God, Man and Physics

Discovery Institute ^ | 18 February 2002 | David Berlinski

[Cameron]

The God Hypothesis:
Discovering Design in our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe
by Michael A. Corey
(Rowman & Littlefield, 256 pp., $27)

GOD'S EXISTENCE is not required by the premises of quantum mechanics or general relativity, the great theories of twentieth-century physics --but then again, it is not contravened by their conclusions either. What else can we do but watch and wait?

The agnostic straddle. It is hardly a posture calculated to set the blood racing. In the early 1970s Jacques Monod and Steven Weinberg thus declared themselves in favor of atheism, each man eager to communicate his discovery that the universe is without plan or purpose. Any number of philosophers have embraced their platform, often clambering onto it by brute force. Were God to exist, Thomas Nagel remarked, he would not only be surprised, but disappointed.

A great many ordinary men and women have found both atheism and agnosticism dispiriting--evidence, perhaps, of their remarkable capacity for intellectual ingratitude. The fact remains that the intellectual's pendulum has swung along rather a tight little arc for much of the twentieth century: atheism, the agnostic straddle, atheism, the agnostic straddle.

The revival of natural theology in the past twenty-five years has enabled that pendulum to achieve an unexpected amplitude, its tip moving beyond atheism and the agnostic straddle to something like religious awe, if not religious faith.

It has been largely the consolidation of theoretical cosmology that has powered the upward swing. Edwin Hubble's discovery that the universe seemed to be expanding in every direction electrified the community of cosmologists in the late 1920s, and cosmologists were again electrified when it became clear that these facts followed from Einstein's general theory of relativity. Thereafter, their excitement diminished, if only because the idea that the universe was expanding suggested inexorably that it was expanding from an origin of some sort, a big bang, as the astronomer Fred Hoyle sniffed contemptuously.

In 1963 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson inadvertently noticed the background microwave radiation predicted by Big Bang cosmology; when Robert Dicke confirmed the significance of their observation, competing steady-state theories of creation descended at once into desuetude. And thereafter a speculative story became a credible secular myth.

But if credible, the myth was also incomplete. The universe, cosmologists affirmed, erupted into existence fifteen billion years ago. Details were available, some going back to the first three minutes of creation. Well and good. But the metaphoric assimilation of the Big Bang to the general run of eruptions conveyed an entirely misleading sense of similarity. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius took place in space and time; the Big Bang marks the spot at which time and space taper to a singularity and then vanish altogether.

It follows that the universe came into existence from nothing whatsoever, and for no good reason that anyone could discern, least of all cosmologists. Even the most ardent village atheist became uneasily aware that Big Bang cosmology and the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis shared a family resemblance too obvious profitably to be denied.

Thereafter, natural theology, long thought dead of inanition, began appearing at any number of colloquia in mathematical physics, often welcomed by the same physicists who had recently been heard reading its funeral obsequies aloud. In "The God Hypothesis: Discovering Design in our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe," Michael A. Corey is concerned to convey their news without worrying overmuch about the details. His message is simple. There is a God, a figure at once omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, and necessary. Science has established his existence.

How very embarrassing that this should have been overlooked.

AT THE very heart of revived natural theology are what the physicist Brandon Carter called "anthropic coincidences." Certain structural features of the universe, Carter argued, seemed finally tuned to permit the emergence of life. This is a declaration, to be sure, that suggests far more than it asserts. Structural features? Finely tuned? Permit? When the metaphors are squeezed dry, what more is at issue beyond the observation that life is a contingent affair? This is not a thesis in dispute.

Still, it often happens that commonplace observations, when sharpened, prompt questions that they had long concealed. The laws of physics draw a connection between the nature of certain material objects and their behavior. Falling from a great height, an astrophysicist no less than an airplane accelerates toward the center of the earth. Newton's law of gravitational attraction provides an account of this tendency in terms of mass and distance (or heft and separation). In order to gain traction on the real world, the law requires a fixed constant, a number that remains unchanged as mass and distance vary. Such is Newton's universal gravitational constant.

