The Biotic Message

"Evolutionists have seen “odd arrangements and funny solutions” in nature and they insist these are paths a sensible designer would never tread. They are mistaken. Not only is it sensible, but message theory absolutely requires it, though at first it will seem paradoxical.

We expect a designer of life to create perfect designs. Yet this expectation itself constrains a biomessage sender to do the unexpected. A world full of perfect optimal designs would form an ambiguous message. In fact, it would not look like a message at all. It would provide no clues of an intentional message. It would look precisely as expected from a designer having no such intentions. Life’s designer created life to look like a message, and therefore had to accept an astonishing design constraint: life must incorporate odd designs. [You can't write without jots and tittles, you know. Although some do try to write their story with only looove and all titillating tittles, all the time.]

How can I be so utterly sure on this point? Because evolutionists have (unknowingly) said so. In fact, they insist on it. Every one of them — from Darwin, to Ghiselin, to Gould — has emphasized how unreasonable it is for a designer to have created such non-optimal, odd structures. We can rightfully conclude that if evolutionists had the wherewithal to create life, then they would independently go forth and create optimal perfect designs. We can conclude that a world of perfect designs would look precisely like the work of multiple designers acting independently. The biomessage sender created life to look unlike the product of multiple designers, and therefore had to use odd designs.

It is not enough for a biomessage sender to merely include odd designs. All the designs together must form a pattern attributable only to a single designer. Life on earth has such a pattern.

Suppose we examined many separate handwritten documents. How would we recognize they all had the same author? Answer: By the overall pattern, especially the funny quirks and odd imperfections. It is the same with living organisms.

The quirks and imperfections play a key role in the pattern. They unite all organisms into a unified whole, while looking unlike the product of multiple designers. They give life the distinctive look of a single designer. They also make the pattern look like an intentional message, rather than an ordinary design effort."
(The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory,
By Walter ReMine :27-28)


This is an interesting book, to me anyway. If life is a message then who is it a message to? You and I? Perhaps...but I can think of other things too. Maybe the story is not all about you...or I.