Presented by Gemini for Zia H Shah MD

Abstract

The intersection of empirical science, metaphysical philosophy, and theology has perennially generated profound debate regarding the origins, mechanisms, and ultimate nature of the cosmos. In contemporary intellectual discourse, two prominent frameworks have emerged to reconcile the empirical realities of modern science with theistic belief: the Intelligent Design (ID) movement and the BioLogos paradigm, representing evolutionary creationism. This exhaustive report provides a comparative analysis of these two models across scientific, philosophical, and theological dimensions. By interrogating the epistemological foundations of ID—such as William Dembski’s “specified complexity” and the “explanatory filter”—against the established boundaries of methodological naturalism, the analysis explores why ID is frequently critiqued as pseudoscientific while being simultaneously lauded as a robust continuation of natural theology. Conversely, the BioLogos approach, championed by geneticist Francis Collins, fully integrates mainstream evolutionary biology and cosmology, proposing non-interventionist mechanisms for divine action such as quantum indeterminacy. However, this model introduces profound theological challenges, particularly concerning theodicy, the vast epochs of animal suffering, and the historicity of the Fall. Integrating interfaith perspectives, notably the extensive writings of Zia H. Shah MD on monotheistic metaphysics and occasionalism, alongside Templeton Prize laureate Michael Heller’s critiques of Manichean dualism, this report synthesizes the strengths and limitations of each paradigm. Ultimately, the analysis reveals that while Intelligent Design attempts to scientifically formalize metaphysical intuition at the cost of empirical validity, BioLogos preserves scientific integrity but requires significant theological recalibration to address the philosophical implications of a cosmos governed by evolutionary mechanisms.

Introduction: The Epistemological Divide in Science and Faith

The modern dialogue between science and religion is frequently characterized by the search for a coherent synthesis between the mechanistic, undirected processes observed in the natural world and the teleological, purposeful universe posited by classical theistic traditions. Since the advent of Darwinian evolutionary theory and the subsequent formulation of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, the quest to identify divine fingerprints in the natural world has fractured into competing methodologies. At the forefront of this discourse in the twenty-first century are the Intelligent Design (ID) movement and the BioLogos foundation, each offering fundamentally divergent approaches to the interpretation of biological and cosmological data.

Intelligent Design emerged in the late twentieth century as a sophisticated, ostensibly secularized successor to traditional creationism. It asserts that certain features of the universe and biological systems are too complex to have arisen via unguided natural processes, thereby necessitating an intelligent, external cause. BioLogos, conversely, was founded in 2007 by Francis Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project, following the immense success of his seminal 2006 book The Language of God. BioLogos advocates for evolutionary creationism (often termed theistic evolution), asserting that mainstream evolutionary science—including common ancestry, deep time, and natural selection—is the precise, divinely ordained mechanism through which a sovereign Creator brought about the diversity of life.

This report evaluates the theoretical viability, pros, and cons of both frameworks from three distinct yet intersecting perspectives: the scientific (evaluating empirical testability, the definition of information, and adherence to methodological naturalism), the philosophical (analyzing metaphysical assumptions, epistemological boundaries, and concepts of chance versus necessity), and the theological (assessing compatibility with classical monotheism, the attributes of God, and the problem of natural evil). By incorporating the integrative insights of Islamic scholar and physician Zia H. Shah MD, alongside the mathematical and theological frameworks of Templeton Prize laureate Michael Heller and physicist Robert John Russell, this analysis constructs a holistic view of how human intellect seeks to reconcile the Book of Nature with the Book of Scripture.

The Intelligent Design Movement

The Intelligent Design Movement (IDM) posits that the empirical detection of a purposeful intelligence is scientifically viable and logically necessary to explain the complexity of life. Formulated largely by figures associated with the Discovery Institute, such as mathematician William Dembski and biochemist Michael Behe, ID challenges the reigning paradigm of neo-Darwinian evolution by arguing that natural selection and random mutation are mathematically and biochemically insufficient to generate novel, complex biological information.

Scientific Perspective on Intelligent Design

The scientific apparatus of Intelligent Design relies heavily on borrowed concepts from information theory, probability, and cryptography, attempting to apply them to biological systems.

