Designed To The Core

I read Designed To The Core (2022) by Hugh Ross in 2025. It represents a new take on the intelligent design hypothesis. Unlike young Earth creationism, which assumes to short a time for evolution to have worked, and unlike those who argue from fine-tuning and irreducible complexities, who are agnostic about age and merely insist that evolution is guided by an intelligence, Hugh’s model requires billions of years for our privileged place in the cosmos to be meaningful.

I would strongly recommend reading the book in reverse order. He starts his story at the level of galaxy clusters, moving down to the Milky Way, our local arm, the stellar neighborhood, the solar system, and finally the Earth-Moon system. At each step, he makes statements which are either unclear or at least not substantiated until later chapters. Instead of explaining how our sun sits in a safe place in the galaxy and later explaining how most galaxies have no safe place at all, he states that our galaxy has the requisite gas flow and other properties to be safe (without explaining how or why), later detailing all the dangers that still exist, only to finally explain that we are in a safe place. It’s very confusing.

Another thing Ross is guilty of is info-dumping. I didn’t need to know the exact geography of the Laniakea Supercluster to follow the later arguments, and without any introduction to the purpose of the information, I didn’t know what I would need to retain or what to relate it to. It was far too much to memorize with no narrative to bind it together, and then I needed to go back and reread to see what he would later reference. It’s a poorly-written book.

Another thing he is guilty of is asserting much without supporting. He does cite scientific papers, but he never describes the evidence himself. He simply mentions, with no further discussion, that Laniakea is uniquely flat and that this is important for any life living there. Why? Also, Earth has hundreds of times the uranium as similarly-sized rocky worlds. How do we know? A high ratio of dark matter to stars in a galaxy is important for life. Why? Three meteorites struck the Earth recently in just the right places at just the right times. In what way? Right for what purpose? How could that even matter? I also wish he had discussed the evidence for the grand tack planetary migration model instead of just citing it.

Now that I have finished attacking his writing, I can attack his model. It has problems with exactness, speculation, causality, and temporality. Then again, some of this might actually be his writing too, rather than his science. It’s confusing.

Exactness: His basic premise seems to be that our location in the universe is uniquely perfect for life. At one point, he states that the central black hole of the Milky Way has been inactive for a long time, unlike those in other galaxies. I already knew that there was evidence for a great “burp” event in the recent past, so I was skeptical. Later, he mentions this evidence, but claims that the radiation was minor enough not to threaten our ancestors fifteen million years ago.

Later in the book, he explains why the corotation radius is the best place in the galaxy for a solar system, only to contradict himself by complaining about mean motion resonances (without explaining what they are), finally deciding that the radius is only one important factor among many.

Later, he explains how the distance, mass, and number of gas giants in our solar system represents the best possible compromise between too many comet strikes of Earth and too much orbital instability of Earth. He makes it sound perfectly balanced and substantiated by observations, only to later mention that it is the Moon that stabilizes the Earth in spite of Jupiter’s influence. He also explains away the few comets that do get past as necessary for the elemental enrichment of the crust.

Speculation: Much of his conclusions depend on knowing the exact size and shape of our galaxy, the cause of spiral arms, and the mechanism behind planetary magnetic fields. All of these things are still very much unsettled. I know. I’ve been keeping up on these subjects as recently as 2024. He also claims the “cobweb” structure of our universe to be a result of baryon acoustic oscillations, with voids full of dark matter and a tiny bit of normal matter right at their centers. This contradicts the mainstream simulations I have been used to seeing based on Lambda-CDM. He also says that a diurnal cycle a mere hour longer or shorter would create a climate too extreme for advanced life, which not only sounds insane, but I know it has long been believed that the Earth has slowed substantially over the past four billion years, meaning the day used to be much shorter and life did fine.

Causality: Ross is also bad at explaining the causal relationships within his model. He rambles on endlessly about correlations between spiral arm pitch, gas flow, star formation, galactic bulge size, and dark matter ratios while sometimes giving one impression and sometimes another, but never spelling out exactly what parameter is actually special about our home and which parameters are “downstream” from it. I suspect that our uniqueness is not nearly as surprising as he seems to suggest.

