If the universe was intelligently designed, how could we tell?

Question

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that everything in the universe was designed by an intelligent creator. How would we know? Could we pick up a rock and say "Ah yes, this object has characteristic X and property Y and therefore must have been intelligently designed"? How could we establish criteria for identifying that something is intelligently designed if absolutely everything in the universe was intelligently designed, and we had no non-intelligently designed things to compare it to?

My point is: The only reason we can look at a car or a can opener or a 4,000-year-old clay pot and say with confidence that it was intelligently designed is that we can compare it with everything in the natural world which was *not* intelligently designed, and see the difference. The very fact that we can identify things which were intelligently designed (man-made things) means that we have to acknowledge that the natural world was not intelligently designed.

Unless you know different...? :-)

eighties: Good idea - that the natural world has 'purpose' - but again, how would we know? We can't say that the rain exists *in order* for plants to grow, for example - all we can say is that if rain didn't exist, then plants as we know them wouldn't exist. We can't push the argument backwards and say that rain exists so that plants can exist.

Purpose is certainly a sign of intelligence, and if we could prove purpose in the natural world then I'd agree that we could prove intelligent design, but there is no reason to suppose that there *is* any purpose in the natural world.

maiohwmai: Same point as above - i.e. if the universe had a purpose (as a timepiece is created by us for the purpose of letting us know the time), then you'd be right... but there is no sign of any such thing. The universe exists, and is complex and intricate and has order and so on, but you cannot argue that *therefore* it must have been intelligently created, because there is no reason to suppose that a non-created universe couldn't be exactly as this universe is.

secular: You say "humans... look like robots made of flesh and blood". They do indeed, but that would be because humans (made of flesh and blood) design and make robots, wouldn't it?

Living organisms are indeed enormously complex and organised, but that in itself can only indicate intelligent design if we can prove that natural (uninteligent) processes couldn't produce such a thing. In fact, just the opposite is true - Science shows that natural process can and do make complexity and organisation, right up to the level of multicellular living organisms such as ourselves.

Robert L: Unfortunately you forgot to back up your answer with any real facts, nor even any rational ideas. Quoting from scripture is like saying "God Did It, and that's that".

Try again.

Answer 1

There really is no way to tell, other then to continue to research and study it.

We all have a limited understanding of how things work, from can openers to computers, and even the universe. When a person reaches their limit of understanding regarding a particular thing, there are few ways they can respond...

1) I don't know, but I would like to know
2) I don't know, nor do I want to know (or nor do I care.)
3) I don't know, but I'm certain it's because of _______.

Lets use an automatic transmission as an example. Most people don't know how this device works, and unless they are really mechanically inquisitive, they don't want to know. As long as the car keeps moving, who cares. At the same time, most people are reasonably certain that an automatic transmission works because of the automotive engineers (who designed it) and the assembly workers (who installed it.) This explanation is acceptable to most people, and it's backed up by plenty of real-world evidence to support it. Most people would be loath to say that the reason a transmission works (or doesn't work) is because of god, because a transmission, while complex to be sure, is also comprehensible to a great many people.

Next lets take a disease, like cancer. Most people don't know how cancer works, and unless they, or someone close to them get it, they don't really care. Doctors have a pretty good handle on what causes many cancers, but plenty of laypeople believe the cause of cancer is unknown, and a few still believe it is bad luck, or punishment for evil deeds. Unlike a transmission, which is a straightforward device, cancer is alive. It can behave unpredictably, so for most people, there is an element of mystery surrounding the disease. When a terminal cancer patient beats the odds and survives, many people will see it as a miracle, or an "act of god." Doctors are far less inclined to subscribe to such outlandish explanations, mainly because they understand the mechanisms of cancer far better than the average person. They may not be able to say definitively why the cancer went into remission, but writing it off to "god" would dangerously contradict the idea that persistent research can determine the cause of disease. If doctors started down this path, they might as well go back to practicing voodoo as a way to heal.

When it comes to big unknowns, like the universe, only a minority of people in the world understand even a few of the mechanisms at work... space-time, dark matter, black holes, string theory, etc. Most people don't care why background radiation is of interest to astronomers, and unless something strongly compels us, you can pretty much guarantee that few people are sitting around trying to research the origins of the universe, figure out why time exists, or what causes gravity.