The Architecture of ID: Specified Complexity and the Explanatory Filter

The cornerstone of ID’s scientific claim is William Dembski’s concept of “specified complexity” (also termed Complex Specified Information, or CSI). The term was originally coined by origin-of-life researcher Leslie Orgel in 1973 to describe the unique nature of biological molecules like RNA, but Dembski weaponized it as a marker for intelligent intervention. According to Dembski, a pattern exhibits specified complexity if it is simultaneously highly improbable (complex) and conforms to an independently given, objective pattern (specified). To quantify this, Dembski proposed a “universal probability bound,” positing that any specified event with a probability of less than $1 \times 10^{-150}$ cannot occur by chance anywhere in the observable history of the universe, given the limited number of elemental particles and Planck time transitions available.

To formalize the detection of this information, Dembski introduced the “Explanatory Filter,” a tri-level decision procedure used to evaluate the causal history of a given phenomenon. The filter asks three sequential questions:

1. Can the event be explained by regularity (deterministic natural laws)? If yes, the inquiry stops. If no, it proceeds to the next level.
2. Can the event be explained by chance (low-information stochastic processes)? If yes, the inquiry stops. If no, it proceeds.
3. If the event is highly improbable, lacks a deterministic law, and conforms to an independent specification, it must be attributed to design.

ID proponents argue that this filter is routinely and successfully used in secular sciences such as cryptography, forensic pathology, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and therefore should be equally valid in biology to analyze irreducibly complex structures like the bacterial flagellum or the digital code of DNA. Furthermore, Dembski posits a “Law of Conservation of Information,” asserting that while natural causes (chance and necessity) can transmit existing Complex Specified Information, they can never originate it.

Scientific Cons: Methodological Naturalism and Pseudoscience

Despite its rigorous mathematical veneer, the broader scientific community overwhelmingly rejects Intelligent Design as pseudoscience. The primary scientific failure of ID is its outright rejection of methodological naturalism—the foundational epistemological ground rule that science must restrict its explanations to testable, observable, and natural causes. By invoking an unquantifiable, supernatural (or extra-universal) designer, ID halts the scientific process, substituting empirical inquiry with a terminal hypothesis of miraculous intervention.

Furthermore, the Explanatory Filter has been heavily criticized by philosophers of science and mathematicians. Scientific models rarely, if ever, explain phenomena through a strict binary of deterministic “law” or pure “chance.” Rather, standard scientific explanations utilize highly integrated models combining deterministic equations with stochastic (statistical) variables and environmental constraints. Dembski’s filter sets up a false dichotomy, assuming that if a phenomenon cannot be currently explained by known biological laws, it defaults to design. Critics point out that evolutionary algorithms routinely generate high levels of specified complexity without intelligent input, contradicting Dembski’s Law of Conservation of Information.

This scientific invalidity was legally formalized in the landmark 2005 case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. The federal court ruled that ID is essentially creationism repackaged (tracing its direct lineage to the 1989 textbook Of Pandas and People, which replaced the word “creationism” with “intelligent design” following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard), offers no testable hypotheses, and is fundamentally untethered from the scientific method.

Philosophical Perspective on Intelligent Design

The transition from scientific evaluation to philosophical analysis reveals a paradoxical strength in the Intelligent Design movement. What fails as an empirical scientific theory often succeeds as a compelling metaphysical argument.

Philosophical Pros: A Robust Natural Theology

Zia H. Shah MD and other philosophers of religion argue that while ID is bad science, it serves as excellent philosophy and robust natural theology. ID continues the venerable metaphysical tradition of teleological arguments, reminiscent of medieval scholasticism and William Paley’s famous watchmaker analogy. Modern empirical science, by its very nature and design, deliberately brackets out ultimate questions of meaning, purpose, and final causation. ID unapologetically steps into this metaphysical void, asking vital questions that resonate deeply with the human intellect: Why does the universe possess the exact physical constants required for life? Why does biological information resemble a heavily encrypted linguistic code?

As a philosophical framework, ID provides a theistic worldview that satisfies the human desire for ultimate meaning. By demonstrating that the cosmos bears the hallmarks of intention—whether through cosmological fine-tuning or the intricate assembly of molecular machines—ID constructs a compelling metaphysical argument that a Mind underlies reality. It explicitly addresses the ultimate questions that science ignores, offering an answer in line with theistic belief that imbues nature with objective purpose.

