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Logos in Biology
Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith
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0:00 51:45
Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith

Logos in Biology

Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith argues that the intricate design in biology points to a divine designer, challenging materialistic interpretations of life.
In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of design and logos in biology. He starts by explaining that the Bible teaches that God added thought or concept to matter, resulting in the creation of the first man. He emphasizes the importance of understanding this concept to avoid confusion and misunderstandings. The speaker then quotes from the Holy Scripture, stating that God's invisible nature and power can be clearly perceived in the creation of the world. He concludes by highlighting the role of design in biology and how it points to the existence of a designer.

Full Transcript

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to talk tonight about the role of design and logos in biology. The role of design and logos in biology. Your worthy pastor and our worthy pastor, even though we live in Switzerland, we regard him as that, said on Sunday night here something which struck me very, very deeply.

You'll be surprised when you know what it was. He said that he couldn't understand how it was that any educated person wouldn't be struck by the design shown by all biology. And design demands a designer.

Now, anybody whose circuitry is wired upright, up top, will think that. And I think so myself. But you see, biology doesn't.

Biology is convinced that the appearance of design in biology is an illusion and a delusion, and that only imbeciles like me and others could see it otherwise. They're perfectly convinced that we are uneducated fools when we say that the design of an eye shows that God knew something about optics. The design of an ear, that he understood something about hearing.

The idea of a brain, that he knew something about computing. They don't, they don't follow that at all. Now, they're convinced that we're fools.

They really are, and it's genuine, and you mustn't get ratty or annoyed about it, because they've got their reasons. You see, if you don't understand them, you'll never communicate with them. I don't believe them, but I think I do understand them, because I've debated them often enough.

Now, what I'm going to do is read out, first of all, what the holy scripture says, and then we'll talk about what they say, and we'll add it up afterwards, and we may come to two plus two equals five, as I've said before, but we'll analyze it. It is what the scripture says, for what can be known about God is plain to men, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, God's invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

That is, the creation, inorganic and organic, biological and astronomic, shows the deity and power of God. That is, the design shows the designer. That's the position of the apostle Paul, and it's our position too, isn't it? But we must understand how men have got away from that position, and can still think themselves educated, because they're the people that teach in our schools, and they're going to close down the schools which teach that which I've just read out.

They didn't close it down, they've already started. Now, you must understand them in order to get on the same wavelength, and then you can combat them. But if you don't understand them, you won't be able to combat them.

If you want to fight an enemy, the best thing is to study him very, very carefully to see what he does. And if you can see what he does, you can nip him in the bud. But if you don't know what he's going to do, he'll get you.

So it's very important that we do a bit of thinking tonight. Do you mind that we do a little bit of thinking tonight? I know it's hard after a day's work, but let's try it. Clearly perceived and things have made, so that men are without excuse.

Then he says, for although they knew God in the creation, showing the designer, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. So what we've done tonight, giving thanks to him, is absolutely right. God expects that, and there's great blessing in doing it.

Right, that'll be enough to be getting on with tonight. Now, let's have a look at the rock bottom of this idea that all design, or a large amount of design, such as we see in biology round about us, that it's all a delusion and doesn't show a designer. Because that's what the children are taught at school.

I attended a church service in Thun, in Switzerland, just before we came here, and there was a dear old preacher. He was a dear old man. He radiated, you know, the love of God, like some preachers do.

And he had some beautiful flowers all around his pulpit, and he exuded over these flowers how beautiful they were, how they showed the glory and artistic delight of the Creator. But you know, there were, oh, two or three hundred youngsters there, and they were absolutely cold. Didn't touch them at all.

Why? Because the old man had never learned it at school, but they had that all design was a fake. It was a delusion. And you see, they thought that the design had come about itself, and so they weren't particularly touched when he exuded over the beautiful flowers around his pulpit.

The dear old man didn't notice it for an hour. They were all asleep after an hour, but so they didn't gain or lose anything by the whole process. Now, David Hume is, was a Scottish philosopher and an atheist who lived from 1711 to 1776.

