IDers seem to be making a lot of hay about the apparent evidence of design in the universe these days. From the ‘fine tuned cosmological balances’ which, if altered even infinitesimally (or so we’re informed), would result in a universe inhospitable to life, to the mind-boggling ‘fact’ that bananas just happen to perfectly fit our hands and mouths (chuckle...puts a new spin on masturbation, as well as...well, you know), it seems that proof of God’s handiwork is simply EVERYWHERE, if only we weren’t so stubborn as not to recognize it. The argument is usually put forth in the form of an analogy...
“When we see a modern skyscraper, or a painting, or an intricate piece of machinery, we immediately assume a designer behind them. Or, whilst walking along the sandy shore we should discover a pocketwatch, we know it’s origin is one of man’s invention, and that it’s not simply a part of the natural background. Along these same lines, when we see the incredible intricacy built into existence, especially in such complex systems as the human brain, or in the labyrinthine structure of DNA- things which are far more complicated than anything man is able to design or build- isn’t it reasonable to assume a Grand Designer behind the whole thing?”
This is a bad argument for a couple of reasons. First of all, we usually recognize manmade artifacts because we are familiar with other manmade artifacts, and can generally make comparisons fairly easily, through personal experience. This isn’t always the case, however. For instance, man can also design something that blends in with the surrounding environment, such as a false reef, or artificial trees. The less incongruous the artifact is with it’s environment, the less likely we are to recognize it for what it is. What’s even more amusing is the deep irony in the analogy’s basic premise, in that we recognize design precisely because it stands apart from nature’s ‘non-design’, when it is nature’s design which theists are trying to prove in the first place.
Beyond these cursory arguments, however, lies a deeper flaw in basic reasoning. It’s a mistake we’re all guilty of, not just theists. As supposed individual ‘egos’, we all tend to see ourselves as agents standing outside of, or apart from, our environment, so as to manipulate that environment in ways of our own choosing. Part of the illusion of ‘self’ is to see ‘one’s self’ as an autonomous agent moving through the world, changing things according to our individual or collective wills. It’s ‘consciousness’ over here, manifesting the emergent properties of our minds over there. No wonder, then, that we should posit a Universal Overmind standing apart from It’s ‘creation’ in much the same way that a sculptor steps back to look in admiration upon his own handiwork. However, none of this seems to be the way existence actually operates.
From a naturalistic point of view, so-called design, at any level you choose, is simply the natural culmination of what’s gone before, and depends solely upon where you’ve chosen to draw the line between the designer, and the designed. Here’s an analogy: stand up one domino on edge. Next to it, stand up 2 more. Next to them, stand up 4 more. Continue the process on out to, say, a Billion dominoes. Next, veil your perception of the field of dominoes somehow, so that all you can see are the first domino, and the very last line of dominoes. Finally, tap over the first domino, and voila! Somehow, magically, one little domino has moved many, many dominoes! But only because your perception was restricted to a very limited view of what was actually happening, and skipped most of the steps in-between.
What we see as design is actually no more than pattern recognition within the flux of the ever-changing universe. We are as much a part of that flux as anything we supposedly ‘create’. In fact, there is an unbroken connection between everything across both time and space, to the extent that biologists are now beginning to recognize things like habitat as an actual extension of the organism itself (apologies for not providing links to this idea, but for the life of me I can’t recall where they are right now). In light of what we now know, it could be no other way. Physically, nothing really stands apart from anything else. Everything IS one, not in the new-agey sense, perhaps, but the fact of the matter is that everything is merely a cloud of quantum interactions, clumping into various patterns and thicknesses here and there. Nothing about us is solid from moment to moment. We are what we eat, and we eat what we are.
In this sense, we have two options vis-a-vis design. On one hand, we can say that everything is designed, if design is defined as pattern. However, unlike the theistic view (or the ‘little theistic’ view as pertains to us seeing ourselves as designers), all design comes from the ‘inside’ i.e. design is an emergent property of existence-as-a-whole in flux. It is spontaneous, unguided creation from moment to moment...the dance of the universe.
On the other hand, we COULD do away with the concept of design altogether. Stuff simply happens, from abiogenesis to volcanoes to viruses to Rolex watches; and, most importantly, all the stuff in-between those things, which lead up to those things, and in fact are all part of those things. The important thing to recognize is that there are no sharp edges between one thing and the next, other than those invested upon existence by the limitedness of our perceptions. Perhaps not a dance, then, but more of a universal cataleptic seizure, if you will (or perhaps it's dancing on one foot...catalectic hip-hop...UNIverse...LOL!) The unpoetic version of all-there-is. Actually, we’re bound to see things from both perspectives, since from an evolutionary perspective we are bound to patterns. That is to say, we are patterns within patterns, surrounded by patterns, infused by other patterns, which in turn binds us to the illusion of patterns.
Get it? Good.
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