Philosophical Cons: The Argument from Ignorance

Philosophically, however, the fatal flaw of ID is its structural reliance on an argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument from ignorance). The Explanatory Filter essentially acts as an eliminative logical process: “We cannot explain X through naturalism; therefore, Y (design) is the cause”. Because ID cannot positively demonstrate the mechanism, nature, or implementation strategy of the designer, it relies entirely on the current gaps in evolutionary biology and abiogenesis to make its case. This philosophical misstep confuses an epistemic limitation (what human science currently does not know) with an ontological reality (what cannot possibly occur naturally in the universe).

Theological Perspective on Intelligent Design

The theological implications of Intelligent Design are complex, yielding unexpected apologetic benefits for monotheism while simultaneously introducing severe doctrinal distortions.

Theological Pros: Upholding Monotheistic Metaphysics

From an apologetic standpoint, ID has been highly effective in combating metaphysical materialism—the ideology that the physical universe is a closed system and matter is all that exists. Zia H. Shah points out an intriguing paradox regarding the demographics of the ID movement: while the primary architects of ID (such as William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and Michael Behe) are predominantly Trinitarian Christians who often view the designer as the Christian God, their cosmological and biological arguments ultimately serve to validate the God of Judaism, Islam, and Unitarian Christianity.

By establishing the metaphysical necessity of a single, unified, intelligent Creator who authored the information in DNA and fine-tuned the cosmos, Trinitarian scientists inadvertently furnish encyclopedic philosophical evidence for the absolute monotheism (Tawhid) described in the Quran. Their arguments perfectly mirror the Quranic presentation of Allah’s attributes as Al-Khaliq (The Creator), Al-Bari (The Originator), and Al-Musawwir (The Fashioner). In this sense, the literature produced by the Discovery Institute acts as an exceptional tool for interfaith monotheistic apologetics against atheism.

Theological Cons: The Shrinking “God of the Gaps” and the Violation of Transcendence

Despite these apologetic utilities, the theological critiques of ID are arguably more devastating than the scientific ones. Foremost is the reliance on a “God of the gaps” theology, wherein divine agency is invoked solely to explain phenomena that science cannot currently elucidate. As scientific knowledge inevitably expands and fills these gaps, the theological space for the deity shrinks, leading to a fragile faith that is threatened by every new biological discovery.

Furthermore, ID violates classical monotheistic conceptions of divine transcendence. In Islamic theology, for instance, God is Al-Baatin (The Hidden, or The Incomprehensible), whose essence and action cannot be encompassed by physical sight, empirical measurement, or material scientific frameworks (Quran 6:103). By attempting to detect physical “fingerprints” or biological anomalies as direct, measurable evidence of God, ID reduces the transcendent Creator to a physical force operating alongside gravity or electromagnetism, turning divine activity into a mundane subject of empirical science.

Additionally, Templeton Prize laureate and Catholic priest Michael Heller argues that ID commits a grave “Manichean error”. ID proponents create a dualistic, oppositional framework between God (design) and matter/chance (evolution). Heller points out that in classical theology, God is the author of all reality—including stochastic processes, probability, and seemingly random mutations. Pitting intelligent design against chance revives the ancient Gnostic heresy that views unguided matter and chaos as an opposing force to God, rather than a secondary cause entirely sustained and utilized by Him.

BioLogos and Evolutionary Creationism

In stark contrast to the adversarial posture of the Intelligent Design movement, the BioLogos perspective posits that biological evolution is the specific, chosen mechanism by which God created the diversity of life on Earth. Coining the term BioLogos (Bios through Logos, or life through the Word), geneticist Francis Collins sought to dismantle the perceived hostility between orthodox faith and modern science. The BioLogos foundation, established in 2007, serves as the premier institution for Christians advocating for theistic evolution, or evolutionary creationism.

Scientific Perspective on BioLogos

The scientific posture of BioLogos is defined by its total integration with the prevailing consensus of modern empirical science.

Scientific Pros: Total Integration with Empirical Evidence

The defining scientific strength of BioLogos is its unwavering harmonization with the contemporary scientific consensus. Evolutionary creationists fully accept methodological naturalism as the correct and necessary boundary for scientific inquiry. By accepting deep time, common ancestry, and the neo-Darwinian synthesis, BioLogos adherents do not find themselves in a perpetual defensive posture against new biological, geological, or cosmological discoveries.

