[00:00:05] Speaker A: Id the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to ID the future. I'm Casey Luskin, and today we're going to talk about whether the cosmos was engineered. We have with us Professor Dominique Helsmer, a professor of engineering at Oral Roberts University. Dominique, it's great to have you on the show with us.
[00:00:27] Speaker C: Oh, it's great to be here, Casey.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: So, Dominique, as I said, you're a professor of engineering at Oral Roberts University, and we wanted to have you on the show because you wrote a textbook titled Hacking the Cosmos, how reverse engineering uncovers organization, ingenuity, and the care of a maker. But before we get into your book.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: A little bit, what else can you.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Tell us about your background and what was your motive for writing this textbook?
[00:00:50] Speaker C: Well, I've been teaching engineering at Oral Roberts University for about 29 years now, and I've been enjoying that quite a bit. Before that, I got my PhD at UCLA in mechanical engineering and my bachelor's and master's in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Purdue University. And I also, while I've been at ORU, I've completed a master's in biblical literature.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Wow, that's wonderful. So you've got quite a background for thinking about engineering through a lens of science and faith, I would imagine.
[00:01:24] Speaker C: Right. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to pursue that master's in biblical literature is because I have a strong interest in science faith questions. And the reason I wrote the book really was to, I was thinking of my engineering students at ORU and having a textbook for them, especially the intro to engineering students, the freshmen coming in, first year students, to orient them to the science and faith conversation and the role that engineers might play in that conversation, that's really valuable.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: I think it says a lot when a professor writes a textbook for his own students and takes the time to do that, it shows you really care about your students.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: So I'll just say I remember reviewing your book for evolution News in 2019, and at that time, I was still in the middle of my PhD in South Africa, and I was occasionally every once in a while, writing a post or two for evolution news sort of anonymously. And reviewing your book, Dominique, was one of the last sort of fun things I did before I started writing my PhD thesis, which was at the end of June of 2019. So I remember doing this, and I remember getting access to your book online and reading it and really enjoying it. And one of the things that you talk about as you discuss sort of how the cosmos is engineered is this idea of an affordance? Can you explain this for our listeners? What do you mean when you talk about an affordance?
[00:02:43] Speaker C: Well, that term originally came out in the field of ecological psychology, and it has to do with how an agent in their environment, whether it's an animal or a human being, has certain capabilities or action potentials that they can take because of the relationship they have with the environment.
And there's natural affordances, and there's artificial affordances. A deer in the woods, because of its coloring and the coloring of the trees, can take camouflage, can take hiding in the woods. If it comes across a lake, it can hydrate because of that action potential of drinking the water, but it can also drown in water. So there's actually positive and negative affordances if you have consider life to be of value. But then there's also artificial affordances, like the chairs we're sitting in right now, afford sitability just because of a relationship that we have with them. And, in fact, that's what engineers do. They create affordances for their customers. And so the book is about reverse engineering of natural systems, but in particular, it's about affordance based reverse engineering that is looking at the relationships between the elements in the universe. And the fascinating provision that comes about because of these relationships, the fascinating opportunities we have as human beings speaks really to an engineer behind all of nature.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Before we get into some of the specific affordances, what you just said is kind of what I took from this, that the very idea of an affordance implies purpose, that there's some reason that something is there. It's not just there sort of arbitrarily because of some mindless process. It was put there for a purpose, to do something. Is that sort of going in the right direction?
[00:04:35] Speaker C: Well, actually, Jonathan Meyer, in his book the Affordance based Design, he's an engineering researcher at Clemson. He brings up the good point that an affordance is simply a statement of what can be done in a particular environment. So in that sense, it is kind of teleologically neutral. It doesn't really commit to any teleology, because you could say that your brain is for thinking, and that would imply teleology. But you could also, in terms of affordances, you could say that the brain allows you to think, or because you have a brain, you can think simply, this is what you can do. So in that sense, I think it's kind of helpful in the science faith conversation because it doesn't necessarily bring about any teleological baggage with it. Now, when you start looking at the universe and all of these layers of nested affordances or relationships that build on each other to produce something of value. That's when I think you start to see a pointer towards purpose, because that's what engineers do. They create relationships that ultimately lead to something of value, and that's what we see in nature. So that's why I would argue that the hypothesis that the universe is an engineered system is a reasonable hypothesis based on this.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: What you just said makes a lot of sense, actually, that calling it an affordance sort of stays out of that debate, but it allows you to at least understand the way things work. And then when you get the bigger picture, then you can ask, okay, what is really going on here in the bigger picture? So what are some of the affordances, if you don't mind taking us in a little bit more detail in your book that you talk about that maybe allow life to be possible?
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Well, it's almost like a fish in water.
It's just all around us. It's everywhere. Because when you look at the chemical elements of our periodic table, they all have these relationships with each other in very interesting ways. They're like the legos of life, right? They combine with each other in bonds, and they separate from each other. And these relationships between the chemical elements produce very fascinating molecules, carbon dioxide, water, that are the legos of life, really. And they're building blocks.