And the expression of his belief is exactly that of the belief of the Greek philosophers before him. The Greek philosophers and materialists, Socrates and Epicurus and people like that, all believe the following. Now, if you don't go to sleep for the next two minutes, you'll understand me.

But it's hard. Never mind. Hard things should keep you awake.

He, and all the philosophers before him, said this, that there's no need for the Greek gods. And the reason is that we've got nothing that points to them. The other Greeks, they pointed to biology, they pointed to man, they pointed to the universe, the stars, and they said that the gods made things.

Now, the Greek philosophers said he didn't, they didn't. They taught this. Listen ever so carefully, because you may need this when you come to do a little bit of quantum theory.

Quantum theory is a lovely subject for the elite, but not for others. It's hard. I don't know whether I understand it fully.

They said this, that there is a continuity, get this, there is a continuity in all nature. That is, you go continually without any breaks or any hiatus from the inorganic world the dead world, to the living world. There's chemical evolution without any breaks between that which is dead and that which is alive.

That is, there's no, there's no discontinuity in nature at all. Science, you know, don't believe that today, and science there is right. But that's what they taught.

Now, they also said that there's no break between the primeval slime and the first primitive cells, if there are any primitive cells, I'm very doubtful myself, and us human beings. There's no break. One gradually moves over into the other.

That's the first point they had. And of course, it isn't true. People who know the quantum theory today know that one thing changes into another by leaps, and what they call quantum leaps today.

But this is what biology is, to a large extent, teaching our kids, so that when they get a bit older, they've learned this false theory, which says in effect that two plus two equals five, and then they have to unlearn it when they come to do quantum theory. Namely, that things go in leaps and jumps. They don't go continually.

That's the first point I wanted to make to you. The second point, I'll make it more interesting when I've got the theory off my chest. But I've got to get the theory off my chest first, and I sometimes burst until I've got it off, because I can see by the expressions on the face, on your faces, whether you understood me or not.

And sometimes I get very, very disheartened indeed. Listen, they then said that this continuity of all matter, living and dead and dead and living right up to man, goes so far in that all matter, listen to this ever so carefully, because your kids know it at school. They're not told it like I'm going to tell it you now, but they'll learn it.

They said that all matter consists of particles which continually combine and then decompose. Continually combine and then decompose all the time. So that in the course of time you get everything produced by matter which can be produced by matter.

You see, we're made of matter, aren't we? You may not think so, but you're made of eggs and bacon and things like that. So am I. And they say that the molecules of which we're made combine and then decombine and decompose, and that only the useful things, think of that what we're saying, only the useful things remain and don't decompose and disappear. Now, why ever they said that? I can't, can't, can't, I can't rumble at all, because I find all the useful things break down ever so quickly, and the useless things you can't get rid of.

I find, but that's what they thought. Anyway, their excuse was that matter will produce any thing at all which is capable of being built up of matter in the course of time. Now that was the argument, precisely that argument, with which T. H. Huxley beat, in a debate at the University of Oxford, Bishop Wilberforce, who was present as a professor there to defend the Christian faith against Huxley and Darwin.

And on that point, using his typewriters, which I'm going to do another evening here, but not now, he said that everything that consists of matter will be produced by matter if you leave it long enough, every mortal thing. So that if you left matter long enough, it would produce an amoeba. And if you left an amoeba with some more matter long enough, it'll produce a frog.

And if you left a frog long enough, it'll go up to a cow, and lastly will come up to us, you see. That is that matter is continuous and is not discrete, and will produce, I mean E.T.E., not E.E.T., in case there's any difficulties about that word, matter itself will produce everything. Now if matter itself will produce everything, you think what that means? Lots of things made of matter look as though they're designed, don't they? I mean, if you look at our eye, it's certainly made of matter.