There are many comparable constants throughout mathematical physics, and they appear to have no very obvious mathematical properties. They are what they are. But if arbitrary, they are also crucial. Were they to vary from the values that they have, this happy universe--such is the claim--would be too small or too large or too gaseous or otherwise too flaccid to sustain life. And these are circumstances that, if true, plainly require an explanation.

Carter was a capable physicist; instead of being chuckled over and dismissed by a handful of specialists, the paper that he wrote in 1974 was widely read, Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson, Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, Steven Weinberg, Robert Jastrow, and John Gribbin all contributing to the general chatter. Very few physicists took the inferential trail to its conclusion in faith; what is notable is that any of them took the trail at all.

THE ASTRONOMER Fred Hoyle is a case in point, his atheism in the end corrected by his pleased astonishment at his own existence. Living systems are based on carbon, he observed, and carbon is formed within stars by a process of nucleosynthesis. (The theory of nucleosynthesis is, indeed, partly his creation.) Two helium atoms fuse to form a beryllium intermediate, which then fuses again with another helium atom to form carbon. The process is unstable because beryllium intermediates are short-lived.

In 1953 Edwin Salpeter discovered that the resonance between helium and intermediate beryllium atoms, like the relation between an opera singer and the glass she shatters, is precisely tuned to facilitate beryllium production. Hoyle then discovered a second nuclear resonance, this one acting between beryllium and helium, and finely tuned as well.

Without carbon, no life. And without specific nuclear resonance levels, no carbon. And yet there he was, Hoyle affirmed, carbon based to the core. Nature, he said in a remark widely quoted, seems to be "a put-up job."

INFERENCES now have a tendency to go off like a string of firecrackers, some of them wet. Hoyle had himself discovered the scenario that made carbon synthesis possible. He thus assigned to what he called a "Supercalculating Intellect" powers that resembled his own. Mindful, perhaps, of the ancient wisdom that God alone knows who God is, he did not go further. Corey is, on the other hand, quite certain that Hoyle's Supercalculating Intellect is, in fact, a transcendental deity--the Deity, to afford Him a promotion in punctuation.

And Corey is certain, moreover, that he quite knows His motives. The Deity, in setting nuclear resonance levels, undertook his affairs "in order to create carbon based life forms."

Did He indeed? It is by no means obvious. For all we know, the Deity's concern may have lain with the pleasurable intricacies of nucleosynthesis, the emergence of life proving, like so many other things, an inadvertent consequence of his tinkering. For that matter, what sense does it make to invoke the Deity's long term goals, when it is His existence that is at issue? If nothing else, natural theology would seem to be a trickier business than physicists may have imagined.

AS IT HAPPENS, the gravamen of Corey's argument lies less with what the Deity may have had in mind and more with the obstacles He presumably needed to overcome. "The cumulative effect of this fine tuning," Corey argues, "is that, against all the odds, carbon was able to be manufactured in sufficient quantities inside stellar interiors to make our lives possible." That is the heart of the matter: against all the odds. And the obvious question that follows: Just how do we know this?

Corey does not address the question specifically, but he offers an answer nonetheless. It is, in fact, the answer Hoyle provides as well. They both suppose that something like an imaginary lottery (or roulette wheel) governs the distribution of values to the nuclear resonance levels of beryllium or helium. The wheel is spun. And thereafter the right resonance levels appear. The odds now reflect the pattern familiar in any probabilistic process--one specified outcome weighed against all the rest. If nuclear resonance levels are, in fact, unique, their emergence on the scene would have the satisfying aspect of a miracle.

