Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Extravagant Design of Nature

William Dembski
May 14, 2005
Darwinism, Intelligent Design
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Have a look at the following image and consider what your gut is telling you: (1) that nature is full of extravagant design that we should not expect on materialistic principles; (2) that nature has programmed us through evolution (e.g., sexual selection) to appreciate beauty in nature so that we can be good little robots and spread our genes. Here’s the image.

Comments
This theme of extravagance and beauty resounds with many, especially the young. When I gave an ID lecture recently to the FreeThinkers (atheists and agnostics) at James Madison University regarding Walter Bradley's thesis: "The Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God" and Antony Flew's conversion, I spontaneously mentioned, "there are scientific evidences supportive of God's existence, but on a more personal level -- the girl I'm going out with -- when I think of her, I some time say to myself, 'Only God could make her!' " The reaction of the audience to my statement was predictable. They all responded with a loud, "Awhhhhhhhhhhhhh...." The former atheist, Patrick Glynn said, "[I had] an encounter with love sufficiently deep to bring an intimation of the divine... I encountered Gabriele. Someone once said that it is hard to fall in love without thinking of God. Such was my experience. Ours was a wonderful romance that would culminate in marriage two years later. But these romantic feelings pointed me toward something deeper.... For reasons that I hardly understood, I began to utter from time to time a little prayer of thanksgiving....” Though ID proper does not identify life as made by a Deity, the sympathy (not necessarily endorsement) for that viewpoint, even among some of the young atheists and agnostics, is very strong, almost unavoidable. Ironically, this group of Freethinkers have been among the most supportive of getting ID taught in the universities. Deep in many of their hearts, they are hoping that life is not ultimately meaningless, and that not only is life intelligently designed, but made by God. A few of they young atheists in that group are hoping IDists will succeed in Walter Bradley's quest for "Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God". scordova
May 16, 2005
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Oh, and the picture is breathtaking.sue
May 15, 2005
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I don't understand how anyone could think that this world and the balance it survivies on is an accident of nature or whatnot. It just doesn't seem logically possible. But, of course, you have to see the entire picture to see that. Most evolutionists only seem to see what they want to see and that is tragic. sue
May 15, 2005
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It's hard to think that this beauty as well as our sense for it is the outcome of "maximizing reproduction success in relation to continual changing (and undirected) conditions". That's surely not a strict argument against evolution but a reason to think. Markus Rammerstorfer
May 15, 2005
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