Christian Apologetics - Teleological Evidence

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Teleology, when it is applied to Christianity, refers to the study of the evidence of intelligent design within the universe. This evidence includes:

* The irreducible complexity of the living cell

* The impossibility of abiogenesis (life coming from non-living matter in the beginning)

* The irreducible complexity of molecular machines within cells

* The impossibility of DNA forming from random chemical combinations (IE. the impossibility of intelligent information coming from non-intelligence)

* The inability to explain the origin and nature of consciousness and cognition in a purely mechanistic physical universe

* The incredibly precise and statistically impossible fine tuning of the universal constants

* The uniqueness of Earth with its long list of implausible habitability factors.

* The implausible and totally unexpected mathematical beauty of the laws of physics and our ability to comprehend them

I have written extensively about these in my book, 7 Reasons to Believe, and will be examining them in detail in my upcoming video and podcast series, Evidence for Belief. In this paper, however, I will very briefly mention a few of these areas of evidence.

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VIDEO SERIES: EVIDENCE FOR BELIEF

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IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY

Irreducible complexity refers to the fact that even the simplest components of life comprise a number of staggeringly complex and interdependent components. A single cell, for instance, is an incredibly complex biological factory containing hundreds of intricate, inter-dependent molecular machines, each one of which isindispensable to the viability of the cell. For a single cell to come into existence originally, each of these hundreds of molecular machines would have had to spring into existence simultaneously in a fully functioning state. There is no known natural process by which this could occur! The irreducibly complex single cell cries out for an intelligent designer.

Dr. John D. Morris states, “Any living thing gives such strong evidence for design by an intelligent designer that only a willful ignorance of the data could lead one to assign such intricacy to chance”.

The human genome is another example of irreducible complexity. Almost every cell of the human body has a complete set of DNA, with 3.2 billion base pairs of information. The entire coding for the development and functioning of the whole human body is present in every cell – an amount of information which, if translated into words on print, would equate to 1,800 volumes each containing 500 pages! Those who deny an intelligent designer are left clinging to the belief that this vast amount of genetic information developed by chance through positive mutations. There are two significant problems with attributing the development of the human genome to chance: Firstly, probabilistic calculations indicate that the universe hasn’t been in existence long enough for even one billionth of the genome to develop by chance alone (see the resources below for a full discussion of this argument). Secondly, positive genetic mutations simply never occur. All genetic mutations involve either the loss of genetic information or the corruption of information. There is no known natural process whereby new genetic information is created from nothing. Dr. Ken Ham states, “If they had known about genetics in Darwin’s day, the theory of evolution would never have gotten off the ground.”

MOLECULAR MACHINES

Living cells are filled with hundreds or even thousands of complex biological molecular machines carrying out all sorts of essential biological tasks. We call them “machines” because they have machine-like characteristics – cogs and gears and motors, and many of them are like tiny robots with arms and legs. Each molecular machine is comprised of dozens or even hundreds of individual parts made of many different protein molecules, shaped and joined together to form all the various moving parts of the machine. And each machine is … well … they’re alive! The living cell is a veritable factory filled with thousands of factory workers scurrying around doing all sorts of tasks.

This incredible world of molecular machines within cells increases our understanding of the IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY of cells, because if any one of those machines or group of machines was removed or was not in place in the beginning, the cell would not be viable; it would not be alive. All those complex biological components, a huge army of molecular machines – had to be in existence in the very first cells from the very beginning in order for those cells to be viable, in order to be alive and able to reproduce.

Furthermore, each of these molecular machines, individually, is irreducibly complex and cannot have evolved incrementally and gradually. You see, each molecular machine is comprised of many individual, inter-dependent moving parts, made of hundreds of different proteins, folded and shaped and joined together in just the right order to construct the machine. Molecular machines needed to come into existence with all their inter-dependant parts fully assembled and functioning in order for each machine to be viable.

For example, the spliceseosome is a molecular machine that consists of 300 different proteins. If any one of its 300 component proteins was missing or in the wrong order or a different protein – if just one of the millions of other possible proteins was included in the structure at ANY one of those points – the machine would not function. All of the right proteins in exactly the right order have to be in place for the molecular machine to function.

Thus, molecular machines are irreducibly complex. They cannot have evolved incrementally over time, because a partially constructed machine would be non-functioning. And non-functioning molecular machines would, in turn, render the whole cell non-functioning. The cell itself would not be alive and able to reproduce itself.

This example of irreducible complexity shows the impossibility of cells and their army of molecular machines coming into existence incrementally over a vast period of time as a result of blind chemical processes. An intelligent, all-powerful creator is strongly indicated.

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ABIOGENESIS

Abiogenesis refers to the supposed process whereby non-living, inorganic matter gave rise to the first living organisms in the beginning of earth’s biological history.

