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Does Science Point to a Creator or is it just God of the Gaps?

Some have said that Creation Science or the ideas of Intelligent Design aren’t science at all, they’re just religion masquerading as science.  They say that it’s just “God of the Gaps”, that wherever Christians see a gap that science can’t yet explain that we just put God in that gap and say, “See, it has to be God.” Mocking Intelligent Design, some have even said that believing that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created everything is just as reasonable and scientific.  But is that true or is there actually scientific evidence that positively points to a Creator?  (That is, unless we’ve unfairly ruled him out beforehand, out of bias, something which wouldn’t be very scientific.)

Positive Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer

Rather than plugging God in somewhere we don’t yet know something, like saying, “We don’t know how this works so it must be God.”, I believe that God is the best explanation for what we do know.  I believe that, given the scientific evidence we have, that God is the best explanation.

What do I mean? Our consistent, scientific observation tells us that complex machines always come from a designer and complex information always comes from an intelligent mind.  Nature and natural processes do not make complex machines or devices.  If you’re walking in the woods and you see a watch on the ground, do you think, “Wow, the forest made this!” or do you think, “Someone was here and lost their watch.”?  What’s more, natural processes do not produce complex information/messages.  If you’re walking on the beach and you see the words, “John loves Mary” written in the sand, do you think, “Wow, the waves did that!” or do you think, “Someone was here and wrote that.”?

I’m sure that every one of us would be certain that both of those things were produced by intelligent agents.  Why? Because we’re unscientific, religious nuts?  No, because consistent observation over time (science) tells us that those kinds of things don’t come about any other way.  Let’s look a little more in depth at each.

Complex Machines Come from Intelligence

As we’ve learned more and more about the amazing complexity of a single cell in our bodies, we’ve learned that they contain tiny molecular machines.  Stephen Meyer and Scott Minnich have said this about them.

“Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role the origin of the system. … Indeed, in any other context we would immediately recognize such systems as the product of very intelligent engineering. Although some may argue this is a merely an argument from ignorance, we regard it as an inference to the best explanation, given what we know about the powers of intelligent as opposed to strictly natural or material causes.”

Complex Information Comes from Intelligence

Of complex information Stephen Meyer says this.

[W]e have repeated experience of rational and conscious agents — in particular ourselves — generating or causing increases in complex specified information, both in the form of sequence-specific lines of code and in the form of hierarchically arranged systems of parts. … Our experience-based knowledge of information-flow confirms that systems with large amounts of specified complexity (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source — from a mind or personal agent.

 When we see the code from a computer program that accomplishes something, we know it was written by an intelligent person.  Evolutionist Carl Sagan expressed, in his novel Contact, that, in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, if we received a string of prime numbers, that would prove the existence of intelligence out there.

So now consider the amazing amount of information in the DNA that is present in every one of our cells.  Atheist Richard Dawkins, professor of Zoology at Oxford University, admits that the information in just the cell nucleus of a tiny amoeba is more than all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica combined, and the entire amoeba has as much information in its DNA as 1,000 complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica.

So if we’re certain that the simple message “John loves Mary” or a string of prime numbers must have come from an intelligent mind, I think it’s a solid scientific conclusion to be certain that information equal to 1,000 sets of encyclopedias must have come from an intelligent mind, an intelligent designer.  Everything we observe tells us that it couldn’t have come about simply by natural processes.

The Best Explanation Given the Evidence

You can decide for yourself, but I believe that, between material causes only and an intelligent creator, that a creator is the best explanation, given the evidence.  We’re not just plugging God into gaps in our knowledge.  We have good reasons to believe that God is behind it from what we observe.

To me, that’s positive scientific evidence.  For that matter, isn’t hoping and assuming that in the future science will fill the gaps in our knowledge just a “science of the gaps”?  As Greg Koukl says, we should follow the evidence where it leads.

Sources: Stephen Meyer, Scott Minnich, Casey Luskin, Greg Koukl, Frank Turek, Norman Geisler

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