There it was. An unmistakable sign of masterful design, staring at Skiff from his anatomical textbook. To this day he can tell you — as he told me— how one flexor tendon in your hand splits in two to allow another flexor tendon to pass in between and attach at the top of your fingertip. It’s an ingenious design enabling you to flex in a way evolution could never approach.
Much as Skiff was struck by the feeling that someone must have designed the hand, his professors’ mantra was that it was only the appearance of design. Daily, Skiff would learn about a new intricacy in the human body, only to hear the same handwaving evolutionary line from those around him. He grew accustomed to constant exposure to design in medical school by learning to swallow his professors’ dogma rather than overthink it.
Appeal to the “Consensus”
With evolutionary materialism as his prime reality, Skiff felt that people who believed in God were weak and ignorant, desperate enough to invoke a fictional higher power rather than face their struggles alone. He describes the shock he felt at a comment from a neurosurgeon whom he highly respected: one of the neurosurgeon’s patients thanked him with the words, “I’ve got you and God to thank for my recovery”; to which the surgeon replied, “You’ve got it right, but the roles reversed.” The comment didn’t square for Skiff. How could such a knowledgeable man believe in God? It was a glancing blow to Skiff’s materialist paradigm, and he deflected it with another practiced appeal to consensus science.
When he met his first wife in medical school, Skiff accompanied her to church for a time. But when his first son arrived with crippling autism and his marriage grew rough, he grew angry at God. Soon enough, his superficial Christianity slipped away. In its place, desperation led him to reckless behavior, and anger fueled a deep hatred of the church and God.
Fast forward a few decades, and Skiff had a successful surgical practice. But while his business card read, “Dr. Shelby Bailey, MD, FACS,” his personal life was beginning to spell defeat. He had one failed marriage, a second on the line, and a history of self-destructive behavior. Especially heartbreaking was taking care of his son, Paul, who struggled with daily seizures. Watching his son’s suffering up close, Skiff asked himself, “Where’s the meaning in this?”
An Agonized Season
Deeply troubled, Skiff embraced atheism, which quickly led to nihilism. If there were no God, then there could be no meaning, he reasoned. If there were no meaning, then why should he and Paul suffer day after day? Skiff’s thoughts turned suicidal. At one point, he held a loaded pistol to his mouth, finger tense on the trigger. With the finesse of a surgeon, he flexed to the last, lethal millimeter — but he never had the resolve to fire.
In this agonized season, Skiff read everything he could get his hands on, searching for meaning somewhere. He read works from across the board, whether atheistic or spiritual. When he read Christopher Hitchens, he felt that it left him where he started, with a passionate hatred of a God he claimed didn’t exist. But one book finally opened his heart to God: at a line in a Christian novel, “God can handle all of your anger,” something in Skiff broke, and he spent the next several hours sobbing.
Yet he was still anxious for more. He wasn’t one of those fools desperate enough to believe anything rather than live through their troubles alone, was he? He’d despised them for so long, but now he needed God himself.
As he continued to read, he picked up Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell. “The way Dr. Meyer explained information theory with such clarity and detail was something I had never heard before. After forty years of looking at this stuff, I suddenly could see that DNA was information and not just mindless chemical units. For me, Signature in the Cell proves that God exists.”
Signs of Design
Even more, Skiff explains that all of the signs of design he’d marveled at in medical school and during his practice came together with a new force. Instead of overlooking their significance, he felt the full weight of his medical knowledge testifying to the incredible design and purpose in his body.
For Skiff, intelligent design (ID) “changed everything” because he believes that the One who designed him intricately knows him intimately. “No matter how angry I am, or depressed, discouraged, and disappointed,” Skiff says, “I can look at DNA and realize that I am purposefully designed. Life is not a cosmic accident and neither am I.”
In the face of daily struggles, Skiff counts on design to comfort and encourage him. Daily, he checks for new videos from Steve Meyer or podcasts on ID the Future. When Skiff gets a chance, he tells anyone who will listen about the lightning bolt of realization that Signature brought to him. Through ID, his confidence in God has rivets and steel girders, and he wants the same for those around him.
So next time you need encouragement against disappointments or doubts, try checking out CSC materials like Science and Culture Today articles, ID the Future podcasts, or Discovery Institute Press books. You’ll be placing your intelligently designed finger on the signs that you were designed for a purpose.
A Final Word
Determined to enable more life-saving material from the Center for Science and Culture (CSC), Skiff has joined the Discovery Society as a donor. Would you please join him now, with a gift at any level? Your gift will change the trajectories of medical students and professionals like Skiff, among others.