But when you take a good look at it, and its optics, and the means by which it focuses, and how the photons are registered on the retina, and all the rest of it, it sure does look as though it's designed, doesn't it? And you take a good close look at it. But you see, if the theory that these gentry put forward 500 years before Christ was born, that matter is continually combining and decombining until, in the course of time, it's produced everything there is capable of being produced, then obviously some of the things which it produces are going to look as though they were designed. And if you can fix those things, that look as though they're designed, make them useful, you see, in their theory, then they'll stay.

So that when you look at these things that have been produced by designlessness, they will, if they're useful and stand, look as though they were designed. Now if you've got that sort of argument in your mind, you see, you can look at anything in the world, the most beautiful orchid, and it looks designed, doesn't it? But you see, the materialists say, oh no, there's no need for gods or anything outside time and matter, because matter itself will do that, and will produce the illusion, or delusion, of design. Now this is taught in all seriousness.

It's the basis of Darwinism. Darwin said that out of a little pond, a little warm pond with some phosphate salts in it, and some ammonium salts in it, kept at the right temperature, what is to prevent? The first simple amoeba--he only knew what he was talking about. If you look at an amoeba, it's the last thing but simple--will be produced by itself, and because it is a machine, it'll look like a machine, and therefore look as though it's designed.

But it's all an illusion. There's no need for any theory of God behind this. And if you look at, then, say, an amoeba, and see how it, they say, evolves itself up to higher animals, to higher plants, and to man, that looks too.

You've got design upon design upon design beyond design, but in reality, it's merely the workings of matter which combines with itself to produce everything that matter can produce, including those things that look as though they're designed. So there you are, that's the argument. So there's no argument from design.

This argument was had out, you know, by William Paley, Archbishop William, Archdeacon William Paley, years ago, the argument from design. But William Paley was a brilliant old man. He didn't say anything looking like design is made by a designer, because he knew the argument of the materialists in those days.

You see, he knew what other people thought, and therefore he was very careful. He said, any machine, ah, ah, he'd reduced it. Any machine will show design, and will show the capabilities of the designer.

So we've got now, down now, from any aggregate of matter that does anything, to a machine that does something, because a machine is teleonomic. That is, it has a purpose. So William Paley said, anything that has a purpose in it has a purposeful designer behind it.

And the argument stands today. I've seen a lot of textbooks recently who have revived the idea of Archdeacon William Paley, and said the old man was absolutely right, because the teleonomy, that is the purpose, comes from telos, meaning purpose. The teleonomy has to be a surprise effect, because matter doesn't have any set teleonomy or purpose in it.

So if William Paley was speaking today, what he would have said is what I put up on the board there, if you can read it. M, the big M at the front means matter, plus E means energy, plus T means tempus, or time. And that, said Darwin, will produce the cell, or the machine, or other aggregates of matter.

Now, okay, have we any proof of that? The answer is, we've got proof that it isn't the case. The formula is deficient. The formula has an infinity in it, and the infinity is the lack of information, there's none at all in it, to give it any teleonomy for a cell or machine.

Now, that was the position of the old materialists, and some of the younger ones too, was the position of Huxley and people like that. Its position of the evolutionists today were trying to close down your creation in schools. They say that formula is science and is truth.

Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, it isn't. It's a deficient formula. If you add, as I've done on the second line there, if you add information, or telos, or surprise effect to it, then the formula is perfect, and you can work with it.

But you see, Darwin was out to reduce or cut out the influence of anything supernatural in science. He wanted all science to be concerned only with matter, and with nothing else. Well, with matter alone, you can't produce any machine.

Do you know of any machine that isn't an expression of thought in matter? Take a sewing machine. It's an expression of the idea of sewing two bits of cloth together, with a needle popping in and out through the cloth. But it's a thought combined with matter, making the machine teleonomic, that is, make it so.

And you can't make any machine without adding thought to it. That's the difference. You can make lots of things out of matter, and time, and energy, but not machines.

So the error in the formula of the materialists is this. They didn't specify that anything could be made in matter by chance. They didn't specify that if the aggregate of matter you were making was a machine, you'd have to put in thought.

