Intelligent Design

I came across this story tonight and it left me a bit awestruck. Granted, I'm already an Intelligent Design proponent. Granted, there's much more statistical, empirical proof for design than this simple illustration. But the story itself is compelling, even though the real odds for intelligent design are exponentially greater even than this.

Chicago: OrchestraHall

So here it is:

"Consider further the case of Artur Rubinstein. Imagine it's 1971 and you are at Orchestra Hall in Chicago listening to Rubinstein perform. As you listen to him perform Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 in C-Sharp Minor, you think to yourself, I know the man I'm listening to right now is a wonderful musician, but there's an outside possibility that he doesn't know the first thing about music and the he is just banging away at the piano haphazardly. The fact that Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody was cascading from Rubinstein's fingers would thus merely be a happy accident.

"What's more, the 'fact' that he has done this many other places, that he has often spoken eloquently about music and piano, and that it is well documented that he spent many years seemingly developing his skills--these are also all part of the happy coincidence afforded by an infinity of universes. He's just a lucky imbecile banging away at a keyboard in just such a way as to coincidentally give the appearance of a man dramatically progressing in his skills, babbling strings of sounds that just happen to make for astute music commentary. What a fun coincidence! Of course, the idea that Rubinstein was just banging away at a keyboard and getting lucky is absurd."

William Dembski. The Design Revolution. p123

I'm not going to call anyone names, but the mountain of evidence against pure, naturalist, Darwinian, macro-evolution is growing against all odds, like a jagged fault line riding up 5,000 feet into the sky. I'm just a dude. I don't have to convince anyone, but I've got to look myself in the mirror and stand before my wife and kids in the integrity of my own heart. I don't believe we're here by chance. I just don't.

When I look at people, I see destiny and worth. When I hug my wife and kids, I feel an affection that I can not attribute to random mutations. I feel the opposite of that. I feel an immutable bedrock of purpose and meaning and love. I feel God.

Intelligent Design doesn't start with a God-assumption and craft anecdotes to fit. "ID", as it's becoming known, looks at the irreducible, specified complexity of the molecular and galactic worlds and is increasingly finding the fingerprints of a designer.

Science that does not deal with the methods of ID, in my very humble opinion, has forfeited it's credibility.

And for those of us who will never hold a PhD, "Come on smart people! You're going to have to do a lot better than that!"