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To begin, I need to explain where the point of view I will be presenting here fits into the broad spectrum of opinions on how the earth came to be inhabited as it is today. At one end of the spectrum are the neo-Darwinists, who believe that everything we see around us came into being as a result of a totally random evolutionary process. They have incorporated modern advances in molecular genetics into Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory and conclude that, given the billions of years that the process has been underway, it is possible to explain the creation of the biological world without imposing any supernatural causes. At the other extreme are the "young earth" creationists, those who hold to a literal interpretation of the creation account in Genesis. Some who advocate this point of view have attached the label "creation science" to their investigations and suggest that they can use the scientific method to counter the claims of the neo-Darwinists. ..... Personally, I remain totally unconvinced by the arguments coming from either of these extreme positions. First, I find it impossible to swallow the idea that the complexities we observe in living systems today arose strictly by chance, even given the several billion years they estimate it required to complete the job. The creation of the earth and its inhabitants had to be, ultimately, the result of supernatural causes. The only question is, when and how were these causes put into play? ..... The "young earth" proponents will argue that everything we see around us today came into being in six days at a time somewhat less than ten thousand years ago, the miraculous and instantaneous result of God declaring "Let there be..." I have two primary reasons for rejecting this view of the creation. The first is simply that I find overwhelming the scientific evidence for an "old earth" and the gradual development of living systems over a long period of time. The second is that I find personally unsatisfactory the concept of a God that creates by simply waving his magic wand and commanding things into existence. That is just not nifty enough for me. Some "old earth" proponents suggest that it indeed took billions of years for living systems to develop after the earth was formed, but that the Creator God remained actively involved, tweeking the system throughout that developmental process. I find this concept of The Creator equally unsatisfactory. I cannot personally accept a perception of God as a micro-manager. For me, the idea that God could not design matter that would fulfill his creation plan without his constant intervention diminishes my ability to honor him for his work. ..... My own concept of the mechanism of the creation parallels the philosophy of those "old earth" proponents that favor what has become known as "intelligent design." This philosophy considers certain examples of biologically complex systems and argues that the probability of these systems assembling themselves as a series of strictly random events is so remote as to be essentially impossible. Such complexity could not have been created, they contend, unless some source of intelligence was involved in the process. To the extent that "intelligent design," as a proposal for explaining the mechanism of creation, does not require The Designer to micro-manage the process, I find it useful as a starting place for expressing my own thoughts on the subject. ..... To illustrate what I mean, I'd like to begin with an argument that some intelligent design advocates refer to as "the divine watchmaker." Consider that you are all alone on a deserted island and discover a watch on the beach. Would you doubt for a moment that some other intelligence had made that watch, even though you are the only person on the island? Certainly you would not contend that the watch had come into being by the chance accumulation and assembly of the watch's constituent parts. Although this argument is a bit simplistic, it suggests that it is folly to think that the higher levels of complexity seen in living systems today could ever be achieved by random processes alone; and it provides an image I'd like to build on to explain how I see the hand of God working in the creation process. ..... My argument is that the "divine watchmaker" did not build the watch himself, but rather created its constituent parts so that it could "self assemble." That is, the rules by which those constituent parts were created to behave specified that they could only assemble in certain ways. Given proximity to one another, an appropriate environment, and sufficient time, they would become a watch without any further intervention by the watchmaker. He simply designs the parts, throws them into a bag and shakes it. Later--much later (after all, what's time to a divine watchmaker)--he opens the bag and pulls out a ticking watch. Now, that is a nifty watchmaker! ..... At this point in my discourse, I need to pause and counter some anticipated contentions that, because I have invoked supernatural causes, my credibility as an objective scientist has been compromised. I have always found this to be a fascinating contention, particularly considering that it typically comes from individuals whose objective credentials are themselves compromised by the very nature of their arguments. Let me explain what I mean. My philosophy of science--and hopefully the philosophy of any scientist for whom objectivity is paramount--demands that no theory can be rejected as impossible if the rejection is not accompanied by supportable arguments to disprove it. Thus, when supernatural causes are proposed as the basis for a scientific theory--and no physical data are available to support a credible alternative--then that theory must be accepted as a viable option...whatever one's personal beliefs may be. ..... Opponents of this point of view typically use the argument that those of us who include supernatural causes in our explanations are allowing our faith to corrupt our objectivity. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We are being far more true to the scientific method than they are. Their objection to supernatural causes is based on a firmly held belief that no such causes can possibly exist--a belief that must be accepted solely on faith, because they have no data to support it. So while they condemn us for allowing our belief system to corrupt our science, we are, in fact, true to the scientific method--accepting as possible anything that has not been specifically disproved--while they allow their own belief system to prohibit consideration of all possibilities. ..... This is not to say that there are not proponents of supernatural causes that have allowed their science to be corrupted by their religious beliefs. Some creationists remain anchored to a literal interpretation of the Genesis time line, ignore the best scientific evidence and cling to poorly documented models that support what their faith demands. There is no place for bad science on either side of the issue. ..... You will find me muddling around somewhere in the middle of this spectrum of philosophies. I am a creationist and an evolutionist; and I find no conflict in being both. However, because evolutionary theory has itself evolved in the 150 years since Darwin published The Origin of the Species, I need to specify how I see the evolutionary process by which today's biota came into being. ..... Returning to the illustration of the divine watchmaker and his bag full of parts, let's consider the logical consequences of this creation model. My contention is that the details of atomic structure--and the quantum mechanical rules that specify their interrelationships--carry within themselves a blueprint for all the living systems we see around us today. That is, if the watchmaker shakes his bag of parts for a sufficiently long time, the result will be a watch--and only a watch--simply because it is in the nature of those parts to ultimately assemble in that way. I can't imagine that the creation process could be conceived to occur by any other means. Either there was a master plan in the mind of The Creator when he said "Bang!" or he had to be prepared to take potluck from the result and involve himself later in tidying up undesirable outcomes. This second alternative suggests a creator that couldn't get it right the first time. That is too limited a concept for me. ..... Think about it. Here we have a timeless superintelligence--and source of unlimited energy--that conceives a master plan for the universe and applies the energy necessary to set that plan in motion. I find it very hard to imagine that the ultimate design conceived in such a plan could not be achieved solely through the design of the starting materials. What this means, of course, is that if the divine watchmaker disassembled the watch, put the parts back into the bag--along with everything else that was there initially--and shook it again, another watch would emerge. Obviously, this rather momentous suggestion requires some further discussion. ..... Hopefully, it is clear that this model does not eliminate randomness from the process. It simply imposes on a system of random encounters certain probability rules that favor some outcomes and constrain others. Over periods of time, these rules will ordain the ultimate outcome. Actually, this scenario is little different in principle than that proposed by the atheistic evolutionists. They will happily accept the existence of probability rules. These are, after all, the bases of all chemical interactions. Some reactions are permitted; others are denied. The critical difference, of course, is that the neo-Darwinists do not acknowledge the existence of a plan. For them, everything is strictly a matter of chance. So, if their watchmaker were to put the parts back in the bag, they would have no way of predicting what might emerge the next time. They could not accept my contention that a re-started creation process would produce the essentially same overall result in the same span of time. ..... This contention, however, does raise some questions concerning the logical consistency of my argument. For example, if the same outcome would be expected from a re-started process, how is this model fundamentally any different from a totally micro-managed creation? Am I not simply expressing the dogma of the literal creationists, with an expanded time scale and a lot of mumbo-jumbo about probabilities? I don't see it that way. Certainly any imaginable scenario is possible with an omnipotent Creator. So, for me, it reduces to one simple question. What do I see as the most nifty scenario? What gives me the best opportunity to glorify God? Asking those questions, I am compelled to acknowledge a clear distinction between a God that tinkers and a God that designs. My God is a designer; a divine watchmaker who contrives a self-assembling watch in the design of its parts. ..... Yet, however useful that watch may be as an illustrative metaphor, we ultimately must be able to define what it represents for us in the real-time, real-space outcome of the creation. That outcome, today's universe, comprises many different things with many different properties. Fortunately, among all of those things, we need to concern ourselves in this discussion only with the earth and its inhabitants. Whatever else may be going on out there, it can have no real influence on how we perceive the outcome of Gods creation plan, simply because all of that other stuff is too remote. Whatever our perception of God's purpose in the creation, it must necessarily be restricted to what we directly observe and experience. In the last analysis, however anthropocentric a contention it may appear to be, we--the human race on this spaceship called earth--we are that watch. We were the intended outcome of God's divine design. ..... With that contention as a starting point, we now need to look in greater detail at the process by which this outcome came to fulfillment.
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