Intelligent design

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This article is about the concept of intelligent design. See also the teleological argument. For the associated social movement see ID as a movement. For the book, see Intelligent Design (book).

Intelligent Design (or ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent. Most ID advocates state that their focus is on detecting evidence of design in nature, without regard to who or what the designer might be. ID advocate William Dembski in his book "The Design Inference"[1] lists a god or an "alien life force" as two possible options, however Dembski states explicitly elsewhere that the designer can only be the Christian God. In his book Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology Dembski states that "Christ is indispensible to any scientific theory... the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." [2] He also states "ID is part of God's general revelation..." "Not only does intelligent design rid us of this ideology (materialism), which suffocates the human spirit, but, in my personal experience, I've found that it opens the path for people to come to Christ." [3]

Adherents of ID claim it has all the merits of a solid scientific theory. This claim is dismissed by the majority of the scientific community. Despite ID sometimes being called Intelligent Design Theory, mainstream scientists do not recognise ID as a scientific theory and consider it to be creationist pseudoscience. The National Academy of Sciences has said that Intelligent Design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because their claims cannot be tested by experiment and propose no new hypotheses of their own. Critics argue that ID proponents find gaps within current evolutionary theory and fill them in with speculative beliefs, and that ID ultimately amounts to nothing more than a convolution of the God of the gaps argument.

Both the Intelligent Design concept and the associated movement have come under considerable criticism. [4] This criticism is regarded by advocates of ID as a natural consequence of the cultural dominance of Darwinism built upon methodological naturalism which preclude by definition the possibility of supernatural causes as rational scientific explanations.

Media organizations often focus on other qualities that the designer(s) in Intelligent Design theory might have in addition to intelligence, "higher power"[5], "unseen force"[6], etc.

Intelligent Design in summary

Intelligent Design was born out of opposition to the theory of evolution. Its putative main purpose is to investigate whether or not the empirical evidence necessarily implies that life on Earth must have been designed by an intelligent agent or agents. For example, William Dembski, one of ID's leading proponents, has stated that the "fundamental claim" of ID is that "there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."

Dembski uses the example of Mt. Rushmore to provide an analogy to the underlying premise of ID:

"What about this rock formation convinces us that it was due to a designing intelligence and not merely to wind and erosion? Designed objects like Mt. Rushmore exhibit characteristic features or patterns that point us to an intelligence."--The Design Revolution, p. 33.

Proponents of ID look for evidence of what they call signs of intelligence — physical properties of an object that necessitate design. Examples being considered include irreducible complexity, information mechanisms, and specified complexity. Many design theorists believe that living systems show one or more of these signs of intelligence, from which they infer that life is designed. This stands in opposition to naturalistic theories of evolution, which attempt to explain life exclusively through natural processes such as random mutations and natural selection.

Critics call ID religious dogma repackaged in an effort to return creationism into public school science classrooms and note that ID features notably as part of the campaign known as Teach the Controversy. The National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education assert that ID is not science, but creationism.[7] While the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection has observable and repeatable facts to support it such as the process of mutations, gene flow, genetic drift, adaptation and speciation through natural selection, the "Intelligent Designer" in ID is neither observable nor repeatable. This violates the scientific requirement of falsifiability. It has also been charged that ID violates Occam's Razor by postulating an entity or entities to explain something that may have a simpler and scientifically supportable explanation not involving unobservable help.

ID proponent Behe concedes "You can't prove intelligent design by experiment". [8]

Critics say ID is attempting to redefine natural science,[9] and they cite books and statements of principal ID proponents calling for the elimination of "methodological naturalism" from science[10] and replace it with what critics call "methodological supernaturalism", which means belief in a transcendent, non-natural dimension of reality inhabited by a transcendent, non-natural deity.[11] Natural science uses the scientific method to create a posteriori knowledge based on observation alone (sometimes called empirical science). Critics of ID consider the idea that some outside intelligence created life on Earth to be a priori (without observation) knowledge. ID proponents cite some complexity in nature that cannot yet be fully explained by the scientific method. (For instance, abiogenesis, the generation of life from non-living matter, is not completely understood scientifically, although the first stages have been reproduced in the Miller-Urey experiment.) ID proponents infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically. Since the designer cannot be observed, critics continue, it is a priori knowledge.

This allegedly a priori inference that an intelligent designer (God or an alien life force[12]) created life on Earth has been compared to the a priori claim that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids[13]. In both cases, the effect of this outside intelligence is not repeatable, observable, or falsifiable, and it violates Occam's Razor as well. Empirical scientists would simply say "we don't know exactly how the Egyptians built the pyramids" and list what is known about Egyptian construction techniques.

