itself. The different colours of the spectrum result from the diffraction of white light through the microscopically thin layers that coat the birds feathers. This same technology appears in many other creatures unrelated to the peacock, in butterflies and elsewhere.
And as for the geometrical precision and symmetry of the displayed pattern, where did that come from?
Darwin was right to be worried.
That old monkey business
You have probably heard the story:
If you have lots of monkeys, all typing away on typewriters (or ipads), given long enough they will produce the complete Works of Shakespeare entirely by accident. It may be a comforting thought if you're worried about how some of the very complicated things in nature might appear by chance.
But it is also wrong – completely, utterly wrong.
Test the maths for yourself.
Your junk appendix
You are not alone.
Your travelling companions as you journey through life are forty million microbes, some on the skin, but most inside, particularly in your digestive tract.
Most of them are ‘good’, beneficial bacteria which are in fact essential for life. But something less than 1% are bad and can make you very ill. When one of these gets out of control (like streptococcus or clostridium), the body has a strong and effective response The intestines are flooded with water and the contents flushed out in what we experience as an unpleasant bout of diarrhoea. This is highly effective but also quite drastic – the ‘good’ bacteria are flushed away as well as the bad.
GuidoVrola/istock
This is when your much maligned appendix come into its own.
The Goldilocks planet
“Who’s been sleeping in my bed?”
The story of Goldilocks and the three bears is one that many will remember from early childhood – the story of the golden-haired little girl who discovers and then explores the home of three bears in the forest.
But how did our earth become known as the Goldilocks Planet? How is it that such an utterly improbable fairystory should come to feature in the scientific debate of the 21st Century?
Good question!
A long way to swallow
For many people the giraffe seems to epitomise the story of evolution – an animal that survived only because it evolved an extra long neck so it could browse the leaves of the highest trees.
What could be simpler?
It turns out the story is not quite as simple as it seems. One of the foremost evolutionists of our times has dismissed it as a fairy tale. He says it is indefensible, 'entirely speculative', 'weak and foolish' and 'basically rather silly' (Stephen J Gould). Others are looking for alternative explanations for the distinctive features of this amazing animal.
So what's the problem? Let's look a bit closer.
Pablo Vivaracho Hernandez/ istock
Take a deep breath
‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living being.‘ Genesis 2.7
This supposed account of creation from the book of Genesis could hardly be more different to the currently accepted narrative of evolution. Today we are told that when we breathe, the apparatus we use is simply the result of several billion years of unguided accidental change.
Can the evolutionary story explain the mechanism of breathing that Genesis describes here, and which we now know so much about?
PonyWang/ istock
You are exceptional
The apes are our nearest relatives, according to popular evolutionary mythology.
The Genesis creation story is very different. Humans are a special creation, with special characteristics and abilities that reflect those of the Creator.
Which story stands up to examination?
Does our behaviour as human beings reflect our origins?
Can we aspire to anything better?
cheekylorns/ istock
Gravity and fine -tuning
anton burakov/ shutterstock
The story is well known, and Isaac Newton himself seems to have confirmed the main part of it. He was in the orchard of his home at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, England, when the fall of an apple from one of the trees set him thinking. The apple probably didn’t fall on his head, neither was he asleep under the tree at the time – in fact he was obviously very much awake!
Over the next 20 years he developed and refined his theory of gravity until it was published in 1687. It has stood the test of time.
But one remarkable thing has since come to light. The exact strength of the force of gravity is absolutely critical to the existence of the universe and our place in it.
And it is not the only force that has to be exactly right in this way....
Darwin and the whale
A great blue whale throws its nearly 200 tons out of the sea, in what looks like a celebration of pure power and joy!
Darwin suggested the whale was originally a small land animal like a bear, which evolved as a mammal on land, and then migrated into the sea.
Some transformation!
Does the story stand up to examination?
BrettAtkins/istock
Ladybird, ladybird...
English Nursery Rhyme
Protasov AN/ shutterstock
As somebody who grew up soon after the war years in England, I was very familiar with the logo of Ladybird books, a wide range of small hardback books for children.
But when you watched the actual insect, you became aware that its bright red body concealed two large wings that seemed far too large to fit inside. What was the secret?
In 2017 some Japanese scientists set to work to find out what was going on. As a result they found an astonishing piece of design which they called 'origami', after the Japanese art of paper-folding.
The case for the Creator
This famous ‘Time’ magazine headline in April 1966 captured the spirit of the times, and its scepticism still prevails. God does not feature in the lives of most people today.
But times are changing.
Since the turn of the century an important series of publications have challenged the prevailing view, among them ‘Return of the God Hypothesis’ by Stephen Meyer (2021) and most recently ‘Is Atheism dead’ by Eric Metaxas, (2021). They expand on some of the arguments for the existence of God, all of them springing from scientific and historical developments over the last century or so. The claim that ‘science’ has dispensed with the need for a Creator does not stand up to investigation.
Here in the briefest of summaries are seven arguments that demand an intelligent, almighty designer and originator.
Time.com
The perfect copy
Our ability to copy just about anything with the press of a button is an astonishing feature of modern technology. It's now so routine that we take it for granted, but it is revolutionary – the armies of scribes, copyists, monks, typists and duplicators all consigned to history.
Something else we take for granted are the incredible copying techniques used in the human cell to support our existence from moment to moment. This amazing technology, far superior to anything we have produced, is supposed to be an accident of 'nature'.
What do you think?
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Intelligence and purpose in the natural world
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