That is information. That is bits and bytes of information. That's what they forgot.

And our evolutionists today have forgotten just that point. And you can't expect, you know, a boy or a girl of 12 years to think that far on their own. You've got to help them with these things, because after all, we've been thinking about these things quite a number of years, you know.

And it's easy now that when you start from scratch, from the evolutionary point of view, it's difficult to say that matter will make anything non-teleonomic if you leave it long enough to make the conditions right, which is the first formula. But it won't make a machine that way. And as the cell, the biological cell is a machine, it's a metabolic machine, as I've said once before, I believe you were the elite of Los Angeles.

I've said that I'm a machine for converting potatoes into thought, aren't I? If I forget to produce the thought, then my girth increases, and I'm misusing the energy of the potatoes. But if I put the potatoes in and convert them into thought, then I remain reasonably, you know, fit and not too overweight. Yeah, think of that and keep this perfectly straight.

These are things that have to be thought about, and we can apply them in just a minute in a way I hope you won't so easily forget. Okay, the fact is that there is no development of aggregates of matter up to cells continuously. But if you add to matter, thought, information, a blueprint, then you can get machines out.

But that's where the discontinuity comes in, where you add surprise effect of thought to matter and produce a machine. Now, you see, the Bible teaches just that. The Bible says, in the beginning was the word.

And the word is the logos, that is the thought or the concept. And God added the thought or the concept, the I, to matter. And lo and behold, the first man, the machine for converting potatoes into thought, among other things, appeared.

A living soul turned up. But you've got to think about these things. Otherwise, you will, by half-correct thought, get an awful mess for children.

In the end, they'll see no reason to believe in God at all, because they don't see what logos and information means. Now, let's take that one a little bit further. I'm going to tell you a little story, because I've bored you long enough with dry-as-dust theory.

I must tell you this, that I don't verify for the factuality of this little story that I'm going to tell you. But if you get the moral of it, and take it with you all the days of your life, then I'll be very happy. But the actual substance of it is allegorical, and it's parable.

Now, the substance is this. I don't know whether you know a man called Erich von Däniken. He wrote The Chariots of the Gods, remember? Well, he's a neighbor of ours.

He lives not very far from us in Switzerland. And he was an atheist. But he didn't believe in evolution.

He'd read some of my books, and he thought they were right. He only said, there's only one thing wrong about them, and that is you bring in the name of Jesus. I'd make you a millionaire, he told me, if you cut out the name of Jesus in them.

So I said, well, you've cut out the main purpose, then. There's no purpose in writing the books. Oh, he said, if it is bad as that, then I'll leave them alone.

So he once turned up to me when I was holding a lecture in the ETH in Zurich, which is the MIT of Switzerland. And we had a lecture hall there for 250 people, and about 500 people were reading it. And he came up, dressed up like an American tourist, you know, with cameras and videotapes and everything that an American tourist has with him, you see.

So he came like that into my little office where I was waiting to hold the lecture. And he said, can I come in and videotape your lecture? So I said, well, Mr. Von Däniken, if you'd like to, if you can physically get into that room without knocking too many people over the head with all your apparatus, welcome. Well, when I got into the lecture hall, there was cramped right to the very bursting point.

And right in front of them all was Erich Von Däniken with his little, you know, how they refresh their memories, with these cameras. So when I finished, he said he wanted to talk to me. So I said, well, very nice.

When would you like to talk to me? Oh, as soon as I can. So I said, okay, it's Friday today. I've got a lot of speaking engagements.

If you come in on Sunday morning to my hotel at seven o'clock punctually, I'll have time for you. So at seven, he swore an awful oath, I'm afraid. He said he'd never been asked by anybody, not even the king of any country, to turn up at seven o'clock in the morning on a Sunday morning.

So I said, well, okay, I've got no other time. If you really do want to come, come. So he came, and I had a good talk to him.

Now, it's about his gods that I want to talk to you tonight. I mustn't waste too much time on the details of this, because there's an awful lot that would interest you, but I want to get to my point. So the thing is this.