Origins of the concept

Part of a series on
Creationism
Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" on the Sistine Chapel ceiling
History
Types
Biblical cosmology
Creation science
Rejection of evolution by religious groups
Religious views
Non-creation
Evolution

The phrase "intelligent design", used in this sense, first appeared in Christian creationist literature, including the textbook Of Pandas and People (Haughton Publishing Company, Dallas, 1989). The term was promoted more broadly by the retired legal scholar Phillip E. Johnson following his 1991 book Darwin on Trial. Johnson is the program advisor of the Center for Science and Culture and is considered the father of the intelligent design movement.

For millenia, philosophers have argued that the complexity of nature indicates supernatural design; this has come to be known as the teleological argument. The most notable forms of this argument were expressed by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica[14] (thirteenth century), design being the fifth of Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, and William Paley in his book Natural Theology (nineteenth century) where he makes his watchmaker analogy. The modern concept of intelligent design is distinguished from the teleological argument in that ID does not identify the agent of creation.

Religion and leading ID proponents

Intelligent design arguments are carefully formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid positing the identity of the designer. Phillip E. Johnson has stated that cultivating ambiguity by employing secular language in arguments which are carefully crafted to avoid overtones of theistic creationism is a necessary first step for ultimately introducing the Christian concept of God as the designer. Johnson emphasizes "the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion" and that "after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact." only then can "biblical issues" be discussed.[15] Johnson explicitly calls for ID proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having ID recognized "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message."[16] Though not all ID proponents are theistic or motivated by religious fervor, the majority of the principal ID advocates (including Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, and Stephen C. Meyer) are Christians and have stated that in their view the designer of life is clearly God.

Darwin or Jesus? An Alternative Perspective

What if both science and religion are wrong about evolution? What if both are right?

We’ve all seen them: bumper stickers and decals of a fish with legs symbolizing Darwin’s theory of evolution. And then, from religious creationists, the “counter-decals” of a fish-with-a-cross swallowing “Darwin’s” amphibious fish. The battle of the decals is just one way the debate between creationists and evolutionists overflows onto our streets.

But there’s an alternative: a philosophy that shows why both religion and science have got it wrong—and right.

To move beyond the sectarian clashes and wars in these troubled times—between fundamentalists in both religion and science—we need a wiser, more coherent, account of who we are and how we came to be. We need a revised and renewed vision of creation and evolution. We need a deeper and broader understanding of both religion and science.

Both Wrong and Right Religion is wrong to place the “Creator” beyond nature (as supernatural). Science is wrong to deny intelligence (consciousness or spirit) at work in evolution. Religion is right to hold the view that there is creation and that creation possesses intelligence. And religion is right to deny that the birth and evolution of our world happened by chance. Science is right to hold the view that evolution produces different species, including humans. And science is right to deny that some “supernatural” intelligent designer is responsible for the wondrous diversity and interconnectedness of living and non-living forms.

Best of Both In the new view, creation is not the result of some “supernatural Creator.” Nor is creation a one-time event. Instead, creation is continuous and natural. Evolution is not random and unfolding without the guidance of a deep intelligence. Nature itself is naturally intelligent and creative.

Instead of a “higher” intelligence, an alternative assumption is a deeper intelligence. Instead of “dead” and “dumb” matter, we could accept the possibility of sentient and intelligent matter.

Then we can have the best of both worlds—integrating the great insights of both religion and science. The “missing link” is consciousness. The ability to have experience, to feel, to be aware is a complete mystery to science. Evolution cannot explain it.

Religions take it for granted that this ability is unique to humans (or, at best, to creatures with nervous systems and brains). The fact of consciousness highlights the shortcomings of both science and religion, and it offers a way out of the seemingly endless debate between evolutionists and creationists. New Worldview In this alternative worldview, religion would recognize that consciousness (intelligence or spirit) is not “supernatural,” but is part of the natural fabric of cosmos, Earth, and life, and would science recognize that matter itself “tingles with the spark of spirit,” that evolution is guided from within. This “new” philosophy or worldview is called “panpsychism” or “radical naturalism.” We could also call it “intelligent evolution.” (Actually, it’s a very ancient philosophy, shared by indigenous cultures throughout the world.)

If we shift to such a view, then we can begin to transcend the squabbles between those who believe in supernatural “intelligent design” and those who believe in random evolution.

The biggest challenge facing modern science is to explain the mystery of consciousness. A science based on the assumption of “dead” insentient matter exploding from a random Big Bang cannot account for mind. Yet consciousness is the one thing we can be absolutely certain exists.

The biggest challenge facing mainstream religion is to remain relevant in a world increasingly dominated by scientific knowledge.

