Part One highlighted Casey Luskin’s presentation on mankind’s unique design. He considered the fossils associated with human evolution, genetics and psychology, and he concluded that the best explanation for mankind’s existence is a non-evolutionary alternative- namely God’s creation and design. Here in Part Two I’ll touch on presentations by Mark Garcia, Howard Glicksman and Steve Laufmann.

1: Dr. Mark Garcia did a masterful job summarizing human uniqueness according to the Genesis account of Adam, where no suitable helper was found for him among the animals. From the very beginning Adam can speak, and he uses speech to name the animals. But it isn’t until God brings Eve to him that he finds a “well-fitted other,” and Adam says, “This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” We’re not like animals who lack our mental abilities. Mankind was made in the image of God, and that is reassuring.

Further, Garcia recognized the vast chasm between man and the ape-like Homo naledi, whom evolutionists claim we’re related to, and shows there’s no comparison. H. naledi was an animal. They didn’t bury their dead, use fire, or write on walls like the first humans did. In fact, Garcia makes the obvious statement that animals don’t do science, don’t use rationality or make moral laws.

2: Dr. Howard Glicksman is a medical doctor, and he contrasted atheism with faith, asking, “Are you a cosmic accident? Or were you intended?” Those are important questions all humans should address because both can’t be true. Darwinism is superficial, but people can be easily misled by its claims. However, he explains, “The laws of nature don’t generate life.” That should be obvious to everyone. Consider, life requires “innovative solutions to overcome” hardships. As Dr. Glicksman explains, the “Laws of nature cause death.” I found that to be a compelling truth, and it explains why every planet or moon we’ve examined is lifeless. Earth is the exception, and for good reason. Naturalistic processes simply can’t explain innovative solutions. Only God’s existence provides an adequate explanation.

Dr. Glicksman went further, explaining there are many hurdles life must overcome for those who adhere to naturalism. Control systems- such as sensors- must be present in the first living organism, otherwise it would die rather quickly, and extinction would occur. There must be “coherent interdependent systems” to make life work, and origin of life experiments can’t account for this kind of complexity.

Specifically, he says, the first living organism would need to be engineered with an “integrator” to analyze the sensory information received, make decisions, and send instructions to correct the problem. It would also need an “effector” to receive orders from the integrator and perform those tasks. This is an example of just one irreducibly complex system necessary for life to exist.

This makes Darwinian gradualism a failure because it can’t explain the existence of a single working control system. But Dr. Glicksman didn’t stop there. He went on to discuss chemical parameters, physiological parameters, dynamic capacities, reproduction, respiration, and other complex systems.

Finally, he asks, where did all this information come from? And how did it come about if the organism had to be alive each step of the way? There are only two explanations for the origin of life, he says, and that is either unguided, unplanned, purposeless materialism lacking foresight, or intelligent design. Once again, I contend that God’s design makes the most sense of the evidence.

3: Steve Laufmann, a computer scientist, continued the theme, presenting hurdles for the origin of life without an intelligent agent, but by unguided, natural processes. Interestingly, he said, “You can’t solve the problems at the beginning until you solve the problem at the end.” That idea is profound because it suggests life had to be engineered. Of course this is only a problem for evolutionists.

Laufmann spoke of the “Problem of cascading problems” where one system is interdependent on all other systems, and a whole different system is necessary to get the system started. The first living organism would need to be able to manufacture proteins, or nothing works. And those proteins must be shaped physically and precisely. Somehow materials would need to be separated and isolated, which means something must be in place to harvest the material from the environment. Somehow the material would need to be transported and delivered to factories at just the right time, where everything is assembled and sent to where it’s needed (not where it’s not needed). How does the first living organism deal with waste recycling and disposal? How does it come up with supply chain management or chemistry management? Every single system needs control mechanisms, signaling when to start and stop. How would this theoretical organism achieve range of motion and find the right amount of strength to make all these tasks happen? What about defense mechanisms and fluid dynamics? How does it know when something is broken so it can fix the problem and repair it? How does it adapt to a changing environment? Where do all the coordination mechanisms come from? All this needs to happen automatically, without the organism thinking about it, or it goes extinct.

I doubt true evolutionists are concerned much. They shrug and say, “It could have happened,” or “Science will figure it out” as if time and chance are the heroes. But waving a magic wand isn’t enough. Inventing a just so story requires a good imagination, but what we really need is to see life spontaneously form on its own with all these complex systems in place, and then reproduce the results experimentally as with any valid scientific theory. If not, then its not valid science, and there’s no rational reason why anyone should believe life could arise by natural processes.

However, as Laufmann recognizes, life appears to be finely tuned. All these complex features appear to have been present right from the beginning, engineered in every living organism. In fact these features appear to be optimized with no hint of evolutionary experimentation by trial and error. How long do evolutionists think this experimentation took place? Did it happen with one quick strike of lightning, or did it happen over billions of years? They have no rational explanation. Their response is, “Trust me.” But as Laufmann said, “The burden of proof is on them if they believe that happened.” He says we should be able to ask them how it happened, and if they can’t provide a satisfactory answer, then we shouldn’t listen to them. Evolutionists mock a “god of the gaps,” but it’s appropriate to point out their own adherence to “evolution of the gaps” and expose their inconsistency.

He concludes, saying evolutionists are “invoking luck where we invoke God.” We are here intentionally, not by accident. Our bodies scream “design!” Darwinism, he says, is an ideology and belief, but humanity needs to come back and recognize the meaning, intention and purpose we were created for. Amen.