The Evidential Power of Beauty by Dubay Fr. Thomas

Author:Dubay, Fr. Thomas [Dubay, Fr. Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898707526
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2009-06-29T04:00:00+00:00

Design Accords with Science

We have already noted that the rejection of design in nature arises not from science but from materialism. It remains now to explore a bit more deeply the fact that there is nothing unscientific about acknowledging stunning design throughout the cosmos, and most especially in the living kingdoms. We may begin by listening to scientists who openly speak of design in nature and assume it furthers what they think and how to express their thoughts and findings to others.

We read, for example, that “the wings of an eagle are a miracle in lightweight design. . . . Pound for pound, an eagle wing is stronger than the wing of an airplane.” The bones of the eagle are hollow, and in some places they are strengthened by slim inner braces. Each wing feather is immensely strong because it is “held together by more than 350, 000 tiny hooks”. The wing is constructed to provide lift for the same reason that the wings of airplanes are precisely crafted for the same purpose.20 Astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins commenting on the discovery, in the late 1970s, by English farmers of large geometric patterns flattened on their wheat fields, noted that three patterns “displayed exact numerical relationships, all of them involving diatonic ratios, the simple whole-number ratios that determine a scale of musical notes. ‘These designs demonstrate the remarkable mathematical ability of their creators’,” Hawkins comments.21 If there is design in the wheat fields, as obviously there was, then science benefits immensely from the design in the entire universe, since our cosmos is utterly filled with most abstruse mathematics. And there is no mathematics without a mathematician.

Research chemist Bela Szepesi writes that in the laboratory “an intelligent designer (an experimenter) can assemble a cell from less organized cellular aggregates and that new species can be formed by a designer via insertion of genes and chromosomes (such as the transgenic species). So far there is no credible scientific evidence that cells can form by a random assembly process of simple components or that the species barrier can be crossed by random process.”22 It is ironic how researchers constantly suppose and use design in their own work and then some of them turn around and deny it in the objects on which they are working. The word for this is weird.

Our best and most widely educated scientists, those, namely, who have a feel for epistemology and thus possess some philosophical depth, see vividly that a chance universe is an impossibility. They are convinced that just as a Mozart concerto demands a composer, the Pietà a master sculptor, a Macbeth a highly talented dramatist, a computer a team of gifted technicians, so also the breathtaking and immensely complex beauties we have touched upon in this volume—not to mention countless others described in libraries throughout the world—demand a superhuman origin. As we have observed earlier, biochemist Lewis Thomas comments upon the view that the universe is random and thus absurd: “I cannot make my peace with the randomness doctrine: I cannot abide the notion of purposelessness and blind chance in nature.

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