The philosophy of intelligent evolution can help science and religion meet these challenges. In a nutshell, it takes us beyond the dogmas of both:

Beyond Religion: The world was not created by a supernatural transcendent God (in seven days or 13.7 billion years).

Beyond Science: The world did not come into being from a random Big Bang followed by billions of years of random chemical and biological evolution.

Instead, the most coherent story about how the world came to be (a world where both matter and mind are real) would recognize that

1. Spirit is not supernatural (above and beyond nature). 2. Evolution is not without purpose or intelligence.

This alternative philosophy offers a way to honor the deep insights of both religion and science.

Intelligent Design Yes, there is an “intelligent designer” at work in evolution. But the intelligence (call it “God” or “Spirit”) is intrinsic to nature. Nature itself is intelligent (has sentience and consciousness, purpose and meaning) “all the way down” to single cells, molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles.

Evolution In this new view of nature and evolution, matter itself is intelligent. Matter is “adventurous.” Evolution is the adventure of matter exploring its own creative potentials. As matter evolves, its native intelligence or consciousness evolves, too. So by the time human brains come on the scene, matter or nature has achieved the remarkable ability to be self-reflective—to know that it knows—and to ponder the eternal questions in religion, philosophy, and science: Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? Why is there anything at all?

Intelligent Evolution: A Sacred Fish with Legs? Instead of the amusing (and silly) bumper-stickers pitching Darwin against Jesus (evolution vs. religion), we can come up with a new set of symbols and sound-bytes: Picture a decal that shows a fish with legs and a halo, indicating that evolution is a sacred process because spirit is active in the development of species. Evolution is natural and creative. We could say “Spirit Matters” or, just as meaningful, “Matter Spirits.”

ID as a movement

Main article: Intelligent design movement

The Intelligent Design movement is an organized campaign to promote ID arguments in the public sphere, primarily in the United States. The movement claims ID exposes the limitations of scientific orthodoxy, and of the secular philosophy of Naturalism. ID movement proponents allege that science, by relying upon methodological naturalism, demands an a priori adoption of a naturalistic philosophy that dismisses out of hand any explanation that contains a supernatural cause. Phillip E. Johnson, considered the father of the intelligent design movement and its unofficial spokesman stated that the goal of intelligent design is to cast creationism as a scientific concept:

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."[17]
"This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy."[18]

The intelligent design movement is largely the result of efforts by the conservative Christian think tank the Discovery Institute, and its Center for Science and Culture. The Discovery Institute's wedge strategy and its adjunct, the Teach the Controversy campaign, are campaigns intended to sway the opinion of the public and policymakers. They target public school administrators and state and federal elected representatives to introduce intelligent design into the public school science curricula and marginalize mainstream science. The Discovery Institute acknowledges that private parties have donated millions for a research and publicity program to "unseat not just Darwinism, but also Darwinism's cultural legacy."[19]

Critics note that instead of producing original scientific data to support ID’s claims, the Discovery Institute has promoted ID politically to the public, education officials and public policymakers. Also oft mentioned is that there is a conflict between what leading ID proponents tell the public through the media and what they say before their conservative Christian audiences, and that the Discovery Institute as a matter of policy obfuscates its agenda. This they claim is proof that the movement's "activities betray an aggressive, systematic agenda for promoting not only intelligent design creationism, but the religious worldview that undergirds it."[20]

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, compares "Teach the controversy" with teaching flat earthism, perfectly fine in a history class but not in science. "If you give the idea that there are two schools of thought within science, one that says the earth is round and one that says the earth is flat, you are misleading children." [21]

Underscoring claims that the ID movement is more social and political enterprise and less a scientific one, Intelligent Design has featured in a number of controversial political cases. These are discussed in depth in the main Intelligent design movement article.

Intelligent design debate

Template:ID The intelligent design debate centers on three issues:

  1. whether the definition of science is broad enough to allow for theories of human origins which incorporate the acts of an intelligent designer
  2. whether the evidence supports such theories
  3. whether the teaching of such theories is appropriate in public education.

ID supporters generally hold that science must allow for both natural and supernatural explanations of phenomena. Excluding supernatural explanations limits the realm of possibilities, particularly where naturalistic explanations utterly fail to explain certain phenomena. Supernatural explanations provide a very simple and parsimonious explanation for the origins of life and the universe. Proponents claim that the evidence strongly supports such explanations, as instances of so-called irreducible complexity and specified complexity appear to make it highly unreasonable that the full complexity and diversity of life came about solely through natural means. Finally, they hold that religious neutrality requires the teaching of both evolution and intelligent design in schools, because teaching only evolution unfairly discriminates against those holding the Creationist beliefs. Teaching both, ID supporters argue, allows for a scientific basis for religious belief, without causing the state to actually promote a religious belief.

