By now, it's pretty well known that the anti-evolution crowd is upset about the new "Cosmos" show. They feel that their Biblical version of creation of man is being ignored, and want equal time. They want "Cosmos" to discuss what they call "Intelligent Design". That descriptor replaces "creationism" as it implies perhaps not a literal interpretation of the creation story in Genesis, but one that still places the design of creation and the creation of Man in the hands of God.

As a software engineer, designer, developer, and architect, I know a thing or two about intelligent design. A good software program is designed to be reusable, extensible, modular, adaptable, and scale-able. Let's look at a few aspects of that.

If one looks at all of creation as a massive computer program, then it's also been coded to adapt to environmental changes. Think about Google searches - the results that get clicked on end up rising to the top of the results list. The search results "evolve" to match the best outcome for the user. That is intelligent design. So is a natural process that allows a species to evolve to match its own environment. If one looks at giraffes, it was the individuals born with longer necks that could get at more food, so they survived and reproduced, while those with shorter necks died away. Those best suited to the environment thrive, like the search result that matches what most people are looking for. Sure you can subvert the "natural" process at Google by using specific code to bomb the site to force a desired result. That is also the idea behind selective breeding.

One aspect of the software design cycle is to test, troubleshoot, update, and retest. It's how bugs are found, and bad code is eliminated, bit by bit. When one sees how evolution works in the real world, the similarities are remarkable. The code was written to test, rewrite, and eliminate those that didn't work.

Another aspect of software design is code reuse. Certain functions (like drawing a window on a screen) are kept in libraries that are used multiple times by many programs. It's easier than having to rewrite the same code over and over. That's intelligent software design. As noted in Cosmos, we share identical DNA with most other creatures. The example cited was the processing of sugars. An intelligent designer of life would create programming like this that would be reusable, rather than recreate the wheel every time.

Sometimes a program can do amazing things with just a little bit of code. The Apollo space capsules that went to the moon had less programming power than our cell phones do today, but it was specialized code that did exactly what it needed to, and nothing more. One interesting subject in math and computer programming is fractals. Fractals are actually simple equations that are recursive and call themselves over and over with the previous result as input. When graphed, they produce amazing images:



The real takeaway here is that each larger object is made up of smaller objects that look like the larger object, and it's all done with very little code required. When one looks at a tree, we see a trunk with limbs, which have branches, which have twigs, which have leaves, which have veins. Whether you look at the macro or up close, the structure is the same. The human body has 4 limbs and a head, the human hand has 4 fingers and a thumb. This sort of repetitive topology could be coded into our DNA in a type of simple fractal equation via chemistry. Intelligent design?

The Bible says that God created Man in his image. If one is to believe that, then one has to believe that God was intelligent, and created us to be intelligent, to discover his genius in the coding that allows us to evolve and adapt. Perhaps that creation is still ongoing, and the evolution of us from earlier primates via the software intelligently designed into our genetics is also part of that creation. The laws of physics, the lego-like aspect of organic chemistry, DNA, evolution... all of these can be seen as evidence of intelligent design if one is willing to grant that intelligence to a higher being and master programmer/architect. None of this subverts any religion. Some say that "God works in mysterious ways" - what could be more mysterious than creating a primate designed to evolve into our current form?

It is amazing to comprehend and in no way diminishes the notion of a world Intelligently Designed. If one is willing to agree that the "7 days" in Genesis do not describe 7 24-hr days, but 7 of "God's Days", then there is no reason for science and religion to be so at odds. The unexplained tenacity of life in a universe that seems to favor entropy is miracle enough.