Intelligent design

   

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This article is about the Intelligent Design movement. You may have been looking for the more general argument from design.

Intelligent design (ID) is a theory regarded by some as science and by others as pseudoscience, which purports to rationally support the existence of an "intelligent designer" as the originator of organic life, and to rationally disprove the established scientific principle of evolution by means of natural selection. More broadly, ID is a challenge to the concept of naturalism within scientific philosophy, and an attempt to reserve a place within science for the supernatural.

Intelligent design distinguishes itself from forms of creationism that rest on purely theological arguments or Biblical literalism. Arguments in favor of ID purport to cite principles of biology, information theory, and secular philosophy, and in many cases, ID proponents accept many principles of natural history that traditional creationists reject. The ID theory makes no explicit claim about the identity of the intelligent designer, although by definition this designer is "outside" the realm of ordinary organic life, and it is a short leap of faith between the ID theory and the belief in a supernatural god. Because most public proponents of ID are theists, and a large number of them are Christians, ID is often viewed as a sophisticated outgrowth of the traditional Christian argument from design. As such, there are disputes around the question of whether their religion informs their science, or their science informs their religion.

Adherents to ID theory are particularly active in the United States, especially within the Christian right. Many of them are advocating that the theory be taught in public schools, and presented as an alternate scientific theory to evolution. This presents a number of political and legal controversies, however, because incorporating ID into the science curriculum is seen by many as infringing the separation between church and state, and as potentially undermining students' education and college preparation in the field of natural history.

The Intelligent Design theory has not been well-received by the scientific community, which overwhelmingly considers it to be pseudoscience, in part because it violates the accepted principles of the scientific method, including the principal of falsifiability.

Intelligent design arguments

Arguments for intelligent design can be broadly split into three categories:

  • Assertions that the theories of naturalistic evolution and naturalistic abiogenesis are improbable or impossible.
  • Analogical arguments that posit a relationship between living things and artifacts that are known to be designed. The similarities between living things and designed things should be taken as evidence that living things are designed.
  • Fine-tuning arguments that consider cosmological constants and other features of our universe that are "just right" for life to be the product of deliberate design.

Criticism by the mainstream scientific community

The mainstream scientific community typically criticizes intelligent design as follows:

  • ID, it is argued, does not qualify as a scientific theory. It is based on a purely eliminative inference, makes no positive statements about Earth history, lacks a research program, etc.
  • The specific criticisms of biological evolution offered up by ID advocates are deeply flawed. Most are in fact simply updated versions of old creationist arguments, and ID has done little or nothing to improve upon them.
  • Arguments against the sufficiency of natural causes, also known as "God of the gaps" arguments, are highly prone to failure. The history of science shows that gaps in our knowledge become continuously filled in.
  • ID's assertion that complexity is not possible without intelligence is contradicted by the emergent behavior of cellular automata (as expounded by Stephen Wolfram in A New Kind of Science).

ID arguments against evolutionary theory

Most Intelligent Design arguments assert that the theory of evolution cannot explain certain phenomena, and that these can therefore be more reasonably explained by ID. They include the following.

Irreducible complexity

A key concept in Intelligent Design is what Michael Behe calls "irreducible complexity," the idea that at the earliest stages of the development of life on Earth, science cannot account for the emergence of the complex organic mechanisms that must be present for evolution to proceed. Therefore, it is reasonable to posit that these mechanisms were deliberately engineered by some form of intelligence.

According to the theory of evolution, genetic variations occur randomly, and the environment selects variatiants that have most fitness. Change occurs in a gradual, stepwise manner, and is able to create complex structures from simpler beginnings. Most ID advocates accept that evolution through mutation and natural selection occurs, but assert that it cannot lead to new instances of irreducible complexity.

The term Irreducible complexity" (IC) was coined by biochemist Michale Behe and discussed at length in his book Darwin's Black Box. IC is defined as: "a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (Behe, Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference). ID advocates assert that IC systems cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution, because each component of the system would be useless, or even disadvantageous, without the others. Behe used a mousetrap as an analogy to explain the concept of IC. A moustrap consists of several interacting pieces -- the base, the catch, the spring, the hammer -- all of which must be in place for the mousetrap to work. The removal of any one piece destroys the function of the moustrap. Likewise, biological IC systems require multiple parts working together in order to function. Natural selection could therefore not create them by successive, slight modifications because the selectable function is only present when all parts are assembled. ID advocates then conclude that IC systems must have been assembled simultaneously by an Intelligent Designer. Behe's original examples included the bacterial flagellum of E. coli, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system.

There are many criticisms of IC. First and foremost, the IC argument assumes that the present function of a system must have been the one that it was selected for. But the concept of cooption, in which existing features become adapted for new functions, has long been a mainstay of biology. Many of the systems that Behe pointed out have functional subsystems, or individual components that have altogether different functions, and would already exist prior to the evolution of the IC system. Secondly, something which is at first merely advantageous can later become necessary . For example, one of the clotting factors that Behe listed as a part of the IC clotting cascade was later found to be absent in whales (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9678675), demonstrating that it isn't essential for a clotting system. And finally, evolutionary pathways have been elucidated for IC systems such as the immune system (http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/Evolving_Immunity.html) and the flagellum (http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum_background.html). Computer simulations of evolution have also demonstrated that IC can evolve -- see, for example,this article (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12736677&dopt=Abstract)), discussing computer models showing the possibility of developing irreducible complexity through evolutionary algorithms, and this article (http://www.embl.org/aboutus/news/press/2004/press28oct04.html), discussing recent research regarding the origin of the eye from "light sensitive cells in the brain."

ID advocates respond by saying that proposed models for the evolution of IC structures are not detailed enough, or cannot be tested. They also dismiss computer simulations as biologically unrealistic.

Specified complexity

The ID argument of specified complexity was developed by mathematician, philosopher, and theologian William Dembski. The term "specified complexity" was originally coined by origin of life researcher Leslie Orgel, and later used by physicist Paul Davies in a similar manner, to denote what distinguishes living things from non-living things"

"In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their ‘’specified ‘’ complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures which are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity." (L. Orgel, The Origins of Life, 1973, p. 189)

Dembski uses specified complexity in a similar manner, to denote a property that makes living things unique. He claims that specified complexity is present when there exists a large amount of specified information. The following examples demonstrate the concept of specified information:.

  • High information, low specificity. For example, the 10-letter structure "dkownl el." According to Shannon’s theory of information, a random string of letters contains the highest possible information content, because it cannot be compressed into a smaller string. However, the random nature makes the string without meaning, and thus non-specified according to Dembski. (Note that “meaning” does not play a role in information theory.)
  • High specificity, low information. For example, the 10-letter structure "aaaaaaaaaa." The sequence has low information because it can be compressed into a smaller string, namely “10 a’s” . However, because it conforms to a pattern.
  • Specified information. For example, the 10-letter structure "i love you". This has both high information content, because it cannot be compressed, and specificity, because it conforms to a pattern. In this case, the pattern it conforms to is that of a meaningful English phrase, which make up a small fraction of all possible arrangements of letters. In living things, the “pattern” that molecular sequences conform to is that of a functional biological molecule, which make up only a small fraction of all possible molecules.

Dembski defines complex specified information (CSI) as something containing a large amount of specified information, which is assumed to have a low probability of occurring. He defines this probability as 1 in 10-150, which he calls the universal probability bound. Anything below this bound has CSI. The terms "specified complexity" and "complex specified information" are used interchangably.

Dembski and other proponents of ID assert that specified complexity cannot come about by natural means, and is therefore a reliable indicator of design. Dembski has formulated this as his Law of Conservation of Information:

This strong proscriptive claim, that natural causes can only transmit CSI but never originate it, I call the Law of Conservation of Information.

Immediate corollaries of the proposed law are the following:

(1) The CSI in a closed system of natural causes remains constant or decreases.
(2) CSI cannot be generated spontaneously, originate endogenously or organize itself (as these terms are used in origins-of-life research).
(3) The CSI in a closed system of natural causes either has been in the system eternally or was at some point added exogenously (implying that the system, though now closed, was not always closed).
(4) In particular any closed system of natural causes that is also of finite duration received whatever CSI it contains before it became a closed system."(Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, InterVarsity Press, 1999, pg. 170)

The soundness of Dembski's SC/CSI argument is strongly disputed by critics of ID. First of all, specified complexity, as originally defined by Orgel, is precisely what Darwinian evolution is proposed to create. It is not enough for Dembski to take a property of living things and arbitrarily declare it to be a reliable indicator of design; he must also provide compelling reasons why no natural processes could create such a property. Dembski confuses the issue by using "complexity" as synonymous with "improbability", thereby assuming that anything complex is also improbable. He defines CSI as anything with a less than 1 in 10150 chance of occurring naturally. But this renders the argument a [tautology]. CSI cannot occur naturally because Dembski has defined it thus, so the real question becomes whether or not CSI actually exists in nature. To demonstrate this, Dembski would need to show that a biological feature really did have an extremely low probability of occurring naturally, an enormously difficult (perhaps impossible) task that would require definitively ruling out all potential theories, including those that may not have been thought of yet. In general, Dembski does not attempt to do this, but instead simply takes the existence of CSI as a given, and then proceeds to argue that it is a reliable indicator of design. Thus far, he has made only one attempt at calculating the odds for the natural occurrence of a biological structure -- the bacterial flagellum of E. coli -- which appears in his book, No Free Lunch. Dembski calculates the odds of the flagellum evolving as being below his universal probability bound, but does so by assuming that all of its constituent parts must have been generated completely at random, a scenario that no biologist believes to begin with. He justifies this approach by appealing to Behe’s concept of "irreducible complexity" (see above), which leads him to assume that the flagellum could not come about by any gradual or step-wise process. This renders the validity of Dembski's calculation wholly dependent on Behe’s IC concept, so it’s not clear that Dembski's own concept of CSI is adding anything to the debate. This has led some critics to contend (http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nfl/replynfl.html#s3) that CSI is a superfluous middleman, which could be dispensed with altogether.

http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nfl/

http://home.mira.net/~reynella/debate/dembski.htm


Other ID criticisms of evolutionary theory

The creationist movement in general perceives several problems with evolutionary theory. The ID movement often accepts various aspects of evolutionary theory, for example common descent and microevolution that other creationist groups disagree with. However, problems perceived by the intelligent design movement include:

  • Abiogenesis: arguing that science has thusfar failed to conclusively demonstrate any mechanism by which life may have arisen from non-life, they assert that it is most reasonable to conclude that life was created.
  • Macroevolution: While some proponents of ID ascribe to macroevolution, others assert that evolutionary theory has failed to show sufficient evidence from the fossil record to support belief in macroevolution, and has failed to show any mechanism by which mutation and natural selection can lead to macroevolution.
  • Cambrian explosion: arguing that the sudden appearance of an enormously greater number and variety of lifeforms at the rock strata associated with the "Cambrian" era than those below cannot be explained by naturalistic evolution alone, and it is therefore most reasonable to conclude that those new species were created.
  • Human evolution: arguing that the fossil record has failed to provide a common ancestor for hominids and the lower primates, they argue that there is no positive evidence that there is any such common ancestor, and it is most reasonable to conclude that humanity was created.

In all cases, the scientific community rejects such problems, arguing that proponents of ID are merely creating a "God of the gaps," to whom proponents of ID attribute every phenomenon science has not yet completely explored. They also argue that most of arguments used are deliberately deceptive and no evidence supports intelligent design. They also note that evolutionary theory is in a continual state of refinement, but its central tenets are not in doubt.

Diversity within ID

Since the ID viewpoint does not prescribe the identity of the designer nor the mechanism by which the design was instantiated, ID is potentially compatible with a large number of different philosophies. The following views are all supportable within the narrow meaning of ID as an identifier of a past design action:

  • ID only applies to life as investigated to date, on Earth, and is not an indication that life cannot originate through abiogenesis. This allows ID as a component of hypotheses that life on Earth was introduced by aliens, or as a result of panspermia.
  • ID states that there has not been sufficient time for evolution to produce the complexity of life as observed even within the timespan available since the Big Bang, and thus the only available mechanism for the creation of life is one that is supernatural.
  • ID states that the present knowledge of physics at the quantum level still allows that there are realms outside the well investigated space/time dimensions such that all natural explanations are not excluded.

Similarly, the observation of signs of design does not restrict the point of intervention, and the following possibilities exist:

  • de novo creation of life
  • intervention in existing organisms to introduce observed complexity
  • on-going or intermittent intervention.

Further, there is no restriction on the number of designers responsible for observed life, so the number and character of intelligent design scenarios is potentially large.

The intelligent design movement

Advocates of ID believe there is empirical evidence that an intelligent designer (or designers) has been at work in the history of life, and many believe that macroevolution of life, particularly the evolution of humans, is not credible. Members of the Intelligent Design movement are typically theists (Christians, Jews, or members of other faiths that believe in a powerful deity), though ID itself does not specify the identity of the designer.

ID and Biblically Literal Creationism

ID is similar to Biblically literal Creationism in that both assert that the life was created, rather than developing purely naturalistically. It is different from Biblically literal creationism, however, in that while creationists assert that God created life as described in the Biblical book of Genesis, ID makes no explicitly religious claims, relying simply on evidence that life was created by an "Intelligent Designer", which could be the God of any religion or no religion, or some other intelligent being that is not God.

The Center for Science and Culture

Main Article: Center for Science and Culture

The intelligent design movement is centered around part of a conservative Christian thinktank, the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, which was founded in 1996.

The CSC fellows believe that naturalistic evolution is fatally flawed, and that Intelligent Design is a more scientific theory of origins. They also recognize, however, that explicitly religious claims are beyond the realm of science, and therefore cannot be brought into mainstream scientific discourse.

In their effort to gain entrance into mainstream scientific discourse, they devised the "Wedge strategy." Evolutionary theory is analogised as a log, and ID as a wedge. The wedge may be put into cracks into the log (perceived discrepancies within evolutionary theory) and after some hammering, the log will shatter due to its inherent weaknesses. Because advocates of intelligent design believe that the evidence for intelligent design of one form of another is overwhelming, they believe that the movement should initially focus on advocating more clear-cut issues, such as irreducible complexity, rather than on more questionable issues, such as Noah's flood and the age of the Earth.

The Wedge Strategy document was a document produced in 1998 by the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture but later leaked 1999 and published on the Internet. [1] (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html). It identified the key goals of the movement as:

Governing Goals
Five-Year Goals
  • To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.
  • To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
  • To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.
Twenty Year Goals

The godfather of the ID movement, University of California, Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson (now emeritus), is quoted as saying that issues such as the age of the Earth can be taken up once the common enemy of evolution has been done away with. Proponents of ID acknowledge that the wedge strategy is a tactical device, but argue that the use of strategy in achieving a goal does not make the goal any less valuable or true.

Critics of ID argue that the wedge strategy demonstrates that ID is motivated by religion and ideology, rather than an objective search for scientific truth.

Rejection by the scientific community

Opponents of ID, who include the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, claim that this argument intelligent design has no standing as a scientific hypothesis, i.e. it is considered pseudoscience. There are metaphysical objections, and a lack of scientific discourse.

In the United States, the National Center for Science Education seeks to fight what it calls antievolutionism, and various organisations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science have spoken out against intelligent design.

Some ID proponents claim this is due to a global conspiracy, career requirements, etc. In response, opponents can point out that tenured professors are pretty safe, and anyone presenting convincing evidence of design would be lavishly rewarded and published in the popular press.

Metaphysical arguments

The scientific community argues that ID violates scientific philosophy. ID does not present falsifiable hypotheses, and violates the principle of naturalism. (See methodological naturalism) They also point to examples of seemingly poor design within biology. The ID movement in the first place however, say that they wish to redefine scientific philosophy and remove its materialism.

The identity of the "intelligent designer" cannot be inferred; it is assumed to be a monotheistic god. Other problems with the argument from design.

Scientific journals

To underscore the allegedly pseudo-scientific nature of ID, in the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington looked through thousands of scientific journals searching for any articles on intelligent design or creation science—he didn't find any. Other more recent surveys have also failed to find articles on these subjects in the primary scientific literature (not to mention that only a handful of these articles were even submitted).

To date, intelligent design has been able to publish one single peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The author is Stephen C. Meyer, Program Director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, the major organization promoting ID. This article is not available on-line from this journal, but a copy is on the Discovery Institute site:

A review of it is available on the Panda's Thumb website:

http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000430.html

The paper has subsequently been disowned by the journal, which has stated that it did not go through the journal's approved peer review process. The journal's statement (http://www.biolsocwash.org/id_statement.html) explains that the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the journal.

In contrast, many articles have been published in highly-ranked journals which specifically deny the claims of ID (for example, Lenski et al. 2003 The evolutionary origin of complex features. Nature 423:139-44 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12736677&dopt=Abstract).)

Additional arguments

Further, say scientists, a body part or organ that has a modern function did not necessarily have the same function in the past. Evolution works on chance and opportunity, with gill bones of mouth-less fishes evolving into jaws, fish air bladders becoming vertebrate lungs, and fin support structures becoming fingers and toes. Scientists have also argued that arguments like the watch argument actually damage the case for the ID theory. Specifically, some of them claim that life is often "poorly designed" on the macroscopic, cellular, and genetic levels. Others just say that we simply don't have enough knowledge about the processes in living systems to draw this type of conclusion.

Intelligent Design and the "God of the Gaps"

Mainstream scientists assert that ID is simply an argument against the sufficiency of natural causes, also known as "God of the gaps" arguments, which are highly prone to failure, as the history of science shows that gaps in our knowledge become continuously filled in. It is unreasonable and unneccessary, therefore, to assume a supernatual cause for physical phenomena when science will likely discover a natural cause.

Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that if science caused the God of the Gaps to become less powerful, we could expect His ultimate disappearance. They argue, however, that the course of science has made our concept of the God of the Gaps more powerful, as every advance of science has illustrated greater, more intricate, and inexplicable evidence of design. They argue that every step of science makes purely naturalistic explanations less reasonable, and Intelligent Design more reasonable.

Broader view of "intelligent design"

Some people use the term "intelligent design" in a broader sense than that given in intelligent design theory. It can refer simply to the belief that God designed the universe, without any specific claim as to how or when he did so. Many people consider this belief entirely compatible with standard Darwinian evolution, with no divine intervention—life could be produced by a purely natural process, evolution, designed by God. God might merely have written the laws of physics, or chosen the fundamental constants, and left the universe to run like clockwork afterwards. This would be a form of deism. A more theologically robust view is theistic evolution (see e.g., Kenneth R. Miller's Finding Darwin's God cited above), which is too nuanced to explain here. Not all people who believe God was involved in the design of the Universe also adhere to the specifics of the intelligent design belief, as proposed by creationists.

See also


Further reading

Pro-ID

  • Michael J. Behe. Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, New York: Free Press, 1996. ISBN 0684834936. Argues that several exquisite biochemical mechanisms could not have arisen by a sequence of random mutations and selection.
  • Michael J. Behe, William A. Dembski, Stephen C. Meyer. Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe (Proceedings of the Wethersfield Institute), Ignatius Press 2000, ISBN 0898708095
  • William A. Dembski. Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, InterVarsity Press 1999. ISBN 0830815813
  • William A. Dembski, James M. Kushiner. Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design, Brazos Press, 2001, ISBN 1587430045
  • William A. Dembski, John Wilson. Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing, ISI Press, 2004. ISBN 1932236317
  • William A. Dembski, Charles W. Colson. The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design. Inter Varsity Press. 2004, ISBN 0830823751. This Charles W. Colson is the born-again Watergate convict.
  • Phillip E. Johnson. Darwin on Trial, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991.
  • Phillip E. Johnson. Defeating Darwinism by opening minds, Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997.
  • Phillip E. Johnson. Evolution as dogma: the establishment of naturalism, Dallas, Tex.: Haughton Pub. Co., 1990
  • William Paley. Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/p/pd-modeng/pd-modeng-idx?type=header&id=PaleyNatur), London: 12th edition, 1809. Online in full.
  • Geoffrey Simmons, William Dembski. What Darwin Didn't Know, Harvest House Publishers, 2004, ISBN 0736913130
  • Thomas Woodward. Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design, Baker Books, 1993, ISBN 0801064430

Anti-ID

  • Barbara Carroll Forrest, Paul R. Gross (2003) Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design ISBN 0195157427
  • Ernst Mayr: One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Harvard University Press 1993. Explanation of the evidence behind the mainstream evolutionary theory.
  • Kenneth R. Miller: Finding Darwin's God, HarperCollins 1999. A cell biologist (and devout Christian) pokes holes in intelligent design theory (and advocates scientific creationism)
  • Robert T. Pennock: Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism, MIT Press 1999. A philosopher pokes holes in intelligent design theory.
  • Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics, ed. Robert T. Pennock, MIT Press 2002. A comprehensive anthology.
  • Matt Young, Taner Edis Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism ISBN 081353433X

External links

Pro-ID

Anti-ID

Young-Earth creationist comment on ID

Neutral



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