According to critics of ID, not only has ID failed to establish reasonable doubt in its proposed shortcomings of accepted scientific theories, but it has not even presented a case worth taking seriously. Critics of ID argue that ID has not presented a credible case for the public policy utility of presenting Intelligent Design in education. More broadly, critics maintain that it has not met the minimum legal standard of not being a "clear" attempt to establish religion, which in the United States is forbidden by law. Scientists argue that those advocating "scientific" treatment of "supernatural" phenomena are grossly misunderstanding the issue, and indeed misunderstand the nature and purpose of science itself.

Between these two positions there is a large body of opinion that does not condone the teaching of what is considered unscientific or questionable material, but is generally sympathetic to the position of Deism/Theism and therefore desires some compromise between the two. The nominal points of contention are seen as being proxies for other issues. Many ID followers are quite open about their view that "Scientism" is itself a religion that promotes secularism and materialism in an attempt to erase religion from public life and view their work in the promotion of ID as a way to return religion to a central role in education and other public spheres. Some allege that this larger debate is often the subtext for arguments made over Intelligent Design, though others note that ID serves as an effective proxy for the religious beliefs of prominent ID proponents in their efforts to advance their religious point of view within society. [22][23][24]

Irreducible complexity

Main article: Irreducible complexity

The term was coined by biochemist Michael Behe in his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box. The irreducible complexity argument holds that evolutionary mechanisms cannot account for the emergence of some complex biochemical cellular systems. ID advocates argue that the systems must therefore have been deliberately engineered by some form of intelligence. Irreducible complexity is defined by Behe as:

"...a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."--(Behe, Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference).

According to the theory of evolution, genetic variations occur without specific design or intent. The environment selects variants that have the highest fitness, which are then passed on to the next generation of organisms. Change occurs by the gradual operation of natural forces over time, perhaps slowly, perhaps more quickly (see punctuated equilibrium). This process is able to create complex structures from simpler beginnings, or convert complex structures from one function to another (see spandrel). Most ID advocates accept that evolution through mutation and natural selection occurs, but assert that it cannot account for irreducible complexity, because none of the parts of an irreducible system would be functional or advantageous until the entire system is in place.

Behe uses the mousetrap as an illustrative example of this concept. A mousetrap 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 mousetrap. Likewise, biological systems require multiple parts working together in order to function. ID advocates claim that natural selection could not create from scratch those systems for which science is currently not able to find a viable evolutionary pathway of successive, slight modifications, because the selectable function is only present when all parts are assembled. Behe's original examples of irreducibly complex mechanisms included the bacterial flagellum of E. coli, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system.

Criticism
The IC (irreducible complexity) argument also assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary, and therefore could not have been added sequentially. But 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[25], demonstrating that it isn't essential for a clotting system. Many purported IC structures can be found in other organisms as simpler systems that utilize fewer parts. These systems may have had even simpler precursors that are now extinct.
Perhaps most importantly, potentially viable evolutionary pathways have been proposed for allegedly irreducibly complex systems such as blood clotting, the immune system[26] and the flagellum[27], which were the three examples Behe used. Even his example of a mousetrap was shown to be reducible by John H. McDonald[28]. If IC is an insurmountable obstacle to evolution, it should not be possible to conceive of such pathways—Behe has remarked that such plausible pathways would defeat his argument.
Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin have shown that systems satisfying Behe's characterization of irreducible biochemical complexity can arise naturally and spontaneously as the result of self-organizing chemical processes[29]. They also assert that what evolved biochemical and molecular systems actually exhibit is redundant complexity — a kind of complexity that is the product of an evolved biochemical process. They claim that Behe overestimated the significance of irreducible complexity because his simple, linear view of biochemical reactions results in his taking snapshots of selective features of biological systems, structures and processes, while ignoring the redundant complexity of the context in which those features are naturally embedded and an over-reliance of overly-simplistic metaphors such as his mousetrap. In addition, computer simulations of evolution demonstrate that it is possible for irreducible complexity to evolve naturally[30].

Specified complexity

Main article: Specified complexity

The ID concept of specified complexity was developed by mathematician, philosopher, and theologian William Dembski. Dembski claims that when something exhibits specified complexity (i.e., is both complex and specified, simultaneously) one can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause (i.e., that it was designed), rather than being the result of natural processes. He provides the following examples: "A single letter of the alphabet is specified without being complex. A long sentence of random letters is complex without being specified. A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified." (Intelligent Design, p. 47) He states that details of living things can be similarly characterized, especially the "patterns" of molecular sequences in functional biological molecules such as DNA.

