How painful do you think it can be to miss the evidence of design in our world? A conversation with a donor who started a monthly gift last December shows the consequences of bad science, and I want to share it with you. 

It was a low point in his life. Jeff had landed in prison, stripped of a promising career. Much worse, four stark prison walls had replaced his family and friends around him. He was removed from everything that had made life meaningful, and waves of remorse washed over him.

Why? How had he messed up his life like this? What had possessed him to treat himself and others so terribly?

In hindsight, Jeff will tell you he’d adopted a mistaken view of reality. Subscribing to theistic evolution, he had halfway believed in God, but one who had left the development of humanity to meaningless chance. And if God didn’t care about humanity, then neither did Jeff.

Mutation, Not Mind

During his schooling, Jeff’s professors had dogmatically claimed that mutation, not mind, accounted for life. A class session that stood out to him as a senior pre-med student was when a professor appealed to a “cosmic force.” The professor slapped a complicated equation on the board and used rate of mutation and population sizes to calculate the likelihood of life arising by evolution within Earth’s time constraints.

“Well,” the professor summed up, “you can see by this equation that evolution couldn’t have happened.” The whole room went silent. “But it did,” he asserted baldly. “Therefore, there must have been some unknown cosmic force at work to bring about life.”

Jeff chewed on this. His professor was determined to admit only natural causes for the formation of life. While Jeff felt that the reasoning was imperfect, there was no Center for Science and Culture (CSC) back then to provide a scientific alternative. Jeff’s new questions about Darwinism went unresolved.

With Darwin’s disciples preaching at him adamantly in the culture, Jeff felt no accountability to a seemingly hands-off God, if one existed at all. He let drugs and sex guide his decisions — he is candid about what he did, which I will spare you — leading ultimately to a prison sentence. Now brought to his lowest, Jeff was prepared to confront his own thinking. Theistic evolution wasn’t going to cut it.

Jeff’s thoughts returned to his younger years. He remembered watching his grandfather singing hymns on his tractor at the family dairy farm, full of joy in his Maker. Jeff’s own faith was poorly defended, allowing naturalism to corrode it. Now it was time to repair his ruined life.

During this time of questioning, Jeff read Darwin’s Black Box, by Professor Michael Behe. “It was a breakthrough for my faith,” says Jeff. Behe was the first person to establish for Jeff that DNA was a code — a set of complex instructions written by a coder. This designer had programmed him, intricately and purposely, at the biochemical level.

“Now I can honestly defend my faith based on the mounting scientific evidence produced by your group. … You guys have explained beyond a shadow of a doubt why this world is a product of mind, not of chance,” he says.

A Joyful Relationship 

Behe’s book fanned Jeff’s confidence in God into flames. God did care — about nature, humanity, and specifically him. Jeff now has a joyful relationship with his Maker.

If only the evidence of design that buoyed up Jeff were more widely known! That’s why it is critical that the CSC be allowed to produce and disseminate intelligent design research.

The CSC renews the cultural understanding of design in nature and humanity through three core initiatives:

• Research & Scholarship: A vibrant community of scientists conducts research on the evidence for design in nature. CSC scholars trace competing scientific frameworks in history, philosophy, literature, and culture. The Research & Scholarship initiative lays the foundation for our work at Evolution News, Discovery Institute Press, and other CSC programs.
• Education & Outreach: Annual conferences on science and faith, the Summer Seminar, ID Education Days for kids, online courses for adults, mentoring in the U.S. and internationally for university undergrad and grad students — all of it comes from our exceptional Education & Outreach team. Prominent among their efforts is the stunning Roots program, an invaluable resource for the grassroots intelligent design movement.
• Media & Communications: To cultivate a true cultural mindset shift, Media & Communications staff package CSC content in a wide variety of formats to reach vast online audiences. People can click on bite-sized social media clips, listen to daily podcasts, or dive deep on YouTube to learn about intelligent design. This widely accessible and understandable information changes lives around the world.

Finding Better Science

While many college professors will tell you that naturalistic causes are the only rational explanation for life, Jeff knows where to find better science. He wants others to have access to it.

That’s why he started a monthly donation. Jeff is far from a wealthy man. Semi-retired with a job as a dishwasher, he gives what he can. He tells me dishwashers are the bottom rung in the restaurant industry, but he sees the need for continued projects at the CSC.

Do you? Are you willing to join him?

By giving regularly, you can put CSC research into the hands of young people before naturalism guides them down the wrong life course. To make ongoing CSC projects a reality, set up a monthly gift here.