The Human Brain

Some Basic Facts

The cortex (sometimes called ‘grey matter’) represents the outer layer of the brain and is only about 2 – 5mm thick. It is home to our mental activity, thanks to the 100 billion or so neurons (excitable cells) that form trillions of axons—or bridges linking one neuron to another. When stimulated, the neuron sends electrical impulses down the axon to the synapse. The synapse is a gap between axons. Ions (charged atoms or molecules) composed of sodium and potassium are fired across the synapse and down the axon to the next neuron. In this way, neurons (which on their own are not very ‘smart’) can “communicate” with tens of thousands of other neurons in a fraction of a second.

An Argument from Design

Argument from Design
By Peter Kreeft

The argument starts with the major premise that where there is design, there must be a designer. The minor premise is the existence of design throughout the universe. The conclusion is that there must be a universal designer.

Why must we believe the major premise, that all design implies a designer? Because everyone admits this principle in practice. For instance, suppose you came upon a deserted island and found "S.O.S." written in the sand on the beach. You would not think the wind or the waves had written it by mere chance but that someone had been there, someone intelligent enough to design and write the message. If you found a stone hut on the island with windows, doors, and a fireplace, you would not think a hurricane had piled up the stones that way by chance. You immediately infer a designer when you see design.

When the first moon rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, two U.S. scientists stood watching it, side by side. One was a believer, the other an unbeliever. The believer said, "Isn't it wonderful that our rocket is going to hit the moon by chance?" The unbeliever objected, "What do you mean, chance? We put millions of man-hours of design into that rocket." "Oh," said the believer, "you don't think chance is a good explanation for the rocket? Then why do you think it's a good explanation for the universe? There's much more design in a universe than in a rocket. We can design a rocket, but we couldn't design a whole universe. I wonder who can?" Later that day the two were strolling down a street and passed an antique store. The atheist admired a picture in the window and asked, "I wonder who painted that picture?" "No one," joked the believer; "it just happened by chance."

Is it possible that design happens by chance without a designer? There is perhaps one chance in a trillion that "S.O.S." could be written in the sand by the wind. But who would use a one-in-a-trillion explanation? Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. We have a logical explanation of the universe, but the atheist does not like it. It's called God.

There is one especially strong version of the argument from design that hits close to home because it's about the design of the very thing we use to think about design: our brains. The human brain is the most complex piece of design in the known universe. In many ways it is like a computer. Now just suppose there were a computer that was programmed only by chance. For instance, suppose you were in a plane and the public-address system announced that there was no pilot, but the plane was being flown by a computer that had been programmed by a random fall of hailstones on its keyboard or by a baseball player in spiked shoes dancing on computer cards. How much confidence would you have in that plane? But if our brain computer has no cosmic intelligence behind the heredity and environment that program it, why should we trust it when it tells us about anything, even about the brain?

Another specially strong aspect of the design argument is the so-called anthropic principle, according to which the universe seems to have been specially designed from the beginning for human life to evolve. If the temperature of the primal fireball that resulted from the Big Bang some fifteen to twenty billion years ago, which was the beginning of our universe, had been a trillionth of a degree colder or hotter, the carbon molecule that is the foundation of all organic life could never have developed. The number of possible universes is trillions of trillions; only one of them could support human life: this one. Sounds suspiciously like a plot. If the cosmic rays had bombarded the primordial slime at a slightly different angle or time or intensity, the haemoglobin molecule, necessary for all warm-blooded animals, could never have evolved. The chance of this molecule's evolving is something like one in a trillion-trillion. Add together each of the chances and you have something far more unbelievable than a million monkeys writing Hamlet.

There are relatively few atheists among neurologists and brain surgeons and among astrophysicists, but many among psychologists, sociologists, and historians. The reason seems obvious: the first study divine design, the second study human undersign.

But doesn't evolution explain everything without a divine Designer? Just the opposite; evolution is a beautiful example of design, a great clue to God. There is very good scientific evidence for the evolving, ordered appearance of species, from simple to complex. But there is no scientific proof of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, Natural selection "explains" the emergence of higher forms without intelligent design by the survival-of-the-fittest principle. But this is sheer theory. There is no evidence that abstract, theoretical thinking or altruistic love make it easier for man to survive. How did they evolve then?
Furthermore, could the design that obviously now exists in man and in the human brain come from something with less or no design? Such an explanation violates the principle of causality, which states that you can't get more in the effect than you had in the cause. If there is intelligence in the effect (man), there must be intelligence in the cause. But a universe ruled by blind chance has no intelligence. Therefore there must be a cause for human intelligence that transcends the universe: a mind behind the physical universe. (Most great scientists have believed in such a mind, by the way, even those who did not accept any revealed religion.)

How much does this argument prove? Not all that the Christian means by God, of course—no argument can do that. But it proves a pretty thick slice of God: some designing intelligence great enough to account for all the design in the universe and the human mind. If that's not God, what is it?

Arguments against ID: Genetics & Physics

Some have argued against Intelligent Design based on the principles of genetics and physics.

Apple seeds grow into apple trees because of their genetic material. This genetic material has evolved over time. Through natural selection, those things which found a way to reproduce, survived (most defenders of the teleological argument, however, do not see this as being a decisive blow against the argument, because it doesn’t explain away the argument, but simply proposes a different way in which intelligent design might be at work).