Dembski defines a probability of 1 in 10150 as the "universal probability bound". Its value corresponds to the inverse of the upper limit of "the total number of [possible] specified events throughout cosmic history," as calculated by Dembski. (The Design Revolution, p. 85) He defines complex specified information (CSI) as specified information with a probability less than this limit. (The terms "specified complexity" and "complex specified information" are used interchangeably.) He argues that CSI cannot be generated by the only known natural mechanisms of physical law and chance, or by their combination. He argues that this is so because laws can only shift around or lose information, but do not produce it, and chance can produce complex unspecified information, or unspecified complex information, but not CSI; he provides a mathematical analysis that he claims demonstrates that law and chance working together cannot generate CSI, either. Dembski and other proponents of ID argue that CSI is best explained as being due to an intelligent cause and is therefore a reliable indicator of design.

Criticism
The conceptual soundness of Dembski's specified complexity/CSI argument is strongly disputed by critics of ID. First, critics maintain that Dembski confuses the issue by using "complex" as most people would use "improbable". He defines CSI as anything with a less than 1 in 10150 chance of occurring by (natural) chance. Critics claim that 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. They claim that Dembski does not attempt to demonstrate 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.
Another criticism of specified complexity refers to the problem of "arbitrary but specific outcomes". For example, it is unlikely that any given person will win a lottery, but, eventually, a lottery will have a winner; to argue that it is very unlikely that any one player would win is not the same as proving that there is the same chance that no one will win. Similarly, it has been argued that "a space of possibilities is merely being explored, and we, as pattern-seeking animals, are merely imposing patterns, and therefore targets, after the fact."[31] Critics also note that there is much redundant information in the genome, which makes its content much lower than the number of base pairs used.
Martin Nowak, a Harvard professor of mathematics and evolutionary biology argues that "We cannot calculate the probability that an eye came about. We don't have the information to make the calculation."[32]

Fine-tuned universe

Main article: Fine-tuned universe

ID proponents use the argument that we live in a fine-tuned universe. They propose that the natural emergence of a universe with all the features necessary for life is wildly improbable. Thus, an intelligent designer of life was needed to ensure that the requisite features were present to achieve that particular outcome. Opinion within the scientific community is still divided on the "finely-tuned universe" issue, but this particular explanation and assessment of probabilities is rejected by most scientists and statisticians.

Within mainstream physics this is related to the question of the anthropic principle, whose weak form is based on the observation that the laws of physics must allow for life, since we observe there is life. The strong form, however, is the assertion that the laws of physics must have made it possible for life to arise. The strong form is a distinctly minority position and is highly controversial.

Criticism
Critics of both ID and the weak form of anthropic principle argue that they are essentially a tautology; life as we know it may not exist if things were different, but a different sort of life might exist in its place. The claim of the improbability of a life-supporting universe has also been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination for assuming no other forms of life are possible (see also carbon chauvinism).
Based on the unproven idea that some of the universe's initial conditions might have been different, Stephen Hawking and James Hartle have shown that from the initial conditions of the universe, that is, the moment immediately after the Big Bang, a large number of types of universe could have formed. The type of universe that we live in is called a Hartle-Hawking type universe. According to their calculations, the chance that a Hartle-Hawking universe forms is over 90%. Thus, the chance that our particular universe formed may be small, but the chance that a universe of the same type, with stars, planets and the other elements required to create life as we know it would come out of the Big Bang is over 90%, not improbable at all.
Recent work in cosmology has put forth the mathematical possiblity of a multiverse. This would allow many types of universes to simultaneously arise, of which ours is one possibility. Although multiverse theories currently lack verified predictions, some astronomers believe that gravity may leak into other dimensions in braneworld scenarios, potentially providing the first observable data to support these theories.

Additional Criticisms of ID

Scientific peer review

Dembski has written that "Perhaps the best reason [to be skeptical of his theory] is that intelligent design has yet to establish itself as a thriving scientific research program."[33] Critics argue that ID proponents either do not submit articles to peer reviewed journals, or set up "peer review" that consists entirely of ID supporters. Proponents of ID explain the reason for their absence in peer-reviewed literature is that papers explaining the findings and concepts in support of ID are consistently excluded from the mainstream scientific discourse. They claim this is because ID arguments challenge the principles of philosophical naturalism and uniformitarianism that are accepted as fundamental by the mainstream scientific community. Thus, ID supporters believe that research that points toward an intelligent designer is often rejected simply because it deviates from these "dogmatically held beliefs", without regard to the merits of their specific claims.