BUT, since the average persons understanding of these phenomenon is so limited, it becomes MUCH EASIER for them to write them off to god, than to try and learn or find plausible explanations. Even our educated doctors will tend to buy into the easy answer in these cases. What's more, the less people who can offer plausible explanations, the MORE people will be firmly convinced that it's "god" at work. It's an inverse effect. Socially, it is arrogant and presumptuous to announce that you understand things that nobody else in the world does, plus, having such knowledge would put you in an advantageous position relative to your fellow man, and thus you would be seen as a threat. History bears this out, as virtually all early scientists were branded dangerous heretics because they proposed that science had answers that not only did theology lack, but that theology was mistaken about.

The true answer to this question is that the one way we could tell if the universe was intelligently designed is if we figured out how to create one ourselves. Reverse engineering is probably the only way to guarantee certainty.

(ps - to some of the other posters... the statement that the universe is orderly is inaccurate. Yes, there are laws that make the universe appear orderly (thermodynamics for example), but at subatomic levels, these same laws are completely inapplicable. The universe seems orderly from our limited, human perspective, but we live on a temperate planet, in a relatively calm, orderly part of our galaxy, orbiting a stable star with a consistent period. Life on Venus would seem more chaotic, as would life were we situated near the asteroid belt, or in a galaxy that was colliding with another one, or exploding! There is plenty of disorder in the universe. You wouldn't want to experience the distortion space-time that occurs when you are caught too close to a black hole. One need only look at the cosmic debris that enters our atmosphere each night as "shooting stars" to see examples of the violent disorder spread throughout the cosmos.

(pps - awesome question, one of the best I've seen)

Answer 2

You say: "The only reason we can look at a car or a can opener or a 4,000-year-old clay pot and say with confidence that it was intelligently designed is that we can compare it with everything in the natural world which was *not* intelligently designed, and see the difference." That is ONE way we know that something is intelligently designed. But when theologians say that the universe shows "intelligent design," what they primarily mean is that the universe proceeds in an orderly or rational manner which we recognized because we are intelligent creatures. For example, there are the laws of physics (gravity, torque, conservation of matter and energy, etc) - which we have discovered because we are intelligent creatures. We discovered that the earth revolves around the sun in a fixed orbit and so do the other planets. We can express astronomical phenomena in complex mathematical formulas and use them to launch a space orbiter, etc. The universe is not chaotic - if it were, then what assurance do we have that tomorrow the sun will rise from the east and set in the west at such and such times? This is all that is meant by "intelligent design" - that intelligent creatures like ourselves can understand it and even improve upon it.

Answer 3

That's something I've noticed a lot about IDers. For example, the good old human body. Don't get me wrong - I love a good human body as much as the next person (unless that person is asexual or something) - but I can acknowledge that it's just ingrained habit and a reproductive instinct that makes me say that. Opposable thums? Sure, pretty cool - but if your hands were, say, made of titanium certainly it'd be a more 'intelligent' design, right? The eye? Sure - amazingly complex, supposedly 'irreducible' (whatever that really means) - but we can't see through walls, can we? Wouldn't that be a sign of _really_ intelligent design?

IDers work backwards. They take the 'finished product', arbitrarily describe it as 'ideal' (news to anyone who's ever had a wisdom tooth, tolnsil or appendix operation) and then say 'the odds of this perfection happening by chance are one in one million billion squintillion'...

Sure. Like I can walk outside the building I'm in, find a rock on the ground and say 'it is intelligent design that this very rock be located in this very location when there is only a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance that this rock would be located exactly here. But here it is! God must have put it there!"

Excellent question, BTW. Nobody who needs to answer it will try to answer it, however.

Answer 4

The question can have a very simple explanation based on Occam razor's reductionist philosophy - ie. the least complicated formulation should be embraced.
From the perspective of of the second law of thermodynamics.
the entropy in the universe (as indeed in any system) is continuously increasing. Metaphysically speaking, since entropy (and consequently disorder) keeps on on increasing there is no real case for the concept of intelligent design.
In fact intelligent design would come into the picture if we see a decrease in entropy either granularly or steadily.
We can have a long discussion on this, but sorry, shortage of time....

Answer 5

Just see those Man Made things are intelligently designed.
As u say...

