Evolution and Design --Clarence Darrow Mystics often talk about the evidence of design in the universe. This idea runs back hundreds of years, including the essay by Paley, "Natural Theology." Paley argues that if a man traveling over the heath should find a watch he would soon discover in it abundant evidence of design. This is true, but only if the man already is familiar with tools and their use. What if the watch were picked up by some savage or an ape? None of them would draw this inference: it would never enter their heads that it was "designed." The general "Design Argument" goes: (1) whenever there is 'evidence of design', there is a designer; (2) the world shows vast 'evidence of design' and (3) therefore there was a designer of the universe. But this is folly and scientific nonsense.
Paley goes on to show how the mouth and teeth are adjusted to prepare the food for man's digestion, how his stomach is formed to digest it, how the eye and ear were made to carry sensations to the brain, etc. But these organs were never made for such a purpose. Man was never made. He evolved from the lowest form of life. His ancestor in the sea threw its jellylike structure around something that nourished it and absorbed it. Through ages of mutation and selection organs evolved. Creatures that were responsive to light got more food, and eye slits were passed from generation to generation. More adaptable and specialized structures evolved, and filled the various ecological niches. The stomach was not made, then food created; food came first, and certain forms of life developed organs that would absorb food in the process of growth. Not everything with "order" or "apparent design" came about through design; many came about by chance and natural selection operating on a vast scale . . . the others, through human intervention.*
What does order mean, anyway? We have a norm, a pattern--the universe itself, from which we fashion our ideas. We observe this universe and its operation and we call it "order." To say the universe is patterned on order is to say the universe is patterned on the universe. It means nothing else. Are we supposed to think that the law of gravity is proof of design, simply because it expresses a universal pattern of 'order' in the universe? Does the order of planets circling a larger body prove 'order' and 'design'? I think not.
The earth revolves around the sun in an orbit like that of a circle. Does this show order? Suppose it went in a rectangle instead. Wouldn't we call that "order"? There are nine planets around the sun. Was that a plan? What about the eight moons around Jupiter? Was that a plan, too?
It is senseless to talk about "order" and "system" and "design" in the universe. Astrophysicists will tell us that there is none of it--that our solar system came about eons ago when all the planets were part of the sun, a gaseous mass, and something caused it to explode, and chunks of it went into space and cooled and formed into orbits through the power of gravitation. That is how the solar system formed. That is not design and order, it is mere accident, combined with the working of natural laws.
Where is there order and design in the universe or even on the earth? There are endless systems of stars, and billions of billions of stars. These billions and billions of stars are billions and billions of miles away from each other. No one can even form a conception of the infinite expanse of the universe, the infinite numbers of planets and suns and other astronomical bodies. What are the relations between these stars and the solar systems that they have or fail to have? Are they in perfect "order"? Do they show a vast "design"? Of course not. What is the universe, except chance and chaos and here and there, vast objects which come into being through explosions and exist for millions of years and then go out of being through explosions again?
Does the earth then show design, order, and purpose? Certainly, there cannot be life on earth unless it stands in a certain relation to the sun and the other planets. There cannot be 'life,' unless the conditions for life exist, e.g. water. But the existence of life does not prove the necessary conditions were created in order to bring it about. Furthermore, even if the earth had been meant for life, it surely was not meant for human life. Three-fourths of the planet is covered with water; two-thirds of the land is unfit for human beings; the deserts are dry and the polar caps are frozen. It is better suited to insects than the 'higher' animals, including man. Or was the purpose of the Creator to design a world for insects?
What a handiwork the earth is, anyway. Surely the Creator designed the earthquakes to shake us out of our complacency, and hurricanes to teach us to design umbrellas! Surely the Creator invented terrible diseases, so we would not get too high and mighty! That was cruel of him, perhaps, but it does show a purpose. But that is all nonsense, anyway. The earth shows no purpose, no design. It is just nature, the way it is. Insects comb the land and destroy the farmer's crops. The object of this "Design" is not the farmers who raise them or the insects who devour them; there is no divine Design, there are only human designs.
All we know is that we were born on this little grain of sand in the vast sea of space. We know that on board this craft there are many sorts of creatures, and that to survive on it, we must be intelligent and resourceful, and helpful to each other as we drift, side by side, toward our common happiness or our common doom. We have to make the 'designs' ourselves; we cannot reasonably think that there are any others.
*For example, many of the species of domesticated animals, dogs, cats, cattle, horses, etc. As for the question of design in nature, take another example, the long-necked giraffe, or the grey-speckled moth that evolved in 19th century industrial England. . . . "Why does the giraffe have a long neck?" asks the Creationist. "In order to eat the leaves high on the trees in the pampas," he answers; "it is a case of Design." But the answer the Evolutionist gives is better: "Once upon a time all the giraffes were short-necked, and one was born--a freak, really--with a longer neck. He ate higher on the trees, and survived better, and so did his progeny, while the short-necked ones died out, with not enough food. And so again and again, until giraffe means a long-necked, long-legged horse-like thing with a skinny face." That is how all the so-called "evidence of Design" came about . . .