This thread is also not about the God that created time, space, the universe, and humans. Most importantly, this is certainly not about what the Bible says. This thread is meant to analyze a hypothetical ... IF there is a God who creates things within the realm of the Universe, how would He operate?I have been approaching this question from an engineering perspective as essentially, I see "creation" as more of an engineering problem than anything else. I hear so many people beat their heads, jump up and down, and scream how we should teach kids "Intelligent Design" as an alternative to evolution. But to them, "Intelligent Design" means creating what we see now right away with no intermediate steps, no refinements, and no change. At the same time, as I look into this more and more, I realize evolution in itself is much more of an intelligent design than "Intelligent Design"! This is why I would like to label evolution as Intelligent Design.
Here are four reasons I think evolution is more intelligent that currently what is known as "Intelligent Design":
1. It is much easier to design complex systems using a set of fundamental starting pieces and a set of rules for interaction, growth and adaptation, compared to trying to design everything right away. Evolution wins.
2. Having automatically self-healing and self-upgrading systems is far superior to systems that can never be fixed or upgraded or things that require constant manual attention. Evolution wins.
3. Environments are constantly changing. Resources that were abundant before may become scarce and resources that were scarce before can become abundant. Having life that adapts to change is superior to life that is static and doesn't change. Evolution wins.
4. There is no such thing as a "flawless" design. Flaws cannot be described in the absolute. A flaw only becomes apparent under certain conditions when trying to reach certain objectives. A static, non-evolving design inherently assumes there will not be any flaws which in reality, will never be the case (even if the designer is God). Evolution wins.
Having said this, I think it is clear to see that evolution is much more of an intelligent design than what currently is claimed as "Intelligent Design". This is not to say evolution is fact and I am not trying to make the case that God didn't create humans. I am merely saying if I were God, I would have probably chose to set in motion a far superior system like evolution rather than going to create a whole bunch of things "Intelligently" and then have to sit back and stare a really boring static picture that could then reveal an infinite number of flaws, sending me back to the drawing board. Actually, I think countless redesigns of life will eventually lead to a design system that is based on notions of evolution!
