By Dr Werner Gitt Master Books, 2006 264 pages £10 ISBN 978 0 890 514 610
Dr Gitt is a German scientist and a convinced Christian. In this book, translated from the German, we are presented with strong evidence from a variety of sciences, especially biology, to support the rational and reasonable basis for belief in a divine Creator rather than the alternative – belief in evolution over time by natural selection.
Dr Gitt is teutonic in his thoroughness, ranging over the physical sciences and the biological, looking at human beings as well as animals, suggesting laws in the world of nature arising from the nature and limits of science itself. Emphasis is always given to the the function of information in the processes of nature.
Information is proposed as a fundamental entity of nature but it is not a property of matter.
There are 5 levels of information moving from the statistical to the apobetics, this latter being defined as the intended /achieved purpose of information.
The author discusses many different kinds of information including, amongst many others, human languages and the language of genes.
The overriding aim of the author, however, is not just to reveal the role that information significantly plays in many parts of the natural world but, overtly and without apology, to argue that the evidence of incredible design in nature, wherever it may be found, irrefutably implies a mindful intelligence behind the design.
Wide-ranging and thorough, the evidence is powerful in support of the idea of intelligent design which is, in any case, by no means modern. William Paley, in his book ‘Natural theology’, employed the same idea centuries ago.
At the end of the day, the arguments of intelligent design do not establish the existence of a Creator; they just point in that direction.