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There's been a lot of talk very recently,

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or definitely over the last several years,

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about the idea of intelligent design and how it compares to evolution.

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And my goal in this video isn't kind of enter into that discussion,

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or it's actually turned into an argument in most circles,

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but really to make my best attempt to kind of reconcile the notions.

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So the idea behind intelligent design is really that

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there are some things that we see in our world

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that are just so amazing that it seems hard to believe

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that it could be the product of a set of random processes.

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And the example that tends to be given is the human eye,

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which truly is an awe-inspiring device.

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You can call it an organ or a machine.

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Whatever you want to call it,it does all of these amazing things.

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It can focus at different lengths.

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It brings the light into focus at just the right spot,

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and then you have your retinal nerves and you have two eyes

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so can see in stereoscopic vision.You can see in colors,

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and then you can adjust to light and dark,

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so the human eye truly is awe inspiring.

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And the argument tends to go that,look,

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how can this be created from random processes?

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And the goal of this isn't to trace the evolution of the eye,

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but I'll do a little side note here that evolution is--

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and natural selection,and I like the word natural selection more

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because it's not talking about an active process.

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Natural selection is acting over eons and eons of time,

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and we do see evidence in our world

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of a progression of different types of eyes.

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In fact,all evidence shows that the human eye is not perfect,

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and that there is variation.

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I mean, we all know some of us are nearsighted,some are farsighted.

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We have astigmatisms.It degenerates over time.

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People generate cataracts,so there's a whole set of things

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that can go wrong with the human eye.I'm not using that as a rebuttal

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but I'm just showing you that there is variation,

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even in what I believe is truly an amazing piece of biology.

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And even if you go outside of the human world,

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there's obviously a huge spectrum of eyes.

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You have fish at the bottom of the ocean that have eyes

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that are really just light sensors,that barely can maybe tell you--

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and some insects are like this--

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whether there's some light or some heat around,

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nothing really more than that.

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And at the other end of the spectrum,far better than humans,

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you have certain birds and a certain type of nocturnal creatures

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where they can see in the dark.

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You know,maybe you have a certain--actually,all cats

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have this reflective material in their eye that allows them

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much better night vision,so in that way they're superior to humans,

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and they can see just as good as humans during the daytime.

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You have certain birds who can see with far more visual clarity

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at far better distances than humans can,so there is no perfect eye.

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So I'll go into a little bit of a theological argument here,

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and for those of you who watch my videos,

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you know that I'm one to stray away from theological arguments,

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although I might eventually do a whole philosophy playlist,

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but I want to be very careful not to offend anyone's sensibilities,

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because that truly,truly,truly is not my intention.

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But the whole point I want to make is that,look,

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if you believe in a God,

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and I won't take sides on that argument in this video right here,

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it's to some degree,I would say,

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almost disparaging of an all-powerful being to say that this human eye

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it kind of gives too much importance to us as individuals.

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I always think that religion--and actually science.

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Or actually everything.

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I mean,we should be humble in our lives,

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and there should be the realization that we,as humans,really--

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this isn't perfection,and to imply that this is the best that a

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perfect entity or an all-powerful entity could produce

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I think is a little actually disparaging of it.

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I'll give you another example.I give you another example,

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and I'll put my engineering hat on here.

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And once again,I want to be very clear.

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My goal isn't in this video to say,oh,you know,look,hey,

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evolution,random processes,that by itself,there is no God,

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and you just have to live with it. No,that's not my point.

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I'm actually making the opposite argument,

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that a belief in God would not point to a God who--

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a belief in a universal,all-powerful God would not point to a God

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who designs the particular,who designs each particular.

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And even more,the imperfections that we see around us would--

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and especially because we see variation

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and they're being selected for it.

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I mean, we can't just focus on the eye.

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We would have to focus on viruses and cancers,

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and it would have to speak to a God that is designing

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one of every version of every sequence of DNA that we see,

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because if someone talks about designing an eye,

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we know that the eye is the byproduct of DNA,

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and we know the DNA is a sequence of base pairs,

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you know,ATG,C,A,and,

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you know,billions and billions of them.

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And so when we talk about design,

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we would be talking literally about designing the sequence.

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And we even know that a lot of the sequence,

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there's some noise in there.

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We know that a lot of it comes from

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primitive viruses deep in our past.

