A Hard Look at Intelligent Design

by Meade Fischer

There is a battle being fought in science education. A vocal group is advocating for the teaching of an idea known as Intelligent Design in addition to or as an alternative to evolution. While most people would balk at tossing out evolution in favor of an alternate theory, there are those who don't see any harm in exposing children to an additional explanation. The proponents, after all, make it seem innocuous enough. However, we need to look carefully at what they are saying before we welcome their theories.

In a report for Natural History magazine, editors? Richard Milner and Vittorio Maestro sum up position of the Proponents of Intelligent Design (ID). "These antievolutionists differ from fundamentalist creationists in that they accept that some species do change (but not much) and that Earth is much more than 6,000 years old. Like their predecessors, however, they reject the idea that evolution accounts for the array of species we see today, and they seek to have their concept -- known as intelligent design -- included in the science curriculum of schools."

Some of those arguing for ID are willing to concede much to evolution, perhaps in order to be scientifically credible. The one place they all draw the line is the question of how life began. While evolutionists are concentrating on chemical combinations present on the young earth, along with various energy sources needed to drive these combinations into complex proto life molecules, Intelligent Design maintains that life was arranged and created by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Intelligent causes and purposes are difficult things to quantify scientifically, so these concepts should be examined critically.

First, there are arguments of the type used by William Paley, creator of the famous watchmaker analogy in 1802. If we find a pocket watch in a field we immediately infer that it was produced not by natural processes acting blindly but by a designing human intellect. Michael J Behe follows a similar pattern with the example of the mousetrap being too complex to be made built up from simpler elements, which is meant as an analogy to complex organs in humans. Kenneth R. Miller refutes that argument with a list of uses for part of the mousetrap. Then there is the classic argument of the complex eye, the perfect organ that couldn't have evolved from simpler organs. In fact, there are ample examples of light sensing organs simpler or in some cases far more perfect than our own. But these specific arguments are begging the question.

These arguments about complex organs and watches that by their nature require a designer have a counterpart in the arguments against chemical evolution. There are several theories about how life might have occurred via natural means on the early earth. These require certain assumptions about the early atmosphere, the chemical composition of the early shallow seas, and the types of energy available in the forms of solar radiation, lightening and the like. We cannot recreate the early earth, and we cannot prove now, nor may we ever prove, exactly how life got its start. Science isn't about answers, but about the search for reasonable explanations that can be shown to be consistent with observation. There are no absolute answers in science, only the best answer at the time. The door remains open for a deeper understanding.?

The Intelligent Design position appears to say, if you can't prove A, than you cannot deny the argument favoring B. More specifically, since we can't prove any of the chemical evolution scenarios, we need to say, life was likely a product of an intelligence and designed for some purpose. While that is certainly a possibility, it doesn't necessarily follow. One can speculate, hypothesize, widely, including that life was brought here by space travelers. This kind of speculation might find a home in philosophy if the arguments are consistent enough, but they are not the stuff of science.?

There are certain impossible or nearly impossible questions that immediately send the mind on mystical and metaphysical tangents. One of those is the question of what came before the big bang. One day we may be able to create proto universes in the laboratory, but until then, that's a question much like, "What time was it a minute before time started?" We may say, "logically, I would think that it was this way," or "my faith assures me that it was that way." In either case you are making an assumption not based on science, and in the final analysis we are talking about what is fed to children as scientific education.

At a deeper, linguistic level, there is the argument based on the way we define our terms. "Intelligent design" is a very loaded term. What do we mean by "intelligent?" It would not be difficult to argue that our universe in an intelligent system, using the term to refer to information in the way that "military intelligence" refers to the gathering of information about the enemy, not a statement of the relative IQs of people in uniform. Information is encoded in DNA, as it is in quarks, atoms, the electro-weak force, and gravity. Where that information came from is still an unanswered questions, of the pre big bang type of question.?

If you add "design" to "intelligent," you compound the complications of definition. Is a design simply a pattern that is expressed more clearly as a system grows, or is it design as engineers know it, a conscious attempt to bring a technological solution to a problem?

"Intelligent Design," as its advocates assume, requires a designer, an intelligence that has shaped experience for a predetermined purpose. This is something we humans do. We have a problem, such as it's too hot in the summer. We mess with freon and pumps and the like, and we design air conditioners, true intelligent design. However, that is radically anthropomorphic. Is it realistic to assume that an intelligence capable of creating the entire universe thinks just like we do and solves problems using the same methods as postindustrial man? Its as comforting as our once-held belief that the earth was the center of the universe, but it has no basis in science.?

The reality is that we don't really know all the answers, particularly regarding how it all got started. We tend to like answers, whether we can prove them or not. However, when people use terms that are highly colored both emotionally and spiritually and use them as if they were neutral, they confuse young minds and destroy the objectivity that science attempts to foster. It is a very short journey from Intelligent Design to the notion that science really knows nothing and faith is the answer. It's an interesting journey for theology and perhaps for philosophy, but it shouldn't be undertaken in the name of science.?