Francis Collins’s conversion to Christianity—spurred by C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, the concept of the Moral Law, and the existence of selfless altruism which challenges strict evolutionary utility—did not cause him to abandon his rigorous scientific training. In The Language of God, Collins utilizes overwhelming evidence from the Human Genome Project to demonstrate undeniable common ancestry. He points to the existence of pseudogenes (defunct, mutated genomic sequences that no longer code for proteins but are shared in the exact same genomic locations across different species), ancient repetitive elements, and shared genetic retroviruses between humans and primates as irrefutable proofs of descent from a common ancestor.

Zia H. Shah MD echoes this scientific fidelity, harshly criticizing religious literalists—such as Javed Ahmad Ghamidi and Yasir Qadhi—who invent unscientific narratives to explain scripture. Shah notes that Ghamidi’s theory that early humans hatched from earthen “eggshells” in the mud is an egregious fabrication that ignores the “encyclopedic evidence from molecular biology and genetics”. BioLogos circumvents these intellectual embarrassments by embracing scientific truths, viewing the intricate, slow development of the cosmos and biology not as a refutation of God, but as the majestic outworking of His natural laws.

Scientific Cons: The Epistemological Surrender

From the perspective of ID proponents and strict scientific materialists alike, BioLogos faces a critical epistemological tension: it accepts that the history of life appears entirely unguided, blind, and undirected to the scientific observer, yet appends a theological claim that it was intimately guided by God. Critics argue that BioLogos defers so heavily to scientific consensus that it effectively operates as functional atheism in the laboratory, only applying a theistic gloss in retrospect.

By conceding that design cannot, in principle, be scientifically detected in nature, BioLogos arguably surrenders the empirical world entirely to metaphysical naturalism. Critics assert that this framework gives atheists essentially no intellectual or scientific reasons to become Christians, as the BioLogos universe is materially indistinguishable from a purely secular, materialistic universe. If science cannot detect God, the scientific utility of the BioLogos model is virtually zero, acting only as a psychological comfort for scientists who wish to retain personal faith without challenging their peers.

Philosophical Perspective on BioLogos

To bridge the domains of faith and science without violating natural law, thinkers associated with the BioLogos worldview have explored profound philosophical frameworks.

Philosophical Pros: Complementary Epistemologies and NIODA

Philosophically, BioLogos aligns closely with Stephen Jay Gould’s concept of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA), asserting that science and religion operate in distinct but complementary domains. Science explains the “what” and “how” (the mechanistic interactions of the physical universe), while religion explains the “why” (the ultimate meaning, moral law, and purpose of existence).

However, BioLogos goes beyond strict NOMA by attempting to explain how God interacts with the world without breaking laws. The physicist Robert John Russell formulated the concept of Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA). Russell posited that God could act objectively in the world at the quantum level. Because quantum mechanics (per the Copenhagen interpretation) is inherently indeterministic and probabilistic, God can determine the collapse of wave functions or the path of electrons without breaking any laws of nature, because nature at that subatomic scale has no deterministic laws to break. This philosophical construct allows for a God who is intimately involved in steering the evolutionary process (e.g., directing specific genetic mutations that lead to consciousness) while remaining entirely undetectable to macro-level scientific observation.

Philosophical Cons: A “Quantum God of the Gaps”

Despite its ingenuity, the NIODA framework faces severe philosophical criticism from both secular and religious scholars. Skeptics point out that relocating divine intervention from the macro-biological level (like ID’s bacterial flagellum) to the subatomic quantum level is merely creating a microscopic “quantum God of the gaps”. If future paradigms in physics replace quantum indeterminacy with deterministic hidden-variable theories, this philosophical space for divine action would instantly evaporate, leaving BioLogos adherents with the exact same shrinking deity as ID proponents. Furthermore, asserting that God uses “random” quantum events to secretly steer evolution philosophically strains the definitions of both randomness and divine sovereignty, forcing believers to worship a God who hides His actions behind quantum foam.