It is a miracle, of course, whose luster is apt to dim considerably if other nuclear resonance levels might have done the job and thus won the lottery. And this is precisely what we do not know. The nuclear resonance levels specified by Hoyle are sufficient for the production of carbon. The evidence is all around us. It is entirely less clear that they are necessary as well. Corey and Hoyle make the argument that they are necessary because, if changed slightly, nucleosynthesis would stop. "Overall, it is safe to say"--Corey is speaking, Hoyle nodding--"that given the utter precision displayed by these nuclear resonances with respect to the synthesis of carbon, not even one of them could have been slightly different without destroying their precious carbon yield." This is true, but inconclusive. Mountain peaks are isolated but not unique. Corey and Hoyle may well be right in their conclusions. It is their argument that does not inspire confidence.

THE TROUBLE is not merely a matter of the logical niceties. Revived natural theology has staked its claims on probability. There is nothing amiss in this. Like the rest of us, physicists calculate the odds when they cannot calculate anything better. The model to which they appeal may be an imaginary lottery, roulette wheel, or even a flipped coin, but imaginary is the governing word. Whatever the model, it corresponds to no plausible physical mechanism. The situation is very different in molecular biology, which is one reason criticism of neo-Darwinism very often has biting power. When biologists speculate on the origins of life, they have in mind a scenario in which various chemicals slosh around randomly in some clearly defined physical medium. What does the sloshing with respect to nuclear resonance?

Or with respect to anything else? Current dogma suggests that many of the constants of mathematical physics were fixed from the first, and so constitute a part of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Corey does not demur; it is a conclusion that he endorses. What then is left of the anthropic claim that the fundamental constants have the value that they do despite "all odds"? In the beginning there was no time, no place, no lottery at all.

MATHEMATICAL physics currently trades in four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces governing the nucleus and radioactive decay. In general relativity and quantum mechanics, it contains two great but incompatible theories. This is clearly an embarrassment of riches. If possible, unification of these forces and theories is desirable. And not only unification, but unification in the form of a complete and consistent theoretical structure.

Such a theory, thoughtful physicists imagine, might serve to show that the anthropic coincidences are an illusion in that they are not coincidences at all. The point is familiar. Egyptian engineers working under the pharaohs knew that the angles of a triangle sum to more or less one hundred and eighty degrees. The number appears as a free parameter in their theories, something given by experience and experiment. The Greeks, on the other hand, could prove what the Egyptians could only calculate. No one would today think to ask why the interior angles of a Euclidean triangle sum to precisely one hundred and eighty degrees. The question is closed because the answer is necessary.

THE GRAND HOPE of modern mathematical physicists is that something similar will happen in modern mathematical physics. The Standard Model of particle physics contains a great many numerical slots that must be filled in by hand. This is never counted as a satisfaction, but a more powerful physical theory might show how those numerical slots are naturally filled, their particular values determined ultimately by the theory's fundamental principles. If this proves so, the anthropic coincidences will lose their power to vex and confound.

Nonetheless, the creation of a complete and consistent physical theory will not put an end to revived natural theology. Questions once asked about the fundamental constants of mathematical physics are bound to reappear as questions about the nature of its laws. The constants of mathematical physics may make possible the existence of life, but the laws of mathematical physics make possible the existence of matter. They have, those laws, an overwhelmingly specific character. Other laws, under which not much exists, are at least imaginable. What explanation can mathematical physics itself provide for the fact that the laws of nature are arranged as they are and that they have the form that they do? It is hardly an unreasonable question.

Steven Weinberg has suggested that a final theory must be logically isolated in the sense that any perturbation of its essential features would destroy the theory's coherence. Logical isolation is by no means a clear concept, and it is one of the ironies of modern mathematical physics that the logical properties of the great physical theories are no less mysterious than the physical properties of the universe they are meant to explain. Let us leave the details to those who cherish them.

The tactic is clear enough. The laws of a final theory determine its parameters; its logical structure determines its laws. No further transcendental inference is required, if only because that final theory explains itself.

