Who Designed and Created The Designer?, July 9th, 2004
Extended Dec 27th, 2004

One of the questions that Intelligent Design (ID) supporters avoid and fail to answer is "who designed and created their designer?" If the universe is designed by an intelligence (i.e. God) it follows that it requires a designer and it also follows that that designer also requires a designer, who would also require a desiger, ad infinitum. As they say "it's turtles (or designers) all the way down."

In a Universe with an Intelligent Designer you still need a designer for that Intelligent Designer. In other words, who created God? If there isn't a designer of the Intelligent Designer, but still an Intelligent Designer, then the Intelligent Designer (i.e. God) must have been created out of the lifeless atoms and energy of the Universe just as biological life is theorized to have come into existance.

Another way to say it is that having a "designer" doesn't answer the question of how the universe came to be since a designer must have had a designer. So, the creationists and ID folks simply ignore anwsering the question as their answer.

It's much simplier, and more beautiful and elegant I might add, if there simply never was a designer or any designers in the first place. Why is it difficult to imagine a universe that simply exists and that may have existed forever or that came into existance from non-existance and might continue forever or collapse into non-existance again?

Things come into and go out of existance all the time. A unique snow flake comes into being in the clouds and floats down into the palm of your hand where it promptly melts. The snow flake had a brief existance. If that very same drop of water that remains in your hand were to freeze again and form another snow flake it would be a different snow flake. Existance, snow flakey bliss, non-existance. The same applies to people, planet, starts, galaxies and why not the entire universe?

A universe that is not intelligence in and of itself? It seems that intelligence can arise in the universe in the form of biological beings. There is no evidence of any intelligence of non-biological origin. Artifical Intelligence isn't intelligent yet, and besides if it was it would have been created by humans. Sentient Artifical Intelligence is another level althogether and there is no evidence that it can occur in the universe except for the example of biological intelligence and sentience that is here on Earth.

A universe that exists - with or without the big bang to create it - is simply too scary a concept for many since it would require them to toss away the comforting beliefs that they were taught as children. The comforting idea that they will continue to exist past their own biological death. The big lie that they and others tell themselves so that they can avoid the harsh reality of our all too brief existance.

Some find this a harsh view of reality, I find it "spiritually" refreshing and enlivening view of reality. Oh, that's a non-supernatural, non-religious humanistic spriritualy that I'm speaking about, you know, "the human spirit", as in "she had a lively spirit that helped her accomplished her goal". It enlivens since it empowers you to consider your actions and to act with prudence and care as our actions have consequences some of which could shorten your own existance. Some of our actions will make our existance blisful while yet other actions make life a living hell.

What I find the harshest reality of all is those that use thier "pious" and "rightous" religious views and beliefs to shape the world and bring death and destruction down upon other living beings, and humans in particular. It's ironic that those that fear "going to hell" are often those who bring a living hell on Earth (bombs, holy wars, prejuidice, etc...) and death so easily and quickly to others.

Our unique consciousness came from nothing, our bodies came from the contributed DNA of our parents and the spark of our life came from physical, chemical and biological processes. In a sense our lives came from nothing and the active biological machinery of our parents. Somewhere in the distant past these processes started. Most likely simple systems in Nature created the complexity required to ignite life and distinguish it from the rest of the universe as living.

The basis of the beauty of all life comes from the Natural world and the way that simple systems can create complex systems at the same level of complexity as any complex system that we are aware of. Stephen Wolfram has demonstrated this with A New Kind of Science. Furthermore he has discovered a new kind of "randomness" that comes from simple systems themselves thus providing a rich source of variability in the natural and simple processes that pervade the universe. It takes no further explaination other than this work to understand the elgance and beauty of the entire universe in it's natural splendor.

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