What Intelligent Design Is

The more scientifically sophisticated we get, the stronger the argument for intelligent design.

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave, you’ve heard of “intelligent design” (ID) and some of its leading proponents—Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski. Unfortunately, you probably got the mainstream media’s spin. It’s so predictable, I sometimes wonder if reporters aren’t using computer macros.

The reporter types control-alt "CE" and out pops the witty headline: “Creationism Evolves.” Control-alt "Scopes Trope" and out pops a lead referencing the old Spencer Tracy film "Inherit the Wind," a cartoon-like caricature of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial over evolution in the classroom.

Control-alt “Conspiracy” and, presto, a paragraph about the religious right and its scheme to smuggle Bibles into the science class as the first step toward establishing a theocracy. Next comes a quotation supposedly representing the view of all “serious scientists,” with the phrase “overwhelming evidence” thrown in for good measure. The story practically writes itself, and it possesses this virtue: it saves the reporter the bother of actually investigating what design theory really is.

So what is ID, really? ID is not a deduction from religious dogma or scripture. It’s simply the argument that certain features of the natural world—from miniature machines and digital information found in living cells, to the fine-tuning of physical constants—are best explained as the result of an intelligent cause. ID is thus a tacit rebuke of an idea inherited from the 19th century, called scientific materialism.

Natural science in the Victorian Age, or rather, its materialistic gloss, offered a radically different view of the universe: (1) The universe has always existed, so we need not explain its origin; (2) Everything in the universe submits to deterministic laws. (3) Life is the love child of luck and chemistry. (4) Cells, the basic units of life, are essentially blobs of Jell-O.

Onto this dubious edifice Charles Darwin added a fifth conjecture: All the sophisticated organisms around us grew from a process called natural selection: this process seizes and passes along those minor, random variations in a population that provide a survival advantage. With this, Darwin explained away the apparent design in the biological world as just that—only apparent.

Each of these 19th-century assumptions has been undermined or discredited in the 20th century, but the materialist gloss remains: There is one god, matter, and science is its prophet. It hides behind its more modest cousin, methodological naturalism. According to this tidy dictum, scientists can believe whatever they want in their personal lives, but they must appeal only to impersonal causes when explaining nature. Accordingly, any who discuss purpose or design within science (the founders of modern science generously excepted) cease to be scientists.

There was one problem with this tidy rule. Nature forgot to cooperate. The trouble started in the 1920s when astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the light from distant galaxies was “red-shifted.” It had stretched during the course of its travels. This suggested the universe is expanding. Reversing the process in their minds, scientists were suddenly confronted with a universe that had come into existence in the finite past. Who knew! Hubble’s discovery, confirmed by later evidence, flatly contradicted the earlier picture of an eternal and self-existing cosmos. The universe itself had re-introduced the question of its origin to a community bent on avoiding the question altogether.

This was just the beginning. In the 1960s and ’70s, physicists found that the universal constants of physics (e.g., gravity, electromagnetism) appeared finely tuned for complex life. To astrophysicist and atheist Fred Hoyle, this fine-tuning suggested the work of a “superintellect.”

Still more recently, growing evidence in astronomy has revealed that even in a finely tuned universe, dozens of local conditions have to go just right to build a single habitable planet. This growing list of unlikely requirements is only half the story. In "The Privileged Planet," astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and I argue that those conditions for habitability also provide the best overall conditions for doing science. The very places where observers can exist are the same places that provide the best overall conditions for observing. For instance, the most life-friendly region of the galaxy is also the best place to be an astronomer and cosmologist. You might expect this if the universe were designed for discovery, but not if, as astronomer Carl Sagan put it, “The universe is all there is, ever was, or ever will be.”

Of course, even with a suitable environment, you don’t automatically get man or even amoebas. Before the Darwinian mechanism can even get started, it needs a wealth of biological information as part of the first self-reproducing organism. For instance, there’s the information encoded along the DNA molecule, often described as a sophisticated computer code for producing proteins, the three-dimensional building blocks of all life. These, in turn, need the right cellular hardware to function.

In recent years, philosophers William Dembski and Stephen Meyer have turned this evidence into a formidable argument for intelligent design. Dembski, also a mathematician, applies information and probability theory to the subject. Meyer argues that the usual aimless processes of chance and chemistry simply can’t explain biological information and that, moreover, our everyday experience shows us where such information comes from—intelligent agents.

