Men in Black: Intelligent Design, Total Depravity, and the Watch Your Inner Toddler Wants to Steal

Apologetic foot soldiers for the faith often wave 1 Peter 3:15 like a battle standard—“always be ready to give a defense”—yet rarely does anyone actually ask. The text calls us to readiness with gentleness and respect, not to spray reason like buckshot at every passing skeptic. Not everyone is entitled to a full courtroom hearing, especially when armed with the extreme rationalism (call it positivism) that Rabbi Katz so incisively unmasks across the twentieth century.

Intelligent Design was once household furniture in Christendom—until courtrooms like Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005) tried to evict it. The standard counter was always “illusory intelligence”: sure it looks designed, but it’s just a cosmic trick of the light. As if people—smart as dogs, and twice as loyal to their preferred pack—couldn’t flip the same arguments to prop up either a Creator G-d or personified natural laws. Time, that patient jury, would decide which dog bites back.

The deeper frontline concern was never abstract philosophy. It was the formation of the young. Could rational arguments, skillfully wielded by either side, bend an entire generation’s perception of reality? Unclear? Imagine the enemy knowing exactly where the gun is holstered. Announce its location, and the adversary simply walks over and takes the Wedge.

The Watch and the Locker
One of the most memorable frameworks for Intelligent Design comes from the classic watch-on-the-beach analogy: if you landed on a distant planet and found a functioning watch, wouldn’t that scream intelligence? Some of us remember the Men in Black scene that takes it to gloriously absurd heights. Agent J (Will Smith) opens an airport locker and discovers tiny aliens worshipping a watch like a sacred relic—steeple, altar, the whole devotional package. The watchmaker has become their god.

Cue the Calvinist, stepping into the frame with the first petal of TULIP: Total Depravity (or Inability). Picture a mature adult cradling a small child. On the adult’s wrist glints that same watch. The child’s eyes sparkle with raw desire—“gimme!”—and reaches. The adult gently says no and deflects the little hand. The child fusses, reaches again. Deflected once more. Finally the tantrum erupts. The Calvinist leans in: “Take heed. If that child possessed the full faculties of an adult, he might one day stand over your dead body clutching his shiny new watch.”

We are that child on a distant planet, staring at the watch while ignoring the vast created order around us. Intelligent Design advocates drop us here to marvel at the artifact. Fair enough. But then Rabbi Katz walks across the planetary surface, points upward, and reminds us: it’s not merely intelligent—it’s personal. The very G-d who spoke galaxies into being crafted everything, watch included. No impersonal force or cosmic illusion entrapped us here. This is the work of a Father.

The Micro-Dot and the Macro Glory
It wasn’t Rabbi Katz who penned the original watchmaker argument, but his book Understanding Judaism sharpened the point. So for a moment I’ll Will Smith him in appreciation.

Long ago, under unfolding stellar lights as evening yielded to night, the glory of the Majestic Creator stood revealed. Personal or impersonal? In this interstellar classroom, consider something less grand. A high-resolution photograph. Somewhere in it hides a micro-dot no larger than a pixel against an infinite background. Zoom in with microscope or telescope and entire worlds unfold—tunnel after tunnel of captured scenes: tears, mundane moments, explosive joy. Every frame belongs to a specific life.

Now zoom out. The finite micro-dot rarely glances over its shoulder to behold the perspective of the Infinite. Yet Scripture testifies: “He made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16). The life of the first man was captured, and his offspring, their siblings, and the first families of the nation of Israel—the jewels of Hashem.

Author’s note: Knowledge arrives through propositional facts, empirical senses, and personal relationship (Amos 3:2—“You only have I known…”). For most of you out there, I neither know you nor particularly want to. Was that personal enough? Hey mister—no other gods. Thanks for the watch.

שָׁלוֹם עַל יִשְׂרָאֵל
Wit