This month’s issue of Physics Today contains an article entitled “Evolution Wars Show No Sign of Abating”:http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-8/p24.html. It’s free on the web, for all you non-subscribers (and I know there are just a few of you!). It’s a nice, but (as usual) scary, overview of this confusing mess into which the U.S. has gotten itself.
I got to thinking. What happens if you take a bunch of randomly cut paper shapes and throw them repeatedly onto the floor. Then, snap a picture of the pattern they make. Take the photos – say, 100 – and show them to a random set of Americans. Ask them the question, “Which of these patterns was designed by an artist?” Determine what fraction of people say that they see design in any of them. That would be a very interesting experiment.
Intelligent design advocates always say they can see, touch, and smell the design in nature. I agree that the laws of nature create order from relative disorder, and that understanding those laws is critical. But I don’t ascribe them to a designer. However, they never argue that. They argue that micro-motor assemblies in cells are evidence of design. I wonder if it’s just that they’ve had their noses in too close to the petri dish, and every complex structure that’s the result of thousands or millions of years of selection makes them see the shadows of design?