Moving up a level, we find complex and functionally integrated machines that are out of reach to the Darwinian mechanism. Biochemist Michael Behe immortalized some of these in his bestselling 1996 book, "Darwin’s Black Box."

Behe argues that molecular machines like the bacterial flagellum are “irreducibly complex.” They’re like a mousetrap. Without all of their basic parts, they don’t work. Natural selection can only build systems one small step at a time, where each step provides an immediate survival advantage for the organism. It can’t select for a future function. To do that requires foresight—the exclusive jurisdiction of intelligent agents. That’s the positive evidence for design: Such structures are the sort produced by intelligent agents, who can foresee a future function. If you get this point, you’ve already comprehended more than most journalists writing on the subject.

Moving to the macroscopic world, we see the three-dimensional complexity of many diverse animal body plans (phyla). In the fossil record, these show up suddenly. The problem for Darwinism is not that there are “gaps.” Of course there are. Rather, it’s the entire fossil record’s pattern of sudden appearance of new phyla and persistent morphological isolation between them. This is not the gradually branching tree of life the Darwinian story leads us to expect.

Nor is this an argument from ignorance. In our experience, sudden innovations and massive infusions of information come from intelligent agents. The primary innovations come first (e.g., car, airplane, a new Cambrian phylum) followed by variations on the original form. This is the story the fossil record tells.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we have new evidence and new intellectual tools at our disposal. Standing in the way is the materialistic definition of science inherited from the Victorian Age. If a definition of science conflicts with the scientific evidence, should we go with the definition or the evidence?

To ask the question is to answer it. "Scientia" means knowledge. If we are properly scientific, then we should be open to the natural world, not decide beforehand what it’s allowed to reveal. Either the universe provides evidence for purpose and design or it doesn’t. The way to resolve the question isn’t to play definitional games but to look.

Recently, Nobel-prize winning physicist Charles Townes asked, “What is the purpose or meaning of life? Or of our universe? These are questions which should concern us all.... If the universe has a purpose, then its structure, and how it works, must reflect this purpose.”

Townes continues: “Serious intellectual discussion of the possible meaning of our universe, or the nature of religion and philosophical views of religion and science, needs to be openly and carefully discussed.”

Unfortunately, few are willing to follow Townes’ advice. If we talk about ID, we’re warned, someone, somewhere, will start talking about God.

But certain ideas in science will always have theological implications. As arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins so memorably said, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Right.

Both Dawkins and Townes agree that ideas in science can have theological implications. Isn’t that obvious? Yet in our current climate, even the bare rumor of God causes some to reach for their stash of derisive terms—“theocrat,” “fundamentalist,” “creationist”—they don’t require much imagination.

But that response rings increasingly hollow. The genie is out of the bottle, and name-calling and misinformation won’t put him back. The mandarins can no longer control the flow of information to those who seek it. The implications can take care of themselves. It’s time to discuss the evidence.

(PH: the thread's not dead yet, it just smells that way)

If it is unknown or poorly understood then you can't prove against regularity or chance. Those proofs rely on having solid models. If you don't have a solid model, then you can't prove the null hypothesis wrong.

If that were to be true, the filter would have that as a final test. But Dembski's filter pigeonholes everything into only three classifications: Regularity, Chance, or Design.

If a observed phenomena can be explained by a law or law-like cause it is 'Regularity' and there is no need to proceed further.

Next comes 'Chance' -- Can the event be explained by a accepted model (theory)? If so then we stop there.
Note that the observer has to "accept" a theory of how the universe works to judge what is in the realm of possible.

Dembski's filter then drops everything past this point into 'Design' without further analysis.

If the null hypothesis were to be used correctly, then after classification the events would be compared to random cause.
When H_t - H₀ > some significant value (say 15%) then we can say the hypothesis under test (H_t) is substantially better than the null hypothesis (H₀).

The filter (rather dishonestly IMO) doesn't perform this final test. If it did, most (if not all) 'Design' classified events would then become no different than random noise -- a category that I called 'unknown' further up the thread.

Do models change?
Of course they do,

Certainly.