He believed, you know, that his astronaut gods came to the earth and seeded it with genes, and that these genes, then developed by Darwin, Darwinian process, to produce us. So he didn't have much use for Darwinian evolution, because he said, you've got to have the gods in it, you see. You have the gods in it, you're okay.

Well, I mean, there's a grain of truth in it, but not very much. Now, they, Sondinian's gods, are alleged to have gone back to the galaxies, you see, after they finished doing their work here. And the story that I'm going to tell you is this.

One of the gods, I forget his name, had a birthday party, and they wanted to have a little outing on the birthday party. So they thought that a nice place to go would be planet Earth. Now, they have plenty of space machines about that fly around at the speed of light, so they didn't have much trouble.

So they decided they'd take the old god who got his birthday with them on a little jaunt to the blue planet Earth. Had a fascination for the gods. Now, when they were speeding straight towards us, their Geiger counters started to tick.

Now, you know how Geiger counters tick, don't you? And even gods don't like Geiger counters that tick. Because, so they said, look, there's something gone wrong. And then they looked out of the little portholes, and they saw that the Earth in their eyes, right in front of them, they were heading straight for it, was changing from blue to brown.

So as they got nearer and nearer and nearer, the intensity of the radioactivity got worse. So they said, even gods can't stand that. It doesn't take me too seriously, will you? I see your pastor looking at me with a very, yeah.

They said, we'll have to get off. Where can we go to observe the Earth, but not get too near, because it's highly radioactive. Somebody's blown it up.

So they found the moon quite near them. So they veered off and got into orbit around the moon. And then they put on the brakes, you see, and descended to the surface of the moon.

And they said, now we get out our telescopes and have a look at what's happening on that formerly blue planet. So while they were rummaging around and unloading their spaceship, they said, we'll have to fix our telescopes and instruments down very firmly onto moon rock. So they all got to work, took off their jackets, you see, and were knocking in--listen very carefully to what I say--tent pegs to anchor their apparatuses with, you see.

Now one of the gods had a big tent peg, and another god was there with a big whacking hammer to knock in the tent pegs. There's not much gravity on the moon, so you have to use a lot of force, you know, to get these tent pegs in. So they were hammering away at these tent pegs, and one of them stood up and he said, well, I've never seen anything like this before.

We've got on the moon--are you listening?--elastic rocks. Because my tent peg is bouncing. I knock it in and it comes out again.

I didn't know that granite could be like rubber, he said. So the other one said, let me have a go at it, and he hammered it in, you see, and the more he hammered, the more it bounced back. So they said, well now, we didn't know that you could make granite into an elastomer like rubber is.

We shall have to have a look. This is something new for us gods. So they started to get some shovels out from the spacecraft and dig down to see what this rock was that was made of elastic.

When they got down, they found something black and round. So they dug and dug and dug until they got right under it, and then they pulled it out. Do you know what it was on it? Goodyear.

Now, so they thought, well, boys, let's have a look. So they dug a little bit to the other side and they found another one with Goodyear on it. Black and white Goodyear, you know, all around it.

And then they dug a little bit further back and they found another two Goodyears, black and white lettering on it. Well, they were really perplexed at this. So they thought, well, let's dig the whole bag of tricks out.

So they dug the whole bag of tricks out, and do you know what they found? They found the Jeep that the Yanks had left behind up on the moon. And it was all covered up with moon sand, you see. But they got it out and cleaned it up, and it was in perfect working condition.

And they were rummaging around on the dashboard with the steering wheel, you see, and they found a book in there. It was a manual, you know, like you have on your new Cadillac. A manual there on how to use the thing.

Well, they didn't know how to read English, because it was in English. So they got their computers to work, you see. These gods had everything you could wish for.

They got their computers to work on decoding this wretched manual. And after a day, they knew how to charge the batteries. They knew how to drive it.

They knew what it was for. So they said, this is absolutely fine. We came here for a birthday party, and a birthday party it shall be.

