There's been a lot of talk very
recently, or definitely
over the last several years,
about the idea of intelligent
design and how it compares
to evolution.
And my goal in this video
isn't to enter into that
discussion, or it's actually
turned into an argument in
most circles, but really to make
my best attempt to kind
of reconcile the notions.
So the idea behind intelligent
design is really that there
are some things that we see in
our world that are just so
amazing that it seems hard to
believe that it could be the
product of a set of
random processes.
And the example that tends to
be given is the human eye,
which truly is an awe-inspiring
device.
You can call it an organ
or a machine.
Whatever you want to call
it, it does all of
these amazing things.
It can focus at different
lengths.
It brings the light into focus
at just the right spot, and
then you have your retinal
nerves and you have two eyes
so can see in stereoscopic
vision.
You can see in colors, and then
you can adjust to light
and dark, so the human eye
truly is awe inspiring.
And the argument tends to go
that, look, how can this be
created from random processes?
And the goal of this isn't to
trace the evolution of the
eye, but I'll do a little side
note here that evolution is--
and natural selection, and
I like the word natural
selection more because
it's not talking
about an active process.
Natural selection is acting over
eons and eons of time,
and we do see evidence in our
world of a progression of
different types of eyes.
In fact, all evidence shows
that the human eye is not
perfect, and that there
is variation.
I mean, we all know some of us
are nearsighted, some are
farsighted.
We have astigmatisms. It
degenerates over time.
People generate cataracts, so
there's a whole set of things
that can go wrong with
the human eye.
I'm not using that as a
rebuttal, but I'm just showing
you that there is variation,
even in what I believe is
truly an amazing piece
of biology.
And even if you go outside of
the human world, there's
obviously a huge spectrum
of eyes.
You have fish at the bottom of
the ocean that have eyes that
are really just light sensors,
that barely can maybe tell
you-- and some insects are like
this-- whether there's
some light or some heat
around, nothing
really more than that.
And at the other end of the
spectrum, far better than
humans, you have certain birds
and a certain type of
nocturnal creatures where they
can see in the dark.
You know, maybe you have a
certain-- actually, all cats
have this reflective material in
their eye that allows them
much better night vision, so in
that way they're superior
to humans, and they can see just
as good as humans during
the daytime.
You have certain birds who can
see with far more visual
clarity at far better distances
than humans can, so
there is no perfect eye.
So I'll go into a little bit
of a theological argument
here, and for those of you who
watch my videos, you know that
I'm one to stray away from
theological arguments,
although I might eventually do
a whole philosophy playlist,
but I want to be very careful
not to offend anyone's
sensibilities, because
that truly, truly,
truly is not my intention.
But the whole point I want to
make is that, look, if you
believe in a God, and I won't
take sides on that argument in
this video right here, it's to
some degree, I would say,
almost disparaging of an
all-powerful being to say that
this human eye, it kind of gives
too much importance to
us as individuals.
I always think that religion--
and actually science.
Or actually everything.
I mean, we should be humble in
our lives, and there should be
the realization that we, as
humans, really-- this isn't
perfection, and to imply that
this is the best that a
perfect entity or an
all-powerful entity could
produce I think is a little
actually disparaging of it.
I'll give you another example.
I give you another example, and
I'll put my engineering
hat on here.
And once again, I want
to be very clear.
My goal isn't in this video to
say, oh, you know, look, hey,
evolution, random processes,
that by itself, there is no
God, and you just have
to live with it.
No, that's not my point.
I'm actually making the opposite
argument, that a
belief in God would not point
to a God who-- a belief in a
universal, all-powerful God
would not point to a God who
designs the particular, who
designs each particular.
And even more, the imperfections
that we see
around us would-- and especially
because we see
variation and they're being
selected for it.
I mean, we can't just
focus on the eye.
We would have to focus on
viruses and cancers, and it
would have to speak to a God
that is designing one off
every version of every sequence
of DNA that we see,
because if someone talks about
designing an eye, we know that
the eye is the byproduct of DNA,
and we know the DNA is a
sequence of base pairs, you
know, ATG, C, A, and, you
know, billions and
billions of them.
And so when we talk about
design, we would be talking
literally about designing
the sequence.
And we even know that a lot of
the sequence, there's some
noise in there.
We know that a lot of it comes
from primitive viruses deep in
our past.
