Michael Behe is a biochemist, leading proponent of intelligent design, and a wise guide to understanding the wonders of life with its mysterious “purposeful arrangement of parts.” The new series from Discovery Institute, Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe, concludes today with a last consideration of the “X Factor” that appears to lie behind the wonderful, irreducible complexity of biology. That “X Factor,” he explains, is an intelligence inconceivably beyond our own:

Secrets distills the argument for intelligent design in five-to-eight minute episodes, five in all. I’m sure ID has never been presented more accessibly, in a way anyone can easily understand. Share Secrets of the Cell with your family, friends, and social media network!

What a remarkable thing that the design of the universe was almost universally appreciated, by scientists, philosophers, and everyone else, whether religious or not, until the middle of the 19th century. Charles Darwin wove an argument that strangely changed the culture of thinking, around the globe, in ways that corroded many people’s previous confidence that the world is a good and benevolently ordered place.

So it’s fortuitous to be releasing this now — more welcome than the producers could have expected. With our country and much of the world stressed by worries about a sickness, on a scale we’ve never seen before, it’s a reminder that the universe is not governed by random accidents only. Behe is the first to admit, as he does in this episode, that science can’t offer answers to all our questions. “Why bad things happen to good people,” for one, is a secret that philosophy and theology can seek to address, perhaps not successfully. Certainly it’s beyond what science can say.

It is reassuring, then when we are upset this way, to think that there is indeed a design behind our existence, that a designer cared to instill a purpose in all the forms of life we see, which are of overwhelming beauty and marked everywhere with hints of an underlying love. Thank you to Professor Behe for this well-timed series!