CreationStudies Institute
[Originally published as part of Intelligence Versus Foolishness]
Whenever design happens, intelligence precedes it. Design — whether it be in the form of fashion, architecture, planning, strategizing, or scheming — always involves intelligence. Not only is design intricately connected with intelligence but it also signifies purpose.
Design, by its own definition, always involves the act of creating, which uses a higher form of intelligence to accomplish an objective or goal. The design always originates from an outside intelligence because it cannot create itself. To believe that design is mindless, haphazard, without intent, and done with materials from within is just foolishness.
Intelligence in the Cosmos
It is evident that the remarkable plan behind the cosmos, with its array of laws and mathematical constants, gives an innate order that affects all the objects in it, even those so huge that they dwarf our understanding of what is big and move at speeds that defy our imagination.
This is easily exemplified by our sun, which is a medium-sized star with a volume of 1.3 million earths. It is part of a body of stars numbering ~200 billion in our Milky Way galaxy, moving at speeds close to a million miles per hour. This kind of colossal systematic movement of massive bodies, bound by an intrinsic order, leads one to the logical conclusion that this is evidence of a designer with intelligence much larger than ours. We are forced to recognize there is an outside intelligence that approaches infinity. It was King David who humbly proclaimed, “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!” (Psalm 139:17).
Our attention is not drawn inward but outward beyond the physical domain toward a Creator — God. It was Galileo (1564–1642), famous for defending the Copernican Theory (sun-centered solar system), who developed a telescope capable of making discoveries in the heavens that give us a new perspective. He used a method of experimentation never used before, which earned him the title “Father of Modern Science.” Such experiments affirm over and over again that the cosmos is made with a profound order that vividly demonstrates the exquisite work of a mathematical and sovereign God. Galileo recognized this fact as he stated, “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.”
Contempory to Galileo, the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler (1597–1630) gave us the laws of planetary motion. He helped springboard the scientific revolution that transformed the way we do science today with the use of inductive reasoning. He stated,
Those laws [of nature] are within the grasp of the human mind; God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts.
Whether they acknowledge it or not, those who practice modern science have their roots in a belief that there is a God of infinite intelligence behind the design of the cosmos. In Kepler’s words, we were created in God’s image to experience Him and witness His shining glory.
Another genius of all time, Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727), came to the same conclusion one hundred years later. He, perhaps like no man before him, would be committed to searching for relationships in these universal laws that gave order to the universe as well as the earth in the area of motion. He recognized that there is a common thread through the universe that is mathematically consistent and could be relied on, as Galileo and Kepler stressed; in its discovery, there are even more hidden secrets waiting to be revealed.
When he wrote The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Design (1687), which is accepted as one of the most influential scientific works in history, he included the statement, “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” He, like Kepler, believed that those universal constants and laws were not produced haphazardly but with a purpose to accomplish the overall design.
It has been documented that Newton, on more than one occasion, wrote his signature followed by the phrase, “God created the universe by number, weight, and measure.” He rationally concluded that this was made by an infinite Designer and describes Him in Principia this way:
“And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity.
The Foolishness of Man
These iconic figures demonstrated clearly that there is a grand design in our finely-tuned universe with all its defined laws that was simultaneously created. It could not have developed in a step-by-step progression but as a system of forces and bodies all interacting in time and space together.
Since evolution is bound to materialism, which is confined to naturalism-imposed boundaries, it denies giving credit to any outside intelligence. Over the years, atheistic evolutionists have developed a well-scripted story of how the observable, highly-ordered universe originated without outside intelligence or designer. They must assume that somehow each law was randomly set in motion in the same instant. This attempt to describe all of these steps is commonly known as the Big Bang. This is how Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the popular TV astronomer, described it in “The Genesis of the Universe” video. Below is his claim from the beginning of the video:
In the beginning, about 13.7 billion years ago, all the space, all the matter and all energy known in the universe was contained in a volume less than one trillionth the size of a point of a pin. Conditions were so hot that basic forces that collectively described the universe were unified. For reasons unknown, from this sub-conformed point, the cosmos began to expand.
Many people think of DeGrasse Tyson as their hero today, as others did decades ago with Carl Sagan. These two charismatic figures have attracted many because of their wild speculations and boundless imagination. Later in the same video, Tyson states, “Under these extreme conditions, what is admittedly speculative physics…” is an example of ignorance, exaggeration, and arrogance that has no place in science as we know it.
This is a real insult to iconic figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton who not only discovered a magnificent, orderly cosmic masterpiece but also recognized a benevolent Creator. Newton befittingly said, “He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.” Those who fail to see the most obvious realities are blinded by their own foolishness. The Bible defines such people as fools in Psalm 14:1a,
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