Significantly, the Wikipedia page for Abiogenesis states:

“Abiogenesis, or informally the origin of life, is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. While the details of this process are still unknown, the prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing complexity that involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Although the occurrence of abiogenesis is uncontroversial among scientists, there is no single, generally accepted model for the origin of life, … for how abiogenesis could have occurred.”[i]

This comment on Wikipedia is typical of the unfounded evolutionary belief in abiogenesis. Evolutionists are effectively saying, “we don’t know how it happened, we haven’t witnessed it happening today, there is no OBSERVABLE evidence that it ever happened in the past, and we haven’t been able to replicate it in our laboratories, but it must have happened, because the only alternative is to believe in a Creator!”

The problem facing evolutionists, is to explain how all this could come into existence by chance, from dead matter. Dr. John F. Ashton expresses this problem clearly:

“For the first life to start from non-living matter, thousands of specialised large complex molecules must somehow be synthesised in very large numbers from simple, small inorganic molecules. These molecules then have to come together randomly, over and over again, until somehow the structure of the cell is formed. This remarkable and complex structure would still, however, not be alive. To become alive, hundreds of metabolic reactions would have to be initiated, with the metabolic intermediates already in place at just the right concentrations so that the reactions went the right way. Common sense tells us that these sorts of reactions don’t just happen by chance – in fact, we cannot even make them happen.” (John F. Ashton, “Evolution Impossible”, Green Forest, AR, Masterbooks, 2013, p.43.)

Recognising this impossibility, Dr. Eugene V. Koonin (not a creationist) states:

“The origin of life is the most difficult problem that faces evolutionary biology and, arguably, biology in general. Indeed, the problem is so hard, and the current state of the art seems so frustrating, that some researchers prefer to dismiss the entire issue as being outside the scientific domain altogether, on the grounds that unique events are not conducive to scientific study.” (Koonin, Eugene V., The logic of chance: The nature and origin of biological evolution. Pearson Education, NJ. 2012, p.351.)

In other words, Dr. Koonin is saying that we have no idea how life could have originated; the problem is too difficult to solve, so some of us are just choosing to ignore it! He also appears to be admitting that the answer to the origin of life must lie BEYOND the realm of science and naturalistic causes.

Dr. Sir Fred Hoyle (1915 – 2001), in his book, “Evolution From Space”, states:

“The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it…It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.” (Hoyle, Sir Fred, Wickramasinghe, Chandra. 1984. Evolution from space. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY., p.148.)

FINE TUNING OF THE UNIVERSAL CONSTANTS

The fine tuning of the universe is the second category of evidence for intelligent design. This argument posits that the fundamental forces or constants of the universe are so extraordinarily fine-tuned for life that they could not have occurred by chance. The 34 recognised universal constants are so finely tuned that altering one by even one thousandth of one percent would render life and, in the case of some of the constants, the existence of matter itself, impossible.

Let’s take the gravitational constant as an example – the force that holds us to the surface of our planet and holds the physical matter of our planet together and keeps our planet orbiting our sun and holds our sun and billions of other stars in orbit around our galactic core. If the gravitational constant – if the force of gravity was either increased or decreased by 1 part in 10⁶⁰ of its current value, matter itself could not exist – our universe could not exist.

Let’s look at another example: the Cosmological Constant. This is the value of the energy density of the vacuum of space, which plays a stabilising role in the rate of expansion of the universe and which Einstein correctly identified in his theory of general relativity. Scientists estimate if the Cosmological Constant was altered by even 1 part in 10¹²⁰ of its current value, matter could not exist.

To give you an idea of how astronomically precise this value is, imagine a ruler that spans the entire length of the known universe – not just billions of kilometres but billions of light years in length. And imagine that the ruler is divided into increments of not just centimetres or even millimetres, by billionths of a millimetre. The increments of that ruler represent all the possible values or strengths that the cosmological constant could have. And the actual value of the cosmological constant, which allows the universe to exists, sits at one of those very precise points. If its strength or value was either increased or decreased by just one billionth of a millimetre on that vast ruler, the physical universe would not be able to exist.

I’ve only mentioned two of the cosmological constants. But there are 34 of them. And if the strength of ANY one of them were altered by even one trillionth of one percent, all life would cease and the physical universe would not be possible. Atoms would fly apart or implode and we would simply not exist. The fact is that the forces that govern the existence of our universe are balanced not just on a razor’s edge, but on the edge of a razor which is balanced on the edge of another razor which is balanced on another razor – 34 times!

The late great Stephen Hawking stated: “The remarkable fact is that these values seem to have been very finely adjusted to make life possible.”

Dr. Robin Collins, Professor of Theoretical Physics, North Western University, states, “The chance of just two of these cosmological constants developing by sheer chance, is one in 100 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That’s more than the number of atoms in the universe! And that’s just TWO of the constants!”. Dr Paul Davies, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Adelaide University, states, “The physical universe is put together with an ingenuity that is so astonishing, with physical constants that are so impossibly perfect, that I can no longer accept it as the product of brute chance”.

The teleological argument for the existence of God is extremely convincing. Dr. Sir Fred Hoyle, astrophysicist and mathematician, Cambridge University, states, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Charles Darwin stated, “The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed…. Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity. I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind, and I deserve to be called a Theist.”

For a more detailed discussion of the teleological argument, refer to the resources below:

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AP3 Teleological Argument (.pptx)

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Essential reading for anyone who is serious about defending their faith!