According to their critics, this is an ad hominem attack, designed to cover over the lack of success in creating scientifically testable or verifiable data or theory, by claiming that there is a conspiracy against them. Critics of ID point out that this is an argument commonly used by advocates of pseudoscientific views (most notably by UFO enthusiasts), and that the perceived bias is simply the result of ID being unscientific and inadequately supported. A notable exception to this explanation for lack of published, peer-reviewed writings is William Dembski, who claims in a 2001 interview that he stopped submitting to peer-reviewed journals due to their slow time-to-print and that he makes more money from publishing books[34].

To date, the intelligent design movement has yet to publish an article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. On 4 August, 2004, an article by Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture appeared in the peer reviewed journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.[35] On 7 September, the publisher of the journal, the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, released a statement repudiating the article as not meeting its scientific standards and not peer reviewed. The same statement vowed that proper review procedures would be followed in the future and endorsed a resolution published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science,[36] which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID. The journal's reasons for disavowing the article was denied by Richard Sternberg, who was managing editor at the time the article was submitted and subsequently left the editorial board at its time of publication.[37] Critics of Meyer's paper believe that Sternberg himself was biased in the matter, since he is a member of the editorial board of the Baraminology Study Group, an organization with a creationist agenda. The Baraminology Study Group's official position is that Sternberg is not a creationist and acts primarily as a skeptical reviewer.[38] A critical review of the article is available on the Panda's Thumb website[39].

ID proponents have also claimed as proof of peer review an article by Michael Behe and David W. Snoke was published in the journal Protein Science. But the paper has been critiqued by qualified scientists, who point out that "it contains no 'design theory,' makes no attempt to model an 'intelligent design' process, and proposes no alternative to evolution."

The vast majority of practicing biologists do not support or otherwise endorse intelligent design. The scientific community does not regard the argument over ID to be of the same kind as, for example, differing theories on how particular traits evolved, or even in the realm of scientific speculation, the way, a hypothesis of exogenesis might be considered as a plausible scientific speculation. The failure to follow the procedures of scientific discourse, and the failure to submit work to the scientific community which withstands scrutiny is regarded by the critics of ID as a strong argument against intelligent design being considered as "science" at all.

Hypotheses about the designer(s)

Although the Intelligent Design movement is often portrayed as a variant of Bible-based Creationism, many ID arguments are formulated in secular terms. Most ID arguments do not depend on Biblical fundamentalism. They do not explicitly state that their adherents accept the Bible's accounts, they do not explicitly state that God is the designer, but the designer is often implicitly hypothesized to have intervened at so many different points in time and space (sometimes even outside of time and space in the case of the fine-tuned universe designer) that only God or an extremely capable, long-lived and persistent alien culture could fulfill the requirements.

Each hypothesized design poses a new challenge for ID. Is the new design a product of the same designer(s) as any other design, based on external evidence, or evidence internal to the design. Each design, based on the evidence for the original time and place of the appearance of that design, hypotheses that the same or different designers must have been present at that place and time. Since the places and times are often only known imprecisely, there is the possibility that they may coincide with those of some other designs.

The key arguments in favor of the different variants of ID are so broad that they can be adopted by any number of communities that seek an alternative to evolutionary thought, including those that support non-theistic models of creation although the designers might be different. For example, the notion of an "intelligent designer" is compatible with the materialistic hypotheses that life on Earth was introduced by an alien species, or that it emerged as a result of panspermia, but would not be with the designer(s) of the "fine-tuned" universe. Likewise, ID claims can support a variety of theistic notions. Some proponents of creationism and intelligent design reject the Christian concept of omnipotence and omniscience on the part of God, and subscribe to Open Theism or Process theology. It has been suggested by opponents that ID researchers must explain why organisms were designed as they were, and argue that existing evidence makes the design hypothesis appear unlikely. For example, Jerry Coyne, of the University of Chicago, asks:

Would an intelligent designer create millions of species and then make them go extinct, only to replace them with other species, repeating this process over and over again? ... Why did the designer give tiny, non-functional wings to kiwi birds? Or useless eyes to cave animals? Or a transitory coat of hair to a human fetus?... Why would the designer give us a pathway for making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its enzymes? Why didn't the intelligent designer stock oceanic islands with reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish, despite the suitability of such islands for these species? And why would he make the flora and fauna on those islands resemble that of the nearest mainland, even when the environments are very different?[40]

Some of these ID researchers would instead argue that we are simply incapable of understanding the designer's motives. For example Behe argued in Darwin's Black Box that

Features that strike us as odd in a design might have been placed there by the designer for a reason--for artistic reasons, to show off, for some as-yet undetectable practical purpose, or for some unguessable reason

Additionally, they may argue that the creator's benevolence does not imply the need for physical perfection in Creation. Critics like Coyne respond that the possibility of mutually contradictory and "unguessable" motives for the designer mean that ID is not falsifiable and therefore not scientific.

