The Deceitful Critics of Intelligent Design
Kazmer Ujvarosy
January 29, 2007
Critics of Intelligent Design (ID), in their utter impotence to refute the theory’s basic logic that the existence of complex systems in nature implies the existence of an intelligent cause or designer, are doing their best to divert attention from the real issue by notoriously bringing up lame and demonstrably false arguments.
First of all, they allege that ID theorists failed to name the designer. The fundamental problem with this criticism is that intelligence in fact has been named as the designer--after all, the theory itself is called Intelligent Design. Thus the designer is intelligence. And because there is absolutely no demonstrable evidence that an intelligence above and beyond human intelligence exists, by default the credit for design in nature goes to human intelligence.
If ID critics want me to be even more specific, Christ identified himself as that intelligence which created the universe to make reproductions of himself in the form of human beings. In other words we find design in nature because Christ constitutes the seed of the universe, or the cosmic system’s input and output. As he disclosed it in Revelation 22:13, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
In essence Jesus is telling us that he constitutes the beginning and the end of the cosmic system, similarly as a seed constitutes the beginning and the end of a plant system.
"I pray you," wrote Jean d'Espagnet in his Hermetic Arcanum, "look with the eyes of the mind at this little tree of the grain of wheat, regarding all its circumstances, that you may be able to plant the tree of the philosophers."
He’s asking us to meditate on any kind of seed-bearing plant, and if we are able to infer based on our observations that the universe exists, and we exist because the parent seed of the universe needed a “manufacturing” plant for the production of human beings in its own image, then we’ll gain enlightenment.
Second, ID critics allege that the theory fails to provide testable claims. Again, this criticism is demonstrably false: ID is eminently testable, has been tested, and is being tested constantly. As a matter of fact, ID needs no testing at all. The fact that design is the basic quality of intelligence is so self-evident that anyone who doubts it has to be exquisitely ignorant or entirely delusional.
What needs to be demonstrated is not the fact that design is the basic quality of intelligence, but the abysmal absurdity that the formation of systems in nature—from atoms to the universe--is the basic quality of zero intelligence. Needless to say, the burden is on the critics of Intelligent Design to demonstrate that structure formation in the universe is the product of zero intelligence. Those who rabidly promote that nonsense are most qualified to do the demonstrations, having near-zero intelligence themselves.
In short, the claim that zero intelligence is the cause of structure formation in nature is pure speculation. Facts do not warrant it, and analogy does not support it. On top of that, the constant generation of structures by intelligence falsifies outright that lamebrained concept.
When we wish to have an apple tree in our garden, we simply plant an apple seed, and get a tree that bears apples. Voilá, Intelligent Design has been demonstrated--the design we find in the tree’s structure comes from the seed’s intelligence. Moreover, the design we find in a building comes from its designer, and the design we find in our body comes from the human genome or human intelligence.
Seeing that any design we have is caused by intelligence, what makes the critics of Intelligent Design believe that zero intelligence is the cause of structure formation in nature? On what empirical evidence do they base the evidental nonsence that zero intelligence can generate anything superior to itself? If the initial cause of the universe had zero intelligence, how did it manage to boost itself up to the level of human intelligence?
We are not interested in “just so” stories, but in facts. Who has ever observed the generation of intelligence from zero intelligence? What empirical evidence validates the rationality of the belief that an initial cause can yield anything superior to itself?
If indeed science is, above all else, about cause-and-effect relationship, then the true test of a theory or explanation in science, and in philosophy as well, is the central question: Is the proposed initial cause of a phenomenon sufficient to bring about the effect attributed to it?
Most importantly, we have to keep in mind that the proposed initial cause of a phenomenon in question must be, in terms of value or qualities, proportional to the value and qualities of the phenomenon it caused. This is a basic and rational requirement because no initial cause can produce an effect greater than itself--i.e., no initial cause can give more than what it has. Or, whatever qualities are in the effect must originate from that effect’s initial cause.
So if we attribute to an initial cause an effect greater than itself, then the extra effect is without a cause, and could come only from nothing, which is contrary to reason and, by extension, to science.
Thus from the Principle of Causality necessarily follows that the initial cause of the universe cannot be lesser in qualities than the qualities we find in the universe, just as the parent seed of a tree cannot be lesser in qualities than the qualities of the tree it created.
Also the Principle of Causality tells us that when we try to derive the richness of life from a simple beginning, as Darwin did, we are deluding ourselves. We are trying to get from a simple cause what it clearly does not have, namely greater complexity.
The U.S. novelist, Margaret Deland (1857-1945), pertinently remarked: “A pint can’t hold a quart--if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.”
