The only paradox [of theory of relativity] is the one between the reality that we think is true when we were little kids and the one we find out is true when we take relativity class. I think that it makes sense that the human mind can’t discover all the truth there is out there to know simply through the interaction with the sand in the playground. - Dr. Pamela L. Gay
One of the most popular form of evidence for God is the Argument from Design. To put it simply, it’s the argument people make when they say, “When I look at the world – the beauty of a sunset and the miracle of a newborn baby – I see design. I see order and purpose. Someone must be behind that, someone powerful and loving. There must be a Creator.” The argument was written by William Paley in his 1802 work Natural Theology. He suggested that any person coming across an object of complexity, like a discarded watch, would automatically assume that its order and intricacy necessitates a creator. He expands his analogy from a watch found on the ground to the natural world in its entirety.
Paley and others who favor this argument are encouraging simplistic, intuitive thinking. Our brains, ever so fond of finding patterns and assigning meaning, look at the natural world and see, based on childlike observations, what we believe to be evidence for order and thus design in the universe. Creationists insist that this deduction is glaringly self-evident. Anyone can simply look out their window and see evidence for God’s existence all around them. A child taking a trip to the local neighborhood park could figure this out.
Because of the obviousness of this revelation through nature, because of the fact that a young child can reach this important conclusion, Creationists are absolutely dumbfound when scientists ask them to believe not in the manifest realization that God created the world as we see it today. Instead they are asked to believe that the universe was created during a great cosmic event tens of billions of years ago, and that all the structure they see has been gradually assembling itself over such a vast amount of time. A child playing in the park could not ever come up with this convoluted Big Bang theory on their own. It is completely counter intuitive and flies in the face of our most basic daily observations and experience. This leads Creationists to believe not only that theories like the Big Bang theory and evolution via natural selection are untrue, but they are completely incredulous that anyone could believe in them at all, because they simply sound so absurd and do not conform to the observations of nature we made while playing in the sandbox.
The situation leads to Creationists like this one writing,
It never ceases to amaze me how intellectually condescending evolutionary naturalists can be. Keep in mind, these are folks who believe that an indescribably tiny wad of nothingness exploded into a fully functional, structured, and ordered universe of orbiting planets and complex creatures without any supernatural agency involved.
In other words he’s saying, “Materialists are the ones being condescending, but common! They are asking us to believe in the most ridiculous things! They want me to ignore all of these valid observations I’ve been making about nature since I was a child. They want me to ignore the truth of design right in front of my eyes and submit to this crazy theory. It boggles the mind!” Well yes, it does boggle the mind.
Many scientific observations are completely baffling. Take the example of the theory of relativity. When I was taking a descriptive physics course at Berkeley the professor began his lecture on relativity by stating, “The main problem with relativity is overcoming your prejudices…Most of what relativity is is really quite simple, but it goes against what your parents taught you when you were ten and that is why it is hard.” In his textbook he wrote, “Nothing about time is obvious…we know that if two twins are exactly the same age and one travels while the other stays at home, then when they are brought back together, the moving twin will have experienced less time than the other twin!” After explaining that time is dependent on velocity he continues, “It sounds absurd. It goes against intuition. It goes against everything we experience…[as a child] you were trained to watch clocks and to ‘be on time,’ and you finally learned that there is a ‘universal’ time that you can follow.” What we figured out as children, what seemed intuitively true, is actually false. Time is not this monumental fixed entity that ticks away at exactly the same rate all of the time, as the evidence of the physics of relatively attests.
What the lesson of relativity can teach us is that our everyday observations of nature do not always accurately explain it. This is just one reason why the Argument from Design is so flawed. It relies on the sorts of intuitive perceptions that science is constantly rendering bankrupt. The universe is far more complex that it seems, and to truly understand it we need to rely on more than simply “the interaction with the sand in the playground.”
Although the theory of relativity is every bit as counter intuitive as the Big Bang and evolution, I’ve yet to hear of a Christian who denies it for religious reasons. Obviously there are some (less threatening) areas of science where Christians understand that the observations they made as children are not able to accurately explain the physical world. They are swayed by the evidence, even though it contradicts previously held beliefs and personal observations. The evidence for evolution and the big bang is solid, just like the evidence for relativity. It should be more than enough to convince even the most ardent skeptic, and yet there is still active opposition to the theories found in defenses like the Argument from Design. This line of reasoning relies on the faulty supposition that our facile observations of the natural world are enough to explain its workings.
I’m not asking for religious people to give up their belief in God, but when considering the Big Bang and evolution to simply give up their intuitive sandbox revelations and embrace the truth of the evidence, even if it contradicts their personal observations.
