The Design Argument

Let's not stand on ceremony. Here we go. All of nature appears to be designed. And a design must have a Designer. Now the nature of God is an entirely different question. He could be an evil genius or an all-good genius, but whichever He is, you're stuck with the inevitable conclusion that a conscious Being must have put the universe together very carefully. This is an easy one for most. You don't even have to know much physics. Just look at a flower and you can see how much order there is. Now staunch skeptics will say that the order present in the flower followed from first principles in physics and that might be true. But where did those underlying first principles come from? Why are those ordered? Principles that don't follow from other principles are called first principles and we see these abundantly in nature.

Now it makes no sense to calculate the probabilities of events after they happen. For example, if I'm walking up to the physics department and I see the license plate EHH 318, I might think: "Whoa! What are the odds of that?" You could find out how many cars are in the state where I lived, so on and so forth, and find some probability, say 1 in 4 million. But it makes no sense to calculate the probability after you see it. The probability is 1 actually (i.e. 100%), because it already happened.

That being said, the mere fact that there is an order implies that it was ordered by Someone. Someone made the license plate with that order of letters and numbers. So it makes no sense to calculate the probability of all the laws being ordered a particular way, but the mere fact that they're ordered implies that Someone ordered them. The probability that it was ordered by Someone is also 1 (i.e. 100%).

One last thing about probability calculations. I'm going to use the unique conditions for life on earth as an example. The earth seems to have been placed in a sweet spot for life. We are just the right distance from the sun. The angle of earth's tilt is just right for the four seasons, so on and so forth. Ok here we go. It makes no sense to calculate this probability, because it already happened. If it hadn't happened, we wouldn't be here. That being said, it does make sense to ask the question: What about life outside of our solar system? Then this calculation does make sense. In order for life to have flourished in the way that it has here on earth, the same fortuitous conditions would have to be present elsewhere in the universe. In this case, the calculation matters a great deal.

Scientists don't discover absolute truths. We only discover models that give correct predictions to within certain accuracies. For hundreds of years, Isaac Newton's 2nd law of motion (F = ma) was considered fundamentally true. It wasn't until Albert Einstein came along and showed that Newton's 2nd law had to be modified when traveling at high speeds. Einstein's model introduced a correction factor to the mass that had to be accounted for when particles were traveling near the speed of light. So Newton's "law" was never actually a law but only a model that had been experimentally verified at low speeds. In fact, Newton's model is still useful for low speeds and is still taught in Physics courses around the world. For now we have accepted Einstein's model as useful for making predictions at all speeds but also fully accept that another genius may come along and show that his model needs further correction to explain things with greater accuracy. No theory is safe.

There are only useful models in physics that can be used to make predictions to a certain accuracy. And every model must be open to being discarded. Therefore, the scientific method proclaims that there can be no truth in science. The only truth in science is that there can be no truth.

In our search for truth, we must ask the correct question. The question isn't, "What is the truth?" The correct question is, "Who is the truth?"

I must confess that I believe we are close to the truth in physics. That when we get up to heaven, there might be a science class taught by Saint Thomas, and he will share with us, "Yes, your model of the atom is essentially correct." That being said, it's not possible to discover this truth while in this world. Only after passing from this life to the next, will we truly see. It's sort of ironic that science is in the same boat as religion, both requiring leaps of faith. The scientific method proclaims that if a more precise and consistent model comes along, then we must discard the old model in favor of the new.

Echoes are good: The only truth in science is that there can be no truth.