I suggest that the critics of Intelligent Design should keep this fact in mind, as well as science teachers, unless they want to teach hocus-pocus.
Because the belief that zero intelligence caused the formation of the universe is patently irrational, we have no choice but to posit that the initial cause of the universe can be no lesser in qualities than what we find in the universe. Thus this logical inference from a highly complex effect to an initial cause no lesser in qualities than the effect itself points in the direction of an intelligent agent that we may call the parent seed, universal common ancestor, designer, or cosmic genotype of the phenotype universe.
Third, critics of Intelligent Design eagerly promote the fabrication that the theory completely lacks predictive power. Of course, nothing can be further from the truth. Because we know that human intelligence in Christ’s person is the seed, creator or designer of the universe, we are in the position to predict with unparalleled confidence that Christ is the universal common ancestor of all things created. Also we predict that universal common descent has its source in Jesus Christ.
Overwhelming evidence for the relation of all creatures to Christ by universal common descent has been provided by paleontology, comparative anatomy, biogeography, embryology, biochemistry, molecular genetics, and other scientific disciplines. Whereas evolutionists stick to Darwin’s invention tenaciously--namely to the supernatural entity misleadingly named “natural selection”--, we predict that universal common descent’s mechanism is epigenesis. Thus the process of development from Christ’s genotype to the mature universe for the production of progeny in Christ’s image is epigenetic.
All of these predictions are falsifiable, provided ID critics can demonstrate that instead of Christ the universal common ancestor is a minimal life form, and ultimately zero intelligence; that universal common descent is not a fact; or that epigenesis is not a viable mechanism for development from the seed of the universe.
Based on the knowledge that Christ created the universe to have children in his own image we also predict with great confidence that the cosmic system yields end-product or output in the form of human beings. This prediction is falsifiable, provided ID critics can present a being that exists beyond and above human beings. If they have such a superhuman being in their closet, we'd like to have it presented for our examination.
ID critics may raise the objection that man is not the cosmic system’s input and output, or pinnacle of all life forms in the universe. Indeed, whether it is true or not, we can’t be absolutely certain. Precisely for this reason the theory of creation by Christ is tentative, just as scientific theories are supposed to be.
Because we are the cosmic system’s output, we predict that exclusively human beings have the potential to provide information feedback to the cosmic system’s initial input for the purpose of self-regulation. Communication with the universe’s parent seed is not only possible, but such exchange of information is taking place constantly in the form of prayer. In other words from the systems point of view prayer qualifies as information feedback, where the cosmic system’s human output feeds information back to the cosmic system’s initial input, which feedback to our cosmic parent ensures homeostasis.
The prediction that exclusively human beings pray to the Creator of the universe can be falsified by the demonstration that creatures above or below the level of our intelligence pray to the Creator as well.
If a man is the genotype of the phenotype universe, then the parameters or determining characteristics of the universe are exquisitely fine-tuned for our production, just as the parameters of an apple tree are exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of apples.
Indeed, in astrophysics we find that the universe is remarkably biofriendly and is fine-tuned for our production. ID critics, however, are invited to falsify this prediction by demonstrating that the universe is fine-tuned for the production of intelligence that is above and beyond human intelligence.
As hopefully I made it clear, the charge by ID critics that the designer remained unidentified is bogus. The designer of the universe is Jesus Christ, he revealed himself as our creator, and he’s coming back to deal with his enemies, who are the enemies of humanity as well.
The charges, that ID is not falsifiable and has no predictive power whatsoever, are also bogus. I have provided falsifiable predictions, and now the burden is on the critics of Intelligent Design to falsify those predictions.
Let me conclude by noting that a profound shift is occurring in our perception of the universe, and Intelligent Design is acting as one of its catalysts. The evolutionist paradigm is in process of decay, and is being replaced with the paradigm of cosmic ontogeny or epigenesis.
In brief, we are about to realize that our universe does not have a big bang origin, but a seed origin, which initial and perpetual cosmic seed is Christ, the zero-point of creation. For reasons of his own he created the universe for the production of human beings in his own image, similarly as an acorn creates a mighty oak tree for the reproduction of itself.
For modern science to explain the generation of the universe without its parent seed is about as irrational as to explain the generation of a tree without its parent seed or genotype.
By all signs members of the entrenched Darwinian establishment are determined to fight like cornered rats, but inevitably they will pay the ultimate price for leading generations of children astray. Evidently they will stop at nothing to maintain the Darwinian doctrine of evolution from a simple beginning, in spite of the fact that it is entirely delusional, and flies straight in the face of logic.
