Eric Hedin writes:
In arguing for intelligent design for the origin of life, exhibited in the millions of species found on Earth, what is the role of the Designer? Evolution, if merely defined as “change over time,” matches the evidence found in nature. But that doesn’t mean that the “evolution” happened by purely natural mechanisms. Our increasing understanding of the vast complexity of living organisms defies an explanation of their origin by natural causes.
While intelligent design as a scientific theory doesn’t address religious questions about the identity of the designer, as a Christian I obviously believe that the Designer is the God of the Bible. My viewpoint offered here goes beyond the theory of ID and represents my own thoughts on the matter of the origin of species, intended to be consistent with evidence from nature, and consistent with the Bible.
The Bible indicates that the Creator, God, was active in preparing the physical environment to support life, and in creating various forms of life until the creation of humans. Setting this in the context of Earth’s history implies that God created millions of different species of living things over approximately 3.8 billion years. I am not here suggesting a theistic evolution model, since that would imply that natural causes are capable of far more than what we actually observe.
Could God have taken an already-existing organism and modified in such a way as to form a new species or other classification of organism? Human designers do something similar all the time, but the newly designed system still requires intelligent input of information to function properly. Since we find so much evidence for design in nature, the implication is that huge amounts of information were inputted into the biosphere during the history of life by an intelligent agent, whom I identify as the God of the Bible.
Why would anyone invoke God’s intervention to create living things, while acknowledging that normal laws of physics suffice to forms, say, galaxies and stars? The answer is that this is what science shows: the laws of nature are completely sufficient to form stars (which have a relatively low information content) but are insufficient to form even the complex bio-molecular components of the simplest living organism.[1] The only known cause that can introduce the information required for life is the action of an intelligence. This is why I see intelligent design (consistent with my belief in the God of the Bible as the designer) as the best explanation for the origin of life in all its complexity.
[1] Eric Hedin, Canceled Science, What Some Atheists Don’t Want You to See (Discovery Institute Press, Seattle, 2021).