The Chapel - Rediscovering God Changes Everything.

Greetings! Thanks for your question.

Some scientists (such as Stephen Gould) have argued that the world consists of some very “bad design.” They insist that an all-powerful Creator would have done a better job. Therefore, they claim that the universe was not created, but is just the result of chance plus time. However, even an allegedly “bad” design is still a design. In addition, by what criteria are we to declare a design to be “bad”? And by what criteria are we to recognize an allegedly “perfect” design. Just what does ideal design look like?

One of religiously skeptical scientists' favorite examples of “bad design” was once the giant panda's "thumb." It just seemed to be too long and clumsy not to interfere with what they thought an ideal thumb should be designed to accomplish. It has since been discovered, however, that this aspect of the panda's anatomy enables its hand to serve as a "double pincer-like apparatus that allows the panda to manipulate objects with great dexterity" particularly enhancing the panda’s food gathering and feeding capacity (http://www.reasons.org/evolution/speciation-events/second-opinion-giant-pandas-thumb).

As time has passed, such has been the case, for example, with so-called vestigial organs and so-called junk (or non-coding) DNA in the human body. The more we learn, the more we discover that these structures actually serve the body well. So perhaps the Creator as Designer prefers a menagerie of diverse contraptions that surprise us with their function rather than boring us with the obvious. Does that make him any less intelligent? A souped-up Chevy may not be a Mercedes, but it is still the invention of intelligence, and the Chevy may be of greater value to some than others, depending on its purpose. It does not matter what we like or prefer or consider “perfect,” as long as the Designer knows what he is doing and why. And we should not be surprised that it takes us finite beings a while to figure out that the design really does serve an important function that was not apparent to us at first.

So if we consider the Designer as one who employs engineering principles, we may think of him as one who strives for constrained optimization, rather than perfection. We may imagine him as one who seeks to strike a balance among many conflicting objectives. For example, what would a world look like that is fit for both life and death, existence and extinction, and what would the Designer have to take into account in order to construct such a world, that is, a world within which he is able to accomplish his eternally intended redemptive goal, which requires the life and death of his own Son? As finite human beings, we are not all-knowing, and, therefore, cannot possibly comprehend all such deliberations of a transcendent and infinite Designer. Who are we to say that the Designer has not fashioned a world that is optimal given the constraints necessary for Him to accomplish his eternal purposes? We may yet consider this world imperfect, but only God, who is perfect in wisdom, knows his ultimate purposes, and his ends justify his means (See Job Chapters 38-39).

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile
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