This is very elegant. It is also entirely unpersuasive. A theory that is logically isolated is not necessarily a theory that is logically unique. Other theories may be possible, some governing imaginary worlds in which light alone exists, others worlds in which there is nothing whatsoever. The world in which we find ourselves is one in which galaxies wink and matter fills the cup of creation. What brings about the happy circumstance that the laws making this possible are precisely the laws making it real? The old familiar circle.

ALL THIS leaves us where we so often find ourselves. We are confronted with certain open questions. We do not know the answers, but what is worse, we have no clear idea--no idea whatsoever--of how they might be answered. But perhaps that is where we should be left: in the dark, tortured by confusing hints, intimations of immortality, and a sense that, dear God, we really do not yet understand.

----------------------------
David Berlinski is a senior fellow of Discovery Institute and the author of "A Tour of the Calculus" and "The Advent of the Algorithm." His most recent book is Newton's Gift (Free Press).

[tortoise]

Rubbish. The final probability, which you don't even know because you probably didn't even read that far, mathematically shows that 17 Billion monkeys in each of 17 Billion planets typing for 17 Billion years would have less of a chance of typing THE FIRST SENTENCE of Hamlet than a single lottery ticket has the chance of winning a single lottery.

I read it. Who cares how improbable it is? 17 billion years and 17 billion monkeys isn't very much. I actually think you kind of missed the point of that paper (it was a geek joke), but whatever.

So no, you can't get Hamlet out of randomness, much less the entire collected works of Shakespeare, and certainly not a sophisticated computer program.

How do you logically fly from utterly improbable to impossible? It may seem to be true for you to equate the two in day to day life, but it isn't even remotely true in a mathematical sense. Mathematics doesn't use rounding errors and fudge factors (though engineers do).

[Southack]

Nonsense! You have been CONCLUSIVELY debunked by the math in the link in Post #310.

In no way, shape, or form can complex programs or works of Shakespeare EVER be demonstrated to appear out of randomness no matter how much finite time you have, no matter how much computing power you throw at it, no matter what you do.

The MATH says that even after BILLIONS of years of non-repeating randomness (a generous condition), that it is still less likely for the first sentence of Hamlet to appear naturally than for 17 16 2 61 45 6 to win the lottery tomorrow.

Read the link in Post #310. It debunks your wild-eyed folklore with facts, charts, and verifiable calculations (i.e., with math).

It's over. You lost. The PROOF is in the link in Post #310.

Your claims of "trivial" have already been diminished to the weak-kneed "possible", but even there you don't have 17 BILLION YEARS for a demonstration.

This has got to hurt. You were running around claiming that "math" would save you, not realizing that you were quoting FOLKLORE! Now you've been debunked with, of all things, math!

I love it! This is rich! You have been shot down in flames.

You are so busted!

[tortoise]

I might also point out that at the beginning of the page you link to, the author wrote this:

"This argument is actually quite sound -- given enough time and enough monkeys, one could eventually produce "Hamlet" by accident."

Thanks for playing though. Like your Prigogine evidence, you are either ignorant of the math or intentionally misappropriating it as "evidence" of your position. That's okay, you can still use the mathematics text that I referenced. Not that it will help you.

[Southack]

"How do you logically fly from utterly improbable to impossible?"

That's easy: "utterly improbable" precludes you from ever being able to demonstrate that which you had the nerve to call "trivial" to provide.

You don't have 17 Billion years. The Earth hasn't even been around that long.

You've been disproven by math. Game over, man. Game over.

[Southack]

""This argument is actually quite sound -- given enough time and enough monkeys, one could eventually produce "Hamlet" by accident."

The author highlighted "could" to mock just how improbable that was, even given 17 Billion years of trying.

You've gone down in flames. The math has ruled against you!

[tortoise]

Your claims of "trivial" have already been diminished to the weak-kneed "possible", but even there you don't have 17 BILLION YEARS for a demonstration.

