Listening to an interview yesterday with Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society and publisher of Skeptic magazine, inspired this thought as a possible middle ground between evolution and intelligent design.

But I think some of Shermer's points also illuminate the peculiar view some, including Shermer himself, have towards design of complex systems in general, a process which he describes as being done from the top down.

Hear the full interview on Philadelphia, PA, and Wilmington, DE, National Public Radio affiliate WHYY as Shermer speaks with Marty Moss-Coane, host of Radio Times about his new book Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design.

During the conversation, Shermer argues that rather than supporting the idea of an all powerful creator, most biological systems are suboptimal suggesting they were cobbled together from parts rather than part of a master plan.

Examples of evolving systems similar to this which he gives during the course of the program include language, the economy and the law, all of which Shermer insists are, like life itself, complex and yet not attributable to a single designer.

As a contributor to at least two of these systems myself (as a working journalist to the evolution of language and as a writer and participant in bootstrap entrepreneurialism to the economy), I concede the point.

However, that may be a long way from proving Shermer's case that these systems are not the result of intelligent design since their development required the collaborative and creative effort of all those involved.

It is impossible to conceive of any of the three examples Shermer gives having evolved without this collaborative and intelligent input from numerous creators in the same way it is impossible to conceive of Microsoft or Dell computers evolving independent of creative intelligent input.

"Creation is an act of sheer will" says John Hammond in Steven Spielberg's
Jurassic Park, even if Hammond never realizes the final form that creation will take and accepts the input of many collaborators along the way.

It is a concept not uncommon to adherents of a bootstrap approach used in applications ranging from creation of a complex system to the building of a business.

Perhaps it is also a concept familiar to a bootstrapping God who may have used first atoms and molecules than strings of proteins as building blocks to cobble together a complex creation, eventually with the creative collaboration of the creation itself.