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Imagine walking in the desert and coming across two small stones in close proximity to each other. Most probably, you would think nothing of it. Two stones randomly sitting beside each other is no big deal. You continue your walk in the desert and stumble upon three rows of stones piled up in a brick-layer fashion. Chances are you would quickly surmise that someone was here and arranged these stones in this manner. It didn't just happen. You continue your walk and happen to find a watch lying in the middle of the desert. Would you suspect that a windstorm somehow threw these pieces together and randomly created a watch? Somebody made that watch. It didn't just happen. Design implies designer. DID THE UNIVERSE HAVE A DESIGNER? The intricacy of design in our world is staggering -- infinitely more complex than a simple brick wall or a watch. Dr. Michael Denton, in his book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" describes the intricate organization of nerve cells in the brain [pp. 330 - 331]. There are 10 billion nerve cells in the brain. Each of the 10 billion cells sprouts between 10,000 to 100,000 fibers to contact other nerve cells in the brain, creating approximately 1,000 million million connections, or, 10 to the 15th power.
It is hard to imagine the multitude that 1015 represents. Take half of the United States, which is 1 million square miles, and imagine it being covered by forest, with 10,000 trees per square mile. On each of the 10,000 trees, which are on each of the one million square miles, there are 100,000 leaves. That's how many connections are crammed inside your brain. And they're not just haphazardly thrown together. They form an incredibly intricate network system that has no parallel in the industrial world. Imagine walking by that in the desert! The natural response when perceiving design of such mind-boggling complexity is to conclude that there must be a designer behind everything who created it. None of this just happened. RANDOM WRITING SAMPLE Rabbeinu Bachya, in his major philosophical work "The Duties of the Heart" [10th century] presents this argument in the following manner:
The two most common objections to this argument go as follows:
Let's address these two objections. ADDRESSING ARGUMENT NUMBER ONE The principle "design implies designer" applies across the board, whether the designer is a Bedouin nomad piling rocks in the desert or the Infinite Source of all existence. Intellectually it is the same logical process. In fact, there is more reason to assume a designer in the latter case since the level of design is much higher. Simplicity is not an inherent fault in an argument. Perhaps the reason why some people take issue with this application of logic is due to the accompanying consequences.
Since the Bedouin doesn't make any moral demands on our life, there is no resistance to drawing the logical conclusion that someone designed that rock formation. But when the conclusion points to God, cognitive dissonance kicks in, creating an instinctive opposition to what one perceives to be threatening. [See the previous article in this series: "Seeing the Elephant" When the interference of cognitive dissonance is removed, what is the objective standard of design that we need to see in order to conclude something was created? What we need is a control experiment that determines this threshold of design in a case that has no threatening consequences. "The Obvious Proof", a book by Gershon Robinson and Mordechai Steinman, delivers a compelling presentation of the design argument, and describes such a control experiment involving millions of people concluding the necessity of a designer. The laboratory consisted of theaters across the globe that showed the film "2001: A Space Odyssey." In the film, American scientists living in a colony on the moon discover during a dig the first evidence that intelligent life exists on other planets. What did they find? A simple monolith -- a smooth, rectangular slab of rock. The Americans keep this significant discovery secret, afraid of the widespread culture shock and social ramifications this would have without proper preparation. Thousands of film critics and millions of moviegoers went along with the film's basic assertion, agreeing that intelligent creatures other than man must have created this smooth, rectangular monolith. It didn't just randomly appear. Free from all emotional and intellectual bias, in the comfort of darkened theaters with popcorn in hand, people unanimously agreed that a simple, smooth slab with a few right angles was conclusive proof of intelligence. When the conclusion does not point to God, everyone realizes that the simplest object can serve as the threshold of design, the point at which one concludes an object could not have come into existence by random accident. The universe, infinitely more complex than a monolith, had to have been created. WHAT ABOUT RANDOM EVOLUTION? Given enough tries over a long period of time, isn't it possible for complex structures to emerge randomly? After all, with sufficient trials even improbable events eventually become likely. Robert Shapiro, a professor of chemistry at New York University, uses a national lottery to illustrate this point ["Origins", Bantam, p.121]. The odds of winning the lottery may be 10 million to one. Winning would be incredibly lucky. But if we were to buy a lottery ticket every day for the next thirty thousand years, a win would become probable, (albeit very expensive). But what are the odds of life coming about by sheer chance? Let's take a look at two examples to get a sense of the odds involved in random evolution. Physicist Stephen Hawking, writes in his book "A Brief History of Time":
Well could it be? In response to Hawking, Dr. Gerald Schroeder, a physicist, calculated the odds of monkeys randomly typing an average Shakespearean Sonnet in his book "Genesis and the Big Bang." He chose the one that opens, "Shall I compare you to a summer's day?"
Robert Shapiro cites Nobel laureate Sir Fred Hoyle's calculation of the odds of a bacterium spontaneously generating [p.127]. At first Hoyle and his colleague, N. C. Wickramasinghe, endorsed spontaneous generation, but reversed their position once they calculated the odds.
