Village Voice - December,
2005
Intelligent Design and
How It
Relates to Anatomy and Physiology
Intelligent design
refers to the theory that intelligent causes are responsible for the
origin of
the universe and of life in all it diversity.
–
Dictionary.com
I am a person who is
fascinated with science, but
I’m not necessarily a scientist. I’m
also a religious person who has been taught that God is the be all and
the end
all, the creator of everything. I take
biology and chemistry classes during the week, and go to church on the
weekend. Some might think of this as
living two separate lives, but I disagree.
I’m also a curious person, a trait that is common among
scientists. Curiosity can turn sometimes
turn into
skepticism or cynicism when it appears in a religious setting. Religion can’t always explain “why?” with any
answer other than, “Because God made it that way.”
Science, however, can explain “How”. I
have heard many conflicting explanations,
both of which I am supposed to believe unquestionably as “the truth”.
Neither science nor
religion can fully explain
everything, but I believe that if we can utilize both, we can get
significantly
closer to an answer for our questions.
For example, every child asks their parents, “Why is the sky
blue?” I’ve known most parents to throw
back,
“Because God made it that way.” After
taking some chemistry and some biology, I understand that it has
something to
do with the wavelength of light that is reflected back and activates
the
corneas in our retinas to send the signals to our brains that tell us
that the
color is light blue.
I’ve learned in
Anatomy and Physiology that
everything in the body is mechanical; there is a process for
everything, a
system. But who designed that system? We
just evolved that way, right? I’ve
been taught that evolution is random
changes in DNA sequences that happen when it is damaged or during DNA
synthesis. The rearranged base pairs end
up in gametes during meiosis, and the rest is history.
And a few switched base pairs account for an
organism that crawled out of the ocean and became the most intelligent
and
successful life form on the planet.
I don’t think so.
Like I mentioned
earlier, I tend
to be a skeptic. I just cannot believe
that a random series of events starting with a big bang and some
floating dust
in space led to life as we know it today.
For something completely random to work out so well would be
like
winning the lottery almost every time you play.
For me, I think the
most
believable explanation is that some higher power had to have planned
this. Designed
this. I like to think of God as a
scientist. Maybe evolution was God
experimenting. For example, we talked
about the bones in the
inner ear evolving from jawbones of dinosaurs and lizards.
Perhaps that was the “rough draft” of a
structure that was fine tuned and adjusted for us.
There are countless
different
species and forms of life on the earth.
Some have been around for many eras, surviving through ice ages
and
extinctions. Others are very new, such
as humans. Once God found structures and
bodily systems that were best suited for life on this planet, He
“created man
in His image.” I believe that God
designed the DNA to mix up its base pairs in exactly the right way to
form the
people that we are today. It’s just
amazing that He could plan all of this, down to the atoms that make up
the
molecules that form the DNA that code for proteins that build life as
we know
it today.
Now that is
intelligent
design.
-- Jean
Joiner (written