We're going to have a picnic on the Jeep. So they put everything that they wanted on the Jeep, and with hooray and, you know, singing and all the rest of it, they set off for the mountains of the moon to have a birthday party on the Jeep. Now, when they'd had a good day's outing, they got serious like people do.

And one of them said, where did that come from? Where did this machine come from? So the other said, well, according to best evolutionary theory, the molecules of the rock combined with one another and produced all the possible shapes produced, and produced this machine. Well, some of them didn't like that idea. They said, that's all very well for the machine itself, but you don't mean to tell us that the manual in the dashboard was produced by the paper of which it's made, do you? You don't think that all those instructions with all that information, the millions and millions of bytes of information there, came that way, do you? Well, they said, we could at a pinch believe that the machine arose that way, because after all, all biology arose that way, didn't it? And that would be a bit more complicated than the machine.

Here, it's complicated enough. Charging the batteries from the sun's a real fine idea, isn't it? But the manual, we can't believe that English, the code that we've decoded with our machines, we don't believe that that arose by the Darwinian process. I can't believe that a code, said one of the chief gods there, arose that way.

I can't believe you can write books that way, just by letting everything be formed and then wiping it out, and that which is useful, staying behind. Don't believe it. Well, after they'd argued about this on the way back for a long, long time, one of them said, we have to go and fetch the real expert on this subject, but he's up in the galaxies where we live.

His name was Albertus Zweisteinus. I don't know whether you know that, gentlemen. You know that zwei means two, don't you? That ein means one, so einstein means one stone, and zweisteinus means two stones.

So he was a bit better, you see, than the one we had down here. And so they went and fetched him. Well, now, he came along with his baggy old trousers and his tired eyes, you know, and couldn't speak English very well.

And they said, where do you think he came from, this machine? So they showed him it. He said, well, if cells, biological cells, and we know how they're made, were made by the chance processes of Darwinism, perhaps this jeep could have been made too. But he said, I'll draw the line at the manual.

I can't believe that that was made by that process at all. So he said, well, how do you think it was made? He said, I wouldn't dare tell you people, because you'd kill me if I told you. But he said, you've got absolute proof where that manual was made.

That was made by people with the properties of the gods, who were creative. That was made with the same sort of properties as the creator himself who made the whole bag of tricks had. He said, you don't say so.

Do you think that there are such beings around? Because that's against all the principles of science, if you do. Because all our science is to get rid of the necessity of us--you know that everybody, nobody believes in the gods anymore--because of what we've had them teach about matter making everything. So he made them sign an agreement they wouldn't do anything to him if he told them the truth.

You know, he wouldn't take away his professorship from him, or block his banking account, or anything like that. And when they'd signed, he said, well, I've got absolute proof that that was made in USA on Earth, because it says so on some of the component parts of that machine. Well, they let him go and didn't do anything to him, because he seemed harmless enough.

But they got into their machine and went back quickly as they could in the hope that those people that had apparently blown up the Earth wouldn't intercept them on the way and blow them up as they went back. But they went home after celebrating their birthday and had come to the conclusion that when you find a code hiding information, non-random sequences which hide a code, that that is proof positive of design behind the code and behind the contents. Absolute definite proof.

Even your Carl Sagan says that, you know. He says if you find a non-random sequence hiding a code which stores information, that is proof absolute of intelligence being behind that design. So, let's have a look at it another way around, and then I'll finish.

There are other things that you can say about that. I'm going to ask you one or two questions, besonders, especially the men amongst you. Do you really believe, these are questions, do you really believe that matter combines with itself to produce all the possible aggregates that are possible? Or do you think there are exceptions? Well, I'm of the opinion that matter will combine with itself to perform, to produce a lot of aggregates, but there are exceptions.

Now, I don't know whether I try it, because there are a number of ladies here who probably think that I'm just pulling wool over their eyes, and I should hate to think that, that you'd be, think that I would risk doing that to you. If you were making, say, a car engine, by the method of Darwin, that is random processes producing everything that is possible, everything that is possible, if you were doing that, now, hand on your heart, do you think that those processes could produce a round cylinder? Ask yourself. Of course, they wouldn't.

