The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [45]
That was a mouthful that demanded elaboration. “Give me an example,” I said.
He gestured toward the Apple computer in the open briefcase at my feet. “One illustration that’s sometimes given is a laptop,” he said. “You could look at the screen and say, ‘Bad design; it should have been bigger.’ You could look at the memory and say, ‘Bad design; should have had a larger capacity.’ You could look at the keyboard and say, ‘Bad design; should have been easier to use.’
“But the engineer isn’t supposed to be creating the best screen, the best memory, and the best keyboard—he’s supposed to be producing the best computer he can given certain size, weight, price, and portability requirements. Could the screen be bigger? Yes, but then portability suffers. Could the computer have more memory? Sure, but then the cost goes too high.
“So there are inevitable tradeoffs and compromises. Each individual part might be criticized for being suboptimal, but that’s not the issue. The real issue is how well the overall laptop functions. That’s how good engineering works—and that explains some of the examples of supposed disteleology that are raised.”
While that made sense, it didn’t answer everything. “You’ll have to admit that there are other illustrations of disteleology that are more difficult to explain away,” I said.
“I don’t deny that,” he relied. “Some are just silly. Others are more thoughtful and serious, and they require effort to think through. For instance, Gould claimed the panda’s thumb looks jerry-rigged and not designed. Well, experts on the panda say it’s a pretty efficient way of scraping the bark off bamboo. In the absence of a standard of good design, which Gould can’t provide, it’s really hard to say whether it’s good or bad. It seems to perform its function exceedingly well.
“Other illustrations of disteleology get into issues of theodicy, or reconciling belief in God and natural evil. For example, what about viruses and bacteria that harm people? Did God create those? Natural theologians in the nineteenth century believed that if a perfect God created the world, then it would be perfect, so they were ill-equipped to deal with Darwin’s disteleological arguments.
“However, from a biblical point of view, there isn’t an expectation that nature would be perfect. The Bible says there has been decay or deterioration because evil entered the world and disrupted the original design. We’re not given all of the specifics on how this happened, but the biblical book of Romans affirms the natural world is groaning for its redemption, because something has gone wrong with the original creation. 26 Based on the biblical account, we would expect to see both evidence of design in nature as well as evidence of deterioration or decay—which we do.”
It was time to move on, but I glanced down at the laptop computer in my briefcase. I had to admit that Meyer’s basic explanations about disteleology did make a lot of sense.
ROADMAP TO THE FUTURE
As we wrapped up our conversation, I felt a little like Meyer did when he attended the Dallas conference in 1985: enthused about the affirmative scientific case for God. So far, the evidence from the telescope to the microscope was pointing powerfully in the direction of a Creator—a circumstance I never would have dreamed possible back in my days as a student. I was left with an urgent desire to continue my investigation.
Still, I also was experiencing an underlying skepticism. Would the case for a Creator hold up when it was scrutinized more carefully and when I could cross-examine experts with all of the questions that plagued me? What fascinating new details would be supplied by those who have spent years studying the various categories of evidence that Meyer had