What Immortal Hand or Eye?

Random collection of atoms.

Did Darwin disrupt the argument from design? New Atheists seem to think so.

The argument from design holds that the order in the universe demonstrates the existence of an intelligence behind it—aka God. The classic analogy is this: if you found a watch lying in a field, it would be obvious to you from the intricacy of the object that it was not randomly produced by the actions of wind and wave, but made intentionally by a reasonable being. Yet a giraffe, say, is in fact far more intricate than a watch. So…

Bu, New Atheists—and old ones too, no doubt—affirm that Darwin has given us an alternate explanation. Darwin, on this view, postulates a mechanism that can, given enough time, randomly produce a giraffe; hence no need for a watchmaker.

But that depends, in the first place, on what you mean by “random.” Darwin himself tends to us the term “chance.” Darwin certainly does not prove, nor can he really believe, that evolution is random in the higher sense: to Merriam-Webster, “an action that happens without order or without reason.” In fact, his theory itself, in presuming to explain how evolution works, presents it as an ordered process (evolution) with a reason (preservation of self and species). Moreover, he is not saying that evolution operates outside the laws of nature, which is to say, the established and accepted order in the universe. Indeed, with or without the giraffe, the fact that science works at all is proof that the universe is ordered and follows a design. If it did not, we would not be able to understand it or find rules behind it. As Einstein said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”

Determining randomness in the absolute sense is not just beyond the purview of science; it would be a disproof of science. The very point of science is to demonstrate that nothing is random, that everything follows laws.

So it really does seem that, whatever even Darwin himself thought, whatever Darwinists think, and whatever atheists in general think, Darwin’s theory does nothing to refute or reduce the power of the argument from design. A “random” process in the strict sense still did not produce the giraffe, and the process that did, it would seem, has to have been programmed in to the system by some designer.

It is unfortunate that Darwin and Darwinism use the term “random mutation.” They can only have meant “random” in some relative sense, but they themselves seem to have tricked themselves into thinking it is meant in an absolute sense. There are, I think, only two possibilities Alvin Plantinga, quoting Ernst Mayr, argues that the meaning of “random” or “chance” in this context can only be, that said mutations are random in relation to the specific objective of survival of the species. In other words, the words of Sober, “there is no physical mechanism that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur.” The mutations occur not randomly, but based on some orderly and yet unknown mechanism other than pure survival value.

No issue here, in terms of the argument from design. God could use a spiritual mechanism to do this directly, and in any case his intentions are surely higher than mere survival of species. Kind of goes without saying from the fact that he allows species to die out.

So the giraffe remains an apparent proof of divine power. We are simply postulating some of the tools the watchmaker might have used.