It Is Still Designed!

DOES the struggle in the animal and human realm really rule out a Designer, a Creator? A close look at the matter will reveal that the answer is, No. The argument that design needs a Designer has not really been refuted.

Indeed, using the struggle in nature to disprove the existence of a Designer does not come to grips with the matter. To disprove the existence of a Designer requires more than passing a moral judgment on the use of the things designed.

Design Means a Designer

To illustrate: when you see jet aircraft, it may displease you to think that they can be made to transport atom bombs as well as passengers. However, regardless of their function, modern jet airplanes are very complex. They have highly sophisticated equipment, such as computers, navigation aids and powerful engines.

Would anyone say that jet planes are not the product of intelligent human design simply because they can be used to kill and destroy? Would anyone in his right mind suggest that, instead, they grew out of a heap of scrap metals by themselves?

Design is design, no matter what purpose it currently serves. The more complex the design and the more that all its many parts must work simultaneously, the more compelling the proof of an intelligent designer. Nothing in the whole of human experience contradicts this conclusion.

There is no reason to shy away from applying this principle to the animals that at present prey upon one another. Their teeth and claws were obviously designed. So were the hands and the brains of humans, which also can be turned to horrible use.

Consider how these organs come about. A single sex cell begins to multiply after conception and produces a cluster of copies of itself. These then begin to differentiate and produce only specialized cells and tissues. These may be as soft as the fur of an animal or as hard and razor sharp as its teeth and claws.

All of that is nothing less than exquisite design at work. Even those not inclined to credit a Designer for such workings use superlatives to describe them. For instance, Time magazine spoke of cell differentiation this way: “At a critical moment early in the life of an embryo, identical cells miraculously (no other word will do) begin to take on specialized roles​—some forming tissue for the heart, for example, others that of the liver or skin.” Do not such miracles bespeak the existence of the Miracle Worker or Designer?

We quickly admit a designer when we see a camera, a radio, a robot’s artificial hand, a water pump, a computer. These things obviously were the work of intelligent humans. By what logic, then, can it be claimed that similar, but infinitely more complex things​—the eye, ear, hand, heart, brain—​were not designed by someone of far greater intelligence?

The Problem

The problem Bertrand Russell raised about the Klan, or the Fascists, has nothing to do with the argument as to whether a Designer exists; rather, the problem has to do with the use of what was designed. With humans, free will comes into play, and this free will is itself a marvelous product of design. But why have humans so often used free will to do bad? And the animals, were they designed to kill and maim? Too, why has the Designer permitted all of this?

Really, the problem is not a question of whether a Designer exists; rather, it is a moral question. Man’s implanted sense of right and wrong is strong enough so that at times he is not satisfied by any explanation that does not address the questions of violence and killing and God’s permission of wickedness.

The next article will deal with the way things now work in nature in contradiction to God’s goodness. But, in the meantime, the design-equals-a-Designer argument stands unrefuted. As the book The Universe: Plan or Accident? observes:

“The recognition of design in nature is no ephemeral scientific conclusion based upon the researches of a decade or two in the history of science​—a conclusion which might at any time be reversed were a few new facts to come to light. Rather it is a conclusion which has stood the test of thousands of years; a conclusion so certain that if it should one day transpire that it was a gigantic mistake, man would have every ground for doubting whether valid conclusions of any kind can be reached by thinking.”

No, do not be afraid to trust your reasoning powers when they lead you to the same conclusion reached by the apostle Paul who said: “Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God.”​—Hebrews 3:4.

However, what of the killing and violence in nature? Could that be part of the design of a loving God?

[Blurb on page 8]

For thousands of years people have recognized the design in nature

[Picture on page 6]

While jet aircraft can be made to transport people or nuclear bombs, both types of aircraft are the products of intelligent design

[Pictures on page 7]

We acknowledge these as the products of intelligent human designers

Far more marvelous things had to be designed by a superior intelligence