Intelligent Design (Sermon Outline)

Written by Dr. Ray Bohlin

I.   What’s the Fuss?

A. There’s a strange phenomenon popping up around the country. Scientists are stepping out of their laboratories and speaking to the media about something that has them quite concerned. It’s not the threat of a new flu pandemic; it’s not the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, or even the possible threat of global warming. It’s something called Intelligent Design.

“Evidence is being produced almost day by day in favor of evolution. That to me says it's factual, the way things happened. How anyone can come along and deny it, it just numbs my mind." [Dr. Gene Bammel, The Vail Daily, August 12, 2006]

Well, we certainly don’t want our scientists walking around with numb minds! So if you are going to question evolution, it better be good.

“In the border war between science and faith, the doctrine of ‘intelligent design’ is a sly subterfuge - a marzipan confection of an idea presented in the shape of something more substantial.”[Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2006]

This journalist believes that Intelligent Design promises more than it can deliver. Notice also that the journalist makes sure you think this is a science versus faith question and not a question within science itself. No doubt he would tell you that evolution is science and ID is faith.

So with so many clearly confused and angry, we need to dig a little deeper.

B. The Scriptures are clear that God has created with an unmistakable divine imprint. In Romans. Paul’s theological defense of the gospel, he begins by telling us there is something we all know but most are suppressing: truth (v.18).

C. Paul tells us there is something we know and it is quite plain to us. It is plain to us because He has made it plain to us. Paul is being unmistakably clear. There is something we know because God has gone to great lengths to insure we know it (v.19).

D. And what is this unmistakable truth? Read v. 20. Paul basically says, open your eyes. Look up into the skies, into the heavens. Look down at your feet and the ground, the grass, the trees, the insects, birds, and animals. Simply by observing the created things we know there is a God and we can know something of His divine nature and His eternal power.

II. Evolution

We need to be very careful about the word evolution. It means many things to different people. Much of the confusion over the question of evolution comes from the fact that people often use the word differently and think they are all talking about the same thing. Here are some definitions. The first four are plain common sense definitions that anyone would agree with. The last two are theories that require multiple lines of evidence and cannot be directly observed. But scientists will refer to all six as “evolution.” Make sure when in a conversation about evolution that you are all talking about the same thing!

  1. Change over time – fact
  2. Changing gene frequencies in natural populations – fact
  3. Natural populations changing in response to environmental changes – fact
  4. New species arising naturally – fact
  5. All new adaptations due to mutation and natural selection – theory
  6. All organisms descended from a common ancestor – theory

The fifth definition directly concerns the question of Intelligent Design. What accounts for the intricate and beautiful complexity of the universe and living things?

III. Intelligent Design

A. Is not the latest version of Creationism

B. Intelligent Design is an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its dependence on random/chaotic processes coupled with selection.

C. Intelligent Design is also a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes, which are effects of high specificity coupled with extremely small probabilities.

D. Winning the lottery

Now that was a mouthful. What do I mean by "high specificity coupled with small probability"? Think of the lottery. Someone always wins the lottery despite the long odds. So improbable things do indeed happen.

But let’s make this specific. Let’s say your sister wins the lottery. Now that is someone you specifically know, but again someone always wins the lottery so the fact that it’s your sister doesn’t warrant any special attention.

But let’s make things a bit less probable and much more specific. Let’s say your sister wins the lottery not once but three weeks in a row. Now what are you thinking? Like most people you’re thinking something is not right. The same person doesn’t win the lottery three weeks in a row.

You suspect cheating. You suspect Intelligent Design. Someone with a clever mind is somehow manipulating the lottery.

E. Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design IS the science that studies signs of intelligence in Nature.

Intelligent Design is NOT a religious idea that says living things are so complex that a Creator is necessary to explain them.

F. A “Just Right” Universe and Solar System – use an inflatable model of the sun and earth to demonstrate some of these principles. They are available from online science stores like www.physlink.com/estore/cart/InflatableEclipseKit.cfm. This inflatable eclipse kit ($25) comes with sun, earth and moon. It takes a while to inflate the sun but it is big enough to see in almost any size church. Note, they are not to scale!

Distance from the sun – the earth is 93,000,000 miles from the sun. This is just the right distance to support life on earth. If you round this off to 100 million miles, have one person come up and hold the sun and another hold the earth. Have them stand back to back and instruct the person holding the earth to march off 5 big steps, essentially 20 million miles per step and then face each other again. This is just the right distance for liquid water to exist at all times on the earth. Instruct the “earth” to take one step closer to the sun. At this distance, all the liquid water would vaporize into seam and complex life is impossible. Have earth return to its original position and then take one step further away from the earth. At this distance, all the water would freeze solid and complex life is impossible again.