Helios drove the Sun chariot across the sky each day while other gods like Mars, Selene, and Saturn looked on. Then we realized there where no chariots or teams of horses in the sky, and the planets and stars were actually attached to transparent crystal spheres whirling around the earth. Later on angels would find good paying work moving around things like Venus and comets that didn't seem to be too firmly attached to their respective spheres. Then Copernicus and Kepler came along and changed the model again! It took a while, but the moving angels finally joined Helios, Mars, and Saturn in the unemployment line.
And then volcanoes were the forge chimney of Vulcan and earthquakes were caused by Neptune (or was that Poseidon?) whenever he got pissed off about something.
Then the model changed to 'core, mantle, crust' and then to the current plate tectonics. Vulcan and Neptune are now collecting retirement.
Ditto for the thunderbolts of Zeus. Electrostatic discharge '-ism' killed off the pagan gods (or it would have if the Church hadn't gotten to them first).

... but expecting that a given result of ID should be fixed and immovable is just as silly as requiring any other scientific tenet to be fixed and immovable. All are improved with more data.

Interesting. The proponents of the scientific method have never said that any theory was "fixed and immovable". Indeed, it's the religious who claim that their beliefs are the "Emeth, alpha, and omega" (That's "Truth, beginning and end" for those of you not familiar with the Hebrew scripture).

If naturalistic evolution is "unknown" or "poorly understood", why is it being taught dogmatically?

Nice subject shift. I was speaking of faults in Dembski's filter, namely: lacking a 'unknown' / 'poorly understood' category.
The 'quote-mining' department at ICR might have an opening for someone of your skills.

And I find it ironic whenever the religious folks use words like 'zealot' and 'dogma' ... don't you?

Hope you enjoyed your vacation.

"If that were to be true, the filter would have that as a final test."

No, it's a prerequisite.

"But Dembski's filter pigeonholes everything into only three classifications: Regularity, Chance, or Design."

This is true. But Dembski's filter DOES NOT say that the cause that was relied upon is provable. However, having exactly three classifications means that if you can prove that an event IS NOT the result of two of them, then it must fall into the third. There are cases where the cause is indeterminate. However, if you can prove that it is not regular, and you can prove that it is not chance, then the only one left is design. This is a valid form of proof, if the categories are correct. If you disagree with the categories, I would love to hear why you think one should be added or removed and why.

"Note that the observer has to "accept" a theory of how the universe works to judge what is in the realm of possible."

This is true of every inquiry, whether scientific or not. I don't see why ID is unique in this manner.

"If the null hypothesis were to be used correctly, then after classification the events would be compared to random cause."

Yes, chance. We have already passed the part of the filter where we showed that it was not the result of chance.

"If it did, most (if not all) 'Design' classified events would then become no different than random noise -- a category that I called 'unknown' further up the thread."

Actually, to qualify to pass the filter, a design-classified event HAS to differ from chance in a statistically significant manner.

"The proponents of the scientific method have never said that any theory was "fixed and immovable"."

That was my point exactly. However, they contradict themselves when they say that we can't use ID because we don't have perfect models.

"Nice subject shift. I was speaking of faults in Dembski's filter, namely: lacking a 'unknown' / 'poorly understood' category."

My point was that Dembski's filter would only be unusable for biological systems if evolution was a poorly understood phenomena. If scientists believe it is poorly understood, then I find it odd that it is being taught dogmatically. If it is well-understood, then Dembski's filter can be applied.

"The 'quote-mining' department at ICR might have an opening for someone of your skills."

Talk.Origins can be just as bad.

"And I find it ironic whenever the religious folks use words like 'zealot' and 'dogma' ... don't you?"

Why? You think that only religious people have zealotry and dogmas? The fact is that everyone has this, but religious people are honest enough to admit it.

I am indeed pleased to read these intelligent discussions on science, with which I am certain the Scriptural account of the Book of Genesis agrees absolutely.

You will note the literal nature with which I utilize all words, including the word science. In this post-modern academic world where nothing really has any meaning, as a result of moral relativity which is espoused as an essential dogma of many universities to the proving of the ineffability of the 'enlightened mind' whereby man makes himself God, science has come to be interpreted as much other than its technical meaning.

For the most part, science as a term should by right be today replaced with the term, Darwinistic Naturalism, a religious system.

I rejoice to see Intelligent Design promulgated throughout academia, because it is not a development of any religious system or progamme, but rather of science. I also encourage all persons of good will to set about the important mission of restoring the ethical foundation of true science, at the grass root level, by eliminating religious teachings from science courses in so called public schools funded by the taxpayers.

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