I would point out that only a dumb ass would actually use monkies and typewriters to prove this point. Even a current computing cluster is vastly faster and would do the same job in a tiny fraction of the time. Throw in quantum computing, which will be commercial in ten years at the outside, and you can sift it in linear time (read: in a fraction of a second) due to the nature of the problem (not all exponential time problems translate to linear time problems on quantum computers, though this one does).

[tortoise]

The author highlighted "could" to mock just how improbable that was, even given 17 Billion years of trying.

I do believe you are grasping at straws. This is a ridiculously weak comeback to a rather decisive point I made. When you start referencing math texts, I'll listen.

[Southack]

"I would point out that only a dumb ass would actually use monkies and typewriters to prove this point. Even a current computing cluster is vastly faster and would do the same job in a tiny fraction of the time. Throw in quantum computing, which will be commercial in ten years at the outside, and you can sift it in linear time (read: in a fraction of a second) due to the nature of the problem (not all exponential time problems translate to linear time problems on quantum computers, though this one does)."

You were the one who claimed that the million monkey example wasn't folklore, not me.

Go ahead, show the math for a massive computer attack at the Shakespeare problem. I've already done so in the link in Post #310, and it shows that your massive computer attack on the problem will still fail, even given BILLIONS of years (which is far too generous as you promised that a demonstration was trivial, and something that takes more than my lifespan is obviously not trivial).

But you won't show the math. You're just going to run around calling names and finally fleeing this debate.

You can't produce an example. You can't post the math.

You've been debunked in post #310, and pretty soon you'll just flee this thread because you can't handle any more mathematical humiliation.

You're toast!

[Southack]

"I do believe you are grasping at straws. This is a ridiculously weak comeback to a rather decisive point I made. When you start referencing math texts, I'll listen."

Post #310 is an on-line mathematical text. It conclusively debunks your wild-eyed claims with math. The numbers, charts, and equations are included in that link.

Go ahead, post the final probability number at the end of that text just to show that you actually read it. Go ahead and admit just how low the chances are of getting even the first sentence of Hamlet in 17 Billion years of randomness.

Come on, this is fun! I've got you totally down and out, and I LOVE seeing you drag this out. Perhaps we can go ANOTHER 350 posts with me just banging on your now disproven claims by citing over and over again the very math that debunks your folklore!

[A Navy Vet]

Let's say it's highly improbable, but not *impossible*, for the monkeys to type out the first sentence of Hamlet, given enough time and monkeys. And let's say it's not *impossible* that certain ammino acids came together to form the bases of life, given the random environmental soup needed.

With that in mind, how *possible* is it for those monkeys to finish the entire play? Or how possible is it for those primordial organisms to evolve into the thousands of Earth species WITHOUT design?

I'm probably over my head here, but it would seem to me that simple results may occur with the right circumstances. More complex results may indeed be an impossibility, especially since life on Earth is believed to have originated in a finite amount of time.

[Southack]

Hey! Where did you go?! This is way too much fun for you to flee yet! Come on, dance around and try to deny the math some more!

Let's all read the link in Post #310 again just to see once again the math that proves you wrong.

Then when we're done, let's do it again!

[Southack]

(from the link in Post #310)

Okay, now for the moment of truth. We know how many possible different lines can be produced, hence how likely it is for us to get the right one at random (because only one is right). We can calculate the chances of getting the quote in a year most easily by calculating the chances of missing on every attempt: the chances of getting the quote will be 100% minus the chances of missing on every attempt. I need a really amazingly precise calculator to do this because the chances of missing are so close to 100% that most calculators will round it off to 100%. The calculation is as follows.

probability of missing on one attempt = 1 - 1/(32^41)
...of missing for a minute straight = (1 - 1/(32^41)) ^ 60
...of missing for an hour straight = ((1 - 1/(32^41)) ^ 60) ^ 60
...of missing for a day straight = (((1 - 1/(32^41)) ^ 60) ^ 60) ^ 24
...for a year straight = ((((1 - 1/(32^41)) ^ 60) ^ 60) ^ 24) ^ 365
If you have access to Unix, you can calculate this with the dc command, but be warned that it may take quite a while to calculate and annoy other users because the computer is so slow. Use of the nice command is suggested. The syntax, should you care to try, is as follows. Type the dc command, then type the following lines.

