Undesigned Order Is Unmysterious

Part of the modern intelligent-design argument for God goes like this: in the human world complex things like computer programs have been designed. In fact, they go on, we have no experience at all with such things that have not been designed. Therefore, when we find complex "coding" in the nonhuman world, say, DNA, it is reasonable to conclude -- indeed we have no rational alternative to concluding -- that a designer was responsible. That designer we call God. (An example is here at 13:45.)

So observe the premise: no complex orderly processes exist in the human world that were not first designed by human beings. 

But that's patent nonsense. At least since the Scottish Enlightenment (Adam Smith, David Hume, et al.), and I'm sure going back to ancient Greece, philosophers have been aware of complex, orderly, and undesigned processes in the human world, society in general and the marketplace in particular. In 1782 one of those Scottish thinkers, Adam Ferguson, described such order as "the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design." Adam Smith said this order came about as if guided by an invisible hand. He did not mean that literally; he was not referring to God. The invisible hand was a metaphor to describe undesigned order generated unwittingly by people's actions, that is, their purposeful conduct. People pursue their well-being through trade and other acts of peaceful cooperation, and then, without anyone intending it, a larger order emerges. Nothing mystical there. It's been well explained by social scientists for centuries.

For the early political economists, social and market order was not something to be proved -- the proof was all around: "Paris gets fed" without central planning. Rather, it was something to be explained through economic theory, which they proceeded to do in great detail. Look what Thomas Paine had to say in Rights of Man:

Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together.... Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.

Later, Herbert Spencer, a founder of sociology, made the same sort of observation about  society as a whole. In our time, Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek explained the principles behind what he liked to call "spontaneous order." It's also called "emergent order." (He and others of the Austrian school of economics went on to show that trying to design society was the sure road to disaster and tyranny.) 

Note well: spontaneous social order is neither designed nor the random product of chance. Rather it is the result of a third -- woefully unappreciated -- process. Failure to notice spontaneous order is the mark of a primitive mind.

If, indisputably, we see complex order in the social world that was no part of anyone's intention, then why should we be surprised by it in the natural world?

The intelligent-design folks can't get past their flawed main premise. Who would have thought that their argument had been demolished at least 250 years ago by political economists and sociologists?