Hey Bill Nye, "What If We Were Intelligently Designed?" #tuesdayswithbill | Big Think

Hi Bill, I’m Matt from Mexico and I wanted to know what would a universal super intelligent designer be like? Thank you.

Matthew, Buenos dias. I don’t know what a super intelligent overbeing would be like. People have speculated that there is an entity that has a plan for your life and in the U.S., anyway, we use the English word God for this guy. And if that’s true, there’s a lot of loose ends. So, I’m not sure what the super intelligent entity would be up to.

But to give you something to think about in contrast, the reason you and I are here is because of evolution. We are a result of millennia of about four and a half billion years of evolution on Earth. Now, life started three and a half billion years ago – billions of years of evolution. And evolution doesn’t work that way. There is not a super intelligent entity at the top directing things.

Instead, things come into being through nature, in our case on Earth, from sunlight, the spin of the Earth, and the primordial warmth of the Earth. This energy induced chemical reactions to take place that led to things that could reproduce and then reproduce better and better after that. And it was bottom up. The things that fit in the best with the situation around them, the environment, this three and a half billion years ago to today – not the things that lift the most weights in the gym.

The thing that fits in the best led to this expression, the survival of the fittest. And you and I are here because we’re good enough. We are not super – I don’t think – it doesn’t seem to be. There’s no evidence to support the idea that we were designed by a super intelligent designer. Instead, we’re good enough to be here.

If we were a design by a super intelligent designer, I mean wouldn’t the plumbing be a little different? Wouldn’t we have made some different choices about things? Would we have six fingers? Would we have a bigger brain? Why would I forget stuff? Why wouldn’t I have super eyesight? Why would I need glasses later in life and so on?

This is a cool question, but for me it fills me with reverence because you can ask it. You and I are made of primordial stardust. We are somehow at least one of the ways that the universe knows itself. That’s a great question, Matthew. Gracias. Carry on.