Random processes would never produce a round cylinder. Now, that's the first thing. So, you've got an exception to the general rule of all the materialists who say everything will produce, including those things which look designed, so design is always the appearance of design.

Now, what about getting a piston to fit into that cylinder, to fit absolutely gas-tight, with the reams and the grooves round it, which are gas-tight too, by random processes? Do you think you'd ever get them? No possibility. Do you think you'd ever get a valve to sit in the seat, and with its stem on it, to fit perfectly into the hole made for the stem, by random processes? The only process that'll make those--cylinders, pistons, valves, stems of valves, the seating, which is perfectly round--the only thing that'll make that is directed energy. That is the energy on a lathe.

You can do it on a lathe quite nicely. Now, if you've got directed energy there, then of course that cuts out the whole basis of Darwinism, which is randomness does a whole bag of tricks. It won't work that way.

So, if you're going to have a machine made by Darwin's process, the energy that's--the second word in my formula--the energy mustn't be random. It must be directed. Now, if your energy is directed, it isn't random.

So, the formula is wrong in respect to that. Now, if it's directed energy, then you've got to add the I, information, to make it directional, and then you can do it. So, the formula, which is being taught in all your schools, to justify the lack of anything supernatural having anything to do with our creation, the formula is deficient, and it's deficient in direction.

And that's what Logos means, and that's what information means. Now, you can go right through that into chemistry. You say, oh, well, chemistry is not made like a car engine.

Your chemistry could make a cell, couldn't it? Now, ladies and gentlemen, the answer is no, because all the cells of our body contain thousands and thousands of what are called enzymes. And the enzymes function like a hand fitting into a glove. And the hand goes into the molecules of the glove in a perfect fit, so you get very close fit between the outside of the cell and the inside of the cell chemically, just like a piston fits into a cylinder.

So, you've got the close analogy there between the production of an engine, an internal combustion engine, and the production of a cell. Both are absolutely dependent on an absolute fit. Now, if you're going to get an absolute fit in an engine, you've got to have your direction in it.

You've got to have good leads to do it. And in the chemistry of the cell, you've got to have exactly the same. You've got to have the fit of the hand into the glove.

In thousands of cases, in the simplest cell, there are 2,000 hand-glove fits to make the cell capable of getting energy from its environment. And when you see that, ladies and gentlemen, we can see it today, and we can make such systems to work. Arthur Kornberg and Sol Spiegelman both made a virus.

One of them made it out of RNA, and the other one made it out of DNA. And they spent two to three years doing it to make sure that, by directional energy, they got the fit. And the fit of the hand into the glove, the enzyme systems which are necessary, just like a piston is necessary to fit this into a cylinder perfectly, otherwise the thing won't run.

It's exactly the same in making a machine as it is in making a cell. There's no difference at all in principle. And if you don't have the external direction put into matter to guide it, in the right paths, so that the fit does occur, then you don't get any cell which will live and work, the same as you wouldn't get any motor which will live and work by that means.

So I'm of the old-fashioned opinion, and a lot of people are coming around to it today, that you can't get design without a designer. This idea of design being an artifact produced by matter reacting spontaneously, and higgledy-piggledy, all the thousands of thousands of thousands and thousands and thousands of aggregates of matter, some of which function and some don't, that idea is absolutely wrong, because nothing will function unless you get the perfect fit produced by direction. And the direction is of course stored on the DNA molecule.

But where did that direction come from in the first place? Well the scripture is perfectly plain about that one, and says that the direction came from the logos. The logos put his concept, which is directive thought, into matter, and the result was the metabolic machine known as man, and the animals and the plants appeared. Now ladies and gentlemen, the important thing about this, is not only that we have the knowledge of this, but that it reaches our hearts.

