“You must have read “Darwin’s Doubt”?”
Yes, and several other similar books, though the way I express my ideas is my own synthesis.
“He disagrees with you, though, that all life came from simpler life.”
I believe it did, but not in way most people think. I believe our makers, when they first set about making the earth’s biosphere did not in fact know how to make such complex creatures as ourselves, but that they built up their knowledge base and technology, for example, first starting with viruses, which they then used as tools to build the DNA/replication infrastructure inherent in all cells. They then figured out how to make simple one-cell creatures, which were used to terraform the earth’s environment, making it hospitable for their next generation of creatures, namely simple multi-cell creatures they figured out how to make while the terraforming was underway.
There’s an enormous difference in complexity between single-cell creatures and multi-cell creatures, particularly with gestation, replication, and growth. Such creatures also require a more complex bio-environment.
Once certain kinds of problems were worked out and the mechanisms understood and constructed, then these could be applied to a whole new generation of creatures consisting of a remarkable diversity of similar creatures. This new set of creatures could then be released into the existing biosphere and allowed to reach equilibrium amongst themselves and those that preceded them while work proceeded in the labs on the home planet on the next generation of improved/increased complexity.
This cycle was repeated several times until we’ve arrived at where we are today (essentially Nexus-7s if you will), and accounts for the abrupt changes we see in the fossil record which shows these periodic “explosions” of life forms at substantially increased levels of complexity and diversity from the previous explosion. Each explosion of “improved” creatures was possible because a new set of problems had been solved by The Makers and these solutions could be applied to making the next generation of creatures.
It should also be noted that problems also had to be solved as to how the new, more complex creatures could be layered in on top of all of the old ones and have the whole symbiotic biosphere continue to function in a self-supporting and self-sustaining fashion by reaching a new and stable equilibrium.
In summary, in my scheme, there IS evolution, it’s just that the evolution is purposeful and intelligent, and is analogous to the way human invention evolves, with digital electronics providing one of the most instructive examples of what I am talking about.
Quite frankly, I think earth’s biosphere is simply an instantiation of someone else’s life-making project or experiment, in other words, a fancy terrarium.
I take it, then, you must have also read “Signature in the Cell”. I plan on reading that next.
I find the assertion that all life came from a single primordial cell, which came about through some accidental combination of molecules and some type of energy utterly preposterous. Just the idea that only one cell would have arisen and survived in all of earth challenges all credulity. And only at that point in time and place, never to be repeated again.
I must say that Meyer has made a profound impression on me. I used to dismiss ID as just some bible literalists trying to put a scientific patina on religious dogma. Meyer, using scientific evidence and impeccable logic and no reference to biblical scripture, has won me over. He has also convinced me that it is the scientists who espouse only the materialistic world view that are the dogmatic, closed minded and intolerant ones.
With regard to the Designer or Designers, I too sometime think we’re just someone’s lab experiment and that all the problems and issues we face are just situations created by the Designers to see how their creations (us) deal with them. They might be using us as entertainment or as simply work in progress toward a better model.
The idea that we’re somebody’s experiment (God’s?) and that that god is less than perfect comes across strongly in the old testament. I was particularly taken aback at the passages in the old testament where God refers to himself as a “jealous god” as well as one who likes to be worshipped and feared - qualities belonging not to a perfect, all powerful being, but rather to a master (the Designer?) and an insecure one at that.
Ezekiel’s spaceships is another fascinating mystery in the old testament.