In Richard Dawkins book, 'The Blind Watchmaker, which became very popular among a gullible public, Dawkins builds a watch as follows: a screw, which tells time, is added to a lever, which also tells time, thereby making a screw-lever contraption that tells slightly better time; which is then added to a cog, which also tells time, making a scew-lever-cog which tells even better time, until the watchmaker winds up with a mechanism that tells time as precisely as a well crafted watch. Of course in reality, as opposed to the world of Dawkinsian novellas, everything that a watch maker assembles does not tell time by itself, in fact serves no function what so ever, until the entire watch is assembled. This means, of course, that anyone who undertakes to make a watch, sighted or otherwise, must have a foreknowledge of where they want their endeavors to end up; a foreknowledge which guides the selection and shaping and combining of materials, with the goal of making a watch in mind. With nothing in mind, in fact with no mind, watches cannot possibly be made. That is why paleontologists, as they sift through ancient layers of rock, will find varieties of fauna of remarkable complexity, especially at the molecular level, where all the major biological functions, no matter what organism they are found in, require a stunning level of molecular complexity and precision; but those same paleontologists never find inorganic material randomly forming themselves through upheavals of tectonic plate shifts, volcanoes, rock slides, avalanches or floods, into refrigerators, typewriters, or even spears or axes. No! Spears and axes come much later. Spears and axes are evidence of intelligent design; but the presence of bacteria, almost four billion years ago, bacteria which replicate, digest, grow, have systems of homeostasis and metabolism, have a way of sensing their environment, a way of excreting wastes, all of which require such complexity that they are studied in microbiology departments at the finest universities all over the world, in which the best of these microbiology students and teachers are garnering Nobel Prizes every year for their endeavors (If the bacterium was so damn simple, what is all the fuss about?); yet, this presence of bacteria in the world of Darwinian and Dawkinsian fantasy, offers to these delusional people no proof of intelligence what so ever.
Dawkins keeps babbling about how people are comforted by a notion of God. God is a notion for some people and an experience for many others. Those people for whom God is a notion derive comfort by it simply because it comports with what they already believe and what their friends and neighbors believe. They find the comfort of being part of a like minded group. Yet exactly the same thing holds true for Darwinia and Dawkinsia. Even though Darwinians and Dawkinsians hold a cynical world view, a view in which there is no inherent value of living beings, and the only thing that matters is living longer and having more children; they are comforted in exactly the same way that religious people are comforted by reading the Bible. When they read any Darwinian or Dawkinsian stories, no matter how cynical the world view is, they are comforted because it comports with what they and their cynical colleagues already assume they know and further convinces them of their superiority in the face of those knuckle draggers, those deluded people, who do not subscribe to the empty, dry, joyless beliefs of Darwiniana and Dawkinsiana. The absence of love, of connection, of a deep joy and gratitude for life, is replaced by this materialist cynicism, but it is a cynicism that is shared by their materialist friends and associates, and in a dark, joyless way, is comforting in the same way that shared religious beliefs are comforting (but, of course, it is neither bonding nor joyous in the way that shared religious experiences are bonding and joyous).
Although I believe that I probably come from a different place spiritually than most Intelligent Designers, I have enormous respect for the scientific work that they do and for the valiant courage that they display every day by speaking the truths that they have uncovered. They do this at a great cost to their professional standing, to the security that they can provide for themselves and their families, and even, at times, in the face of organized hostility by the ignorant Darwinian and Dawkinsian masses, at a great cost to their personal safety. It is most definitely not the quest for comfort that has led them to pose serious, scientific challenges to the current orthodoxy.
Dr. Stephen C. Meyer relates the story of a prominent paleontologist from China who came to the United States to give a lecture on the Maotianshan Shale, a treasure trove of Cambrian rock, and the startling diversity and complexity of fauna that had been fossilized there. Toward the end of his lecture he raised his hand with his fingers spread out and pointing upward and said that Darwin hypothesized a tree of life that looks like this; with a common ancestor (his forearm), very gradually accumulating diversity, beneficial mutation by beneficial mutation, so that the tree gradually separates into the various classes, and phyla of animals (his upward and spreading fingers). "Yet the Maotioanshan Shale turns the Darwinian Tree upside down," he said, and turned his hand so that all the fingers were facing straight down. Here we see a whole wide variety of complex fauna from twenty three different phyla, with no direct antecedents in pre-Cambrian rocks; in fact no direct antecedents anywhere. All of this menagerie of creatures with intestines and complex eyes, and spines and exoskeletons and mouths and anuses and nervous systems, seems to spring up from nowhere.
At this point a Darwinian in the audience rose from his seat and hostilely challenged the Chinese paleontologist, Dr. Chen. "You come from an authoritarian government. Do you feel comfortable criticizing Charles Darwin in that environment?" His comment was followed by a thick and palpably tense silence. The unflappable Dr. Chen replied, "In my country you can criticize Charles Darwin; you just can't criticize the government. Here, in America, you can criticize the government; you just can't criticize Charles Darwin!"
