Intelligent Design - Artificial and/or Natural?

Intelligent Design (ID) is a movement that advocates the idea that the universe is designed and not the product of purely material and naturalistic processes. Much of Intelligent Design argumentation has to do with attempting to demonstrate biological structures that ostensibly could not have been created through natural processes. The proponents of Intelligent Design seek to discover life forms and features that go beyond the limits of evolutionary explanations.

“The theory of Intelligent Design holds that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” Intelligentdesign.org

What are some of those structures? A very famous example is the bacterial flagellum, which is a tail-like protrusion that, by its motion, propels the bacterial cell. In other words, it has an outboard motor that allows it to swim. This flagellum is said to be so complex that it could not have formed naturally. It cannot be reverse-engineered, so it must have been designed. One proponent of Intelligent Design, Michael Behe, has used the analogy of the mousetrap, which consists of several interlocking parts. Supposedly, all these parts must be present for the device to work. If one or more parts are removed, the function will no longer be present. This mousetrap is compared to a living being or a biochemical structure. If it had evolved piece by piece, what would it have been good for until it could perform its function? It is argued that many chemical structures must have been created simultaneously because the individual parts are i nterdependent. If even one molecular part were to be removed, the structure could no longer function properly.

At the heart of this debate are theism and deism. Does design need to involve God's interaction with the universe? Does God act exclusively via the laws of nature or supernaturally, deliberately overriding and intervening in the laws of nature?

According to the proponents of ID, the universe is inherently designed: the laws of nature are fine-tuned for life. God differentiated the infinitely dense matter at the Big Bang. He added to the universe the physical laws that were necessary for the emergence of life. There is also an artificial design. This type of design is inserted directly into the world. More specifically, artificial design was, in their view, added to lifeforms and their internal structures and systems billions of years after the Big Bang.

When we think of a design, we think of a person who deliberately draws plans and implements them in real life. The dictionary definition of “design” is a plan or drawing produced to show the appearance and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is made." A design can be a plan, scheme, template, or blueprint – a set of instructions for the final product to build and sustain itself. It could also mean an initial specification for how a machine will operate. A machine is first designed by an engineer. When it is finished and carrying out its function, it is acting on its innate design. A design might manifest itself in an assembly line robot that assembles a part of a car, for instance. The design is something that is innate to the machine without anyone consciously controlling it.

Another way to describe this design would be to compare it to a seed. A seed contains, in the form of its DNA, the information that the tree needs to grow t o its full size and develop branches and leaves. In a sense, one could say that a seed contains a blueprint for the tree. It determines the characteristics of the mature tree, such as its species, size, and shape. The blueprint is a kind of pre-programming of the universe.

This first kind of design could be called “natural design”. It is in contrast to the artificial design. Artificial means "things that are made or manufactured as opposed to occurring naturally". It usually refers to a man-made or manufactured object, typically one of cultural or historical interest. Adherents of ID compare chemical structures allegedly created by the Intelligent Designer to man-made objects. The famous analogy in discussions of design is, of course, the watchmaker analogy. In this analogy, the universe (or various objects in it) is like a watch that has a maker (God), and is thus artificial. The father of this analogy is the Christian philosopher William Paley (1743 – 1805). He gave one of the most famous explanations of it in his book, Natural Theology:

 

"Anyone finding a pocket watch in a field will recognize that it was designed intelligently; living beings are similarly complex and must be the work of an intelligent designer".

He continues by saying:

“The watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some t ime, and at some place or order an artificer or artificers who formed it.”

In Paley’s famous example, a man walking through the countryside comes across a watch that no one would believe came into being on its own. According to Paley, if we found a watch in a field, we would assume it was constructed, since it is impossible for it to have been created by natural processes. A watch is a highly complex device that is clearly designed and intentionally built by an intelligent creator with a specific purpose in mind. A watch cannot simply appear from pieces of metal a nd glass alone. To make a watch, a watchmaker must work with the materials. As another example, he cites the intricacies of the eye and hand. In his view, they could never have evolved on their own in response to the blind forces of nature.

Unlike natural objects like mountains and rocks, man-made objects are clear evidence of the contrivance of parts. They are artifacts. The term “artifact” could be defined as a thing that owes its physical characteristics or place in time and space to human activity. However, the term can also be applied to other beings as well, such as an immaterial Intelligent Designer. This being is supposedly rational and conscious, like humans. Supposedly, artificial objects could be the result of the actions of other conscious beings, such as aliens, angels, spirits, or gods.

ID proponents believe that there is artificial design. This is something that is implanted in the universe, or more precisely, in life, through conscious and intentional activity. Artificial design presupposes that natural design already exists. Artificial design means taking certain materials, changing them, or guiding them toward a specific purpose. For example, Bible-believing Christians believe that man was artificially made from the dust of the earth, and woman, from the man’s rib. Most creationists accept microevolution as part of the natural design of the universe. However, macroevolution on a larger scale is not. It must be artificially implanted in life forms. This means that the Intelligent Designer must change the processes of life. He must intervene to bring about macroevolution. This agent manually creates complex chemical structures and new species and accelerates evolution at times.

Also, much of the formation of components, or building blocks of life, such as amino acids, phospholipids, and RNA must have occurred naturally. Many of these building blocks are found in space today, and they probably arrived on our planet on comets or asteroids. However, most ID proponents and creationists reject the idea that life itself could arise naturally. Artificial design must have occurred using pre-existing building blocks that formed naturally to begin with.

Artificial design could mean something like what a gardener does to a tree. He guides its growth by trimming and pruning it to make it look good, fit in with its surroundings, and stay in good health. He manipu lates by hand the natural structure of the tree. He has a separate design in mind that he wants to impose on the plant.

One could make another important distinction by using the terms “automatic” and “manual”, as well. The universe creates its structures automatically and spontaneously. Creationists and proponents of ID often argue that there is an innate, natural design in the universe. The universe has natural laws, which are said to be “fine-tuned”, that automatically shape and maintain it. It organizes itself, for example, by creating new stars and planets that condense from molecular clouds. However, proponents of ID claim that the structures of life have required the manual and deliberate efforts of a designing agent.

Thus, there are two contradictory ways to describe design. One, nature's self-organization, is applied to cosmos on the whole. The other, artificial design, is applied to life and it's emergence and diversification from non-living components. Read more about in my book Shoehorning God. 

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." If God created the solar system artificially, then why are there countless asteroids and comets circling around in it? One creationist claimed that God placed asteroids and comets in the solar system to teach us humbleness. So, it just seems that it formed in a process that took millions of years. Do you find that believable?