When 'Non-Random' Chance meets Human Design

Richard Dawkins, one of the West’s most prolific and outspoken atheists, is known for his assertion that evolution, despite its lack of outside providential assistance, is not a random act. Dawkins’ pronounces that Darwinian natural selection is a highly ‘non-random process.’ But this highly non-random process is still not in itself specifically designed. While mankind has the capacity to design and create, the universe merely unfolds, and each new stage in the evolutionary process builds in minute incremental complexity. So man, as he has evolved in complexity, can now intelligently design, but the universe, and certainly God, cannot. His statements retain some merit, provided they remain fixed inside an ideological vacuum. But when these two realms (the supposedly non-creative [the universe] and the creative [man]) mix, the combination of the two realms (evolution and human design) presents the height of illogicality.

A case in point was my appointment with the dentist the other week. Having an inlay placed on a chipped tooth, I had already spent approximately three hours and two previous visits prepping for the new insertion. No doubt, the dentist had spent additional hours developing the inlay mold. But as he finished the insertion process of his human-designed inlay, I could tell there was a problem. “It just doesn’t feel quite right,” I said. Like any skilled dentist would do, my dentist grabbed a micro filing tool, and for ten plus minutes he slowly filed down the inlay. Every two to three minutes or so, he would pause and ask me to give him a ‘yea,’ or ‘nay,’ based on his last few minutes of work. After about the sixth or seventh pause, I said to my dentist, “okay, that feels right again.” With that he set down his tool, did a brief bit of mild cleanup, thanked me for my time and I paid at the front counter and left.

But what is fascinating is that my dentist had to spend three plus hours and additional fifteen minutes carefully and intricately redesigning what had supposedly been produced without any supernatural design in the first place – so that it felt perfect once again. My discomfort was due to the fact that man in his evolved ability to create, could not design the smallest portion of tooth enamel to a tolerance level I didn’t even realize I had because the setting of my teeth (through Dawkins’ non-designed evolutionary process) had previously been perfect. My dentist had to expend energy and time minutely redesigning what Evolution could not have been designed in the first place. And this is just the smallest little nondescript lining on my teeth, what about the internal positioning of thousands of miles of arteries, the intricacies of my hair follicles, the mircotolerances of my cornea to my pupil – all things that you and I take for granted about our bodies, until something upsets that perfect design… I mean, upsets that ‘highly non-random yet non-intelligent’ process.

When non-creative evolution and creative man are blended in a situation such as my trip to the dentist, evolution breaks down. That which wasn’t designed must be carefully designed in order to re-operate properly. But to claim that nature is a non-intelligent development is also an insult to the human designer as well. Consider Michaelangelo’s David, played out from the “non-random yet non-intelligent” mindset. Once he had finished his ‘masterpiece’ (which in itself would have to be an oxymoron), those gathered around him would exclaim, ‘of all the evolved creative artists in the whole world, having spending decades of study and sweat to hone their proficiencies in design and artistry, you stand alone as the quintessential expert in best capturing the non-creative, non-designed human form (that you just designed!). And in his expertise as a designer, Michaelangelo merely captured two of the nine biological systems: the muscuoskeletal and the endocrine systems, and we herald him as a creative genius? Expert painters spend years honing their design proficiencies so they can best capture in two dimensional form what was not designed in its three dimensional form? Taking this thought to its most extreme, could we then say that the very best designers and artists on the planet are actually the least creative – because they best capture what could not have been designed creatively in the first place? And as we have evolved, we have further developed a positive evolutionary trait (creativity) that allows us to better capture and fabricate that which is not in itself creatively designed?

I don’t know what you think of when you go to the dentist, but these were my thoughts. The Bible states that “all of creation declares your glory.” We tend to read texts such as these in a vacuum, in the same way Dawkins makes his claims. But when the creative mixes with existence, we are only fooling ourselves, and in fact insulting ourselves, when we claim there is no Providential Design to our existence. Now please, don’t read into what I am not saying. This blog is not demeaning science, even evolutionary science. In fact, the Daniel Project’s most profound and pragmatic discoveries often arise out of the findings of evolutionary science. It is not meant to apologetically discredit Dawkins either. For many of his statements and questions are in themselves highly profound, and far more of an attack on the hypocrisy of the church, than on the Creator Himself. Nor am I attempting to saddle up to the tenets and champions of ID. I am merely pointing out gross inconsistencies that we somehow forget to ponder. As Sam Harris states, “I believe in conversation.” Well, it might be time to converse about this one.