99k
1 1 32 41 ^ / - 60 ^ 60 ^ 24 ^ 365 ^
p

The figure that is eventually printed will be the probability (expressed as a value between zero and one) of our monkey not typing our little phrase from Hamlet in the space of one year's worth of continuous attempts. The answer that it prints looks like this:
0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999386721844366784484760952487499968756116464000
Notice all the nines? Even to fifty or more significant figures, this reads 100%. Okay, so realistically, there is no way that our monkey can do its job in a year. Maybe we should start talking centuries? Millenia? As I understand it, common scientific wisdom suggests that the universe is about 15 billion years old (although they may have revised their dating since I last heard about it). We can easily extend our current figure of one year to count many years. Our calculator will be much faster if we break the calculation down to powers of two and just use the "square" operation, so let's choose a nice even power of two like 2^34, which is about 17 billion (17,179,869,184 to be precise). The new figure is:

0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999989463961512816564762914005246488858434168051444149065728

The chances of failure are still essentially 100%, even after 2^34 years. Hmmm. It doesn't look like were are going to get very far with this, but just for the heck of it, let's see if we are any better off with a lot of monkeys. Let's not hold back here -- I hypothesize 17 billion galaxies, each containing 17 billion habitable planets, each planet with 17 billion monkeys each typing away and producing one line per second for 17 billion years. What are the chances of the phrase "TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION." not being included in the output?

0.999999999999946575937950778196079485682838665648264132188104299326596142975867879656916416973433628

I'd bet money on that. It's about 99.999999999995% sure that they would fail to produce the sentence. Are you astounded? It's such a trivial requirement, right? Just one puny sentence. And yet the figures keep coming up "impossible". Where have we made a mistake? We have fallen into the same trap as the politician who was the subject of my joke, way back up there. We have failed to appreciate the sheer magnitude of the problem. Let's look at it one more time.

The number of 41-character strings that are possible with a 32-character alphabet is 32^41. According to dc, this value is as follows.

51422017416287688817342786954917203280710495801049370729644032

In case you don't feel like counting, this value is 62 digits long. In our hypothesising above, we imagined 17 billion galaxies, each with 17 billion planets, each with 17 billion monkeys, each of which was producing a line of text per second for 17 billion years. How many lines of text did we wind up producing in this experiment? The math is as follows:

2^34 * 2^34 * 2^34 * 2^34 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60

And the answer is as follows:
2747173049143991138247931294711870033017962496000

Once again, in case you don't feel like counting, the answer is 49 digits long. Now, there is no guarantee that our monkeys are going to type something different every time, but even if we managed to rig up the experiment so that they never tried the same thing twice, they have still only produced 1/18,718,157,355,362 of the possible alternatives. The denominator in that fraction is 14 digits long, by the way. It's a figure that's vastly bigger than anything you would come across in the real world. Is it any wonder, in light of that, that it is so damn hard to get the right answer by accident?

[Southack]

Hey! Where did you go?!

Stick around! This is just starting to get fun!

[PatrickHenry]

You weren't doing very well in this debate, either...

You didn't give me much to work with.

[Joe Brower]

-- there is nothing precluding a God from setting up an evolutionary mechanism to accomplish his creations... In fact it would to be testiment to a greater (and comprehensible) God to fashion this mechanism.

This has long been my postulate as well. The way I put it is "If you were an engineer so skilled that you could create a machine that, once switched on, would regulate, improve and repair itself automatically from then on, would you not do so? I would!".

