The Artist's Signature

Recent fossil research has some interesting implications:

The best evidence yet for the oldest life on Earth is found in odd-shaped, rock-like mounds in Australia that are actually fossils created by microbes 3.4 billion years ago, researchers report. …

Allwood's research included examining thousands of the rocky mounds and grouping them into seven subtypes. It is the most comprehensive and compelling evidence that these are fossils of life, not funny-shaped rocks, according to a top expert not on her team.

"It is the best bet for the best evidence of the oldest life on Earth," said Bruce Runnegar, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Moffett Field, Calif. "These are too complicated to be attributed to non-biological processes — but we don't know that for a fact." …

One of the clinchers was categorizing them into seven repeating subtypes, which indicates they weren't random.

In other words, even without any data about the microbes themselves, their handiwork can reasonably be assessed as design, not chance.

So why do so many scientists refuse to consider Intelligent Design a legitimate line of scientific inquiry? The public debate over ID turns on sound bites of what the theory does or does not include – few people outside of rarified scientific circles are actually reading the growing body of literature on the subject.

In its simplest summary, the theory of ID asks the question “IF the universe is by design, how could you know?” What would be the equivalent of the biological markers above that lead one to conclude those are not “just rocks.” In this, ID builds on well-established concepts from criminal forensics, an everyday science that separates random, natural causes from intentional ones. Some of the same concepts are used in the famous Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence projects, which have to differentiate between natural patterns and potentially artificial ones. At any rate, basic ID never says science could determine much about the nature of any supernatural intelligence--that falls to the realm of revealed theology. It simply asks how one could look for the physical fingerprints. Given all the areas in science that routinely use such lines of inquiry, it’s interesting the hostility a doctrinally-neutral ID theory generates.

(Personal note: the title of this post comes from the last chapter of Carl Sagan’s book Contact. I first read the book nearly 20 years ago, and the more recent movie left out much of what was good about the novel. It’s always fascinated me how the ending seemed to allow for the idea of a universe by design.)

HT: World Magazine Blog