Theological Perspective on BioLogos

The theological implications of evolutionary creationism are immense, offering a grand vision of continuous creation while simultaneously introducing the most agonizing challenges in modern theodicy.

Theological Pros: Sovereignty over Chance and Continuous Sustenance

The theological triumph of BioLogos lies in its restoration of God’s absolute sovereignty over all of nature, not just the biological anomalies. As Michael Heller eloquently articulated, when God calculates, the universe is instantiated; mathematical structures are the “Mind of God” translated into physical reality. In this view, what humans perceive as “chance” or “chaos” is not a rival force to God, but rather a probabilistic tool deliberately utilized by the Creator to generate a rich, individualistic, and dynamic universe.

BioLogos teaches that God sustains the universe continuously. He does not need to violate His own physical laws through constant miraculous interventions because those very laws were perfectly calibrated from the Big Bang to guarantee the emergence of sentient life capable of reflecting upon its Creator. This continuous sustenance aligns beautifully with the Islamic concept of occasionalism and divine Lordship, wherein natural laws are simply the habit of God’s continuous creation and sustenance, a concept deeply explored by Zia H. Shah in his commentary on Quran 14:32–35.

Theological Cons: Theodicy, Natural Evil, and the Fall

The most profound vulnerability of BioLogos and evolutionary creationism is theological: the problem of natural evil, animal suffering, and theodicy. Traditional Augustinian Christian theology posits that death, suffering, and disease are anomalies introduced into a perfect creation by the moral rebellion of humanity (the historical Fall of Adam). However, the evolutionary paradigm requires millions of years of predation, disease, mass extinctions, and unimaginable animal suffering long before Homo sapiens ever walked the earth.

Evolutionary creationism asserts that pain, suffering, and death are not judicial punishments for human sin, but rather the very mechanisms, the “warp and woof,” of God’s creative process. As theologian Hans Madueme notes, this drives a wedge between creation and redemption: God uses violence and death to create, but then promises to vanquish those same elements to redeem the world. How can a creation built on the blood and terror of 99.5% of all extinct species be declared “very good”?. Theodicies attempting to justify this, such as Bethany Sollereder’s aesthetic theodicy (which argues evolutionary evil is a necessary part of a valuable composite whole), often inadvertently render God the direct author of evil.

To untie this theodicy knot, evolutionary creationists are forced into significant theological revisions. They must interpret the Genesis creation epic and the Fall of Adam allegorically rather than historically. Theologians like Benno van den Toren argue for viewing “Original Sin” as an evolutionary predisposition to selfishness—a biological hardwiring for survival and cultural socialization—rather than a historical catastrophe. For many conservative Christians and Muslims, this metaphorical interpretation undermines core soteriological doctrines. As critics argue, Darwinism acts as an “acid” on the origins of sin; if the historical Fall is merely an allegory for evolutionary selfishness, the theological necessity for a historical redemption (such as the atonement of Christ) is severely compromised.

Comparative Synthesis: Mapping the Divergence

The debate between Intelligent Design and BioLogos is not merely a dispute over biological mechanisms; it represents a fundamental clash over epistemology, the boundaries of science, and the nature of divine action. The following table synthesizes the core divergences across key domains.

Comparative Analysis Table

Analytical Domain	Intelligent Design (ID)	BioLogos (Evolutionary Creationism)
Core Premise	Biological complexity is statistically impossible without an intelligent cause detectable by empirical science.	Evolution is the natural, perfectly calibrated mechanism through which God intentionally created life.
View of Scientific Method	Rejects methodological naturalism. Seeks to expand science to include supernatural/teleological causes.	Strictly adheres to methodological naturalism. Fully embraces the scientific consensus.
Mechanism of Divine Action	Direct, periodic intervention in natural history (e.g., assembling the bacterial flagellum, originating CSI).	Non-interventionist. God uses physical laws, quantum indeterminacy (NIODA), and natural selection.
Epistemological Framework	Science can directly detect God (or a Designer) through statistical probability and information theory.	Science detects the “how” (mechanism); Faith/Philosophy determines the “why” (meaning and purpose).
Primary Theological Risk	“God of the gaps.” Risks rendering God obsolete as science advances. Commits the Manichean error of dualism.	Severe theodicy issues. Attributes millions of years of animal suffering, death, and extinction to God’s creative design.
View of the Fall and Sin	Often aligns with classical, historical views of Adam and Eve and a literal Fall (though ID has no official theology).	Generally views the Genesis creation and Fall as allegorical; sin is viewed as an evolutionary predisposition to selfishness.