A typical bacterium, which is the simplest of cells, is made up of 2,000 enzymes. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe took the probability of randomly assembling one enzyme and multiplied that number by itself 2,000 times to calculate the odds of a single bacterium randomly coming together. Those odds are 1 in 1040,000. Hoyle said the likelihood of this happening is comparable to the chance that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." These are the odds of just a single, simple cell, without which evolution cannot even get started. Never mind the odds of more advanced compounds like an organ or all the enzymes in a human being. Shapiro writes:
For all intents and purposes, an event with the probability of 1 in 1040,000 qualifies in real-world terms as impossible. SOME THINGS ARE IMPOSSIBLE Imagine you are the presiding judge over a murder trial. Ballistic tests match perfectly with a gun found in the possession of the accused. The odds of another gun firing the bullet that killed the victim are let's say one in a billion. The defendant claims that it is a sheer fluke that his gun happens to match the ballistics tests and that there must be another gun out there that is the real murder weapon. "After all," he says, "it is a possibility." The defendant's fingerprints are found all over the victim's body. He claims there must be another person out there who happens to have astonishingly similar fingerprints. Again, it is possible. There are also eyewitnesses who testify to seeing a man gunning down the victim who looks just like the defendant. The defendant claims there must be another person out there in this big world who looks just like him, and that man is the real murderer. After all -- it's not impossible. You are the judge, and you need to make a decision. What do you decide? In the pragmatic world of decision-making, odds this high are called impossible. One needs to weigh the evidence and come to the most reasonable conclusion. Does the universe have a Creator? Look at the design, look at the odds and look honestly within. Where does the more rational conclusion lie? For further exploration: www.2001principle
Published: Sunday, June 11, 2000
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Objections and praise for this article.
Speaking for all the atheists and skeptics in my class, there are certain errors I would like to point out; firstly, are inkblots really a valid comparison to the universe? Owing to several factors such as the quantity of ink, the velocity and height with which it is poured, and the vessel within which it is contained beforehand, it is nigh impossible that an inkblot will form even the basic letter "F", let alone a coherent (or correctly spelt) word.
Secondly, your understanding of the theory of evolution is flawed. In this article, it is assumed that evolution might have a particular "goal" in mind- i.e. life. However, evolution is not a conscious process, and has no intention. Say, we have forty (six-sided) dice. The probability that they all display the same number simultaneously after a throw is something like ten to the power of twenty-nine. If we throw the dice all at once then we should come up with a fairly random sequence, e.g. 4,2,5,2,3,1,4,6,etc. But this random sequence will have been just as unlikely as if we had got forty sixes. Thus it is with genes, deoxiribose nucleic acid (DNA) and so on. I could put more but my dinner is getting cold.
Other than these (debatable) errors, I must congratulate Rabbi Coopersmith on a fully intellectual and riveting article. An interesting insight into Judaism. Thank You!
(2) leo 2/2/2005
The question is half the answer
to the anonymous writer of 5/23/04:
Questions are good. Judaism, perhaps more than any other religion, appreciates questioning. However, questions are only half the process; getting answers is the other half!
All the questions you raised have been discussed for centuries and there could very well be entire books written on the topics!
So, if the only reason you don't believe in an active G-d is because of those questions, then you're basically 5 hours (which is the max of how long I think a discussion with a competent rabbi about these questions should take)away from Judaism.
If you can, visit aish. it's really an incredible experience and I'm sure the rabbis will be able to speak with you about any question you may have.
=======
and to bill,
good friend,
firstly, rocks are not complex. at least not by the definition in which articles like this one define complexity. A rock can -- and does -- form on its own. it's easily understood.
secondly, the "comparison" perspective doesn't seem logical. why should the fact that you've seen a similar object that's man-made prove that other ones are too? (perhaps it could be a mental shortcut, but it wouldn't be strong enough in and of itself to deny someone who claimed that his webpage just "happened to come together".)
Also, in William Paley's original argument {which was required reading for entering Cambridge University} he writes that "even if one didn't know what a watch was, still, the design would be apparant and the finder would conclude that it was not merely an accident."
Perhaps to make a modern example: Someone who's never seen a computer in his life will definitely conclude that it was designed, even though he has no comparison to it.)
And think of this: what of an ink-blot test? has anyone, in the process of making an inkblot, accidentally formed a page with letters? or that make up words? or which make up sentences? or a poem? written in stunning caligraphy?! No.
But, if someone showed you a stunning poem on paper, and told you that it was actually an odd ink-blot -- you would not believe him! Why? is it because you've seen other poems and they were written intentionally? But if so, that wouldn't negate the possibility that this poem was an accident. Hey, it *could* happen. The answer is that the chances of it happening are so, so, minute that no rational person would believe it.
The same here. The only difference is that the world is much more complex than a fancy poem on paper.
all the best
(3) Anonymous 5/23/2004
Re: Did the Universe Have a Designer?
I have been an Agnostic most of my life and I would really love to believe there is a God, but I don't think there really is, atleast not one who hears our prayers and answers them. Maybe there was a Creator, but I think that is where it stops. My feelings are that whenever you ask "who created God?", the answers usually are either he created himself, or he "always existed", therefore, why can't people believe that the Universe created itself, or always existed?
I know there is a balance in nature, something we call "mother nature", but how can anyone believe that there is a being who sees us and hears us when such things as the Holocaust are allowed to happen?
And has anyone alive today seen an actual miracle in their lifetime that can't also be described as a coincidence? If there is a God, why won't He speak to us as He was reported to do in the distant past? Has He died and no longer exists?