"What designed the designer?"

By raising the question of the need for a designer for objects with irreducible complexity, ID also raises the question, "what designed the designer?" By ID's own arguments, a designer capable of creating irreducible complexity must also be irreducibly complex. Unlike with religious creationism, where the question "what created God?" can be answered with theological arguments, this creates a logical paradox, as the chain of designers can be followed back indefinitely, leaving the question of the creation of the first designer dangling. The sort of logic required in sustaining such reasoning is known as circular reasoning; a form of logical fallacy.

One ID counter-argument to this problem invokes an uncaused causer - in other words, a deity - to resolve this problem, in which case ID reduces to religious creationism. At the same time, the postulation of the existence of even a single uncaused causer in the Universe contradicts the fundamental assumption of ID that a designer is needed for every complex object. Another possible counter-argument might be an infinite regression of designers. However, admitting infinite numbers of objects also allows any arbritarily improbable event to occur, such as an object with "irreducible" complexity assembling itself by chance. Again, this contradicts the fundamental assumption of ID that a designer is needed for every complex object, producing a logical contradiction.

Thus, according to opponents, either attempt to patch the ID hypothesis appears to either result in logical contradiction, or reduces it to a belief in religious creationism. ID then ceases to be a falsifiable theory and loses its ability to claim to be a scientific theory.

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, argues that intelligent design simply takes the complexity required for life to have evolved and moves it to the "designer" instead. ID doesn't explain how the complexity happened in the first place, it just moves it. [41]

Argument from ignorance

Some critics have argued that many points raised by Intelligent Design proponents strongly resemble arguments from ignorance. In the argument from ignorance, one claims that the lack of evidence for one view is evidence for another view (e.g. "Science cannot explain this, therefore God did it"). Particularly, Michael Behe's demands for ever more detailed explanations of the historical evolution of molecular systems seem to assume a dichotomy where either evolution or design is the proper explanation, and any perceived failure of evolution becomes a victory for design. In scientific terms, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" for naturalistic explanations of observed traits of living organisms.

See also

Further reading

Pro-ID

Anti-ID

  • Matt Young, Taner Edis eds.: Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism, Rutgers University Press (2004). ISBN 081353433X Anthology by scientists.
  • Robert Pennock ed.: Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives, MIT Press (2002). ISBN 0262661241 Comprehensive anthology including IDT advocates.
  • Robert Pennock: Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism, MIT Press (1999). ISBN 0262661659 Early critique of IDT - compare to similar more recent.
  • Niall Shanks: God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory, Oxford University Press (2004). ISBN 0195161998 Philosopher/biologist concludes the ID movement threatens scientific and democratic values inherited from the Enlightenment.
  • Mark Perakh: Unintelligent Design, Prometheus (Dec 2003). ISBN 1591020840 Distinguished physicist, the mathematical claims of IDT.
  • Frederick C. Crews: "Saving Us from Darwin, Part II", The New York Review of Books, Vol 48, No 16 (18 October 2001). Discusses Pollack, The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith; Haught, God After Darwin; Ruse, Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?; Miller, Finding Darwin's God; and Gould, Rocks of Ages.
  • Frederick C. Crews: "Saving Us from Darwin", The New York Review of Books, Vol 48, No 15 (4 October 2001). Discusses Johnson, The Wedge of Truth; Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?; Behe, Darwin's Black Box; Dembski (Ed.), Mere Creation; Dembski, Intelligent Design; Pennock, Tower of Babel; and Miller, Finding Darwin's God.
  • Kenneth R. Miller: Finding Darwin's God, HarperCollins (1999). ISBN 0060930497 A cell biologist and devout Christian critiques Intelligent Design Theory and advocates theistic evolution.
  • National Academy of Sciences: Science and Creationism, National Academies Press (1999). ISBN 0309064066 The collective scientific mainstream speaks on anti-evolution.
  • Ernst Mayr: One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Harvard University Press (1993). ISBN 0674639065