So the argument I'm making here
is that in order to give
credit to the all powerful, at
least to my mind, a system
that comes from very simple and
elegant basic ideas like
natural selection and
variations, that in our DNA,
we call those mutations, in
the laws of physics and
chemistry, and those, from that
simple and elegant basic
ideas, for complexity
to emerge.
So this is one idea and this
is what really evolution
speaks to, that, look, our
universe is this profound
world, this profound
environment, where from these
very basic, simple, beautiful
ideas, we have this complexity
in the structure that is truly,
truly, truly awe inspiring.
This is, in my mind, what
evolution speaks to.
And in my mind, even as an
engineer, this speaks to a
higher form of design.
This speak to a more
profound design.
So this whole video, the whole
argument, is that if one does
believe in a God, and, you know,
I'm not going to take
sides in that in this video,
and a God that speaks to
beauty and elegance and is
infinitely powerful, then this
idea of the laws of physics
and chemistry and natural
selection, which is really-- I
mean, you know, when I talked
about natural selection in the
last video, it was really-- I
think you would find it was
a bit of common sense.
That this is a very profound
design and it speaks to the
art of the designer as opposed
to designing each of these
entities one off.
And what's even more profound
about the design
is that it's adaptive.
If there's environmental
stress, then the other
variations survive
more frequently.
And so it's never changing,
that perfection, that no
instance can ever be pointed to
and say this is the highest
point that this design
can reach.
That is always-- I don't want
to say getting better.
It's always getting more suited
to its environment as
it changes, and that to
me is a better design.
Now, just following
up on that, and I
want to be very clear.
This whole idea is to kind of
raise the standard of what we
expect out of design.
It's to kind of show other
points or other places in the
scientific or mathematical world
where this does emerge.
And the best example I see
of that is with fractals.
A lot of you-all might have
seen-- this is the Mandelbrot
set, a very famous
set of fractals.
It's immensely complex.
In fact, you can keep zooming
in on the Mandelbrot set at
any point, and when you zoom it
out, it becomes infinitely
complex, and you can explore
it indefinitely.
But the beauty of it, the true
beauty of it, is all of this
can be described by one
equation, one almost
shockingly simple equation, and
that's this: The next z is
equal to the z before
it squared plus 1.
And you're like you know, Sal,
you started talking about
intelligent design and evolution
and all of that.
Why are you all of a sudden
breaking into fractals?
And the point I'm trying to make
here is that if I had two
designers and one set out to
go and paint this exact
particular fractal and say,
oh, you know, I'm going to
make this brown and I'm going
to make this blue and I'm
going to make this a circle
with other circles, you'd
think this is an amazing
painter.
For example, if you were to go
to someone 300 years ago and
you were to show them this, they
would say that this is
the finest design that anyone
might have ever been able to
devise, because it's so
infinitely complex.
But now we know that this can
be completely described by
this simple equation,
literally.
For those of you are interested,
all they're doing,
this is a complex plane, and
they're starting at zero--
excuse me, not plus 1, plus c.
Let me make that very clear.
This is the equation plus c.
So for every point on the
complex plane, you put that
point in for c, and then you
start with zero, and you keep
doing this.
So you say zero squared plus
that number, that complex
number, is equal to that.
Then you put that in here, and
then you do that number
squared plus that complex
number, and you do it again.
You do it over and
over and over.
So turns out that some numbers
don't go to infinity and those
numbers are in black.
They're considered part
of the Mandelbrot set.
And then the numbers that do go
to infinity, as you iterate
on this formula, you color it
based on how fast it goes to
infinity, and it creates this
infinitely beautiful and
complex pattern.
Now, if you were to say what is
a more profound design, and
you can ask any engineer this,
in my mind, this is the most
profound design.
Because it's simple and elegant,
but it describes
something of infinite
complexity.
It's not just focused on the
particular, it's focused on
kind of the metalevel.
It's focused on creating just
the idea of which this is just
an example.
So anyway, this is probably my
video where I steer most away
from the science of it all and
maybe I focus a little bit
more on the slightly
metaphysical or the awe inspiring.
But my whole point here is to
really throw out my little
idea of how you can reconcile
these notions.
That evolution, the randomness
of it, does not speak to a
Godless universe, although
I'm not going to
take sides on that.
It speaks to a more profound
God, in my mind.
So anyway, forgive me for taking
my liberties, and I
want to make it very clear, I
don't want to offend anyone's
sensibilities, but I really
just wanted to throw
this idea out there.
See you in the next video.