Dawkins, of course, wouldn't attribute this miniaturized intricacy to an intelligent engineer of life, but McDiarmid asks, why not? Why does the technology we use every day naturally prompt us to marvel at the genius of intelligent agents, but the far more fantastically advanced biological machinery in the cell does not. He writes:
These days, we surround ourselves with technology to stay in touch, to keep ourselves informed, and to manage the challenges of our daily lives. We also recognize in our devices and machines all the hallmarks of design, understanding reflexively that they express the ingenuity of engineers or software developers.Yes, indeed it does.
Our appreciation for applied intelligence comes as second nature to us — we intuitively recognize the work of other minds.
But what happens when we look up from our technology and survey the world of nature? When we look up at the movement of the planets, or into the eyes of our children, or when we peer through a microscope into a living cell? Do we see signs of minds in those places? Do we sense intelligence and forethought?
Or does our intuition of design stop at the iPhone and the jet airplane?
In a recent tweet, the world’s most famous scientific atheist, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, confessed to being knocked “sideways with wonder at the miniaturized intricacy of the data-processing machinery in the living cell.”
Dawkins wrote the tweet after watching an animation produced by an Australian medical institute showing how cells store and copy the vast amounts of digital information present in DNA.
The digital information technology found in living cells (as depicted in this and other animations) has raised profound questions about an enduring scientific mystery: how did the very first life begin? And did a mind or intelligent designer play a role?
Dawkins, for his part, has steadfastly maintained that living organisms exhibit only “the appearance” or illusion of design, not evidence of actual design — despite being knocked “sideways with wonder” at the information technology at work in living cells.
As he put it in his most famous book The Blind Watchmaker,“[b]iology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” The claim that life was not designed, even though it looks designed, may seem contradictory.
Here's the three minute video that so impressed Dawkins. As you watch it ask yourself where the information comes from that choreographs these processes and how the whole ensemble of processes could've arisen by blind chance in the earliest life.
It knocks me sideways to think that some very intelligent people believe it all to be a lucky accident:
