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 Editorials | At Issue | January 2005 
Intelligent Design - Some Arguments For and Against
 Intelligent design (ID) refers to the theory that intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and of life in all its diversity. Advocates of ID maintain that their theory is scientific and provides empirical proof for the existence of God or superintelligent aliens. They believe that design is empirically detectable in nature and in living systems. They claim that intelligent design should be taught in the science classroom because it is an alternative to the scientific theory of natural selection.
The odds against DNA assembling by chance are 1,040,000 to one [according to Fred Hoyle, Evolution from Space, 1981]. This is true, but highly misleading. DNA did not assemble purely by chance. It assembled by a combination of chance and the laws of physics. Without the laws of physics as we know them, life on earth as we know it would not have evolved in the short span of six billion years. The nuclear force was needed to bind protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms; electromagnetism was needed to keep atoms and molecules together; and gravity was needed to keep the resulting ingredients for life stuck to the surface of the earth.
Victor J. Stenger
To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or 'Life was always there', and be done with it.
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker : Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
Rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable.
John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory [of natural selection] would absolutely break down.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species |
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The arguments of the ID advocates may seem like a rehash of the creationist arguments, but the defenders of ID claim that they do not reject evolution simply because it does not fit with their understanding of the Bible. However, they present natural selection as implying the universe could not have been designed or created, which is nonsense. To deny that God has the power to create living things using natural selection is to assert something unknowable. It is also inconsistent with the belief in an omnipotent Creator.
One of the early-birds defending ID was UC Berkeley law professor Philip E. Johnson, who seems to have completely misunderstood Darwin's theory of natural selection as implying (1) God doesn't exist, (2) natural selection could only have happened randomly and by chance, and (3) whatever happens randomly and by chance cannot be designed by God. None of these beliefs is essential to natural selection. There is no inconsistency in believing in God the Creator of the universe and in natural selection. Natural selection could have been designed by God. Or, natural selection could have occurred even if God did not exist. Thus, the first of several fallacies committed by ID defenders is the false dilemma. The choice is not either natural selection or design by God or some other superintelligent creatures. God could have designed the universe to produce life by random events following laws of nature. God could have created superintelligent aliens who are experimenting with natural selection. Superintelligent aliens could have evolved by natural selection and then introduced the process on our planet. There may be another scientific theory that explains living beings and their eco-systems better than natural selection (or intelligent design). The possibilities may not be endless but they are certainly greater than the two considered by ID defenders.
Two scientists often cited by defenders of ID are Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box (The Free Press, 1996), and William Dembski, author of Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology (Cambridge University Press, 1998). Dembski and Behe are fellows of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle research institute funded largely by Christian foundations. Their arguments are attractive because they are couched in scientific terms and backed by scientific competence. However, their arguments are identical in function to the creationists: rather than provide positive evidence for their own position, they mainly try to find weaknesses in natural selection. As already noted, however, even if their arguments are successful against natural selection, that would not increase the probability of ID.
Behe is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University. Behe's argument is not essentially about whether evolution occurred, but how it had to have occurred. He claims that he wants to see "real laboratory research on the question of intelligent design." Such a desire belies his indifference to the science/metaphysics distinction. There is no lab experiment relevant to determining whether God exists.
In any case, Behe claims that biochemistry reveals a cellular world of such precisely tailored molecules and such staggering complexity that it is not only inexplicable by gradual evolution, but that it can only be plausibly explained by assuming an intelligent designer, i.e., God. Some systems, he thinks, can't be produced by natural selection because "any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional (39)." He says that a mousetrap is an example of an irreducibly complex system, i.e., all the parts must be there in order for the mousetrap to function. In short, Behe has old wine in a new skin: the argument from design wrapped in biochemistry. His argument is no more scientific than any other variant of the argument from design. In fact, most scientists, including scientists who are Christians, think Behe should cease patting himself on the back. As with all other such arguments, Behe's begs the question. He must assume design in order to prove a designer. The general consensus seems to be that Behe is a good scientist and writer, but a mediocre metaphysician.
His argument hinges upon the notion of "irreducibly complex systems," systems that could not function if they were missing just one of their many parts. "Irreducibly complex systems ... cannot evolve in a Darwinian fashion," he says, because natural selection works on small mutations in just one component at a time. He then leaps to the conclusion that intelligent design must be responsible for these irreducibly complex systems. Biology professor (and Christian) Kenneth Miller responds:
The multiple parts of complex, interlocking biological systems do not evolve as individual parts, despite Behe's claim that they must. They evolve together, as systems that are gradually expanded, enlarged, and adapted to new purposes. As Richard Dawkins successfully argued in The Blind Watchmaker, natural selection can act on these evolving systems at every step of their transformation.
Professor Bartelt writes:
If we assume that Behe is correct, and that humans can discern design, then I submit that they can also discern poor design (we sue companies for this all the time!). In Darwin's Black Box, Behe refers to design as the "purposeful arrangement of parts." What about when the "parts" aren't purposeful, by any standard engineering criteria? When confronted with the "All-Thumbs Designer" - whoever designed the spine, the birth canal, the prostate gland, the back of the throat, etc, Behe and the ID people retreat into theology. [I.e., God can do whatever He wants, or, We're not competent to judge intelligence by God's standards, etc.]
H. Allen Orr writes:
Behe's colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become-because of later changes-essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required.
Finally, Behe's argument assumes that natural selection will never be able to account for anything it cannot account for now. This begs the question. In fact, some of the things that Behe and other ID defenders have claimed could not be explained by natural selection have in fact been explained by natural selection.
William Dembski (Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology, 1998) is a professor at Baylor University. Dembski claims that he can prove that life and the universe could not have happened by chance and by natural processes; therefore, they must be the result of intelligent design by God. He also claims that "the conceptual soundness of a scientific theory cannot be maintained apart from Christ (209)," a claim which belies his metaphysical bias.
According to physicist Vic Stenger in "The Emperor's New Designer Clothes," Dembski uses math and logic to derive what he calls the law of conservation of information. "He argues that the information contained in living structures cannot be generated by any combination of chance and natural processes....Dembski's law of conservation of information is nothing more than "conservation of entropy," a special case of the second law [of thermodynamics] that applies when no dissipative processes such as friction are present." However, the fact is that "entropy is created naturally a thousand times a day by every person on Earth. Each time any friction is generated, information is lost."
Pseudoscience
ID isn't a scientific theory and it isn't an alternative to natural selection or any other scientific theory. The universe would appear the same to us whether it was designed by God or not. Empirical theories are about how the world appears to us and have no business positing why the world appears this way, or that it is probably designed because of how unlikely it is that this or that happened by chance. That is the business of metaphysics. ID is not a scientific theory, but a metaphysical theory. The fact that it has empirical content doesn't make it any more scientific than, say, Spinoza's metaphysics or so-called creation science.
ID is a pseudoscience because it claims to be scientific but is in fact metaphysical. It is based on several philosophical confusions, not the least of which is the notion that the empirical is necessarily scientific. This is false, if by 'empirical' one means originating in or based on observation or experience. Empirical theories can be scientific or non-scientific. Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex is empirical but it is not scientific. Jung's theory of the collective unconscious is empirical but it is not scientific. Biblical creationism is empirical but it is not scientific. Poetry can be empirical but not scientific.
On the other hand, if by 'empirical' one means capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment then ID is not empirical. Neither the whole of Nature nor an individual eco-system can be proved or disproved by any set of observations to be intelligently or unintelligently designed. A design theory and a natural law theory that makes no reference to design can account for Nature as a whole and for individual eco-systems.
Science does have some metaphysical assumptions, not the least of which is that the universe follows laws. But Science leaves open the question of whether those laws were designed. That is a metaphysical question. Believing the universe or some part of it was designed or not does not help understand how it works. If I ever answer an empirical question with the answer "because God [or superintelligent aliens, otherwise undetectable] made it that way" then I have left the realm of science and entered the realm of metaphysics. Of course scientists have metaphysical beliefs but those beliefs are irrelevant to strictly scientific explanations. Science is open to both theists and atheists alike.
If we grant that the universe is possibly or even probably the result of intelligent design, what is the next step? For example, assume a particular eco-system is the creation of an intelligent designer. Unless this intelligent designer is one of us, i.e., human, and unless we have some experience with the creations of this and similar designers, how could we proceed to study this system? If all we know is that it is the result of ID, but that the designer is of a different order of being than we are, how would we proceed to study this system? Wouldn't we be limited in always responding in the same way to any question we asked about the system's relation to its designer? It is this way because of ID. Furthermore, wouldn't we have to assume that since God, the intelligent designer, designed everything, even us, that no matter what happens, it is always a sign of and due to intelligent design. The theory explains everything but illuminates nothing.
The ID proponents are fighting a battle that was lost in the 17th century: the battle for understanding Nature in terms of final causes and efficient causes. Prior to the 17th century, there was no essential conflict between a mechanistic view of Nature and a teleological view, between a naturalistic and a supernaturalistic view of Nature. With the notable exception of Leibniz and his intellectual descendents, just about everyone else gave up the idea of scientific explanations needing to include theological ones. Scientific progress became possible in part because scientists attempted to describe the workings of natural phenomena without reference to their creation, design or ultimate purpose. God may well have created the universe and the laws of nature, but created Nature is a machine, mechanically changing and comprehensible as such. God became an unnecessary hypothesis. |
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