Notes and references

  1. ^ William Dembski, 1998. The Design Inference. Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ Dembski. 1999. Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology. "Christ is indispensible to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ. But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." p. 210
  3. ^ Dembski. 2005. Intelligent Design's Contribution to the Debate Over Evolution: A Reply to Henry Morris.[42]
  4. ^ "Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science" In Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition National Academy of Sciences, 1999
  5. ^ [43] AP, August 2, 2005
  6. ^ [44] Peter Baker and Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writers, Wednesday, August 3, 2005;
  7. ^ Elizabeth Nickson, 2004. "Let's Be Intelligent About Darwin." In Christianity.ca.
  8. ^ Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32 [45]
  9. ^ Barbara Forrest, 2000. "Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection." In Philo, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall-Winter 2000), pp. 7-29.
  10. ^ William Dembski in The Design Inference" (see further reading) cited extraterrestrials as a possible designer [46].
  11. ^ Thomas Aquinas, 1265-1272. Summa Theologica. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" In faithnet.org.uk.
  12. ^ The Design Revolution, pg. 64-65
  13. ^ Michael J. Murray, n.d. "Natural Providence (or Design Trouble)" (PDF)
  14. ^ "...the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion. ...This is not to say that the biblical issues are unimportant; the point is rather that the time to address them will be after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact." Phillip Johnson. "The Wedge", Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. July/August 1999.
  15. ^ "Intelligent Design is an intellectual movement, and the Wedge strategy stops working when we are seen as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message. ... The evangelists do what they do very well, and I hope our work opens up for them some doors that have been closed." Phillip Johnson. "Keeping the Darwinists Honest", an interview with Phillip Johnson. In Citizen Magazine. April 1999.
  16. ^ Joel Belz, 1996. "Witnesses For The Prosecution." In World Magazine.
  17. ^ Joseph Boxhorn, 2004. "Observed Instances of Speciation." In TalkOrigins.org; and Chris Stassen, James Meritt, Anneliese Lilje and L. Drew Davis, 1997. "Some More Observed Speciation Events." In TalkOrigins.org.
  18. ^ Max Blumenthal, 2004 "Avenging angel of the religious right." In Salon.com.
  19. ^ Barbara Forrest, 2001. "The Wedge at Work." from Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics. MIT Press.
  20. ^ Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32 [47]
  21. ^ CNN, 2005. "Judge: Evolution stickers unconstitutional."
  22. ^ Semba U, Shibuya Y, Okabe H, Yamamoto T., 1998. "Whale Hageman factor (factor XII): prevented production due to pseudogene conversion." Thromb Res. 1998 Apr 1;90(1):31-7.
  23. ^ Matt Inlay, 2002. "Evolving Immunity." In TalkDesign.org.
  24. ^ Nic J. Matzke, 2003. "Evolution in (Brownian) space: a model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum." In TalkDesign.org.
  25. ^ Lenski RE, Ofria C, Pennock RT, Adami C., 2003. "The evolutionary origin of complex features." Nature. 2003 May 8;423(6936):139-44.
  26. ^ William A. Dembski, 2005. ""Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress (356k PDF)", pp. 15-16, describing an argument made by Michael Shermer in How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, 2nd ed. (2003).
  27. ^ John H. McDonald A reducibly complex mousetrap.
  28. ^ Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin. Redundant Complexity:A Critical Analysis of Intelligent Design in Biochemistry. East Tennessee State University. [48]
  29. ^ Beth McMurtrie, 2001. "Darwinism Under Attack." The Chronicle Of Higher Education.
  30. ^ Statement from the Council of the Biological Society of Washington. September, 2004.[49]
  31. ^ AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory. American Association for the Advancement of Science. [50]
  32. ^ Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32 [51]
  33. ^ The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories. Stephen C. Meyer. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239. August, 2004. [52]
  34. ^ Richard Sternberg, 2004. "Procedures for the publication of the Meyer paper."
  35. ^ "Clarifications Regarding the BSG, Bryan College, and Richard Sternberg."
  36. ^ Wesley R. Elsberry, 2004. "Meyer's Hopeless Monster." In The Panda's Thumb.
  37. ^ Elizabeth Nickson, 2004. "Let's Be Intelligent About Darwin." In Christianity.ca.
  38. ^ Joel Belz, 1996. "Witnesses For The Prosecution." In World Magazine.
  39. ^ Jon Buell & Virginia Hearn (eds), 1992. "Proceedings of a Symposium entitled: Darwinism: Scientific Inference of Philosophical Preference?" (PDF)
  40. ^ "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." Phillip E. Johnson. January 10, 2003 on American Family Radio [53] In www.christianity.ca
  41. ^ Phillip E. Johnson in his book "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education" (InterVarsity Press, 1995), positions himself as a "theistic realist" against "methodological naturalism."
  42. ^ "Intelligent Design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God." - William Dembski. Science Test. In Church & State Magazine, July/August 2000.
  43. ^ Jerry Coyne, "The Case Against Intelligent Design," The New Republic, August 22, 2005.[54]
  44. ^ William Dembski, quoted by Barbara Forrest. In The Newest Evolution of Creationism. Barbara Forrest. Natural History. April, 2002, page 80 [55]
  45. ^ The Economist Magazine, July 30 thru August 5, 2005, "Intelligent design rears its head", page 30 thru 31
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