Newton’s law of gravity and Johannes Kepler’s (1571-1630) laws of planetary motion are often used to try to demonstrate that physical laws can account for the operations of the universe. For example, a falling brick from the sky is not so much an indication of a designer as it is a demonstration of gravity. Thus, intelligent purpose is thought to have been replaced by laws of physics (however, the counter-argument to this of course is that gravity and laws of physics can also be explained in terms of design).

Hume’s Criticism of Design Arguments by Analogy

Hume—writing some twenty five years before Paley—argues (in a work called Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) that analogies between machines and the universe do not work because they assume similarities where really none ought be assumed. For example, while a useful analogy might be drawn between a frog and a man (they both have circulation, respiration, legs, etc) there is little to commend a comparison of a machine with contiguous parts and the universe with all of its violence as well as apparent order.

Furthermore, since we have no inductive knowledge of the origins of the universe (in other words, no observer was there to see under what conditions the Big Bang occurred) no one can say that it was the work of an Intelligent Designer.
And as far as beauty goes, he quotes the old adage: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Aesthetics is too subjective to be considered a serious philosophical claim.

Aesthetic Principle

An element of the anthropic principle is the aesthetic principle, which makes the claim that certain kinds of beauty have no evolutionary value. Of course evolution may give an account as to why the peacock or flower is beautiful, but does not seem to be able to account for what might be termed, “superfluous beauty”, such as a poem, a painting or even a beautiful sense of the divine. As F. R. Tennant said,

“God reveals himself in many ways and some may enter his Temple by Gate Beautiful.”

Strong Anthropic Principle & Fine-tuning

Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University, Owen Gingerich, points to the fact that the periodic table does not have any atomic mass of five; this is because atomic masses increase in weight increments of four (twelve being carbon, which is necessary for life). Yet the periodic table not only contains everything necessary for life, it lacks nothing necessary for life. It is finely-tuned.
Other scholars, such as physicist Robert Dicke, have noticed how this fine-tuning could not have occurred randomly. In fact, human evolution is controlled by certain factors that ensure human existence. If evolutionary changes were completely random, natural selection would not be evident because it would not be possible.

"Irreducibly Complex Organisms"

Among modern supporters of teleological arguments are the likes of biochemist Michael Behe whose book Darwin’s Black Box suggests that some organisms are, as he calls them, “irreducibly complex”. Such organisms—or ‘moleular machines’—can not be subject to an evolutionary process because to function they must exist in toto or not at all. Behe argues that there are numerous example of molecular machines, such as the cilium: a hair-like machine that moves fluid over animal cells. It is composed of many parts, each needing the other in order to operate. It could not have evolved just as a mousetrap could not have evolved because all functioning parts are required simultaneously for it to work.

3 Kinds of Design Argument

There are various forms of the argument: an argument from analogy, and argument from final cause and the anthropic argument.

Argument from analogy

The best known design argument or argument from analogy is that of William Paley, who likened the observation of the universe to the discovery of a “watch upon a heath.” In the case of the watch, one would know—even if they had never seen a watch before—that this object, with all of its working parts, was not the random product of chance but of a intelligent designer. Other forms of the argument were put forward by the medieval Jewish scholar, Rabbeinu Bachya who likened the order in the universe to writing on a piece of paper. The idea that an essay, he maintained, could be the result of an ink spill on the page is absurd:

“Do you not realize that if ink were poured out accidentally on a blank sheet of paper, it would be impossible that proper writing should result, legible lines that are written with a pen? Imagine a person bringing a sheet of handwriting that could only have been composed with a pen. He claims that ink spilled on the paper and these written characters had accidentally emerged. We would charge him to his face with falsehood, for we could feel certain that this result could not have happened without an intelligent person's purpose.”


Final Cause Argument

An Argument relying on the concept of final cause (this kind of argument is called teleological properly being derived from the Greek word, telos, which means ‘end’) has most famously been brought forward by St Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century.

This kind of design argument is based on the Aristotelian concept of causation. According to Aristotle, everything that exists has a material, formal, efficient and final cause. The final cause points to the purpose of the thing—and purpose implies design.

Thomas uses the analogy of an arrow being shot at a target; just as the arrow must be directed towards a target by an archer, so too must anything that is directed towards a final end be directed by an Intelligence.

Anthropic Arguments

More recently—and especially with increasing knowledge about chemistry, astronomy and physics—arguments have been put forward by scholars that argue that the universe and planet earth are not only friendly to the production of life, but have exactly the right conditions to make life possible.

Barrow and Tipler have classified the principle as being either ‘weak’ (WAP) or ‘strong’ (SAP). The WAP states that the fact that we can observe the universe means that the conditions must be perfect for such an observation to take place. The appeal of this form of the argument for many is that the God of traditional or classical theism does not need to be invoked to accept it. The SAP, principle however holds that the fine-tuning of the universe not only makes life possible but necessary—suggesting a deliberate and intelligent act to bring the observer into being.

Design (Teleological) Arguments

Teleological arguments (also known as Design Arguments) are generally inductive, a posteriori arguments that attempt to prove the existence of God with the claim that since the characteristics of order, purpose and benefit evident throughout the universe imply designer, the universe therefore must have been designed.
Although these kinds of argument are often called arguments from design (that is, drawing conclusions about God based on the observation of design), Anthony Flew insists that they are properly called arguments to design. This is because, he maintains, ‘design’ is the conclusion of the argument, not something self-evident from which the argument is drawn.