He also confused me over whether he thought that subduction caused both the Cryogenian and the concurrent oxygenation, or whether he thought that subduction caused the oxygenation, which caused the Cryogenian. The way he explained the process, it sounded as if subduction more deeply buried carbon that was already buried anyways, doing absolutely nothing to reduce greenhouse gas levels itself (which gradually decrease anyways). In any case, the mainstream narrative is that the Cryogenian was brought about by the “invention” of photosynthesis, which trapped carbon dioxide and released oxygen as a byproduct.

Temporality: Possibly the worst flaw in the model is its temporal nature. Ross argues that we are in a local “bubble” of gas and dust that protects us from supernova radiation (as well as that of pulsars and black hole accretion), yet we only just entered this bubble recently and will not stay here. In fact, our sun had to start its life in the galactic bulge in order to have the right mix of elements to make planets (and life). If the argument is that “God” is looking out for us, why didn’t he protect our microbial ancestors? A young-Earth creationist would say that there were no ancestors and that God placed us in the right place with the right elements from the beginning. Ross can’t say that. Also, what of our future? We will not stay in the bubble. Is God planning on letting us down, or does he know that we will then have the technology to save ourselves?

Ross also argues that our sun is unusually stable, producing far fewer flares than most. However, it is later revealed that this is a temporary phenomenon. We just happen to be at the midpoint of the sun’s life when it is the most stable. Why didn’t God protect our Precambrian ancestors? Why not our future descendants five hundred million years from now?

Another example of this flaw is that of the Earth’s magnetic field. Due to iron crystallization beginning five hundred million to one billion years ago, the field has dramatically increased its strength. This field protects our atmosphere from solar wind, yet it became stronger just as our sun became quiet. It is only later in the book that he reveals that the early moon also had a magnetic field (gone now) that helped to protect the atmosphere our microbial ancestors enjoyed, and it is later mentioned that the mantle once had one hundred times the electrical conductivity it does today, giving the Earth a strong field at that time. When was this? Has the Earth always had strong magnetic protection, but for different reasons? It is so unclear. Why not cover all this together in one chapter? I feel like I’m piecing together a puzzle.

Overview: Life requires a fine balance. Too little star formation, and there are too little elements heavier than helium. Too much star formation, and there are too many opportunities for irradiation and orbital disruption. Too little gas flow, and there are too few stars formed. Too much gas flow, and the supermassive black hole spits some of it back out at high speed. Too small a galaxy, and neighboring galaxies will disrupt stellar orbits. Too big a galaxy, and there will be too much radiation. Too far or too close from the galactic center, and stars will orbit at different speeds than the arms they are in, which are thought to be waves of density rather than coherent objects themselves. Only at the corotational radius will stars maintain a relatively constant distance from their neighbors. As the sun has become brighter, carbon dioxide has reduced to compensate. As the mantle has cooled, more water has worked its way downward to compensate and keep tectonics working, building mountains faster than erosion can tear them down. Life as we know it must be incredibly rare indeed. In fact, there are likely no aliens inside the observable universe at all.

Thoughts: I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, study of physics suggests that infinitesimally tiny changes to the constants of nature threaten not only the existence of life, but of stars, atoms, and even matter itself. On the other hand, my experience with bodily health, the economy, and especially the ecosystem has led me to believe that such things are more resilient than the fearmongers would have us believe. This book tends to add fuel to the argument that the world is fragile. What lesson should I derive? Is the universe perfectly designed just for us? Or is it so precariously balanced that we should be constantly filled with terror?

What counts as greater evidence for God? The miraculous creation of innumerable species all over the cosmos? Or the existence of one species miraculously surviving in a hostile world against all odds? How does one quantify the degree of miracle? Probability is likely part of it, but I’m not sure we know enough yet to make those calculations. I hope there are aliens somewhere.

The problem with the multiverse hypothesis as an explanation of the anthropic principle is that there is scant evidence for it. There is more evidence for God than for the multiverse! However, there is undeniable evidence for multiple star systems. Living in a privileged universe is currently a mystery requiring an explanation, whether God or multiverse. Living in a privileged star system is just chance. We had to be somewhere, and we could only be where we could be alive. It doesn’t sound like evidence for divine protection at all.