Size, temperature, & type of sun – Point to the sun and emphasize that there are many different kinds of stars in the universe and ours is just the right size, temperature and emits just the right spectrum of light and radiation to support life. Our sun is just right.

Size, axial tilt, rotation speed, moon, and composition of earth – The earth has just the right speed of rotation (too slow a rotation and day and night periods would be too long, forcing too severe temperature extremes). Our one moon stabilizes the all-important tilt of our axis and provides regular tides that mixes the nutrients and heat in the oceans allowing the entire ocean capable of supporting life, not just the first few feet. The liquid iron core of earth creates an electromagnetic field that shields us from much of the harmful radiation our sun does emit.

G.    Each of these parameters can be assigned a probability of occurring naturally or by chance

There are now over 322 parameters with a probability of 1 in 10282 or 10 -282.

1 planet/star or 1022 planets (ten thousand billion billion), the final number of planets in the universe suitable for life is 10-282 x 10 22 = 10-260 or

 0.0000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000001 planets suitable for life in the universe

That’s a little less than one! By natural processes alone we should not even be here.

IV. Biological Design

“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” [Richard Dawkins, 1986, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 1]

Now notice he said, “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Living things certainly look designed, but, according to Dawkins, it’s an illusion. He spends the rest of his book trying to show how mutation and natural selection, the blind watchmaker, has created this illusion.

But he does admit things look designed. Well, if it looks designed, maybe it is.

A.The incredible Woodpecker – woodpeckers are magnificent birds. They are uniquely designed to accomplish the mundane tasks of searching for food. Woodpeckers are unique in that they bang their heads into trees. They are looking for insects that are underneath the bark of a tree or in the wood of the tree itself. Some will land on the trunk and listen to hear the insects in the tree and then drill a hole to expose the tunnels carved out in the tree.

1. They have a unique toe structure, two in front, two in back to grasp the vertical surface of the tree

2. They have stiff tail feathers that act as the third leg a tripod to give them stability as they bang their heads into trees.

3. The beak is not soft and won’t bend, it is not brittle so it won’t break.

4. There is a shock absorber of muscle and cartilage between the bill and the skull to absorb the blows.

5. There is also a unique set of muscles and nerves in the head and neck allowing a rapid head movement. We call it “drumming” because it sometimes sounds like a drummer executing a drum roll. Try moving your head that fast. We can’t do it.

6. But the most unique thing about woodpeckers is the tongue. Some species can extend their tongue, three to five times the length of the beak! But where does it go when it is back inside the head? The tongue travels an amazing journey into the throat to the back of the head and around the top of the skull and in the European Green Woodpecker, inserts into the right nostril and extends all the way to the inside tip of the beak!

7. How amazing is our God. Just when you think you have Him all figured out, He makes a woodpecker! Intelligent and imaginative! This is no chance assemblage of parts, there is clear plan and purpose in how all these different features work together.

B. Let’s take on more look at complex and specific – use the photo from the PowerPoint of a black sand beach from Hawaii showing tumbled rocks in the background and rocks in circle in the foreground.

1. The rocks in the background are very complex and improbable but clearly just a chance assemblage of rocks.

2. The circle in the foreground looks purposeful but the circle is rather simple, perhaps designed, perhaps not.

3. But if you walk further down the beach and see "John Loves Mary" written in the sand you immediately know this is the result of intelligence. You don’t have to know who wrote it or even whether it is true. You have very precise symbols arranged in a sequence. The sequence of symbols are grouped together into words. The groups of symbols are also arranged in a sequence to communicate a message.

DNA has the same basic structure of four basic “letters,” the biochemical nucleotides abbreviated G, A, C, and T. These “letters” are arranged into three letter words or codons. The codons are arranged to “spell” out genes (sentences). Genes are coordinated into chromosomes (books) and many chromosomes make a library (genome). Language only comes from intelligence in all our collective experience. DNA requires an intelligent designer.

Complex but not specific – rocks in the background
Specific but not complex – circle of rocks in the foreground

The current situation in the conflict between the emerging science of Intelligent Design and the entrenched dogma of naturalistic Darwinism can be summed up by this quote from Mahatma Gandhi::

"First, they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win!"

We are getting closer to a fully open discussion but they are fighting hard and it may get worse before it gets better. It is important to understand that the evidence is growing day by day that our universe and our lives can only be the result of an all powerful, intelligent creator. 

Resources

Probe Ministries – www.probe.org

Discovery Institute – www.discovery.org – www.dissentfromdarwin.org

ARN – www.arn.org

Intelligent Design Blog of William Dembski and others - http://www.uncommondescent.com/