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So the argument I'm making here is that

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in order to give credit to the all powerful,at least to my mind,

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a system that comes from very simple and elegant basic ideas

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like natural selection and variations,that in our DNA,

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we call those mutations,in the laws of physics and chemistry,

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and those,from that simple and elegant basic ideas,

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for complexity to emerge.for complexity to emerge.

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So this is one idea and this is what really evolution speaks to,

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that,look,our universe is this profound world,

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this profound environment,

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where from these very basic,simple,beautiful ideas,

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we have this complexity in the structure that is

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truly,truly,truly awe inspiring.

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This is,in my mind,what evolution speaks to.

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And in my mind,even as an engineer,

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this speaks to a higher form of design.

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This speak to a more profound design.more profound design.

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So this whole video,the whole argument,is that

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if one does believe in a God,and,you know,

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I'm not going to take sides in that in this video,

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and a God that speaks to beauty and elegance

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and is infinitely powerful,then this idea of the laws of

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physics and chemistry and natural selection,

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which is really-- I mean,you know,

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when I talked about natural selection in the last video,

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it was really--

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I think you would find it was a bit of common sense.

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That this is a very profound design

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and it speaks to the art of the designer

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as opposed to designing each of these entities one off.

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And what's even more profound about the design is that it's adaptive.

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If there's environmental stress,

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then the other variations survive more frequently.

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And so it's never changing,that perfection,

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that no instance can ever be pointed to

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and say this is the highest point that this design can reach.

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That is always--I don't want to say getting better.

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It's always getting more suited to its environment as it changes,

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and that to me is a better design.

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Now,just following up on that,and I want to be very clear.

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This whole idea is to kind of raise the standard of

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what we expect out of design.

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It's to kind of show other points or other places

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in the scientific or mathematical world where this does emerge.

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And the best example I see of that is with fractals.

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A lot of you-all might have seen--this is the Mandelbrot set,

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a very famous set of fractals.It's immensely complex.

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In fact,you can keep zooming in on the Mandelbrot set at any point,

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and when you zoom it out,it becomes infinitely complex,

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and you can explore it indefinitely.

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But the beauty of it,the true beauty of it,

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is all of this can be described by one equation,

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one almost shockingly simple equation,and that's this:

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The next z is equal to the z before it squared plus 1.

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And you're like to say you know,Sal,you started talking about

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intelligent design and evolution and all of that.

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Why are you all of a sudden breaking into fractals?

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And the point I'm trying to make here is that if I had two designers

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and one set out to go and paint this exact particular fractal

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and say,oh,you know,I'm going to make this brown

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and I'm going to make this blue

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and I'm going to make this a circle with other circles,

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you'd think this is an amazing painter.

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For example,if you were to go to someone 300 years ago

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and you were to show them this,

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they would say that this is the finest design

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that anyone might have ever been able to devise,

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because it's so infinitely complex.

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But now we know that this can be completely described by

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this simple equation,literally.

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For those of you are interested,all they're doing,

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this is a complex plane,and they're starting at zero--

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excuse me,not plus 1,plus c.

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Let me make that very clear.This is the equation plus c.

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So for every point on the complex plane,you put that point in for c,

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and then you start with zero,and you keep doing this.

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So you say zero squared plus that number,

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that complex number,is equal to that.Then you put that in here,

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and then you do that number squared plus that complex number,

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and you do it again. You do it over and over and over.

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So turns out that some numbers don't go to infinity

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and those numbers are in black.

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They're considered part of the Mandelbrot set.

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And then the numbers that do go to infinity,

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as you iterate on this formula,

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you color it based on how fast it goes to infinity,

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and it creates this infinitely beautiful and complex pattern.

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Now,if you were to say what is a more profound design,

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and you can ask any engineer this,

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in my mind,this is the most profound design.

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Because it's simple and elegant,

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but it describes something of infinite complexity.

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It's not just focused on the particular,

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it's focused on kind of the metalevel.

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It's focused on creating just the idea

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of which this is just an example.

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So anyway,this is probably my video where I steer most away

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from the science of it all and maybe I focus a little bit more

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on the slightly metaphysical or the awe inspiring.

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But my whole point here is to really throw out my little idea

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of how you can reconcile these notions.

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That evolution,the randomness of it,

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does not speak to a Godless universe,

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although I'm not going to take sides on that.

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It speaks to a more profound God,in my mind.

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So anyway,forgive me for taking my liberties,

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and I want to make it very clear,

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I don't want to offend anyone's sensibilities,

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but I really just wanted to throw this idea out there.

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See you in the next video.