Have u thought how is Man himself designed ...
Isnt that intellygently???
How do u think that a man is able to think..?
If there was no one to create us humans how could we have been in this world...
It is the GOD who Intellygently designed us...
Now tell Can A man Design a Man??

Just think What is the reason that the Intelligent(Humans as u say...) are not able to design any thing like any single natural living thing.....
like bacteria or a living virus???
or a bird....
Why do the "intelligent" have to die one day??
Why has he not control over that??

Did u think how come a heart keeps on beating & beating for half a century with out any man made intelligent device??? A super Battery or whatever???


Science has proved that a DNA has much space for storing information like history of every thing that happened in this world...
which will surely cant be contained in any of the Man made "intelligent" hard disk or supercomputers etc..
How come???
Do u still think it is just a coincidence that it(DNA) came into being???

Or u designed it???

Can any "intelligent" Human make such a device???

I say that there is nothing to be compared by the Godly made things...

Be it as little as a bacteria to the largest stars....

there is not a single thing that man has & can(in future) copy from nature....
Or do u think the Intelligent Humans can??
If u still think this way, I am sure no one can help you.....



Well u asked If the universe was intelligently designed, how could we tell??

To this my answer is that we can tell this by just taking a glance on the universe facts....

How come there are orbits of such large planets & moving stars......
why is not that every thing is mingled up???
why not the bigbang is repeating again & again....
It must happen coz there are so many planets & stars & comets & astroids & moons.. etc...
Why are they not bumping with each other???
Why are they moving finely???
Why is it that from smallest to the latgest planets are abiding by some rules so that they are not crashing into each other...


Well why do u think the earth never changes its route....
goes near sun or farther than its next planet?

coz ther are some RULES which they are following....

& who do u think made those rules???
I guess u got it..
Yes!
The GOD.
HE created all rules & he is in control of every thing..
& if he made such things & also controlling each & every one of them, dont u thingk HE is INTELLIGENT...

Why do u think MAN makes mistakes....??
But the nature never does???

Also just tell me why there is always room for improvement in man made things....

take vehicles for instance...

first there werehorses & camels ,
then cart were made...
the cars with out animals were created...
then they improved the performance of the engines...
why are worlds records are being broken (eg..faster & faster cars.... etc)
but
why yet No record has been broken of nature by INTELLIGENT HUMANS?????

Dont u think there is some one more "intelligent" & more "powerful" than us.

& I think we are just small creations of that omnipowerful omniintelligent omnipotent being.....

Who r we to interfer in HIS things???

Dont be just ignorant & ask such questions....

realise that there is some one who controls us & every other thing...

& it is HIS willing to make these super things ....

we have not the zillionth of his intelligence to understand HIS acts.....

Please just try to realise...


Peace..
God Bless u & show u the right path....

Answer 6

Lets say that we all really do not know in a provable way exactly what it was caused man to be here on this planet and that there is a story written long ago that says their was intelligent design.

Say that many people look around and see here on this planet life forms that all work together in an intricatly woven fabric of life, and that one of these life forms have a book preserved from long ago with stories of how it all started and that these people have tried out many of the other things in this somewhat magical book written long ago and match that up with what they see and believe that there is very likely some element of truth about how or why we are here and decide to make that part of what they believe is true because well there are things like rocks on earth that clearly did not have much intelligence in their creation as the life forms do. There is there for some differance between them and the rest, you know like a car, when you see it and how the parts work together you automatically know some rocks did not just jump up and form a car that would be a ridiculus thing to try and prove.

then some group takes this car and says after thousands of billions of years metals heated to the right temperatures happened to fall into rock crevaces and molded into the individual parts and then a earth quake came along and all the parts fell into a valley together and millions of years later a tornato came thrrew and wa la a car was formed. Would you believe something as complex as a car just put itself together with out help from a intelligent being. A car is far less detailed and less functionally complex than a single cell is it not. So nobody in their right mind is going to believe this theory about how the car came to be right??

Now lets supose that some group who really did not like the idea that an intelligent being created cars say maybe because they wanted to be the most advanced beings alive rather than the car designer being more intelligent. These ones then got hold of the power structure and forced the group of people to teach their theory of how that car came to be to their children and opposed the intelligent design idea and got it removed from the curiculum because it was written about in this magical book that represented everything they hated. This story of yours has unprecedented merit.

Here is the truth

the magical book does not say when where or how man was created. Does not say that it was the only creation or even the first creation it only says that here on this planet at sometime in the not too distant past (perhaps after a cataclism had wiped out the earths previous life forms or most of them) that an intelligent being repaired or created a stable environment and planted life here.
to me that seems way more likely than man grew from the one celled being here on this earth with no outside intervention
With regards to creation of the universe the Bible story sounds very similar to the big bang theory. It says the lord spoke and it came to be. So God said bang and here it is today a coalesence of whatever came out of the mouth of God whatever that might be perhaps a sort of metaphor for the the big bang.
theorize all you want but do not go around telling people that your theory's are fact until you can show with actual evidence that things happened the way you theorize. Then you also have to show they happened here on this planet and not somewhere else and then brought here. Good luck with that. My idea is that we are not the smartest ones around and that a smarter one visited and in whatever we could understand at that time told us what happened and eventually that which He told got written down, and today it is preserved as the first book of the Bible. is that a theory you can disprove, and if it is then it should not be taught as an alternative possiblity to what might have happened.

this is really a simple idea and I have not taken any great effort to make it all fit but you have the general idea right??

Answer 7

It's a good point but
what about the design of the living organisms and especially humans
they look like robots made of flesh and blood
theists usually question these and say they must have been designed by a supreme being

Answer 8

Actually, based on reason you cannot conclude anything regarding the origin of the cosmos. LOL

But, it is true that IF the cosmos was created by a God, you could formulate a natural theory to explain its origin without regard for the truth of its creation.

As an example you could take a painting (a design) and hypothesize how the painting formed via "natural process," without regard to the truth of its painter. Which of course, does not mean the painting painted itself.

Ultimately, origins is a philosophical question and not a scientific one. But naturalists and materialists define the debate in terms of their philosophy while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge its existence. Its quite frustrating to those of us who dissent.

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Answer 9

sometimes I wish women were intelligently designed ouch, just kidding.

technically, the rock you pick up looks and feels like it does due to erosion and volcanic activity. So you would ask if the process of erosion could have been intelligently designed. But this process is due to atmospheric and environmental conditions. So you have to ask if the atmospheric and environmental conditions were intelligently designed. But these conditions are due to...

You get me? You'll end up tracing back to the 'big bang'. So the real question is 'Was the big bang intelligently designed'?

My gut feeling is no, but who am I to know?

Creationists, on the other hand, refuse to follow this path altogether and just come up with fairy tales. Intelligent Design is a pretty smart concept for Christians to come up with (compared to creationism),, not sure how it fits in with the bible, though.

Answer 10

I would like to reccamend a really good book calle dthe case for the creator. By Lee Strobel. In it he talks with a number of highly credible scientists on a numbr of varying subjects, posing some good questions. In one of the chapters they talk in some detail about the intricate way the universe works and even how atoms function. There are not just a few but many of these things that have to work together in order for life to exist. I would say alot more here but it's really late but if you can mange to borrow a copy or get one somewhere it has alot of points to ponder and it contains alot of reference material from the scientists who are questioned. Cheers... Irrreducible complexity is best explained with a mouse trap used by Micheal Behe. in order for a mouse trap to work it needs to have several pieces all present when being used. Missing any one of theses pieces the mouse trap would fail to function. What biochemists have seen is that there are machines that operate in this principle although these bacteria's may be too small for the eye to see. But science now allows us to see much further than back in the days of Darwin. What has bee seen is these bacteria operate on the same principle as the mouse trap. They needed to have several pieces all functioning when made. So it poses a problem. How could someting like this arise through gradualistic evolution. It kind of spurs me to think, in order for someting to continue living would it not have to be able to reproduce itself, nourish itself, get rid of waste, have a breathing apparatus. How could someting like this evolve slowly. How you continue to reproduce without meeting all these criteria. So would not all these tings need to be present in the first organisms. Any how if you can read that book it offers some food for thought. Many who are critical of the intelligent design movement don't know alot about it. I'm not suggest all people but many. It is recamendable to try and get a hold of some of their literature and allow them to present their material for themselves. I hear some criticisms of them which sem to misunderstand what they are saying. No where do I see them suggesting urning the science class inot a bible study or whenever they see something they don't understand simply throw their arms in the air and say because God made it that way. They provide many interesting idea's but alot of people don't even botherto check it out.