Biologists are trained to dismiss living systems that look designed as illusory products of chance.
Frank, you may find this interesting ... people have a very broad range of belief with regard to intelligent design and chance. Even so, the distribution of belief is not a normal distribution where the highest frequency occurs somewhere in the middle. So imagine a distribution of belief where one end is completely chance and on the other end is completely intelligence. In the middle, we have those folks who recognize the arguments of those at the extremes giving differing proportions of credence to the opposing arguments. These folks in the middle are what one might call agnostics. Quite simply, they recognize that they do not know and they are at peace with that. At the extremes, where most folks are, are the people who are for the most part cock sure.
Chance is a fundamental belief of atheism.
God is fundamental belief of intelligent design.
But this really pervades all science and all belief. If one's belief is rigidly that chance is fundamental, then he must believe that everything came from nothing. Though this perspective solves the prime mover conundrum it inadequately addresses fundamental physical law, in particular the conservation of energy. For example, is it not arguable ... by the first law of thermodynamics ... that all the universal energy pre-existed before the initiation of universal expansion? I would just mention that there is a lot of evidence that universe's present state is one of finite age from some event popularly called the big bang. But we are presented with choices. For example, we could imagine a collapse occurred which created the conditions of the big bang thus conserving all the energy in a repeated cycle that could be eternal (having no beginning and having no end). Or, we could imagine a single life of the universe which begins by chance and must die.
The people who tell this story primarily believe in chance and the idea of eternity is very troubling to them. It's too much like believing in God and from their perspective it must be rejected simply because of this reason alone. From my perspective, however, I don't think how the universe works tells us about those things we must take by faith. So if someone on the God end of the spectrum said to me ... "Well then ... if the universe is eternal then this evidence that there is a God." I would say no, we must believe in God by faith alone. Also if someone on the Atheist end said to me ... "Well then ... if the universe dies then this must mean that there is no God". I would say no, because the premise relies on a belief in something one must take by faith. You see we must address the laws of thermodynamics and the first one is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So for this law to be fulfilled, the universe must be eternal.
The justifications are rather complex to preserve the notion of chance. Here are some of things we entertain to preserve it.
1. The laws of physics were created by the primordial event (must be taken by faith) and there may well be many other universes with their own laws (must also be taken by faith but is apparently used to strengthen the primary argument that the laws of physics are subject to the creation event ... as opposed to the creation event being subject to the laws of physics)
2. Dark energy. The universe must die if it cannot be recycled and dark energy forces this death. We justify this belief with evidence ... but we should understand that we paint the evidence by choosing what the relationships are. In essence, we paint the evidence with those things we want to take by faith. I would just mention, that faith is very strong whether one believes in God or one believes in chance. I would say there is actually no difference if the belief is rigid. An example of painting is the use of 2nd law of thermodynamics as justification (of chance) but to do so the 1st law must be fixed with the story that the law didn't exist before a primordial event and we must only mention 1/2 of the 2nd law. The entropy of a thermodynamic system must increase or remain the same. You often hear from those who believe in chance that entropy MUST increase and therefore universal death is inevitable. But they don't tell you that a universe that recycles and is eternal does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. You see, any reversible thermodynamic process is isoentropic (entropy remains the same fulfilling the 2nd law).
Make no mistake, beliefs are polarized at each end of the Chance - God spectrum. Enough so that I characterize Atheism a type of religion where that taken as faith is Chance and those things we imagine to support it. To be sure, humans are religious. Atheists merely replace God with Chance and are as immovable in belief as anyone of any other religion. As one who resides between as a minority, the polarity of belief saddens me. It is very difficult to have meaningful collaboration when a litmus is applied to a belief system first. To be sure, I would fear any particular system of belief becoming unanimous. Perhaps, some day, the distribution of belief will look more like a bell curve and there will be a lot more people agreeing to agree and disagree in harmony