In a very microscopic level, you see these kinds of affordances. But also at the very large level, I would say the telescopic level, you see these affordances. Throughout history, over time, layers of nested affordances have resulted in the planet Earth, for example. This habitat that is so beautifully crafted appears to be beautifully engineered for our benefit. And then even at the level of the everyday, what I call the macroscopic level, you see affordances that provide us with what we need every day.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So little full disclosure for our listeners. We're actually at a conference right now in Dallas, Texas, on biology and engineering in the life sciences. And there was a chart that was put up at one of the talks a couple of days ago, Dominique, that I think actually kind of talked about this idea, maybe not using the same language you did, but it talked about at the very basis, there are atoms. And atoms, of course, form these smaller molecules. Whether it's water or CO2, those smaller molecules make more complex molecules like amino acids. Amino acids could be viewed as an affordance that allow proteins to exist. Proteins are an affordance that allow cells to exist. Cells are an affordance that allow tissues to exist. Tissues allow organs to exist, and organs allow organ systems to exist, and then organ systems allow a whole organism to exist. And this concept, and this, I think, was written from a biologist perspective, but even from a non engineer, can see that these structure of nature builds on itself to allow for larger and larger scale complexity. I don't know. Would you agree on that?
[00:08:45] Speaker C: That's exactly the point that I wanted to make. And you don't have to be an engineer to see that the structures of this world that we experience every day, and the universe as a whole.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Speak.
[00:09:01] Speaker C: To these relationships that build on each other, that ultimately bring about somehow value and life, and ultimately love, I would say, is the greatest affordance. And so all of these things that we value so much are a result of these relationships and these affordances. And so I just think it makes sense to consider carefully this hypothesis that the universe is an engineered system. And so then I think the next interesting question is, well, who is this engineer who has apparently cares for me so much?
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, from a materialistic worldview, you can find those same charts in mainstream biology textbooks about proteins and cells and tissues, et cetera. And from a materialistic worldview, it kind of just ends at survival and reproduction. That's the whole point of the show, right? Like, there really doesn't go beyond that. But as you just said, if you're looking at the world through a teleological lens, or you believe in a designer or creator, then maybe there's more to it. Maybe there's a higher purpose of love and being a human being with a mind and a body and a will. And all this allows us to do things that are more than just survival and reproduction and allow higher purposes to be fulfilled.
[00:10:29] Speaker C: Right? And that's what I brought out in the book, is that when we make these kinds of choices, choices to love and care for each other, we see that we are kind of affected by these choices. We begin to find our niche, the niche that we were made for. And then this is where the work in this book kind of relates to some of the evolutionary concepts like niche construction, because we have this ability, because of these affordances in our environments, to make choices for good or for ill, and then we become affected by these choices. Richard Swinburne wrote about this in his book, the existence of God. We are affected by the choices we make, and this is how we can come into this niche. And it's almost like God has engineered the universe to invite us into this niche with him, into this relationship with him, and the choices that we make affect who we become. And it's a beautifully engineered system, I think, to allow God to bring us as free will creatures. God's got a challenge our maker has made us, but then he's got to make us to be free if we're going to be in love, a love relationship with him, somehow he's got to communicate the positiveness of that. That's the choice we want to make. He says in the Bible, choose life, in effect, choose love and not death. And so he's engineered the universe to, I think, kind of reward us in that regard so that we become all that we can be by choosing this relationship with him.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: So it sounds like, as an engineer, you see a lot of. I mean, when you look at the big picture of what's going on in the universe, from the very, very bottom to, as you're talking about right now, some of the highest levels, you see purpose throughout it. I don't want to put words in your mouth. So how do you see design? Or what is your take on design when you look at the big picture of the universe?
[00:12:36] Speaker C: When I look at the reverse engineering, the affordance based reverse engineering approach to nature, it doesn't prove anything.
It provides some, I think, strong evidence, and I want to make that point. And it provides some indications of purpose. Whenever you do a reverse engineering project, you can get some strong indications of purpose, but it's not going to be a proof in the sense of a mathematical proof. And the kinds of conclusions that I come to in going through this process is that, number one, the universe seems to be engineered to communicate God's existence to us, that we are intelligent enough to see the structure of the universe, and we're intelligent enough, and we have the compatibility with the complexity of the universe that we can reverse engineer it and discover the existence of a maker through that. But not only that, it also communicates some of the attributes of God, his magnificence, his great ingenuity. We see ingenious solutions to problems in nature, and this is why the field of biomimicry has become so popular, as we tend to steal those ideas from nature and incorporate them into our own engineering designs.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Okay, well, Dominique, maybe last question would know. Working as a professor and wanting to see your book getting out there and being used, what do you see as the ideal use of the textbook that you wrote?
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Well, since I did write it for the engineering students at Oral Roberts University, I'm hoping that other engineering professors, especially at christian universities, will take a look at it and potentially use it in their courses with their students to, like I said, orient their students to the engineering role in the science and faith conversation. And I hope that they will find it unlike other textbooks in that for each chapter I open and close each chapter with a personal story from my own life, many of them from my childhood that I thought were applicable to that particular chapter. So I think the students and I've gotten good feedback from my students at Oriu that they enjoy reading it.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Dominique, for your time. We appreciate the work that you're doing and coming on the show with us today.
[00:15:02] Speaker C: It's been a pleasure. Casey.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Well, I'm Casey Luskin with ID the future reminding you to be thankful for all the affordances in nature that make your life possible. Thanks for listening.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
