Three Cheers for Intelligent Design... But Not for the Reason You Might Think

Posted by Greg Allen on 04.17.2007

Were someone today to assert that Earth is controlled by an extended family of jealous and violent gods and goddesses, who often descend upon Earth and affect the course of human events, it's safe to say virtually all Americans would view this person as an idiot.
They would be wrong.

"It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe." -Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist

Were someone today to assert that Earth is controlled by an extended family of jealous and violent gods and goddesses, who often descend upon Earth and affect the course of human events, it's safe to say virtually all Americans would view this person as an idiot.

They would be wrong.

The truth is that beliefs and intelligence are rarely, if ever, connected. The exceedingly smart are not magically insulated from holding truly stupid beliefs; likewise those holding false beliefs are not prevented from producing works of staggering genius. There are easy examples to prove this point. The great mathematician Issac Newton, who proved the workings of nature could be predicted and explained through rational investigation, devoted a great deal of time—more than he ever did to optics or gravity—to his studies of the occult and alchemy, which modern scientists laugh at as patently ludicrous. Likewise, the ancient Greeks, who did believe that the earth was controlled by a soap opera cast of deities, also made some of the greatest contributions to modern civilization in art, architecture, mathematics, and philosophy. Remember, people of the past had the same brains as modern people do, even if they were half full of garbage. Stupid beliefs do not a stupid person make.

This lesson is all the more crucial recently thanks to a new movement called intelligent design (ID). The movement styles itself as both the scientific criticism of and alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. It's easy to see why it is tempting for the scientific establishment to classify proponents of ID as intellectually backward advocates of the worst kind of pseudoscience, but to do so would rely on misconceptions of the movement's arguments, the people within it, and what sort of arguments actually have a chance at persuading them.

As stated above, even if ID were intellectually backward, that wouldn't prove that its advocates were. The truth is that there is something of a spectrum amongst believers of intelligent design.
On the one hand are individuals like William A. Dembski, who see ID as tracing a path of logical steps leading towards belief in Christ as the Savior (though Dembski argues against evolution in favor of an anonymous designer in courtroom settings).

On the other hand are ID proponents who seem to genuinely be striving for a scientific resolution to the question of evolution, notably Michael Behe. Unlike Dembski, Behe accepts the common descent of species as well as the scientific consensus on the age of the earth. While conceding that evolution occurs and that natural selection obviously plays a role in it, Behe says that intricate systems in advanced organisms necessitate many evolutionary steps. (Behe specifically focuses on the evolution of protein synthesis.) Behe then asserts that since the evolutionary advantage only occurs once the steps have reached their final result, it is impossible to explain selection and evolution for each individual step. Thus, according to Behe, evolution by natural selection is incapable of accounting for the evolution of so-called "irreducibly complex" adaptations. Even one who disagrees with this analysis should concede it is more elegant than some would slander it as.

That doesn't mean that it's right. It isn't. Not only have irreducibly complex structures successfully been evolved through digital simulations in which organisms adapt to factors even more harsh than those in nature, but in bacteria (whose extremely short generational timescales allow for direct observation of evolution) multiple peer-reviewed papers document the evolution of irreducibly complex adaptations. Irreducible complexity is a seeming contradiction to natural selection that is actually resolved rather easily. Because the bacterial equivalent is difficult to explain (not to mention beyond my qualifications as a layman), I'll discuss a macroscopic equivalent. Legs are a really great way to get around on land, but prehistoric fish obviously lived only in water. This begs the question, why would some mutant fish spontaneously sprout legs to walk out of the water before it had evolved the capacity to breathe on dry land? Likewise, why develop land lungs without a means of getting around on land? This simplified example of irreducible complexity is resolved because the evolutionary "steps" occur for purposes other than the ones in which they finally are utilized. Legs were evolved from powerful fins on the lower part of fish. Lungs are thought to have evolved from the swim bladder, which was previously used to control buoyancy. Though legs and lungs don't make sense unless they come as one package, previous evolutionary "steps" related to the fins or the swim bladder can increase the chance for survival by being independently advantageous and then finally locking into the irreducibly complex adaptation.

In fish, this sequence of events is presented in the fossil record, but in bacteria, its equivalent has been observed directly as well as documented and duplicated. Irreducible complexity is not a challenge that prevents Darwinian natural selection from explaining the existence of complex life forms throughout our planet.

Now sure that the objections or intelligent design opponents are invalid, it's worthwhile to investigate their motives. Some advocates of ID really are "creationists in a lab coat." In fact, the Discovery Institute, the hub of the ID movement of which both Behe and Dembski are members, published a memo entitled "The Wedge" that stated the goals of the institution were to "reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." If that is the case, then it would seem that debating this institution really is arguing for the scientific method against a religious conspiracy whose followers assume the conclusion first and look for evidence second. Surely this is a debate science can win. After all, the same "materialist" science that led to antibiotics, the computer, and virtually every other advance in civilization for the past 300 years is the same one that Darwin used to formulate the theory of natural selection.

Materialist science works and can continue to do so long as people are educated in its proper methodology. Here's where the imperative of this discussion comes in. While it is true that people can believe extremely stupid things and still be extremely smart, it's also true that certain types of beliefs foreclose the possibility of rational investigation into related topics. In the same way the Romans never could have developed calculus simply because their number system was too cumbersome and convoluted to do advanced mathematics, students who are taught that the earth is 6000 years old and that the fossil record was planted by God to test man's faith are educationally crippled. Intelligent design, though espoused as science, puts those who learn it in a weaker position to understand higher levels of biology and the scientific method as a whole (since the theory generates no predictions or testable hypotheses). In most instances, this will be irrelevant since most people don't require a degree in biology to get through their day, but if some politicians get their way and require ID taught in education programs nationwide (John McCain, for instance, feels this way), we can imagine an entire generation of America's scientists and engineers at a strategic educational disadvantage.

Faced with that possibility, some are calling intelligent design a dark cloud hanging over America, but this flies in the face of history. Fully half of Americans directly reject evolution outright in favor of a creationist explanation, but those numbers are virtually unchanged since the Gallup poll started investigating the matter. Yes, many Americans believe some things directly refuted by science, but this isn't a new phenomenon. The real change has been how the rest of the world has long since moved on to accept evolution while the American numbers have remained roughly the same. The Discovery Institute is a reaction to the power of modern science, and that's why the scientific community should take an uncompromising stance on the issue of evolution. They won't convince everybody. To this day there is still an International Flat Earth Research Society, and it's hard to imagine how such zealots will be impressed with the scientific community's retort on the subject. But perhaps by making children aware of the ID criticism of evolution by natural selectio as well as the evidence that directly refutes it, we can nudge those numbers closer to their foreign levels, and in the process maybe show them the true virtues of the scientific method.

Right now it seems the scientific community is foregoing this opportunity. I think they're making a mistake, but I can see where they're coming from. Imagine being a Ph.D historian on TV across the table from a Holocaust denier as though you were equally qualified. Still, belief in creationism is shared by half the population. Ignoring ID isn't going to make it go away. Intelligent design, in all its varieties, has to be attacked early and often. The recent Kansas Board of Education hearings, which were boycotted by evolution advocates, only paved the way for adoption of a state curriculum that required the teaching of intelligent design as a reputable alternative to evolution. It is not certain, but perhaps passionate debate on the part of evolutionists (not to mention the video evidence disproving ID) could have prevented that outcome. Ultimately, it's up to those in science to show laypeople the merits of their way of mind and to fight the good fight.