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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.