Those who believe that human intelligence is the product of the universe, when in fact the universe is the product of human intelligence, are no different from that proverbial maker of an idol who supposed that the idol which he had made actually made him.
First of all, they allege that ID theorists failed to name the designer. The fundamental problem with this criticism is that intelligence in fact has been named as the designer--after all, the theory itself is called Intelligent Design. Thus the designer is intelligence. And because there is absolutely no demonstrable evidence that an intelligence above and beyond human intelligence exists, by default the credit for design in nature goes to human intelligence.
If ID critics want me to be even more specific, Christ identified himself as that intelligence which created the universe to make reproductions of himself in the form of human beings. In other words we find design in nature because Christ constitutes the seed of the universe, or the cosmic system’s input and output. As he disclosed it in Revelation 22:13, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
In essence Jesus is telling us that he constitutes the beginning and the end of the cosmic system, similarly as a seed constitutes the beginning and the end of a plant system.
"I pray you," wrote Jean d'Espagnet in his Hermetic Arcanum, "look with the eyes of the mind at this little tree of the grain of wheat, regarding all its circumstances, that you may be able to plant the tree of the philosophers."
He’s asking us to meditate on any kind of seed-bearing plant, and if we are able to infer based on our observations that the universe exists, and we exist because the parent seed of the universe needed a “manufacturing” plant for the production of human beings in its own image, then we’ll gain enlightenment.
Second, ID critics allege that the theory fails to provide testable claims. Again, this criticism is demonstrably false: ID is eminently testable, has been tested, and is being tested constantly. As a matter of fact, ID needs no testing at all. The fact that design is the basic quality of intelligence is so self-evident that anyone who doubts it has to be exquisitely ignorant or entirely delusional.
What needs to be demonstrated is not the fact that design is the basic quality of intelligence, but the abysmal absurdity that the formation of systems in nature—from atoms to the universe--is the basic quality of zero intelligence. Needless to say, the burden is on the critics of Intelligent Design to demonstrate that structure formation in the universe is the product of zero intelligence. Those who rabidly promote that nonsense are most qualified to do the demonstrations, having near-zero intelligence themselves.
In short, the claim that zero intelligence is the cause of structure formation in nature is pure speculation. Facts do not warrant it, and analogy does not support it. On top of that, the constant generation of structures by intelligence falsifies outright that lamebrained concept.
When we wish to have an apple tree in our garden, we simply plant an apple seed, and get a tree that bears apples. Voilá, Intelligent Design has been demonstrated--the design we find in the tree’s structure comes from the seed’s intelligence. Moreover, the design we find in a building comes from its designer, and the design we find in our body comes from the human genome or human intelligence.
Seeing that any design we have is caused by intelligence, what makes the critics of Intelligent Design believe that zero intelligence is the cause of structure formation in nature? On what empirical evidence do they base the evidental nonsence that zero intelligence can generate anything superior to itself? If the initial cause of the universe had zero intelligence, how did it manage to boost itself up to the level of human intelligence?
We are not interested in “just so” stories, but in facts. Who has ever observed the generation of intelligence from zero intelligence? What empirical evidence validates the rationality of the belief that an initial cause can yield anything superior to itself?
If indeed science is, above all else, about cause-and-effect relationship, then the true test of a theory or explanation in science, and in philosophy as well, is the central question: Is the proposed initial cause of a phenomenon sufficient to bring about the effect attributed to it?
Most importantly, we have to keep in mind that the proposed initial cause of a phenomenon in question must be, in terms of value or qualities, proportional to the value and qualities of the phenomenon it caused. This is a basic and rational requirement because no initial cause can produce an effect greater than itself--i.e., no initial cause can give more than what it has. Or, whatever qualities are in the effect must originate from that effect’s initial cause.
So if we attribute to an initial cause an effect greater than itself, then the extra effect is without a cause, and could come only from nothing, which is contrary to reason and, by extension, to science.
Thus from the Principle of Causality necessarily follows that the initial cause of the universe cannot be lesser in qualities than the qualities we find in the universe, just as the parent seed of a tree cannot be lesser in qualities than the qualities of the tree it created.
Also the Principle of Causality tells us that when we try to derive the richness of life from a simple beginning, as Darwin did, we are deluding ourselves. We are trying to get from a simple cause what it clearly does not have, namely greater complexity.
The U.S. novelist, Margaret Deland (1857-1945), pertinently remarked: “A pint can’t hold a quart--if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.”
I suggest that the critics of Intelligent Design should keep this fact in mind, as well as science teachers, unless they want to teach hocus-pocus.
