Is Creative Design Consistent with Darwinism?
Pharmacists have designed different molecules to serve as medicines, and have even patented some of their molecules. Eventually someone may design an organism of a new species. We can therefore speak of creative design, at least in the future of what we now call “natural history.” Our progeny may eventually have to serve on juries to try patent cases, to see if some organism is a product of nature or if it could be true that the claimant designed the organism. Meanwhile we can ask the following question: Of all the features of natural history, which are consistent with creative design, and which are consistent with Darwinism? Which are inconsistent? Let’s assume throughout that we are talking about a very advanced designer, one who is not limited to just what has been invented to date.
Homing is consistent with both creative design and Darwinism. Natural selection of the fittest is basically a method for moving closer and closer to an established local maximum of the survivability merit function. In almost all cases natural selection eliminates mutations because they are departures from the locally best morphology for survival. Designers also home in on a maximum in the merit function once they find a close neighborhood of the maximum.
Adaptive Morphology is likewise consistent with both creative design and Darwinism. If survival conditions change slowly enough through environmental pressure, a homing mechanism can track them. Providing for adaptive morphology is a seldom-realized goal of human designers, but should be no problem for a very advanced designer.
Imaginative Leaps are consistent with creative design and inconsistent with Darwinism. Darwinism relies on a series of small changes to produce something new. There may be no closely spaced stepping-stones to make a viable path between the old and the new, but a designer can make imaginative leaps.
Reuse of Elegant Solutions in Similar Species is consistent with both creative design and Darwinism. Blood circulates in humans and primates (and in many other organisms). Darwinism says the best solution to a particular problem carries over automatically since it contributes to survival. There is no reason forbidding designers to carry over elegant solutions as well. Human designers do it constantly. One criterion for evaluating proposed NASA projects is whether or not the new design will create an inheritance, an idea that can be carried over to future missions. A very advanced, highly creative designer might still decide that the best solution is one that is already in use.
Reuse of Elegant Solutions in Divergent Species is consistent with creative design but inconsistent with Darwinism. The reasons stated above apply to creative designers whether the species are widely separated or not, because of their ability to make imaginative leaps and to look at the whole picture at once. Cephalopods (“head and foot” organisms like octopi and squids) supposedly separated from vertebrates (organisms with backbones, like us) in the Pre-Cambrian Explosion, yet octopus eyes are very similar to ours. That implies that evolution found the same path twice under the pressure of very different environments, which is highly unlikely.
Non-Optimal Solutions are consistent with creative design if we allow for engineering compromise. Even a very advanced designer might be prodigal with a resource instead of conserving it. Often such prodigality provides a factor of safety. Engineers regularly design bridges to be stronger than the heaviest expected loads. Darwinists often point to deficiencies they identify in certain species as evidence for imperfect design. This is supposedly one of the trump cards Darwinism has against the idea that God created all the kinds of living organisms. There is always the reservation that the Darwinists have merely misunderstood the design purpose of a feature.
Researchers discovered that moths have stacked layers of high and low refractive index in their eyelet cells. Each layer is a quarter wave thick, that is, the thickness is equal to one quarter of the wavelength of the light waves that go through. These were recognized as natural color filters about the same time that optical engineers began making artificial color filters. At first the Darwinist researchers loudly proclaimed the discovery of a design error. The detectors were between the light entrance and the filters, and therefore the filters were useless, they said. Later researchers realized that the filters produced a reflected wave. From their location behind the detectors the filters blocked the unwanted colors by destructive interference, but they almost doubled the light intensity of the desired color by constructive interference. The supposedly erroneous design was in fact better than early engineering designs that put the filters between the light source and the detector. Supposedly non-optimal solutions, once understood, may in fact be optimal.
We summarize, scoring each feature as C for Consistent or I for Inconsistent:
Homing is consistent with both creative design and Darwinism. Natural selection of the fittest is basically a method for moving closer and closer to an established local maximum of the survivability merit function. In almost all cases natural selection eliminates mutations because they are departures from the locally best morphology for survival. Designers also home in on a maximum in the merit function once they find a close neighborhood of the maximum.
Adaptive Morphology is likewise consistent with both creative design and Darwinism. If survival conditions change slowly enough through environmental pressure, a homing mechanism can track them. Providing for adaptive morphology is a seldom-realized goal of human designers, but should be no problem for a very advanced designer.
Imaginative Leaps are consistent with creative design and inconsistent with Darwinism. Darwinism relies on a series of small changes to produce something new. There may be no closely spaced stepping-stones to make a viable path between the old and the new, but a designer can make imaginative leaps.
Reuse of Elegant Solutions in Similar Species is consistent with both creative design and Darwinism. Blood circulates in humans and primates (and in many other organisms). Darwinism says the best solution to a particular problem carries over automatically since it contributes to survival. There is no reason forbidding designers to carry over elegant solutions as well. Human designers do it constantly. One criterion for evaluating proposed NASA projects is whether or not the new design will create an inheritance, an idea that can be carried over to future missions. A very advanced, highly creative designer might still decide that the best solution is one that is already in use.
Reuse of Elegant Solutions in Divergent Species is consistent with creative design but inconsistent with Darwinism. The reasons stated above apply to creative designers whether the species are widely separated or not, because of their ability to make imaginative leaps and to look at the whole picture at once. Cephalopods (“head and foot” organisms like octopi and squids) supposedly separated from vertebrates (organisms with backbones, like us) in the Pre-Cambrian Explosion, yet octopus eyes are very similar to ours. That implies that evolution found the same path twice under the pressure of very different environments, which is highly unlikely.
Non-Optimal Solutions are consistent with creative design if we allow for engineering compromise. Even a very advanced designer might be prodigal with a resource instead of conserving it. Often such prodigality provides a factor of safety. Engineers regularly design bridges to be stronger than the heaviest expected loads. Darwinists often point to deficiencies they identify in certain species as evidence for imperfect design. This is supposedly one of the trump cards Darwinism has against the idea that God created all the kinds of living organisms. There is always the reservation that the Darwinists have merely misunderstood the design purpose of a feature.
Researchers discovered that moths have stacked layers of high and low refractive index in their eyelet cells. Each layer is a quarter wave thick, that is, the thickness is equal to one quarter of the wavelength of the light waves that go through. These were recognized as natural color filters about the same time that optical engineers began making artificial color filters. At first the Darwinist researchers loudly proclaimed the discovery of a design error. The detectors were between the light entrance and the filters, and therefore the filters were useless, they said. Later researchers realized that the filters produced a reflected wave. From their location behind the detectors the filters blocked the unwanted colors by destructive interference, but they almost doubled the light intensity of the desired color by constructive interference. The supposedly erroneous design was in fact better than early engineering designs that put the filters between the light source and the detector. Supposedly non-optimal solutions, once understood, may in fact be optimal.
We summarize, scoring each feature as C for Consistent or I for Inconsistent:
All the points are consistent with creative design. Darwinism has two strikes and a foul tip against it.