[Vercingetorix]

"Nonsense! That's the same as saying that the ability of two computer programs to interface with each other can only be the result of a shared ancestry between them. It's a nonsensical claim that is bogus even at its face value." -- Southack

You really don't know anything about biology, do you? This is a waste of time until you at least finish the fourth grade. Or maybe you could ask your Dad to explain the Birds and the Bees to you. Really, your inability or refusal to understand the simple stuff every single time it's explained to you is absolutely amazing.

[VadeRetro]

No, I'm simply asking you to substantiate a claim that you made (i.e. that there was no evidence of big leaps in design introductions).

Your problem is that the monotremes actually fit on the evolutionary tree just fine. We have a picture of a line of reptiles called Synapsidia which is gradually turning mammalian before our eyes in the fossil record.

We can see the reptilian jaw double-jointing, coming apart, and becoming mammalian ear bones in this sequence. We can see almost-uniform reptilian teeth increasingly differentiating. We can see the defining Synapsid skull hole forming and moving around, fusing in late synapsids with the eye socket.

What we can't see are soft tissue changes like mammary glands, fur, warm-bloodeness (but we have clues in the bone canals on this one). However, we can predict that these are also creeping in, in some order or other.

That's where the monotremes come in. They're warm-blooded. They have fur. They have mammary glands (but not nipples). But they still retain the reptilian cloaca (monotreme = "one holer"). They lay eggs.

They branched off early. They've been evolving on a unique path for a very long time. They have unique features.

That poison spur you lawyer on is simply a platypus innovation, like its electrosensing muzzle. It's no more impossible than a bee's stinger or rattlesnake's fang, and it's much newer and less efficient than those aforementioned structures. (But a lot of snakes seem to have invented the poison fang independently. You can see some species no farther along in this than the platypus is with its venomous spur.) It's an adaptation of pre-existing structures. (And why is that always true?)

Creationists always try to make the platypus something it isn't.

A designer can do anything. We could find a salamander with hammer-anvil-stirrup ear bones if a designer was fooling around. We could find fish with hair. We could find grasshoppers with feathers.

Evolution predicts exactly the kind of transitionals ("mosaics") that we find. We knew before it happened that we would find dinosaurs looking like birds, birds looking like dinosaurs in the fossil record. (OK, Huxley was influenced by the Archaeopteryx find when he proposed dinos-to-birds in the 1860s.) We knew to expect land-mammals-to-whales. We knew to expect fish-to-amphibians, reptiles-to-mammals, apes-to-humans.

Your Designer is limited to the kind of thing evolution can do and the platypus is no exception.

[Virginia-American]

There is one mammal, and only one mamal, in all of history that is poisonous

In all of history?! That's a long time. How do you know?

[VadeRetro]

Your 194 is a strawman of the Occam's Razor dilemma. Occam's Razor is variously stated as "When two or more hypotheses cannot be disproven, choose the simplest." Or, "Do not unnecessarily multiply conjecture." So here's a more realistic statement of the match-up.

Evolution:

1) We can see populations changing in undirected, natural ways that tend to be adaptive.
2) We understand important details of these changes.
3) Past changes are the result of these processes.

ID:

1) We can see populations changing in undirected, natural ways that tend to be adaptive BUT NEVER MIND THAT, THAT'S JUST MICROEVOLUTION AND IT DOESN'T PROVE ANYTHING.
2) We understand some BUT WE'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND THE REST OF IT NEVER NEVER NEVER IT'S JUST IMPOSSIBLE WHAT ARE WE NUTS TO PRESUME WE CAN UNDERSTAND CREATION? WE'RE JUST THE CREATED STUFF WE'RE NOBODY.
3) Therefore somebody, God or an alien civization, has been running around making stuff happen although there's no direct evidence of same.

[VadeRetro]

The figure in 337 is from The Fossil Record by Clifford A. Cuffey. (Don't want to be like Doris Kearns Goodwin. No sir!)