No amount of small, blind, and gradual changes to the steam engine could ever have produced the internal combustion engine. To get to that fundamentally new type of engine, an infusion of new information was required. That analogy can be applied to the origin of biological life, too. The spectacular order, complexity, and design we see in life could not have been achieved gradually by a process that lacked foresight. On a new episode of ID the Future, I welcome mathematician Granville Sewell to the podcast to share some of his compelling arguments for intelligent design.
Only Intelligent Design
Sewell brings to bear more than four decades of experience in mathematics and software development to draw compelling analogies between the development of complex life and human engineering. He explains that both feature large jumps where major new features appear, indicative of deliberate planning rather than gradual, incremental steps. He also discusses how the ubiquity of convergence in biology -- where similar complex features arise independently -- strongly implies common design instead of common descent. Sewell contends that Darwinian evolution, which must proceed through numerous slight modifications, cannot explain the development of new organs or systems. Gradual change is impossible, because major innovations require passing through initial useless stages that would not be selected for function. Only intelligent design, which can look ahead, could guide the development of features that are useless until almost perfect.
The Laws of Nature
Another powerful argument Sewell makes for design in nature is based on the laws of nature. The belief that life arose without intelligence implies that the unintelligent forces of physics alone could rearrange fundamental particles into objects like computers, jet airplanes, and smartphones. He argues that while the Earth is an open system receiving energy from the sun, the extreme improbability of order increasing from disorder persists unless something enters the system that makes the increase not extremely improbable. It's widely known that natural processes tend to turn order into disorder. So why would proponents of Darwinian evolution be prepared to believe that natural selection is the one unintelligent process in the universe that can reverse that rule to create spectacular order out of disorder?
We might think that mathematicians are focused on incredibly complex ideas and equations, far above the everyday thoughts of the rest of us. But as Sewell points out, mathematicians are trained to value simplicity, and complex problems can often be solved in simple ways. Sewell's straightforward yet profound arguments for intelligent design are worth memorizing and sharing with your friends, family, and associates.