Because the belief that zero intelligence caused the formation of the universe is patently irrational, we have no choice but to posit that the initial cause of the universe can be no lesser in qualities than what we find in the universe. Thus this logical inference from a highly complex effect to an initial cause no lesser in qualities than the effect itself points in the direction of an intelligent agent that we may call the parent seed, universal common ancestor, designer, or cosmic genotype of the phenotype universe.
Third, critics of Intelligent Design eagerly promote the fabrication that the theory completely lacks predictive power. Of course, nothing can be further from the truth. Because we know that human intelligence in Christ’s person is the seed, creator or designer of the universe, we are in the position to predict with unparalleled confidence that Christ is the universal common ancestor of all things created. Also we predict that universal common descent has its source in Jesus Christ.
Overwhelming evidence for the relation of all creatures to Christ by universal common descent has been provided by paleontology, comparative anatomy, biogeography, embryology, biochemistry, molecular genetics, and other scientific disciplines. Whereas evolutionists stick to Darwin’s invention tenaciously--namely to the supernatural entity misleadingly named “natural selection”--, we predict that universal common descent’s mechanism is epigenesis. Thus the process of development from Christ’s genotype to the mature universe for the production of progeny in Christ’s image is epigenetic.
All of these predictions are falsifiable, provided ID critics can demonstrate that instead of Christ the universal common ancestor is a minimal life form, and ultimately zero intelligence; that universal common descent is not a fact; or that epigenesis is not a viable mechanism for development from the seed of the universe.
Based on the knowledge that Christ created the universe to have children in his own image we also predict with great confidence that the cosmic system yields end-product or output in the form of human beings. This prediction is falsifiable, provided ID critics can present a being that exists beyond and above human beings. If they have such a superhuman being in their closet, we'd like to have it presented for our examination.
ID critics may raise the objection that man is not the cosmic system’s input and output, or pinnacle of all life forms in the universe. Indeed, whether it is true or not, we can’t be absolutely certain. Precisely for this reason the theory of creation by Christ is tentative, just as scientific theories are supposed to be.
Because we are the cosmic system’s output, we predict that exclusively human beings have the potential to provide information feedback to the cosmic system’s initial input for the purpose of self-regulation. Communication with the universe’s parent seed is not only possible, but such exchange of information is taking place constantly in the form of prayer. In other words from the systems point of view prayer qualifies as information feedback, where the cosmic system’s human output feeds information back to the cosmic system’s initial input, which feedback to our cosmic parent ensures homeostasis.
The prediction that exclusively human beings pray to the Creator of the universe can be falsified by the demonstration that creatures above or below the level of our intelligence pray to the Creator as well.
If a man is the genotype of the phenotype universe, then the parameters or determining characteristics of the universe are exquisitely fine-tuned for our production, just as the parameters of an apple tree are exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of apples.
Indeed, in astrophysics we find that the universe is remarkably biofriendly and is fine-tuned for our production. ID critics, however, are invited to falsify this prediction by demonstrating that the universe is fine-tuned for the production of intelligence that is above and beyond human intelligence.
As hopefully I made it clear, the charge by ID critics that the designer remained unidentified is bogus. The designer of the universe is Jesus Christ, he revealed himself as our creator, and he’s coming back to deal with his enemies, who are the enemies of humanity as well.
The charges, that ID is not falsifiable and has no predictive power whatsoever, are also bogus. I have provided falsifiable predictions, and now the burden is on the critics of Intelligent Design to falsify those predictions.
Let me conclude by noting that a profound shift is occurring in our perception of the universe, and Intelligent Design is acting as one of its catalysts. The evolutionist paradigm is in process of decay, and is being replaced with the paradigm of cosmic ontogeny or epigenesis.
In brief, we are about to realize that our universe does not have a big bang origin, but a seed origin, which initial and perpetual cosmic seed is Christ, the zero-point of creation. For reasons of his own he created the universe for the production of human beings in his own image, similarly as an acorn creates a mighty oak tree for the reproduction of itself.
For modern science to explain the generation of the universe without its parent seed is about as irrational as to explain the generation of a tree without its parent seed or genotype.
By all signs members of the entrenched Darwinian establishment are determined to fight like cornered rats, but inevitably they will pay the ultimate price for leading generations of children astray. Evidently they will stop at nothing to maintain the Darwinian doctrine of evolution from a simple beginning, in spite of the fact that it is entirely delusional, and flies straight in the face of logic.
Those who believe that human intelligence is the product of the universe, when in fact the universe is the product of human intelligence, are no different from that proverbial maker of an idol who supposed that the idol which he had made actually made him.
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