The Myth of Human Design

While all intelligent, informed people in our day deny the existence of divine design, a great many people still cling to the myth of human design. They will tell you that while the eye obviously evolved, and is not (as the ignorant believe) the product of some kind of creator; they will go on to tell you (not noticing the irony) that the camera is a product of human design. (And their chest will swell with pride, like a robin who's pulled up a worm.) No. This is not the case, but the main point is that it's not scientific. There is no scientific case to be made for placing the camera in a separate category than the eye. Both are simple arrangements of matter. In both cases, what appears to be design to the untrained eye, is really just a product of natural selection, and the blind processes of evolution. We need to drop our attachment to the humanist (anthrocentric) thinking. If we want to be scientific we must go where the evidence leads, and we must be consistent.

The foundation of evolution is that everything (everything) in the universe is the product of evolution. We can't make any exceptions if we want to remain scientific in our thinking. We can't take credit for what evolution has done. If we're going to take credit for the camera, we might as well claim credit for the eye.

This error in current thinking stems from the mistaken idea human beings have minds. This is an old error, and its one we're still working to abolish. People imagine that objects like cameras (or eyeglasses) have been designed by creatures with minds. No such creatures exist. The mind is an illusion. All that exists are brains. Human beings have brains, monkeys have brains, and bees have brains. Birds build nests, and human beings build boats; it's all the same thing. It isn't a mind that designs the hive of the bee or the nest of the bird, and it isn't a mind that designs the camera. What's involved is an instinctual behavior pattern that has evolved from natural selection. I'm not sure why people have a problem with this, but I suppose it goes back to cultural indoctrination and the remains of christian tradition.

It's only vanity that makes us think there's any difference between what we do when we build houses, and what beavers do when they construct damns. If we want to be rigorously scientific we must acknowledge (and admit) that our 'design capabilities' (instinctual behaviors) are simply a product of Darwinian evolution and natural selection. If we use 'blueprints' these are only instructions that have been given to us by our genes. The Copernican revolution will not be complete until we give up the idea of human design. This is a superstition that belongs to the past, and we should donate it to the flat earth people.

Notes;
1. 'If a man denies that there is design in nature, he can with quite as good reason deny that there is any design in any or in all the works ever executed by man. - Charles Hodge; What is Darwinism?/181