Zia H. Shah’s Integrative Paradigm: Two Ways of Seeing the Same Cosmos

Zia H. Shah MD presents a highly sophisticated synthesis that navigates the strengths and weaknesses of both camps, demonstrating how Islamic theology can bridge the epistemological divide. From Intelligent Design, Shah extracts the profound metaphysical truth that the universe is unequivocally designed. In his comparative analysis of cosmological fine-tuning and the multiverse (“Lord of the Worlds vs. Cosmic Dice”), Shah illustrates that even if modern cosmology proves a string theory “landscape multiverse” of $10^{500}$ different vacuum configurations, the profound rational intelligibility and order of our specific cosmos remain a glaring pointer to the “Lord of the Worlds” (Rabb al-Alamin).

However, Shah vehemently rejects ID as a scientific enterprise, recognizing its reliance on theologically disastrous “God of the gaps” reasoning and its blatant violation of God’s hiddenness (Al-Baatin). Instead, Shah leans heavily into the BioLogos model of guided evolution and methodological naturalism. By accepting the encyclopedic evidence from molecular biology, Shah demonstrates that classical Islamic thought can seamlessly integrate with modern science without resorting to the intellectual gymnastics of pseudo-scientific creationism.

Shah’s framework suggests that the optimal path forward in the twenty-first century is an intellectual pluralism: utilizing the scientific rigor of BioLogos (and Trinitarian scientists like Francis Collins) to understand how the universe operates, while employing the metaphysical arguments generated by ID theorists to articulate why it exists. By synthesizing the two, both science and philosophy are placed in the service of a unified, monotheistic understanding of the Creator.

Thematic Epilogue: The Symphony of Chance and Necessity

The quest to perceive the Divine in the architecture of the cosmos is as old as human consciousness itself. The tension between the Intelligent Design movement and BioLogos is simply the modern iteration of this ancient yearning—a struggle between the desire to hold empirical proof of God in our hands and the mature, albeit difficult, realization that the Divine operates behind the veil of natural law.

Intelligent Design operates on a profound, deeply human intuition: that the staggering, code-driven complexity of a DNA molecule or the precise gravitational parameters of a galaxy cannot be the offspring of blind indifference. It demands that the universe confess its Creator aloud, seeking to drag the transcendent into the laboratory to be measured, calculated through explanatory filters, and quantified by probability bounds. Yet, in this zealous pursuit, it risks reducing the Infinite to a mere variable in a biological equation, a deity who exists only in the shadows of our current ignorance, forever retreating from the light of human discovery.

BioLogos, conversely, asks the believer to step back and view the entire tapestry of cosmic history—from the primal singularity to the ascent of humanity—as an unbroken chain of divine providence. It posits a Creator so masterful that He encoded the potential for consciousness into the very fabric of matter 13.8 billion years ago. In this view, evolution is not a chaotic rebellion against order, but the slow, agonizing, yet beautiful unfolding of God’s intent. As Michael Heller observed, the cosmos is a masterly symphony where elements of chance and necessity are seamlessly interwoven, playing out a composition written in the language of mathematics and molecular biology.

Yet, this path too bears a heavy cross. To accept evolutionary creationism is to gaze unblinkingly at the eons of suffering, the ruthless competition, and the mass extinctions that paved the way for humanity, and still declare, through the eyes of faith, that the Creator is entirely good. It requires a theology that looks beyond the present pain toward an eschatological redemption that is cosmic in scope, redefining our understanding of innocence, tragedy, and grace.

Ultimately, both frameworks are human attempts to translate the infinite “Language of God” into the finite vocabulary of man. Science remains our most powerful tool for deciphering the mechanisms of the universe, enforcing a methodological humility that prevents us from substituting miracles for knowledge. But science alone is mute on the questions of value, beauty, and ultimate purpose. It is in the synthesis of these distinct magisteria—where empirical honesty meets metaphysical wonder—that humanity finds its true bearing, recognizing that the very ability of our minds to comprehend the cosmos is the greatest fingerprint of the Divine.