Reasonable Dissent

Why I dismiss intelligent design

A recent post seemed to incite a reader more than I would have expected. The link that was left seems to imply that I have a bias toward evolution, and may be guilty of some intelligent design hating without just cause. I must respectfully disagree, but I think it’s only fair to justify why I dismiss the theory. I welcome any criticism to my understanding, of course.

Intelligent design’s relationship to religion

First of all, I’m not necessarily one to run around saying that intelligent design is nothing more than creationism spruced up to pass off as science. It is obvious why its validity could be used as an argument for many Judeo-Christian religious life origin ideas, but the implications don’t make it wrong automatically. However, let’s investigate the implications some. For a scientific theory to mean anything, it needs to make predictions. A modern example might be string theory. At this time, there are very few testable predictions of string theory. It makes some claims, and looks quite pretty, but until you can test a prediction and say that your hypothesis is supported or falsified, you haven’t got a very solid theory in the scientific sense, just some ideas. That doesn’t mean you can’t investigate your ideas, but failing to come up with testable predictions is a huge blow to your credibility. Looking at intelligent design, what does it say? In short, that “the theory of intelligent design holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause” [1]. But does this really answer the question if you claim that the theory is non-religious? In fact, it merely postpones the question. The whole question that they are trying to answer is “how did intelligent life come to exist?” And the answer is, “Intelligent life came to exist by the design from intelligent life.” Intelligent design advocates don’t make any mention of what this intelligence might be, but the only conclusion that doesn’t result in the exact same question is supernatural. Any natural (meant here as “part of the observable universe”) source would be intelligent life that would beg the exact same question: How did it get started? So, while the implication for a creator god doesn’t falsify the theory outright, it seems plain that either the theory is at the very least deistic or it doesn’t answer the question it pretends to.

Irreducible Complexity

The science behind intelligent design has never seemed more than vague and, frankly, unscientific to me. (No, I have not read every single article on ID that exists. If you have one that just blows me out of the water, show it to me. I’ll think about it and let you know if it changes my mind).  So let’s go into some of the major arguments, as I’m familiar with them. The one that I seem to hear most about is “Irreducible Complexity”: the idea that some biological systems are complex in a way that removal of one piece causes the entire function to cease. The infamous example is a mousetrap. There are several key components to a mousetrap, and until they are all present, the mousetrap will not function. The claim is that there are such systems in biology that could not have been built up by gradual processes because the intermediate steps would not be justified by a Darwinian process.

I have two major issues with this idea. First, it supposes a lot of understanding about the intermediate steps that they do not possess. There is no reason to say that every step of the way to evolving my eye had this result in mind. Nor is there any reason to say that every step of evolving my eye had something to do with sight. The intermediate steps could have had an organ that resembled my eye in a basic way, but supported survival in a completely different way. Or, one might argue that a partially functional eye is still beneficial, even though it may not work in exactly the same way as it does today. My second argument with it is that it doesn’t give any falsifiable predictions. The prediction is, “There exist biological systems of irreducible complexity.” This is not a hypothesis because there is no counter proof. The only test is this: “Is this one irreducibly complex? No. Ok, is this one? No. Ok, how about this one?” It’s a question designed to be unanswered forever, unless we can somehow show that we have exhausted the search of every single biological system.

Fine-Tuned Universe

As pointed out by the commenter on my post about the anthropic principle, the idea can be used by both sides of this debate to justify certain arguments. Personally, I don’t see this as a big problem. Two theories can use a previous result in different ways, and that doesn’t invalidate it, nor the theories. But the question of the finely-tuned universe is less a reason to invoke intelligence and more a realization that we don’t know everything there is to know – not very surprising.

Still, it’s worth considering its validity. The idea is that there are several universal constants that seem to be exactly what they need to be for life to form. My first reaction to this was “Well, that just means that a different kind of life might have formed”, but I think this is not necessarily correct. The question may be a valid one, because it involves the production of elements in stars. Certain constants, like the gravitational constant and the strong nuclear force, would impact the way that stars come together, if they were to come together at all, and if they would produce a useful array of elements or not.

But intelligence is not dictated at this point. It’s merely a lack of knowledge, not some “knob-turner” in the sky. Consider people long ago that didn’t have the knowledge of science that we enjoy. Does it seem like an intelligent source is making sure that the sun rises and sets at regular times that correspond very well with our need to sleep? How could it be so finely tuned that we don’t need only 2 hours of sleep and have so much extra dark time? Or how about sailors using a compass before they understood magnetism? It seems like an intelligent source is directing the movement of the needle to always show us north, no matter where we are. (And yes, the compass very much precedes knowledge of magnetism[5]). I have never seen any evidence for intelligence for this position, even from ID advocates. Usually what I see is the idea that it sure looks too good to be random, so therefore intelligence. This is not science.

I don’t claim some authoritative understanding on intelligent design. This is how I understand it, based on my own experience and research. Everything that I’ve seen and investigated has led me to consider intelligent design a pseudo-science at best. I don’t take it seriously, because I tried to take it seriously and found it empty.  No, I don’t think that evolution has all the answers to all the questions, but that’s what science is: continuously improving our theories based on evidence. Intelligent design does not do this, so I don’t take it seriously. It’s as simple as that.

[1]http://www.discovery.org/a/3059

[2]http://www.discovery.org/a/2640

[3]http://www.iscid.org/papers/Luskin_HumanOrigins_071505.pdf

[4]http://www.intelligentdesign.org/index.php

[5]http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/Compass.htm

Tags: evolution, intelligent design, science