I learned something new about so called Intelligent Design (ID) today. While understanding that, according to the creationists, I am to see the world, nay, the universe as a vast and complex machinery to which I am to intuitively posit (and subsequently – and dutifully – philosophize) a Master Machine Maker.

Yet I am also required, should dogma dictate it, to ignore this impulse to postulate a Grand Designer should the edicts of scripture require it to preserve the very theology we are told intelligent design bolsters in the first place.

This new twist, or rather, u-turn in regard to ID thinking has come to my awareness through this informative NightLine: Faith Matters episode on BC (Biblically Correct) Tours:

I was particularly struck by this quote uttered by Bill Jack:

“If this creature was designed to eat meat from the very start what would he have to do until Adam and Eve sinned and death entered the world? Fast and pray for the fall? Is that likely? No. Try that with me. No.”

If it were not for the fact that he’s speaking to children I would have hurt myself laughing. But that he is spoon feeding these kids (and to be sure, having them obediently repeat and digest) this false premise and outrageous conclusion is horrifying.

But let’s move onto the rather embarrassing absurdity this poses for proponents of ID that actually accept this premise that before Adam and Eve disobey their creator all creatures were peace loving herbivores. For the ardent creationist, death did not enter the picture before sin darkened the world citing Genesis 1:30 to show that there was neither predator nor prey but all animals were provided “every green herb for food.” Some hold that carnivorous behaviour was not allowed until after Noah disembarked his ark (thus attempting to avoid the problem of bloody rampages by lions and tigers and dinosaurs upon the vessel).

To reiterate, according to ID as I perceive the world, and more importantly its living inhabitants, I am to marvel the order, structure and complexity of it all and believe my alleged natural instinct that should inform me that no such complexity can come about by random processes. I am to intuit that such marvelous complex architecture and perceived purpose or teleology does not “just happen.”

They are certainly right – ordered complexity does not just happen. However, that does not indicate ordered complexity is the result of design. An assumed element of design that’s oft not explicitly stated in the ID argument is that design goes hand in hand with purpose. It stands to reason that if a design is inferred than a purpose can be extracted.

Here is an example of a creationist divining purpose from an assumed design, entitled humorously enough, “the atheist’s nightmare”:

I bring all this out merely to establish that, according to the advocates of ID, we can both recognize the complexity of things in the world and furthermore ascertain their purpose upon examination of said complexity.

So back to the T-Rex:

Let’s imagine we are transported back in time to the days when Adam and Eve walked through their lucious Eden. As we marvel at the world created for us we happen upon the forbiddingly menacing Tyrannosaurus Rex. But have no fear! As you marvel at it’s impressive size, massive musculature, and serrated teeth measuring up to six inches long we conclude that this beautiful specimen was wonderfully designed, and designed for none other than hunting and eating… coconuts.

You heard right – coconuts. According to The Creation Museum, as cited by science blogger Sarda Sahney, the T-Rex, before the taint of sin covered the Earth and induced some (but strangely, not all) animals to crave flesh the great apex predator of the Cretaceous fed on coconuts. Isn’t it obvious?

The T-Rex’s ablitity to lift nearly 500 lbs with it’s relatively short fore limbs (heretofore previously thought to allow it to hold struggling prey) and it’s massive jaws and teeth was perhaps was used for the purpose of subduing giant coconuts that perhaps had a propensity to fall off the tree (which the T-rex, given its posture, could not reach) and roll away. Mischievous , prehistoric coconuts! How could we think that this creature, “[having] a bite force estimated at 6,400 to 13,400 N, rivaling any other known taxon,” could be using those murderous jaws to tear through the tough hide of other dinosaurs and not the “obviously” concrete husk of ancient coconuts?

Nevermind that coconut trees and their fossilized remains are native only to the tropics and have never been found in the west and northwest of North America where T-Rex was indigent.

Absurd, to say the least.

It leaves one wondering how parasitic micro organisms sustained themselves, or how the entire genus of Felis catus, being “obligate carnivores, because their physiology is geared toward efficient processing of meat, and lacks efficient processes for digesting plant matter,” got by before “the fall.” Apparently god must have magically preserved the entire ecosystem until Adam sinned when it could operate properly.

More importantly, it leaves one realizing that the Creationist will abandon his so called science should it pose any threat to dogma. The creationist is not just after establishing design as the overall principle for understanding our world but insists it must be designed a particular way; to that end he will unwittingly cripple his own theory in order to preserve that ideology. ID and Creationism are not a means of offering alternate scientific explanations but are rather the blunt tools of religious philosophy aimed, and rather poorly at that, at the sharp diagnostics of the sciences. This is not an example of the unanswered questions of empirical investigation of which science is zealous to uncover but rather the self-defeating argumentation of a philosophy that finds itself threatened, as it always has been, by serious and critical inquiry and the honest exploration and discovery of the world around us.

~YK

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