It's very very interesting from a purely scientific point of view to go into all these things, but you can remain as cold as ice doing it, unless you see where it's going to lead you to. Now I don't know what you think, but I think this, that if you put direction, information, onto a very small space, that's known as miniaturization. And when you think that the billions of bits of direction which are in us, and that all that direction with billions and billions of bits of information, was combined on one sperm of my father, and one egg from my mother, that that unbelievable concentration of high technology is on one sperm and one egg.

Now we look at machines which are high-tech, and we wonder, wonder. They go up to Edwards Air Base, don't they? And they see all the little secrets, big secrets that you've got up there. And most of them, you know, are very high technology.

And you say, oh where's man getting to? He really is going too far, because he used it for destructive purposes. When you think how God did that, when we see then, nature as it is, as Paul said in the first chapter of Romans, we see his deity and his Godhead writ large, right throughout biology. And if he did that, the God that I worship, you know, is omniscient.

He knows everything. And if you look at the blueprint for a man, takes billions and billions of pages just to write the sequences down of his genetic code, just to read it, let alone make it and compose it. When you think that we're of infinite value as God's work, beyond that scientifically, of infinite value, when you think that we're that, and rather than let us be perished, let us perish, he came and offered himself to save us from that death.

Now why is that necessary? I think this, that if you're going to get matter to develop itself up to life, you've got to put in from outside telos or information, logos if you like, you've got to do that. That left to ourselves as human beings, if we don't have the direction put in from the Lord Jesus Christ from outside us, we go to pieces. No matter how well you've been brought up, any of us can go to pieces, except that the logos comes into us every day to give us the direction we need.

That means we've got to take time every day to do it. Especially if you're married and have a family, just to run the family right in the fear of God takes the quiet time every day with the family, reading the word, praying, and loving him who gives us this direction. But that's optional for us, we've got to seek for it.

And if we do that, then we'll be quite sure about the design of biology, which is to make us in the likeness of his son. So we'll pray together. Just remain seated where you are.

We ask thee, Lord Jesus, that we may see these things and see thine omnipotence, and thine omniscience in all matters that we look at in science round about us, and give us wisdom to pass on this knowledge to others, that others may profit from it. So make us new by giving us new direction this evening to serve thee as we ought. We thank thee for thy kindness and goodness to us this day.

Amen.

Sermon Outline

  1. I
    • Introduction to the concept of design in biology
    • The assertion that design demands a designer
    • Contrasting views of biology and design
  2. II
    • Scriptural basis for recognizing God's design
    • Understanding the arguments against design
    • The importance of recognizing the designer
  3. III
    • Philosophical perspectives on design and matter
    • The continuity of matter and its implications
    • Debunking the idea of design as an illusion
  4. IV
    • The role of information and thought in creation
    • The significance of teleonomy in biological machines
    • The necessity of a designer in the creation of complex systems
  5. V
    • The historical context of design arguments
    • The relevance of William Paley's contributions
    • Modern implications of design in biology

Key Quotes

“Design demands a designer.” — Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith
“What can be known about God is plain to men, because God has shown it to them.” — Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith
“The teleonomy has to be a surprise effect, because matter doesn't have any set teleonomy or purpose in it.” — Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith

Application Points

  • Recognize the evidence of design in the natural world as a reflection of God's creativity.
  • Engage with opposing views to better articulate and defend your faith.
  • Encourage critical thinking in young people about the origins of life and the concept of design.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main argument of the sermon?
The sermon argues that the design observed in biology is evidence of a designer, contrasting with materialistic views that deny this.
How does the speaker address opposing views?
The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding opposing views in order to effectively communicate and counter them.
What role does scripture play in the sermon?
Scripture is used to support the idea that God's invisible nature is evident in creation, reinforcing the argument for a designer.
What is teleonomy?
Teleonomy refers to the purposefulness observed in biological systems, suggesting that such purpose requires a designer.
Who is William Paley and why is he mentioned?
William Paley is referenced for his argument from design, which posits that machines and complex systems imply the existence of a designer.

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